A valid argument? (for @Fusty_Luggs and @legalaware)

Taxpayers pick up Tesco wage bill! We are investing in Tesco, where are our share holdings? - Fusty Luggs

@Fusty_Luggs @legalaware Thank redistributive taxes for that - me

@obotheclown @legalaware MM I bow down every day to the great god of trickle up; my taxes redistubuted to the top 1%. I feel so very 'umble! - Fusty Luggs

Well, there's a couple of things wrong with this argument from my point of view. Firstly, this 1% bollocks - Tesco's profits and dividends, are like most companies in the UK largely owned by pension funds and as such, are not for the benefit of the alleged 1%, but regular people whose pensions do not depend on the extortion of the state and its massive Ponzi scheme.

Secondly, it's bollocks to say that taxes only trickle up. The state has a massive vested interest in building a client state at both ends of the wealth spectrum, with voters being bought with the lowest possible rates (but on aggregate consuming huge amounts of money) while at the top end, financial backing for the political parties is bought with lazy, non-commercial negotiations leading to egregious profits and other pork barrel deals. The increase in various allowances over the years means that any rational employer would consider workfare perfectly justified. Plus, in my experience, British workers on benefits have very little rational incentive to get off the dole and work for the same or less effective money every month. And then, of course, there is the monstrous behemoth that is the civil service and quango machine. All of these people are beholden to the state, of whatever flavour it happens to be at the time.

But even if my first point is true, I still disagree entirely with the idea of redistributive taxes anyway, because the companies who benefit from either workfare or pork barrel deals are indulging in rent-seeking, not creating wealth. Making it viable for large swathes of people to get by, have fancy TVs and live in houses that taxpayers can't afford is equally wrong and insults the people who are working.

So whether you regard redistributive taxes as trickle up or trickle down or both, in all cases the taxes are extorting wealth from people who are are actually involved in creating it and giving it to people who are not.