Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll • Hacker News Board

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#101

Post by jandrese » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

kentm wrote: post #53

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #4

Alternative title: Majority of Americans are not rich, and therefore see no downside to taking from those who are I do think the inequality gap is becoming more of a problem, but simply asking the population if they want someone else to pay more is going to have the obvious result.

> Alternative title: Majority of Americans are not rich, and therefore see no downside to taking from those who are Thats unnecessarily reductive and dismissive of peoples' beliefs. Probably more along the lines of: 1) The rich have the system gamed in their favor and thus its only fair that they pay more into the system that secures their wealth. 2) There are direly needed services that need to be funded and the ric…

More importantly, capitalism itself tends to concentrate wealth at the top. People can use money to make more money without having to personally produce goods or offer services. This leads to a positive feedback loop where the available wealth concentrates in the hands of people who have lots of wealth. Left unchecked it leads to feudalism and eventually collapses on itself. This is one of the major jobs of a government in a capitalist system: to keep injecting wealth at the bottom of the pyramid to prevent the collapse.

It's arguable that the government has been shirking its duty in this regard since the 80s, and our increasing wealth gap is a symptom of a systematic failure. The longer we let this continue the more painful the solution will have to be in the end. And it's already pretty bad--we have multiple billionaires in the US. A billionaire has the same problem that plagued Communist countries, a person with that much personal wealth can't spend it quickly enough without basically becoming their own company, so the money becomes trapped and slows the economy bit by bit. We are in the situation now where people can start their own personal orbital rocket companies and still not spend their money fast enough to keep it in the economy.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#102

Post by nightski » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #10

nightski wrote: post #3

I feel the wealth inequality issue needs to be addressed. My only problem with the wealth tax is that it takes money from the wealthy and feeds it to the government. I am having a hard time connecting how that improves the situation of the lower and middle classes.

Yeah, it is a total mystery how adequately funding social welfare programs could somehow help the poor.

It's not a mystery at all. But that does not address the wealth inequality. It just provides bare necessities to the poor (which is a great thing, it's just not what I was talking about).

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#103

Post by munk-a » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

derp_dee_derp wrote: post #2

this is a classic case of tyranny of the majority. Majority of Americans favor stealing wealth from others.

I really don't think that it becomes stealing until the wealthy are pulled down below the poor - and that isn't anywhere near being on the table, most of the wealth tax options would just shrink the band between the super rich and the rich. It's not clear if this survey laid out a starting point but Warren's proposal is to only tax excess wealth above 50mil and such a tax would almost certainly be graduated (so a 51M person would pay tax on 1M and a 52M would pay tax on 2M (probably double?)) either way the worst that happens is that unearning trustfunders are slowly reduced to 50M in assets over time which is more than enough money for anyone... and I'd hope that as inflation/cost of living rose that level would be adjusted - being a millionaire today is hardly rare with most people who own a house in a metro area easily falling in that range.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#104

Post by pseudalopex » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #64

sct202 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! A huge portion of the middle class's wealth is tied up in property equity that is taxed every year. The ultra wealthy's wealth is primarily in business ownership or equity which is only taxed on gains when it's sold.

> primarily in business ownership Businesses which employ people and pay a whole host of taxes every year... > or equity which is only taxed on gains when it's sold. How would it be fair to tax someone on an asset that only has a theoretical value, which isn’t realized until it’s actually sold?

RSUs and options are already taxed.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#105

Post by m11a » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

zaphod420 wrote: post #69

This is good for Bitcoin.

Indeed!

