Title: Is there any moral justification for our Progressive Income Tax System? - Quora
Headings: Is there any moral justification for our Progressive Income Tax System?
Is there any moral justification for our Progressive Income Tax System?
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Paul Baumann
, Owner-operator of government contract company (1985-present)
Answered 2 years ago · Author has 380 answers and 81.5K answer views
What are the disadvantages of a progressive tax system? In my view the down side is that, coupled with government financed “charity”, it encourages class warfare and hypocrisy. A progressive tax such as the one in the USA results in the vast majority of taxes being collected from a relatively small minority of voters. The wealthiest 1% of the tax payers pay 39% of all income taxes. The wealthiest 5% pay 60%. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% pay only 3%. Presumably, these are also the ones that receive the most benefit from social welfare. Nevertheless they represent 50% of the votes. Members of Congress need votes to be elected. Using the above it makes good politics to propose increases in social welfare to please the 50% of the voters, and propose increases in taxes that affect the wealthiest 5% to pay the bill.