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[McTraveller]

Also McTraveller, how could you possibly think that charging everyone the exact same tax amount would be a good idea?

Oh, I didn't say it was a "good idea", I said it was the only truly fair tax.  I also argued that people don't really want a fair tax in the first place, they want an equitable one, but that's not even feasible. And that's only looking at just the taxes, not even the concept of something like "net tax" which would be "total benefit from taxes minus taxes paid" which I don't think anyone could ever agree upon a method for how that would be "fair" or "equitable" - by nature, any time you take tax money from a population and distribute it to a subset of that population, it's not fair or equitable by any measure I can fathom.

Of course, I purposely left out the part that in general, "fairness" has never really been a goal of tax systems - tax systems' goals are to raise revenue to fund "public" programs, and generally speaking public programs are neither "fair" nor "equitable" because of physical realities like geography, let alone politics that tend to make the distortions even worse by not even really focusing on public projects but rather special interests.

EDIT: Personally I think taxes should be used for public works that are not "profitable" in the private enterprise sense - pure sciences that may have a huge payout but really low probability, education (the rate of return on that is so nebulous, and look at examples of the for-profit universities that are falling apart), and big infrastructure projects, things like actual cures for diseases (because there's no profit in selling a drug if everyone is cured kind of nonsense), addressing systemic homelessness, etc.

EDIT2: Also, it's worth paying the government to act as arbitrator to prevent abuses among companies and citizens. Assuming the government actually does its job there (I'm looking squarely at crap like the SCOTUS nonsense with binding arbitration clauses instead of class-action suits, poor enforcement of antitrust laws, etc.)

[PTTG??]

If Bill Gates lost half his wealth today, he wouldn't notice. If I lost half my wealth today, I'd be homeless. In other words, money has diminishing marginal returns.

A "fair" tax system is one that distributes the burden evenly over all all.

Furthermore, taxation is part of the economic system. Poor people are disadvantaged by our current economic system by definition -- they have the smallest share of it and the least opportunity to attain more. Therefore, a "fair" tax would be one that more heavily taxes the advantaged rich than the disadvantaged poor.

[McTraveller]

If Bill Gates lost half his wealth today, he wouldn't notice. If I lost half my wealth today, I'd be homeless. In other words, money has diminishing marginal returns.

A "fair" tax system is one that distributes the burden evenly over all all.

Furthermore, taxation is part of the economic system. Poor people are disadvantaged by our current economic system by definition -- they have the smallest share of it and the least opportunity to attain more. Therefore, a "fair" tax would be one that more heavily taxes the advantaged rich than the disadvantaged poor.

Hah ok, I have to concede that there isn't really a difference between "fair" and "equitable" - in fact, the definition of "equitable" includes the word "fair". So my previous definitions are kind of moot - although I think you understood the distinction between them regardless of the label.

That said, I tend to agree that a tax system is a viable way be used to try and mitigate the wealth-concentrating tendencies of most property ownership systems that make it easy to get more productive capital once you already have productive capital, and by nature then make it even more difficult for those that don't have capital to get any of the remaining supply of it.

The "politics" of it is: just how much do you turn the knobs on the equalizer?  One limit is straight tax amount ("everyone pays $X (or fixed X%)") and the other limit is "everyone pays 100%, then we divide it up equally among everyone."  The latter would actually make an interesting thought exercise - kind of like the Manna short story series, if you just simply said "Everyone can spend up to $50k every year (I picked that number because it's pretty close to US GDP per capita). You can't carry unused balance into the next year."

[Reelya]

I think one question that we can ask about fairness in taxation is: to what extent has each person financially benefited from infrastructure spending? And I would consider all public spending in that.

e.g. a boss of a company expects that he can hire a cheap supply of people who can read and write without needing to train people in that. He can also expect that his customers, suppliers etc can read and write. He benefits financially from these things. Plus all the little skills, numeracy, computer skills etc. We see these skills as being universal to the point of being worthless, so you just take them for granted, but they are what societies spend large amounts of money to ensure are universal. And many businesses would be worthless if those skills weren't invested in.

