tax cuts

something i noticed is a glaring absence in talk of tax cuts: the argument always goes that tax cuts benefit the rich far more than everyone else, but this is based on looking at how much money one rich person saves versus how much money one non-rich person saves. the problem isn’t just that obviously someone with huge income is going to see larger reduction in overall taxes compared to someon who makes less income, assuming the tax rate decrease is the same in both cases, but the even more important point is that for every one rich person who benefits from lower taxes there are thousands of other non rich people who also benefit.

so i can respond to such people saying “tax cuts only really benefit the rich! look how much more they saved than a non rich person! the rich person saved $50,000 while the non rich person saved only $1000!” by simply pointing out that the same tax cut that benefited one rich person benefited a thousand non rich people, therefore tax cuts actually benefit the non rich far more than the rich. because there are far more non rich people than rich people.

also, high taxes are very stupid. a stable society is local focused and individual focused and thus doesn’t overly tyrannize the average person; high taxes, because they hurt the poor and middle class far more than the upper class, are directly harmful to locality and not only this but high taxes are a gradual slippery slope of increasing government size and power. once government reaches a critical mass of size and power it becomes tyrannical by default, by definition. so lower taxes are also a moral position in addition to a practical one.

Yes, and still one rich person pays for the welfare of numerous unemployed people. The whole entitlement complex is just what humans seem to be made of though. Since hunting fell away from our self valuing structure I suppose this ailment arose.

There are a lot of stable smaller countries with high taxes, eg Switzerland and Austria, also the Netherlands, social security is really strong here, but then again nothing, but NOTHING ever happens. No one ever does anything that's even remotely interesting. People just come here to gobble up the comforts and proliferate their spiritual sloth.

Yes that is another point I meant to make, that when earthy human localities (e.g. families, real friendships, "gangs" etc. (not gangs as in criminal violent thugs, I just mean like a bunch of kids skateboarding around or playing video games together and causing some minor mischiefs, being lawless in harmless ways, defiant, rebellious, etc)) are damaged by authoritarian tyrannies (e.g. big governments of any type) then this creates a self-feeding cycle because individual people are statistically less likely to be able to prosper or even support themselves, thus government steps in using this as justification to make government even larger, which then decimates localities even more, which then gives impetus for government to grow, etc.

Freedom is the issue for me, and freedom is firstly a thing of, for and by the individual. Individual self-valuing is what our subjectivity consciousness is, and is for. This is the "fantasy-image" principle in my three core model, with truth on the one side and power (willtopower) on the other side mediated through "fantasy" (subjectivity "I"-perspectivity). One thing that emerges from that system is what we call ethics, another is what we call reasoning. Ethics is the emergent property of this system tilted toward the mediating-negotiating factor between self-valuings (i.e. society) while reasoning is the emergent property of this system tilted toward the self. At least that is how I see it.

Americans do interesting things because we take risks, because we are free to do that without immediately having our lives ruined. Well now the left is changing the paradigm so that anyone who steps out of line has their life immediately ruined. If America falls to leftism as I sadly think is a not-so-remote possibility (although I remain hopeful) then I suspect what will happen is what happened both to Rome and to the USSR when they fell... namely that what defines America's philosophical center will be dispersed across the world. That isn't so bad an ending I suppose, because even if America ostensibly dies it will live on forever in millions, no billions, of tiny fracturings of itself throughout the world, transforming other nations and cultures and individuals forever according to the American philosophical idea. But still, I obviously hope America doesn't go the way of the USSR. We need to keep taxes low in order to prevent this.

I'm not even middle class, just lower middle class now, and I pay about $600 in income taxes and welfare/social security support taxes alone every single month. Not even counting various sales and property taxes. I suppose one could argue that I can afford to pay that, but I could also afford to pay double that and still somehow squeeze out some kind of minimal existence, but unlike the marxists' view squeezing out a minimal existence isn't the point of... existing.

And then I think what I could do with an extra $300 a month, imagining that my income taxes were simply cut in half. Firstly this would be fuel in the gas tank of the economy, almost immediately. Secondly I would have more self-valuing potency and increased range of freedom. And I would be better able to care for those around me whom I love. So all of that translates to a strengthened locality.

Btw, today is the national #walkaway march.

Awesome.