So someone has something, and someone else doesn't have something. Is this really something to be angry about?

Imagine a situation in which Johnny has an apple, and Sam has two apples. This is perhaps "unfair", if you are of the opinion that everyone must have equal wealth, a position hard to defend even among communists.
Now imagine a situation in which Johnny has half an apple, and Sam has a fifty acre apple farm. This is, like the above, not all that unfair, and again, only a matter of scale.
However, and this is a final scenario:
Johnny has half an apple, works on Sam's fifty acre apple farm, and Sam avoids his responsibilities to the taxman, paying something like one fourth of what is actually owed, which would be less than 25 percent of the farm's actual number of apples, while Johnny is forced to split off almost a half off his half-an-apple. This is unfair, and it doesn't take a Marxist to say it's a messed-up system.

Seems like the only way to make that worse is to take away what Sam earns. Granted, he'll no longer be able to pay Johnny, but the government can redistribute Sam's apples to all his out-of-work former employees. Nothing gets accomplished, and they get a free ride for a little while. That doesn't really seem fair, either. Doesn't take into account what Sam had to do to get that apple farm. And if it's so bad to have a bunch of something that you've earned, why isn't it bad for someone else to take it away from you without them having earned it?

Notice that the issue is not the NUMBERS of apples involved, but rather that one person is being taxed fairly, and cannot escape that taxation, while the other is not being taxed fairly, and has a means of hiding his actual income.
So, one possible solution would be to give everyone a swiss bank account or somethin'. ^^

Better yet, cut taxes. Everyone prospers.

HMMM! Sounds smart, and less like a joke than mine! ^^
But does that address the issue of people behaving in a decidedly unfair way?
We all agreed to pay taxes--whatever is due, based on our own reporting. And yet, some people decided not to. Should there not be some consequence for such a thing, if we DO believe it is proper to pay taxes?

I never agreed to pay taxes. There's really no choice in the matter. But when taxes are as high as they are, it becomes more and more profitable to avoid them with at least a portion of your income. If taxes came down for everyone, spending money to avoid them would become economically inefficient, it'd take away the incentives for doing so.

Question: Why do neither Republicans nor Democrats ever run for office with the above promise, and if they ever do, why has no such promise ever been fulfilled?

Because it's hard for them to do it. If they're going to cut taxes, they're going to have to cut programs, and that's likely to piss off a lot of people that they're not getting their handouts, or their favorite program isn't going to be around anymore.

who the fuck even needs that much money?

Trickle down economics is a myth :3

I'm not really surprised. We are little people. How could we manage such money anyway? That's why we have the rich people handling all the money in the world to leave us almost nothing. What a beautiful system. ^'===='^





[/sarcasm]

Take note, too, that that $21 trillion is also only the *extra* money those people have managed to squirrel away. They still have that much or more in "legitimate" income (put in quotes because a good number of 'em get their money by gaming the system to get it for nothing). Clearly, taxes aren't high enough, regulations aren't strict enough, and something must be done.

Yes, I was hoping someone would point that out. I forgot to, and just got distracted by other things.

The article has *already* disappeared in a puff of "illegal URL"? How suspicious!

Oh, that's not suspicious at aaaaaaalllllll c.c

/sarcasm

Ughhhhhhhh >.<

I found it. I wonder if the guardian is rejecting links from FA?

it could be, but it makes me wonder why.