&gt;Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut.<p>The &quot;cut&quot; society received is the benefit it gained that made it pay the person enough to make them wealthy.<p>&gt;Progressive taxation is also a recognition that most of anybody&#x27;s income is enabled by living in a modern, safe, resourceful, co-operative and free society. Without a modern society and without the benefit of all that have come before us, we&#x27;d all be subsistence farmers.<p>Are the citizens of Singapore, with it&#x27;s 20% top tax bracket, subsistence farmers? Are all the people in the countries listed at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_flat_tax_systems" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_f...</a> subsistence farmers? There may be moral arguments for progressive taxation but they aren&#x27;t economic ones; non-progressive taxation is perfectly capable of funding a modern society.<p>&gt;It&#x27;s true that most of those who receive the money taken from you in taxes will not have &#x27;earned&#x27; it either. Most of those that built the society that you&#x27;re benefiting from are dead -- the scientists that enabled modern technology, the industrialists who built the economy, the soldiers and politicians who gave us our free society -- the most important work was done by those who came before us.<p>These who came before us chose to do whatever they did. Someone being born didn&#x27;t choose to be born, so it&#x27;s not fair to suggest they have some kind of obligation to the previous generation. A contract to which one party did not consent is not a valid contract.