This assignment is for an honors course known as Issues in Philosophy: self-interest, justice, and revolution. please write an essay of 4 pages under this prompt:
TOPIC A: Tax Slaves and Wage Slaves
Libertarians argue that taxing the rich to provide benefits (such as housing, health care, and higher education) for lower income Americans is an unjust appropriation of a person’s most human right — ownership of oneself and the fruits of one’s labor. United States Senator Elizabeth Warren orginally proposed a wealth tax of 2% on wealth between $50 million and $1 billion, and 3% tax on wealth above $1 billion. On November 1, 2019, Warren proposed an additional 3% surtax on wealth over $1 billion – bring the total annual rate to 6% on every dollar over $1 billion – which generates an additional $1 trillion in revenue. She argues that this tax would raise $3.75 trillion over the next 10 years. Senator Warren has claimed that even $2.75 trillion dollars could pay for the following:
universal child care for every child age 0-5
universal pre-K for every 3 and 4 year old child
raise wages for all child care workers and preschool teachers “to the professional levels that they deserve”
free tuition and fees for all public technical schools, 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges
$50 billion for historically black colleges and universities
forgive student loan debt for 95% of those with such loan debt
$100 billion over 10 years to combat opiod crisis
down payments on a Green New Deal and Medicare for All
Libertarians like Robert Nozick object that. atax of this kind is, in effect, a seizure of personal property. They also object to income taxes that are used to support programs, however commendable, that exceed the functions of a minimal state. The top U.S federal income tax bracket is now 37%, but even a tax rate of 33%, means that every third hour that a higher-earner works is appropriated by the state and may be spent on uses (like benefits for low-earners) to which the high-earner does not consent. From 1951-1963 the top income tax bracket in the U.S was over 90%. From the libertarian point of view, people who paid that rate were virtually economic slaves of the state.
Critics of free market capitalism argue that it turns most people into “wage-slaves”. More and more people are driven by necessity to sell themselves daily and hourly to employers (if they can find them) who will purchase their labor cheaply and can fire them at will. As Marx’s collaborator, Friendrich Engels, explained it “The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserbale it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proleterian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence.” Today social safety net programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Public Housing, and Food Stamps (SNAP), provide a measure of protection for lower income Americans, but these programs exceed the functions of the minimal state. During economic recessions, some Americans have difficulty finding work and no appreciable savings to draw on. An illness in the family or economic challenges of old age can be devasting.
What solution do you favor? Are you opposed to using taxes to redistribute wealth? Are you in favor of increasing taxes to ensure a decent standard of life for all members of society? Are you in favor of increasing taxes to ensure that everyone can afford benefits that Elizabeth Warren advocates? Are you in favor of more radical restrictions on the ownership of capital? Be sure to articulate and defend the principles on which your soluton is based.
**please side with Elizabeth Warren for this paper**
