Gunny
Gold Member
Short answer: for the public good.
Medium answer: the legal and economic system of the United States places a high emphasis on the protection of property (physical and otherwise). Those with the greatest possessions reap the greatest benefit from the maintenance of this system. Thus, they should pay more to sustain it.
The short answer is the more compelling one, but it would probably take a team of sociologists, anthropologists, economists and political scientists to do it justice. Anyway, here are two answers.
Who decides what is "the public good?" I'd wager you and I draw very different lines in the sand where that is concerned.
The wealthy DO pay more taxes by sheer volume. They should not have to pay a higher percentage than anyone else. That amounts to penalizing them for being successful. The benefits they reap are irrelevant to the argument since they EARN those benefits.
It does not support "the public good" to penalize people for being successful.
And our legal system places the most emphasis on the TAXATION of property, not the protection of it. You don't pay up, the US government will "protect" your property about as long as it takes to toss you off of it and confiscate it.