Spotted this in interesting post over at [dis]connect.
Here is my response:
The “American Dream” (TM) is basically the biggest lie we have ever been sold. For us in the UK, it was Thatcher who promised it and Thatcher who ruined everything for us. Our society has literally disintegrated thanks to her “I’m all-right, screw you” philosophy.
The lie is making people think that they can get rich, when the reality is most people will just spend their entire working lives working for other people on a fairly average salary. It’s gone a step further here, with everyone now thinking they are middle class. I know factory workers and part time school dinner ladies who think they are middle class, and thus will never support anything which is (often wrongly) perceived as making the middle class less well off.
You have covered most of the arguments already. The idea that the rich will simply leave is nonsense. They already have off-shore accounts in tax havens and have roots here (family, friends etc). Well, a few do live overseas for tax purposes, but we are better off without them anyway. Lewis Hamilton springs to mind – he could have been a hero here but was unable to celebrate his victories in the UK because he was living as a tax exile. Not exactly an ideal role model.
Maybe I’m just some sort of Communist, but I honestly think the rich have a duty to pay more tax. No-one is rich independently, their fortunes are built off the back of the people who work for them, and society in general. If that doesn’t convince you, let me make a more pragmatic argument. If the rich don’t pay more tax to support the majority of the rest of society (in terms of services and lower tax rates for the middle and poorer classes) then society is going to fall apart, as it has done here. I’m pretty sure most people, poor and rich alike, are not particularly happy with the way things are now.
The situation with health care in the US really shocks me. As a human being, I feel that if I can contribute via some reasonable taxation of my income to making sure that no-one is left to suffer unnecessarily, then I’m happy with that. And yes, I thought that even before I myself became ill, and even now I pay more in to the system than I get out. Personally, I prefer to live in a world where human beings pull together to make things better, not one where everyone looks out for themselves at the expense of others.