Taxes

Death doing taxes, complete with obsidian scythe, floating books, and pen stuck to the outside of fingers. AI is a scam.

Everything is a probability except for death and taxes.

Pay your taxes. Or, as Jesus would say, Render unto Caesar.

Tax avoidance is bad. Society needs money to function. Don't be a jerk--hold up your end of the social contract. This means you too, libertarians!

If you think the tax rates are too high, or the money is being misspent, then use democratic means to change the system. It's not up to you to opt out. The fact that some of the money funds things you disagree with is no justification for cheating. This is monetary addiction, not a principled stand against government waste.

If the system is beyond repair, start a revolution.

If the system incentivizes people to use creative accounting and tax havens to avoid paying taxes, then use the levers of democracy to close those loopholes.

A progressive system of taxation is the most utilitarian. The impact on happiness and well-being that taxes have on the poor is vastly more than the impact it has on the rich. The rich are much whinier about it, and own the media so they can whine very loudly, but their quality of life is barely impacted by higher marginal tax rates.

Taxes: Crash Course Economics

Global Tax Avoidance

The idea that higher taxes are a disincentive to investment is only true in a global economy where capitalists have the option to move somewhere with lower taxes. Profits aren't made by sitting on money. The rich will always make investments. Only a global minimum tax rate will be able to stop them from making those investments in low tax countries, or just offshoring all their IP to a shell company in those countries and leasing it back to themselves so that all the profits are realized by the low-tax entity.

Why a global minimum tax?

Trickle-Down Utilitarianism

Trickle-down economics was an invention that tries to make the counterintuitive case that lower taxes on the rich are utilitarian. It argues that because they will stimulate economic growth, this will create jobs and cause wages to rise, and that will make up for the higher tax burden on the middle class.

While there may have been some truth to this in the 1970s when tax rates were very high and economic investment had stagnated, the way it is used now is economic pseudoscience designed to convince people to vote against progressive taxation and their own interests. However, it continues to fool voters since it appeals to their antigovernmental confirmation bias and signals conservative and libertarian in-group status.

Do tax cuts stimulate the economy?

Supporters of trickle-down economics often misrepresent how progressive taxation works to argue that it disincentives people by making you earn less when you enter a higher tax bracket.

How tax brackets actually work

Laundry and Taxes

In another life...

Music Tax

When a 20-something young man finds himself in a high tax bracket for the first time, there is a natural tendency to rebel. In the 60s when top marginal rates were in the 90s, that had to make you want to write a diss track for the taxman.

The Beatles - Taxman

Jimi Hendrix - Tax Free Live 10/11/1968