I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor.
Taxes are not robbery, kthx.
And yes, leftists believe that
some of the effects of income inequality can be addressed by the redistribution of income. It keeps the socioeconomic and political power of the wealthy in check, and also provides services and safety nets needed by the poor. It is also readily apparent that cutting taxes for the rich, as we've done for the past 40 years, deeply intensifies economic inequality.
Oh, and yeah, the tax rates paid by the wealthy? They've gone down repeatedly in the past 40 years, yet it's not enough. No tax cut is ever enough.
Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich.
Sorry, but I call shenanigans.
The right has many issues with redistribution unrelated to who foots the bill, such as:
• They don't want to give anyone "something for nothing"
• Many don't understand that education and safety nets are public goods
• They do not want to do anything to empower government, especially federal governments
• It gets in the way of blaming the poor for their economic condition / acknowledges structural issues causing poverty
What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it?
Wrong? There's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that
giving people those tools cost money. So who's going to pay for it?
Plus, I for one have seen very little interest on the part of conservatives to "give poor people the tools they need." They spend most of their time trying to destroy what is left of the safety nets, and blaming the poor (and/or liberals) for their economic condition.
What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
Uh, yeah, "helping the poor climb up" is exactly what leftists want to do. The problem is that someone has to pay for it. We ask the rich to pay, because a great deal of their surplus capital relies on all these other people, and a broad array of public goods.
It's also not really clear what you're proposing. If anything, it sounds like you just don't want the wealthy to pay taxes, and let the poor sink or swim. And that doesn't work.
As the rich get richer, the system increasingly tilts in their favor. Politicians bend to their will, as they can easily bribe those officials (legally or illegally) to do their bidding -- or they run for office. They start to monopolize resources in education, medical care, property, legal representation, police protection, corporate governance, and more.
This produces myriad imbalances. E.g. if a poor person is wronged by a wealthy one, it's bad enough if the poor person is facing off against someone who can afford to spend $1 million on their legal defense; it gets pointless if they can spend $10 million on their legal defense.
Or: An elite prep school can offer its students top-notch teachers, an outstanding library, numerous digital tools, good food, a well-maintained athletic facility, and a student-teacher ratio of 12:1. A rural high school in a poor district will have to be funded largely by local property taxes (which aren't very high), and will have high demands for things like free lunches and social services -- and forget about putting in a swimming pool or giving every kid an iPad.
Who do you think is more likely to succeed -- a poor kid from Appalachia in a class of 30, with mediocre teachers and few resources, or a wealthy kid who goes to Eton? At a minimum, they certainly aren't on a level playing field.
Who is more likely to get a good defense in a courtroom -- a poor man who has to rely on a public defender, or a wealthy man who can lavishly spend on his legal defense?
I realize we've all been subjected to decades of Social Darwinism telling us that our fates are exclusively individual in nature, and yes every now and then a kid with a lot of drive and talent succeeds on a big scale. But ultimately, inequality is largely a function of structural features of our society, and part of fixing that is taxing the wealthy -- even if they are not thrilled by that need.