I don’t get why people are so afraid of Libertarians when it comes to social philosophies. Leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. You want me to do something I don’t want to do, pay me. Weird how Libertarians get criticized for that when literally everyone has had that mindset with one thing or another in their life
Their policies lead to bad outcomes. “We don’t need a fire department and I’m not paying for it” -> “oh shit our houses all burned down”.
It also tends to come off as deeply anti social, and not everyone is that way.
Your anti social statement is very fair lol.
However what I was trying to say is not necessarily “we don’t need a fire department” but moreso "the individual citizen shouldn’t be paying for the fire department with their income. Nearly 55% of US citizens make less than $50k a year and the average income per household (in the previous percentage) is around $35k. So why should the individual spend their little bit of hard earned money on taxes when everything else is getting taxed as well?
That sounds like you change the existing progressive taxation system so the first chunk of income isn’t taxed at all. That’s not really a huge change
https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brackets
I think there should be more, harsher, brackets as you go up.
I also think we should probably tax unrealized gains. Or do something about like “I get a loan against untaxed assets” stuff that let the rich enjoy their wealth without paying for it.
But even all of that aside: People should pay their taxes because they benefit from it! Everyone benefits from functional fire departments! And libraries, and roads, and buses, and so on! And since taxes are percentage, the poor people are typically paying less already. (The part where some rich don’t technically have “income” should be patched)
I have a little more sympathy for people who are making 50k/year that feel like their tax burden is too high. But people making $200k/year can fuck off about that.
(Also I think a lot of the squeeze now is from rent and food costs being unchecked)
