Without equally shared risks and benefits, all we have is a hot mess of a financial system where greed rules.
People most of the time think they speak and act objectively but the reality is that most are led by deep-rooted bias.
“The rich should pay more taxes” — says no rich man ever.
But the poor(not rich yet?) population is often found supporting this idea when it's predictable that if they were in the shoes of said rich people, they wouldn't love the idea so much.
But let's pretend that these vastly held opinions are not just biases based on the absence of exposure to the consequences associated and try to explore the “reasoning” that argue for it being appropriate.
What are the common reasons?
—Ability to pay
—Reducing wealth inequality
—Funding public goods
—Economic stability
—Rich people bad(eat and kill them)
Any reasonable person can see how absurd these reasons are.
First off, there's no such thing as an ability to pay “more” taxes. It hurts the same across the board because taxes are generally an exploit and attack on your finances.
You don't have the slightest clue what's “affordable” for a rich man.
Now, onto reducing wealth inequality, this is not something taxation can fix. There's so many factors that influence wealth inequality and just sitting somewhere and trying to reduce someone else to a certain financial level through taxes just so you'd not have to feel bad about not being as rich as they are won't solve them.
When it comes to funding public goods, that's something that should come voluntarily and should not be limited to the rich.
Economic stability, well, that's a funny one. It's interesting that people would even think that taking money from the rich somehow solves the problems of our economies.
Remind me, what do rich people do and what do the taxes taken from us fund?
When you look at money flow, you figure it's just madness robbing who actually creates economic value to fund people that just waste it, fund wars for personal gains and other times just channel it to their personal pockets.
And now, my favorite, “Rich people bad” — yes, he owns a yacht, kill him, he's bad.
This one really sums up everything wrong with traditional finance, economies and governance.
The idea that the rich are bad is both true and false. This is because there's extreme exceptions and whilst this doesn't make the case, in this context, it's more important to look at why it exists, in a small amount.
So now, we are making an assumption that most rich people are bad and few are good. Now the question is, why is this the case?
The answer is quite simply that the system allows this to be an easier reality. It's easier to be bad than good when the potential rewards far exceed the risks.
Our traditional systems have loopholes that allow people to commit fraud and engage in several bad activities and get away with it. On top of this, they also have ways to avoid much overhead costs, like taxes and keep expanding their wealth.
This is where the average person’s pain comes from. The focus is on the fact that the rich(mostly considered bad) have ways to avoid taxes, so they lean to their bias and support max taxing of said rich population because they don't stand to lose.
In the process, they fail to realize that they only set themselves up for being totally dependent and controlled by the government.
The government has been well aware that the rich have found numerous ways to avoid taxes, they literally openly discuss this, so why does nobody stop to question why they'd agree to tax said rich at any time?
It's simply a matter of division in the government, the ones funded by the rich are against taxing the rich aggressively and the ones with little or no exposure are in support because that money gets channeled to them. At the end of the day, no side is playing for the benefits of the common man or the public, it's all about what gives who's in sit the most power.
The wealth growth of certain individuals is now terrifying for certain government officials who don't hold close relationships with these people, so the solution to them is to tax their wealth.
If you pay attention to the United States government for example, you should be able to determine who is backed by the rich and who's not. Yet both sides are playing the same game.
So I say again:
Without equally shared risks and benefits, all we have is a hot mess of a financial system where greed rules.
This is why crypto is so important. Equal risks, equal rewards. Taxing the rich more isn't the solution, the solution is building a system where everyone is equally accountable, punishable and/or rewardable for what they do with respect to the underlying weighting system.