Rather than losing 5% of your wealth in the form of taxes to the US government, you can lose 200% in the form of cryptocurrency wealth redistribution and volatility.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#106

Post by ohazi » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #83

ohazi wrote: post #33

I'm skeptical that most respondents understood the questions correctly. Most people are familiar with income tax, because they know that money is removed from their paycheck every month. Many also file tax returns. A wealth tax, where a fraction of your bank balance is removed every month, is a totally alien concept to most people. If you haven't thought about it before, it can take a minute or two to wrap your head…

I think most Americans already get taxed on their bank balance, by their bank, inversely proportionate to how much they have, so it's not alien from that side - and it's also pretty much identical to real estate taxes which people are already used to paying... in fact a good way to sell a wealth tax might be by saying "Hey, you know how you pay taxes on your property? There are people out there so rich that they've g…

Sure, but if you understand this concept, you're not likely mistaking wealth for income on a survey.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#107

Post by jandrese » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

keanzu wrote: post #38

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #4

Alternative title: Majority of Americans are not rich, and therefore see no downside to taking from those who are I do think the inequality gap is becoming more of a problem, but simply asking the population if they want someone else to pay more is going to have the obvious result.

The tyranny of the majority is a weakness inherent to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own interests at the expense of those in the minority. This results in oppression of minority groups comparable to that of a tyrant or despot.

Oh no, how will those poor powerless multi-millionaires survive? Oh wait, they still control the government.

This situation is kind of silly to talk about because the very people who would be subject to the tax will just tell their congresspeople to vote no and that will be the end of it.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#108

Post by kevingadd » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

fatnoah wrote: post #41

aazaa wrote: post #11

> A wealth tax is levied on an individual’s net worth, such as stocks, bonds and real estate, as well as cash holdings, similar in concept to property taxes. It is separate from an income tax, which applies to wages, interest and dividends, among other sources. One often overlooked issue with a wealth tax is the damaging effect on financial privacy. The income tax already has the IRS probing into nooks and crannies i…

> similar in concept to property taxes All other merits aside, is it really similar to a property tax? I pay property taxes every quarter and I have just as much property as I started with. The value of the property also doesn't go down every tax cycle as a result. With a wealth tax, the person's wealth would decrease to a minimum at some point.

The distinction between wealth and property seems pretty fuzzy here and it's hard to clearly reason about this without addressing it. Property taxes are a great example - you're paying them on things like houses to support local infrastructure, right? And you still have the property afterward.

So let's say you don't want to pay a wealth tax on the money in your bank account - buy a house with it. Now you're not paying a wealth tax, because it's a house instead of US dollars. Instead, you're paying a property tax! If the wealth tax is too onerous you can just park that wealth in a house or something instead, maybe rent the house out (with the help of a management company) and make money off it. That's good, right? Get the economy going, create jobs, and you get a return on your investment.

To me even if a wealth tax isn't the right solution here (I'm not convinced, and I'm not sure it's feasible to implement), the distinction between "wealth" and "taxable property" is kind of arbitrary nonsense at this point.

If everyone is taxed fairly, you can eliminate lots of means testing and systemic complexity because everyone's paying in so everyone has equal right to access all of the systems and benefits a functioning state can have to offer, whether it's health care, public transit, education, etc.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#109

Post by seneca » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

skitout wrote: post #28

nostromo wrote: post #6

It's worth noting that the income tax also started out as a tax on the very rich. Once established, taxes have a way of finding their way from the rich, to the middle-class, and then even to the working poor.

It's worth noting that the income tax use to be more than 90% on the very rich...

So, I hear this a lot, and I was curious what it actually looked like.

In 1944, it was 94% for two years. The bottom bracket was 24%. Then in '51 through '54 it hovered around 91%, with the bottom bracket hovering around 20%. This seems like it must related to World War II, though I didn't do enough research to know otherwise.

The bottom bracket today is 10%, with the top being 37%. Is this a "what's good for the goose..." situation? You think the rich ought to be taxes 90+% on their income, and the poor out to have their taxes approximately double, or only the rich should have increases? I'm not sure current scenario justifies the kind of extremes that World War II may have.

Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

#110

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

iso1824 wrote: post #43

enraged_camel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> it takes money from the wealthy and feeds it to the government. As opposed to...?

giving more money to the wealthy, which is the normal way that the world works

Giving money to the government is the same thing as giving it to the wealthy. Example: trillions of dollars in student loans have been captured by private education.