Absurdity in paying it forward

The "paying it forward" justification for progressive taxation is built on a tower of faulty assumptions that collapses under scrutiny. This supposedly moral framework for wealth redistribution reveals itself to be nothing more than rationalized theft when examined systematically.

The Basic Fallacy

Consider two individuals, A and B:

The progressive taxation advocates now claim A should pay exponentially more in taxes. But why? Both reached the stated goal of gainful employment. Both were already taxed for the services received. What justifies the additional burden on A's success?

Deconstructing the "Social Contract" Myth

Faulty Assumption #1: An Implicit Contract Exists

The Claim: "Rich people used public infrastructure to get wealthy, so they owe society"

The Reality: No contract was ever established. When did A sign an agreement stating "If I become successful using roads/schools, I agree to subsidize others indefinitely"?

Example: If you use a McDonald's bathroom during a road trip and later become a millionaire, does McDonald's have a claim on your future earnings? Absurd — yet this is precisely the logic applied to "public" services.

Faulty Assumption #2: Usage Equals Unlimited Debt

The Claim: "Since successful people used public services, they must pay more for them"

The Reality: Even accepting the false premise that usage creates debt, why would usage of a service allegedly "for everyone" create unlimited future obligations rather than a simple fee-for-service arrangement?

Example: If public roads cost $X to maintain and serve 1000 people, each person owes $X/1000 — regardless of their income. A successful person doesn't wear out roads faster or consume more education retroactively.

Faulty Assumption #3: Success Attribution Without Proof

The Claim: "Your wealth is due to public services"

The Reality: This assumes causation without proof. Was A's success due to roads, or his intelligence, work ethic, risk-taking, and value creation? Did Steve Jobs become wealthy because of public schools, or despite them?

Example: Two people use the same road to work. One becomes an entrepreneur creating jobs and wealth; the other remains a minimum-wage clerk. Did the road cause the entrepreneur's success? If so, why didn't it work for both?

The Perverse Incentive Structure

The Success Penalty

Under "paying it forward" logic, the more value you create for society, the less you keep. This creates a mathematical disincentive for productivity.

Example:

The Rational Response: Strategic Failure

If success is penalized while failure is subsidized, the rational strategy becomes: remain poor and let others subsidize you.

Example: Why should the 999th poor person work to become the 1000th rich person who must then subsidize 999 poor people? It's more profitable to remain the recipient rather than become the provider.

The "Bootstrap Paradox"

The Fast-Track Fallacy

If we accept that rich people must subsidize poor people who will become rich and subsidize others, we create an absurd situation: later generations get wealth handed to them while earlier generations had to earn it.

The Logic:

  1. Generation 1: Earns wealth through effort, gets taxed heavily
  2. Generation 2: Receives subsidies from Generation 1, becomes wealthy easier
  3. Generation 3: Should receive even more subsidies since there are more wealthy people

Example: If public education is "investment," then each generation should need less personal effort to succeed since the "infrastructure" keeps improving. But this means we're essentially printing successful people without the corresponding value creation.

The Failed Assumption: Subsidies Create Success

Even granting the theoretical framework, it rests on a massive assumption: that subsidizing people actually makes them successful. This assumption fails spectacularly when confronted with reality.

The Evidence: Despite decades of exponentially growing government programs, wealth redistribution, and "public investment":

Example: The US has spent over $15 trillion on "War on Poverty" programs since the 1960s. If subsidies created success, we should see:

Instead, we see the opposite. The poverty rate has remained essentially flat while government dependency has exploded.

The Fiat Currency Factor: The very system used to fund these subsidies — money printing and inflation — actively prevents the subsidized from becoming wealthy by:

Example: While minimum wage workers received government subsidies, housing prices inflated 10x faster than wages due to monetary expansion. The subsidies didn't make them wealthy — they made wealth more expensive to attain.

So the "paying it forward" system fails on two levels:

  1. Theoretically: Even if it worked, it would create perverse incentives
  2. Empirically: It demonstrably doesn't work — it creates the opposite of its stated goals

The Last Fool Standing

In this system, the optimal position is to be the very last poor person. You receive maximum subsidies from the maximum number of wealthy people, with no obligation to pay forward.

Example: In a group of 100 people, the 99th person to become wealthy has to subsidize 1 poor person. The 1st person to become wealthy had to subsidize 99 poor people. Who got the better deal?

The Fundamental Contradiction

The entire framework contradicts itself:

  1. Public services are "for everyone" (universal access)
  2. But successful users owe more (discriminatory payment)
  3. This creates incentives for failure (opposite of stated goal)
  4. Which reduces the tax base (self-defeating)
  5. Requiring higher taxes on remaining producers (death spiral)

The Moral Obscenity

"Paying it forward" is ultimately a euphemism for: "Your success obligates you to subsidize others' choices."

This treats successful people as involuntary servants to society — their achievements become society's property. It's the antithesis of individual rights and voluntary exchange.

Example: If a doctor saves lives and becomes wealthy, society claims this wealth belongs to everyone since the doctor used "public" roads to get to medical school. But the doctor's patients, who voluntarily paid for life-saving services, apparently have no claim to having "contributed" to his success.

Conclusion

The "paying it forward" justification is a house of cards built on:

It's not a moral framework — it's a sophisticated rationalization for parasitism. The only thing being paid forward is the cost of supporting a system that punishes productivity and rewards mediocrity.