Punishing success

About

The phrase "punishing success" typically refers to any sort of progressive taxation, i.e. taxes applied more heavily to those with more money to spare. It implies an argument that progressive taxation is a bad idea because it disproportionally "punishes" those who are being "successful", which further implies that they must be providing the most value to society (otherwise why would we care about nurturing their "success"?).

The problem with this implicit argument is twofold:

• It equates money with value in that it assumes that those who are making the most money must therefore be providing the most value to society.
• It equates taxation with punishment, ignoring the fact that taxation is primarily a means of accomplishing positive goals by collecting surplus income from those who can spare it, while progressive taxation further asks those who can spare more to contribute more.
  • Specific tax incentives are often used as a way of encouraging certain behaviors and discouraging others, which arguably might be called "reward" and "punishment" respectively, but this is certainly not the purpose of progressive taxation in general.

This is a growing seedling article. You can help Issuepedia by watering it.