From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!hp-pcd!courtney
Newsgroups: net.politics
Title: Re: progressive tax - (nf)
Article-I.D.: hp-pcd.549
Posted: Mon Dec 20 18:01:53 1982
Received: Wed Dec 22 01:34:35 1982

#R:hplabsb:-117400:hp-pcd:17400004:000:1675
hp-pcd!courtney    Dec 20 13:22:00 1982

    In reading John Woods response and quest for recognition of
trade-offs, I get the feeling that John himself is missing the
scope of trade-offs that will always exist in a society of more
than one living being.
    
    Certainly we all recognize that there is some limit to
individual freedom.  Many people will agree that an appropriate
place to draw the line is at the point where one person's freedom
infringes on another person's.  What happens when we consider
peoples freedom measured over time?

    Suppose we could each choose how much tax we wanted to pay
this year.  We probably would not see anything change for the
first couple days of having this freedom (if given the choice,
most of us would choose to pay little or no taxes).  But in a
week, a month, ... our lives would be radically affected and
few of us would be happy with the result!

    So how much tax should we pay and how far into the future 
should we care?  That question is the "crux of the biscuit" as
far as I can tell. Much of our tax burden provides payoffs in
a somewhat distant future, such as military budget, social
security, education, environment, ...    How far into the future
can the public see and how many of them will forego consumption
today for some abstact improvement of the future?  The wise of
today's society and of past societies seem to agree that we need
a guiding collective body to help insure that we don't discount
the future too greatly ... we call this collective body
"government" and we bestow upon it the power to serve us with
the more abstract needs of our society as a whole AND as a group
of individuals.

                              Courtney Loomis