Taxation basically revolves around money being collected and redistributed realistically speaking this means there are winners and losers or if you will net beneficiaries such as someone who lives on government assistance and the net contributors such as let's say a high-end programmer who earns a lot of money from an arithmetic perspective taxation doesn't seem equitable because people like the previously mentioned programmer give more than they receive but does this mean taxation is a zero-sum game well not necessarily if wealth is not redistributed effectively and sure it can be considered a zero-sum game for example let's assume Sarah makes $50,000 per year Rachel makes is your dollars and John $25,000 the simplest approach would be taking let's say 30 percent from everyone and dividing the total amount by 3 in other words twenty two thousand five hundred dollars would be collected and each person would receive $7,500 this would unfortunately be a textbook zero-sum game because for Rachel to receive money Sarah and John have to give money without receiving anything in return but if government's spend money wisely enough to make society as a whole better off taxation can generate win-win situations for example if you earn a lot of money but there's no law and order you will live in constant fear and your quality of life won't be great if we move beyond the arithmetic dimension a well-run government can provide services which increase your quality of life enough to make it all worth it net beneficiaries love receiving what they call free stuff from security education and medical services to pretty parks comfortable benches and government-sponsored concerts however few things in our world are actually free and there's obviously a limit to how much net contributors are willing to pay therefore it's all a matter of finding the right balance between how much you make people pay and what they get in return