And those costs are not captured in direct trade such as wage labor exchanges. e.g. the more a country spends on teach computer skills, the less it costs to hire someone with those skills. In that sense, clearly training people in computer skills subsidizes all businesses who want to hire people with those skills: more training costs to the state means less costs to businesses, and less pay to the employee who has the trained skills. Clearly, the boss is the big financial winner when we increase training in computer skills, so he's the guy who should be paying the most for it.

Plus, a boss expects he can pay minimum wage and have a steady flow of workers who can afford to get to his business. Not to mention how customers can actually get to your business for cheap so that they can afford your products. That implies subsidized transportation networks, because if you went for a completely user-pays based transport system there's no fucking way people who are paid minimum wage could afford what it costs for their share of the roads to get to work. The worker directly benefits from this (can use the publicly-funded roads and buses to get to work), but it's the boss who disproportionately benefits from this (he gets a financial benefit from each and every worker, and customer, who can use public roads to access his location).

Therefore, there's a case that people who earn a ton of money are actually benefiting from social investment much more than people who are poor: because they're reaping the benefits of everyone in the pyramid below them. Someone who makes a million dollars a year is very unlikely to be personally creating $1 million in value: they are reliant on a large number of lower-down workers who do labor that makes their job possible, and each of those workers was invested in by the taxpayer.

[PTTG??]

And within the next few decades, human labor will cease to be the main source of GDP. So we have to plan for that.

[Reelya]

And within the next few decades, human labor will cease to be the main source of GDP. So we have to plan for that.

Well say hello to Marxism. Proper Marxism.
http://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-umlthe-view-from-the-southuml/marx-on-automated-industry

   Marx viewed automated industry as a new mode of production that would constitute the material foundation for a fifth stage in human history, that of socialism.  Marx had a long-range view of automation from the vantage point of the worker.  He saw it as establishing conditions for a society in which human beings would be freed from work in its conventional form.  Instead of laboring as a slave, serf, or appendage to a machine, human beings would now have the work of designing and maintaining machines, a form of work that is much more versatile and requires education and creativity.  In addition, since machines work with high efficiency, human societies would be able to produce their needs with less labor time.  So not only would work be more versatile, but also labor time would be reduced.

This is where all 20th century Communists completely got it wrong. Factories full of unionized labor is not communism: that sort of thing is just the sort of stasis that prevents Marx's preconditions for what he called Communism from even arising. That's what Marx meant when he said what you might have read about "communism can only arise from the advanced stages capitalism". The problem with people who say "hah! Marx was wrong" is that it's short-term thinking while Marx was playing the long game: that's why his theory is called Historical Materialism because it discusses processes that occur over centuries.

The "Advanced Stage" of capitalism as defined by Marx is still a point we haven't even reached, but we're starting to see the outlines, and the challenges are leading many people to talk about things like universal basic income as the solution - basically the kind of thing Marx said would happen. Trying to short-circuit Marx's stages of history as they did in the 20th century is akin to reading about the idea of space flight in 1899 and trying to build a moon rocket.

The very opposite of Marx's view of history is Fukuyama's 1992 book "The End of History" which proposed that the type of democratic system that existed around 1990 is the final form of human sociopolitical evolution, and there's basically no more to see after that.

[Strife26]

I think one question that we can ask about fairness in taxation is: to what extent has each person financially benefited from infrastructure spending? And I would consider all public spending in that.

e.g. a boss of a company expects that he can hire a cheap supply of people who can read and write without needing to train people in that. He can also expect that his customers, suppliers etc can read and write. He benefits financially from these things. Plus all the little skills, numeracy, computer skills etc. We see these skills as being universal to the point of being worthless, so you just take them for granted, but they are what societies spend large amounts of money to ensure are universal. And many businesses would be worthless if those skills weren't invested in.

