Is it immoral to make a certain amount or have a certain amount of wealth?

[haele]

67. What side of "make a certain amount" or "have a certain amount" scale of immorality are you on?

I think it's immoral to be making $2.50 an hour + tips. I think it's immoral to have an empty savings account and not have the means or ability to be able to put some little money aside in it and build up a rainy day or disaster fund. (not the will, mind you, but if you work, you should be able to save.)

I think it's immoral to inherit millions and think you earned it simply because you were lucky enough to come out of the right vagina at that time.

I think it's immoral to conn other people investing in your casino game, rake hundreds of thousands of "fees" off the top to make great wealth for yourself while letting the vagaries of the market bankrupt them or leave them with less wealth than you "earned" from your fees.

I think it's immoral to make a living falsely representing yourself, your product or your talents for lots of money. That's just as immoral to steal for a living.

I think it's immoral to claim to be "working hard" being a "leader" when you are warming a comfortable chair fitted with a golden parachute so you're risking nothing - and thousands of other people are risking their livelihood to make "your money".

I think it's immoral to claim that gathering virtual money is more important than providing a service or a product.

But more than anything, I think it's immoral to demand that people less fortunate be forced to pay their debts, impacting their ability to survive, while the more fortunate spend a minuscule amount - about the cost of a day's entertainment, in many cases - to avoid or put off paying debts.

The most immoral thing in the world is to consider the worth of any person simply as being the amount of wealth they have or can have. If the only "job" a person is capable of doing is in retail or food service, do they not have the right to be worth the simple dignity of a roof over their family's head, food, education to improve their lives, medical service, security for their old age, and access to all the benefits of citizenship? Or are they simply animals that outlive their usefulness when they can no longer work?

Therein lies the true question. As for the morality of taxing the rich, think of it this way - the wealthier one is, the more he or she interacts in the world and the more common infrastructure - including security and regulatory infrastructure - provided by the government he or she uses. While a poor person using government assistance may cost the government close to $100,000 to provide that assistance, the wealthy use far more expensive infrastructures - both physical (roads, health, rescue, and police services, local government institutions) and regulatory to keep their standard of living, wealth and property safe and to be able to move freely - especially when you include the costs of the employees and departments that support and secure the activities of the wealthy and the subsidies most of their businesses are entitled to so as to stay in business or keep other citizens "employed".
The charity or philanthropy doesn't even make a dent in what it would cost if they were to purchase or hire these services for themselves, so they get a real bargain for what they pay to the federal government - far more than that poor person who may be receiving food stamps, Medicaid, Pell grants and subsidized housing gets.

Therefore, asking the wealthy to pay a higher rate of taxes, and scaling their capital gains rates so that a realized capital gain of $1 million might have a 2 or 3% higher tax rate than a capital gain of $500K does for the use of that infrastructure that helped them make even more money is perfectly legitimate.

Just as one would pay more for insurance on more expensive property, or for having something that has more inherent risk.

Haele