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Equal proportion is not the same as fair. It's a matter of scale. Low, middle, and even upper middle class people will actually feel the impact of, say, a 2% increase in taxes. Someone making more than a million dollars a year will not. It'll be a simple blip on a balance sheet and their quality of life will not be affected in any way.
Cognitive dissonance is high for me on this.
I disagree and agree at the same time.
I agree that it wouldn't make a huge difference, but I still don't like the entitled stances of both sides.
I think there are two factors that make it make sense to me.
People who make oodles of money, that these taxes actually impact, generally don't make that money by being any more productive than the rest of us. They won the birth lottery, or found the right way to exploit other people's labour, or created artificial demand, and so on and so forth. So, they don't really "deserve" that money. I personally agree with this, but I don't think it's a great argument in favour of higher wealth taxes because it's a pretty subjective take.
The purpose of tax is to allow us to collectively allocate wealth to improve society as a whole. We might not all agree on how that should be allocated - some people think we should spend more on health or the military or education or social welfare - but tax is a tool that we (as a culture) have decided is a good way to make sure that we make progress in some shared direction. It's not wrong to think that tax is wrong, but I personally believe that if we didn't have that system, the world would go nowhere because everyone would only spend in their personal interests. Cynical, sure, but it is what it is.
With this in mind I think it makes a bit more sense. Increasing the proportion of tax paid by the 0.1% of people who have the most only marginally affects those people, but the amount of money raised which can be used on common interests has the possibility of doing far more good, for far more people. That money has the potential to be more productive if it wasn't tied up in bonds, or gold, or Bitcoin, or etc.
Many/most western countries already use progressive tax brackets. Wealth taxes, to me, are just adjusting those to "catch up" with the modern definition of wealthy.
This is well articulated opinion. I like acknowledging that we all collectively don't completely agree on use, but most agree in the necessity. I certainly do.
I like police, fire, roads, infrastructure, education, defense, etc. I dont mind paying taxes. Like all,.I have opinions on its allocation, as you said.
I don't care for people automatically assuming they're entitled to rich people's money just because they make more than the rest of us.
I also don't have any empathy for (wealthy) people who have accumulated that wealth in despicable ways, examples you described included.
I've never had a conversation with someone who makes the kind of money these proposed taxes would affect. I'd be interested in that perspective.
Completely agree that it'd be good to actually know someone megarich. I think that's one of the biggest problems in modern society, that people don't have enough opportunities to interact with those outside of their immediate social spheres. I think if the megarich had to interact with normal people (and vice versa) we would all understand each other much better.
I guess I do agree also that no one is entitled to a rich persons money. I guess to go back to fairness though, I find it unfair that there are people going without basic human needs in the same countries as there are people figuratively hoarding piles of gold
I picture scrooge McDuck diving into a golf coin vault.