And those costs are not captured in direct trade such as wage labor exchanges. e.g. the more a country spends on teach computer skills, the less it costs to hire someone with those skills. In that sense, clearly training people in computer skills subsidizes all businesses who want to hire people with those skills: more training costs to the state means less costs to businesses, and less pay to the employee who has the trained skills. Clearly, the boss is the big financial winner when we increase training in computer skills, so he's the guy who should be paying the most for it.

Plus, a boss expects he can pay minimum wage and have a steady flow of workers who can afford to get to his business. Not to mention how customers can actually get to your business for cheap so that they can afford your products. That implies subsidized transportation networks, because if you went for a completely user-pays based transport system there's no fucking way people who are paid minimum wage could afford what it costs for their share of the roads to get to work. The worker directly benefits from this (can use the publicly-funded roads and buses to get to work), but it's the boss who disproportionately benefits from this (he gets a financial benefit from each and every worker, and customer, who can use public roads to access his location).

Therefore, there's a case that people who earn a ton of money are actually benefiting from social investment much more than people who are poor: because they're reaping the benefits of everyone in the pyramid below them. Someone who makes a million dollars a year is very unlikely to be personally creating $1 million in value: they are reliant on a large number of lower-down workers who do labor that makes their job possible, and each of those workers was invested in by the taxpayer.

And one step further, all those companies building stuff efficiently for people is what results in everything related to modern life, including any standard of living enjoyed by anyone within the system. Hence, our fancy whatever exists primarily on the back of modern, educated society so it's only far that the burden for that modern society is shared.

[Loud Whispers]

And within the next few decades, human labor will cease to be the main source of GDP. So we have to plan for that.

Well say hello to Marxism. Proper Marxism.
http://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-umlthe-view-from-the-southuml/marx-on-automated-industry

   Marx viewed automated industry as a new mode of production that would constitute the material foundation for a fifth stage in human history, that of socialism.  Marx had a long-range view of automation from the vantage point of the worker.  He saw it as establishing conditions for a society in which human beings would be freed from work in its conventional form.  Instead of laboring as a slave, serf, or appendage to a machine, human beings would now have the work of designing and maintaining machines, a form of work that is much more versatile and requires education and creativity.  In addition, since machines work with high efficiency, human societies would be able to produce their needs with less labor time.  So not only would work be more versatile, but also labor time would be reduced.

This is where all 20th century Communists completely got it wrong. Factories full of unionized labor is not communism: that sort of thing is just the sort of stasis that prevents Marx's preconditions for what he called Communism from even arising. That's what Marx meant when he said what you might have read about "communism can only arise from the advanced stages capitalism". The problem with people who say "hah! Marx was wrong" is that it's short-term thinking while Marx was playing the long game: that's why his theory is called Historical Materialism because it discusses processes that occur over centuries.

The "Advanced Stage" of capitalism as defined by Marx is still a point we haven't even reached, but we're starting to see the outlines, and the challenges are leading many people to talk about guaranteed minimum income as the solution - basically the kind of thing Marx said would happen. Trying to short-circuit Marx's stages of history as they did in the 20th century is akin to reading about the idea of space flight in 1899 and trying to build a moon rocket.

The very opposite of Marx's view of history is Fukuyama's 1992 book "The End of History" which proposed that everyone loves Ronald Reagan and 1980s-era economics, and basically that's it for human development until the end of time, there's nothing left to invent or change, merely to refine and polish the American economic system that existed at the time, and that will be in use for the next million years or so.

Besides metaphorical eye-rolling at "proper Marxism" I typed out the relevant excerpt because primary sources yo

Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development. Machines etc.

The exchange of living labour for objectified labour - i.e. the positing of social labour in the form of the contradiction of capital and wage labour - is the ultimate development of the value-relation and of production resting on value. Its presupposition is - and remains - the mass of direct labour time, the quantity of labour employed, as the determinant factor in the production of wealth. But to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose 'powerful effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production. (The development of this science, especially natural science, and all others with the latter is itself in turn related to the development of material production.) Agriculture, e.g., becomes merely the application of the science of material metabolism, its regulation for the greatest advantage of the entire body of society. Real wealth manifests itself, rather – and large industry reveals this – in the monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production process it superintends. Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself. (What holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of human activities and the development of human intercourse.) No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [Naturgegenstand] as middle link between the object [Objekt] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth. The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange
value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of  penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.

