Taxes Thought Experiment

Three questions:

Scenario 1) Imagine you’re given a special privilege—paying taxes is voluntary. You can pay as little or as much as you’d like, and no one else has this special privilege—they are all legally required to pay their taxes just like they are now. What percentage of your income would you decide to pay?

Scenario 2) You’re given the same privilege as in Scenario 1, except now, it’s a nationwide privilege. Every citizen gets to decide for themselves what portion of their income to pay (assume everyone would have to decide individually without any knowledge of what anyone else was paying, and each person’s decision would forever be kept a secret). What percentage of your income would you pay?

Scenario 3) You have the privilege of choosing what percentage of your income to pay in taxes, but now, whatever you choose, everyone else will have to pay that same exact percentage of their own income. What percentage would you pay?

Are your three answers the same? Different? If different, what are the reasons?

___________

Two notes:

1) Things are progressing.

2) There will be no Dinner Table next week.

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