a fight i did not get into this past weekend

[jazzfish]

Uncle-in-law C--: "I really liked living in Vancouver, but, you know, you're paying like 40% of your income straight to the government, you never see it."

What I said: "Yeah, and I'm also getting full health care for two people for $110 a month[1]." At which point, irreconcilable differences having been expressed and acknowledged, we went about our business.

What I did not say: "You, with your giant house and your three cars, complaining about taxes while taking public transit to and from work, are half of what's wrong with this country, and the main reason why I will almost certainly never live there again if I have any choice in the matter."

What I also did not say: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."

How sad is it that I cannot remember the last time someone prominent stood up and argued that in public?

---

[1] Fudging a bit: there are things (such as drugs, or chiro, or psychological outpatient counseling, to name three I've run into in the last couple of weeks) that the provincial[2] Medical Services Plan doesn't cover. I'm also enrolled in a supplemental insurance plan that covers a lot of what the MSP doesn't, and the supplemental is paid entirely by work.

[2] In Canadian this word lacks the same overtones of "backwards and country," as in Canadian "province" means "state." Note that "territory" also sort of means "state," except for the ways in which it doesn't.

Comments

[jazzfish]

He lives in a Seattle suburb, and there's nowhere to park in downtown Seattle. (Actually it's his wife that takes transit. I think that his current office is in a place he can drive.)

I've become a convert to the idea of taxing assets. I'm actually less enthralled about taxing income: why 'punish' people for doing something useful? Wealth is one way of determining how much you can afford to contribute to keep the state running, and property (in whatever form) is just non-liquid wealth. I think that at the point where you concede that 1) taxes are the price you pay to live in a civilised society, and 2) the rich are going to pay "disproportionately" more taxes based on whatever measure of taxation, arguing about what precisely gets measured and taxed is, to quote Apocryphal Winston Churchill, quibbling over the price.

"I got all this on my own" is an argument against point 2. I believe in point 2 because a) the rich get disproportionately more use out of government than the poor, even accounting for services targeted at the poor like subsidized housing or welfare, and b) not doing that leads to an aristocracy (much like we got now) and I'm fundamentally opposed to that. Which I guess makes me a filthy commie.

Shorter: eat the rich, because the poor are too stringy.

[rbandrews]

there's nowhere to park in downtown Seattle.

Sell one car, withdraw the money in quarters, park the other two in front of meters. Problem solved? :)

I guess I mind taxing income less because it means I just make slightly less income. If I owned a house I'd have to actually write a check for it, which I don't like. That, and it's very easy to have lots of assets and not be able to afford the taxes on them: inherit a house, or some farmland. Although at that point the taxes become incentive to do something productive with your assets, which I can see the point of.

I do have one argument against taxes that I think you'll agree with though: a lot less of my tax money goes toward improving peoples' lives than goes toward dropping high explosives on them. And although I accept that taxes are the price of a civilized society, I really don't understand how dropping high explosives on people I've never even met makes my society any more civilized.

[jazzfish]

heh. There's literally nowhere to park, though, not just nowhere free. Also, two spoiled tween daughters who will doubtless need their own cars.

I can understand the annoyance factor. To the left, the rich have people to write those checks for them.

Yeah, no argument here. I'd be happy to take an ax to the "defence" budget even if half of the savings was plowed straight back into tax rebates. Killing brown people is one of those gov't services I think of as improving the lot of rich people, since they a) seem to get more satisfaction out of it and b) own more military contracting companies.

[rbandrews]

Waitwait. They have three cars and two daughters below driving age? What's the third car for? To keep the first two company?

And I don't even have to ask, but how many of these cars are luxury SUVs?

[notyourwendy]

One is a serious old clunker of a truck, one is a mini-van, and I can't remember what the other is, but it's some kind of SUV. It was parked in in the garage the entire time we were there.

I think Eldest Daughter is getting the truck when she's of age. Not that it stops her from pointing out the BMWs she'd rather have.

[rbandrews]

Hey, I point out the BWMs I'd rather have too! I just, you know, have a job and don't mind paying for them myself...