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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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Back home we don't have the sorts of high paying jobs like the one I do here. These jobs do exist in places like Hong Kong and Singapore and the US but I have family reasons for not wanting to move too far away from the UK, at least not right now. Money is not the only thing that matters.

  • -10

So you could have gotten a high-paying job somewhere else, but that would have been too far from your family. So instead, you took the high-paying job in the high-tax area, and then blame the people in the area for offering you the choice you freely made.

I don't blame them for offering me the job, I blame them for taxing me a shit load (also note that the people offering me the job were not the same as the people who tax me a shitload).

Your comment reminds me of this comic: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mister-gotcha-4-9faefa-1.jpg

Just like how the peasant is saying "we should improve society somewhat", I am saying "we should tax people like me a lot less" and am being given the same "and yet you participate in society, curious" response. Now the peasant can very well go live in the wild under the law of the jungle, just like how I can go to a different country, but that is even worse for the peasant (and for me) than the present situation. However that does not at all mean the peasant is not entitled to complain that the current state of affairs is not very good, or to agitate for them to be changed until they are more pleasant, while continuing to live his peasant life. Same with me.

But you have the same chance everyone else has to change the tax rate, convince enough people to vote based on it. If you can't then that is democracy doings its job. No matter how superior you feel, you are constrained by your peers. And whether you like it or not, Bob the lout, and Trevor the aristocrat are both your peers here.

Have you tried to change it? Lobbied? Gone into politics? If not, your complaints ring hollow.

In any case your revealed preferences indicate your peers are right to tax you so heavily. After all you are still better off than nearly anywhere else in the world. And they aren't taxing you so much as to change that calculus. Thus, they are taxing your superiority correctly.

You don't get to have everything as you like, society rules you, not vice versa. That is our strength.