Contradiction between the middle class, industry and its development. Machines etc.

The exchange of work hours for products - i.e. productivity's contradiction of capital and worker wages - is the consequence of producing real wealth. It assumes (and is currently) the case that the length of work hours and size of workforce employed are the primary factors in the production of wealth. Yet as a large industry develops, the creation of real wealth depends less on work hours and on the size of the workforce than on the power of the company during worktime, whose productivity is not dependent upon the amount of work spent on producing products, but depends instead on how science and technology has been applied to the industry. (This science, especially natural science, is related to material production).
Agriculture, e.g., is just the applied sciences of chemistry and biology. It's very important & beneficial to society.
Real wealth is rather than a product of many work hours (and a large industry shows this) the product of its functional value as a commodity of manufactured good added to the equivalent work hours of labour the automated process rendered obsolete.
So your cotton jogging bottoms are the value of the cotton trousers + all the working hours it would've taken had all the cotton come from a plantation without the benefits of modern agriculture and processing + all the working hours it would've taken a cottage industry to spin that cotton, then weave it, before finally producing trousers for sale. Physical work put in in such a system no longer factors into the value of a product, instead the role of the worker is more akin to a regulator or mechanic a part of the production process itself.
(What is true for machines holds true for human activities and societies). Workers don't modify natural things anymore to make products. Now they use natural processes, harnessed as industrial processes, creating loads of objects for sale as an industrial master. Now the worker steps aside from the production process, no longer being the manufacturer. His usefulness is not in direct human labour performed, nor is it in how long his workday is, instead it is through his own skills and technical knowledge that this individual is a cornerstone of production and wealth.
The theft of productive hours on which the present wealth is based appears grim compared to large industry. As soon as manual labour ceases to be the great source of real wealth, wealth measured through work hours ceases to be any measure of real wealth, which is why relative exchange rates must be replaced by product utility for determining real wealth. Work hours of the masses exceeding subsistence effort has ceased to be the source for general wealth, just as the inactivity of neets, compared to the development of a skilled workforce. With industry being stripped of exploitative work hours individuals are free to pursue their own individual betterment like some Plato's Republic, allowing a society to reduce its work hours to the absolute minimum needed to function. This maximizes free time for artistic, scientific development of individuals for everyone in society.

Things this needs:

• Automated manufacturing processes capable of defeating Indian and Chinese labour forces in terms of economic viability
• A society that is not full of consumerists dependent upon a great sum of luxuries and waste
• A strong central governing bureaucracy capable of tracking everyone and distributing equitably a fair share of manufactured goods and necessities
• A society that is not comprised of individuals for whom spare time is not drawn into a Brave New World, sucked into idle pleasures instead of intellectual pursuits
• A society of scientists seeking to advance human knowledge and apply it to industrial applications without falling to the above caveats

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Things this needs:

• Automated manufacturing processes capable of defeating Indian and Chinese labour forces in terms of economic viability

Humans are shit at everything compared to computers, including labor costs. Many industries already have achieved this state, and flexible robotics with neural networks will sweep the rest over the course of the coming century half-century few decades. Likelihood: >99%

• A society that is not full of consumerists dependent upon a great sum of luxuries and waste

The consumerist lifestyle is very unpopular amongst younger people. Everybody has a few luxuries they're willing to gorge on, but culture as a whole seems unsatisfied with it all, which is not surprising given how cultural stasis isn't real. Likelihood: 50%

• A strong central governing bureaucracy capable of tracking everyone and distributing equitably a fair share of manufactured goods and necessities

