Daniel

“ALL PROPERTY IS THEFT. SO ALL THEFT IS PROPERTY.
THEREFORE THESE PEARLS ARE MINE.

This is clearly rubbish because there is nothing to link the truth of the conclusion to the truth of the supporting claims. What we need is to ensure that the truth of the supporting claims is preserved by the argument. Logic is quite simply the study of truth-preserving arguments.”
― Dan Cryan, Introducing Logic: A Graphic Guide

“The political scientists Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage studied twenty countries, exploring the question of when, over the course of their histories, the countries imposed heavy taxes on the rich. They concluded that inequality was not sufficient on its own to cause countries to impose high taxes. Instead, they found that raising taxes on the rich happened only when the public believed that the state had unfairly privileged the wealthy, such that higher taxes on the rich were necessary to compensate for that unfair advantage. These perceptions of unfairness were more likely in times of war, when working classes faced conscription while capital owners benefited from increased demand for their products. Scheve and Stasavage argued that the reason progressive taxation saw its heyday in the United States in the twentieth century was because of these frequent conscriptions—first to fight two world wars, and then again to fight the Korean War and the Vietnam War. It is notable that the United States began cutting taxes on the rich only after the draft was eliminated in 1973.”
― Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy

“A frequent refrain of those defending the status quo is that the income tax system already heavily burdens the rich because the top 1 percent of earners pay 40 percent of all income taxes while 40 percent of Americans pay no income taxes at all. This is partially true: Individuals with the most taxable income do pay the most income tax. However, this statistic is about people who have high incomes, typically from work; it tells us nothing about the tax liability of those with the most wealth. Studies have shown that there is only about a 50 percent overlap between America’s wealthiest people and those who earn the most income. Moreover, as the leaked tax returns of several of the wealthiest Americans reveal, the ability of wealth owners to avoid taxable income means that they are just as likely to be among the 40 percent of nonpayers as they are the top 1 percent of earners.”
― Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy

“Third, DAFs (donor-advised funds) allow private foundations to avoid the public scrutiny that Congress wanted them to have. If a private foundation makes a direct donation to a hate group or other questionable charity, that information is available to the public through public disclosure of tax returns. But if the private foundation wants to avoid this disclosure, it can simply make a distribution to a DAF, then make the donation to the hate group from the DAF, and no one is the wiser.45 While DAFs do publish their distributions, they list them over thousands of pages, and the information is disconnected from any particular donor.

45. Charitable gifts to hate groups can have devastating effects both within and outside the United States. Proposed legislation in Uganda imposing the death penalty for homosexuals was supported by significant charitable donations from United States taxpayers, many of which came from donor-advised funds. — Lydia Namubiro, “Charity Loophole Lets US Donors Give Far-Right Groups $272m in Secret,” Open Democracy (July 5, 2023).”
― Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy