Final-Fan said:
First, it seems to me that practical use (as you defined it) =/= practical benefit (as a general value). Practical uses are what makes the money be of practical benefit. You buy transportation, that's the use. How much does it help you? That's the benefit. Different people will benefit different amounts and overall averages will emerge, or would if the study was possible to do.
Let me return to what I proposed: "What I have the idea of measuring is a combination of standard of living, quality of life, and the practical utility of additional income in improving these for various levels of income."
We are only talking at this point about whether the third factor I mentioned is assuming the conclusion (whether the ratio is flat or not).
Taking another look at the Wikipedia entry for standard of living as well as your earlier posts, it would appear that I've overlooked the fact that SOL is actually a "score" that a country gets based largely on income distribution. So you're correct to say that a progressive tax would obviously cause higher scores here than a flat tax, although the study wouldn't be comparing the two tax schemes. Furthermore, that's not really a good indicator of a person's well-being. I only really threw SOL in to emphasize the material benefit, when I should probably have just said QOL.
I still don't think that what I MEANT to say the study would be about would assume a conclusion, but I concede that what I DID say had that fallacy.
Moving on: Are you truly suggesting that a person would have to have more income than he and all his heirs, for all time, could ever want to spend before he had "more than enough"?
AND that even past that point, there is no moral incentive to remove that excess (by every definition) money to give it to those less fortunate? (That, in fact, it is fundamentally wrong to take it away!)
P.S. You didn't tell me what was wrong with my reasoning (in the last pre-postscript paragraph).
P.P.S. I'm curious what you were going to say in (C) after it was cut off.
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By your apparent expanded definition of "Practical use" it would.
Aside from that it is indeed immoral to take from one unwillingly to give to another simply on the basis of the second having less when there is no threat to a persons well being.
The whole problem is you keep trying to expand these terms well past what they actually mean... to seemingly include luxuary items and frivelous things.
If this isn't your intent why wouldn't a flat tax with tax deductions for things that actually increase someones quality of life be better?