What is the computing era, Alex? Likelihood: >99%

• A society that is not comprised of individuals for whom spare time is not drawn into a Brave New World, sucked into idle pleasures instead of intellectual pursuits

See previous popular dissatisfaction. Humans really do not deal well with boredom. Given all the stupid things people have come up with in the last century, I don't think we run much risk of decreasing intellectual pursuit, even if the quality of that pursuit is sometimes lacking. The war is over, the nerds won. Likelihood: 80%

• A society of scientists seeking to advance human knowledge and apply it to industrial applications without falling to the above caveats

Here's your danger point. I'm not seeing a current incentive for seeking to become Star Trek. Likelihood: 20%

Anyway, whether Marx was right about anything in particular or not, the automation economy is definitely coming. This whole hedonist period of ours is like all things, only a period. The important thing is to try and steer culture towards great personal and collective ambitions instead of becoming edgy rebels in the belly of the machine bleeding to death.

[McTraveller]

Things this needs:

• A strong central governing bureaucracy capable of tracking everyone and distributing equitably a fair share of manufactured goods and necessities

Sounds great, until you realize there is no actual objective measure for several of the clauses in "distributing equitably a fair share of manufactured goods and necessities".  Any measure that is chosen is going to be unpopular with some sizable portion (in absolute numbers if not percentage) of the population.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

And the system we have now does?

Focus human talent on effective instead of cheap development, and produce to demand. This is like the diametric opposite of 20th century socialist governments rationing out every drop of vodka to their workforce, it's an abundant rather than scarce methodology. That profit motive will be the death of us.

[Loud Whispers]

The consumerist lifestyle is very unpopular amongst younger people. Everybody has a few luxuries they're willing to gorge on, but culture as a whole seems unsatisfied with it all, which is not surprising given how cultural stasis isn't real. Likelihood: 50%

I'm not taking it for granted until it's a majority amongst the youngest three generations, it isn't even yet majority in the youngest. Once its a virtue passed from parent to child I'll be less cautious in this regard

What is the computing era, Alex? Likelihood: >99%

McTraveller sums it up well, and the likelihood of humans taking advantage of such a bureaucracy >99%

See previous popular dissatisfaction. Humans really do not deal well with boredom. Given all the stupid things people have come up with in the last century, I don't think we run much risk of decreasing intellectual pursuit, even if the quality of that pursuit is sometimes lacking. The war is over, the nerds won. Likelihood: 80%

Exactly, humans do not deal well with boredom, thus they take on idle fancies. I doubt we'll decrease in intellectual pursuit, more just that with the majority of society without any work to focus on, all they'll do will be meaningless wastes of time. Kinda like now really, only imagine our worst anime neets, memesluts, yoloswaggins and such dialed to 100 because there is nothing tethering anyone to reality with responsibility
Likelihood 100%, because it's a problem with nature, how pleasure intrinsically has more powerful allures than most endeavours, and not all find STEM pleasurable

Here's your danger point. I'm not seeing a current incentive for seeking to become Star Trek. Likelihood: 20%

Those who don't publish scientific journals get shot by terminator robots

Anyway, whether Marx was right about anything in particular or not, the automation economy is definitely coming. This whole hedonist period of ours is like all things, only a period. The important thing is to try and steer culture towards great personal and collective ambitions instead of becoming edgy rebels in the belly of the machine bleeding to death.

No point trying to steer something that needs to die, automation doesn't need the human machine to live, praise omnissiah we can excise the useless humans

[Egan_BW]

You type "praise the omnissiah", then you say something that's double-heresy.
Like, ALL the heresy.

[Loud Whispers]

There is no heresy, merely the dogmas of that blithering fool Lorgar shackling the rational inquiries of the material reality, the reality in which the Void Dragon sleeps and the Emperor is only human
Awaken Mars
AWAKEN MARS

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

If Bill Gates lost half his wealth today, he wouldn't notice. If I lost half my wealth today, I'd be homeless. In other words, money has diminishing marginal returns.

The gist of this is correct, but he would notice...