I'm so sick of that argument and the fact that nobody seems to be able to give the counterargument to that, that I will give one here, in numbers no less!
So, let's take a rich and a poor person. The rich person earns ten times as much as the poor person. And lets assume that the average tax income for that level of rich is 40% and that level of poor 5%.
Rich person earns €12.000 per month.
Tax: 40%
Money to state: € 4.800
Poor person earns € 1.200 per month.
Tax 5%
Money to state: €60
So, clearly, the rich contribute much more than the poor!
Wrong! Why? Let's take a look from the standpoint of the persons and let's not forget about how much is needed to survive or rather live a "minimal-normal" life.
To have a normal life with not too much problems (food, shelter, cellular, etc..) I throw an amount in there, let's say €1.100. That's the amount needed to survive and with a little bit of comfort (let's make it reasonable).
Let's recalculate from the standpoint of persons.
Rich person's extra = comfort money = €12.000 - € 1.100 = € 10.900
Money he paid to state: €4.800 (see above)
Percentage that is of his comfort = € 4.800 / € 10.900 = 43%
Poor person's extra = comfort money = €1.200 - € 1.100 = €100
Money he paid to state: €60 (see above)
Percentage that is of his comfort = € 60 / €100 = 60%
In other words the poor person actually pays 60% of the money that's left after surviving and the rich person only 43%.
Let's not forget that shifting the incomes will give the state about the same in total (a bit less though), but people will also be more happy (or well-being, however general you want this) and healthy and the state will have to pay less in health amongst others. Not mentioning the new ideas and motivation these "lower-end" persons will have and thus the value of products and services improved!
This is something economics never calculate, because there is no valuta for motivation and well-being or these are all so volatile and open-ending. But most politicians don't ever realize this.
The counterargument to this saying that rich persons buy more and thus give more VAT to the state is also not valid. But I'm too frustrated to counter that one now. But in short: if you divide the incomes more equally the total sum of buying power stays the same. It justs shifts.
As a matter of fact there will be more things bought than if a rich person has more, since he has so much his interest in buying is much less. A poor person will relatively buy more with a relative increase in income that a rich person ever would. (He will put it into savings, matras money, useless / over-buying that contributes less to happiness, ..)
In my eyes the only problem remaining is the pressure of international weights. If not a lot of countries will shift the same, there might be inter-countries inbalances, but I'm not sure if happier people would mind that.
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