this is a classic case of tyranny of the majority. Majority of Americans favor stealing wealth from others.
You are not a billionaire and will never be one. Calm down.
You don’t need to be a billionaire to think in a rational and unbiased way.
Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
171–180 of 198 posts
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#172I don't really care about wealth inequality, but from a revenue perspective a wealth tax seems fantastic _if_ can be enacted and enforced. Bill Gates came out in favor of a limited wealth tax as well - I think a mild cost to citizenship for the uber-wealthy is a great idea. Feels like political malpractice to not attempt it. Sidebar: > Kathy Herron, 56, a Republican who lives in Santa Rosa, California, said her suppo…
Bil Gates doesn't need any new taxes to help him transfer his money to the US government, he can do it right now with "Gifts to the United States." https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2...
> When I say the government needs to raise more money, some people ask why Melinda and I don’t voluntarily pay more in taxes than the law requires. The answer is that simply leaving it up to people to give more than the government asks for is not a scalable solution. People pay taxes as an obligation of law and citizenship, not out of charity. Additional voluntary giving will never raise enough money for everything the government needs to do. If Melinda and I signed over our foundation’s entire endowment to the state of California, it wouldn’t be enough to fund their public schools for even one year. A vibrant economic system depends on setting expectations for who pays how much.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#173Almost every country that has enacted a wealth tax has repealed it. And the version that Elizabeth Warren is proposing is fairly extreme - her 3% wealth tax rate would be double the 1.5% rate that France ended up repealing ( https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-14/france... ). Personally I can’t get behind this idea because it just feels like it is taking away something you’ve already earned and own out…
> it is taking away something you’ve already earned and own outright for whatever purpose you want The same applies to income tax.
Wealth tax is double (infinite?) taxation.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#174this is a classic case of tyranny of the majority. Majority of Americans favor stealing wealth from others.
The average worker is 5x more productive than they were 30 years ago, but wages have been basically flat. In the last 10 years, the federal minimum wage has not risen, effectively reducing the minimum wage by about $1 due to inflation. The richest 500 people in the world grew their wealth by $1.2 trillion in 2019, a 25% increase over a period of one year. The minority build their wealth on the labor and taxes of the…
> The average worker is 5x more productive
Productivity isn't due to workers alone. Most productivity has been gained through technological advances.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#175A wealth tax is unconstitutional. From the Constitution: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.“ How do…
> How do you calculate a wealth tax on a house?
A wealth tax on houses already exists: property taxes. Are you saying property taxes are unconstitutional?
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is why Andrew Yang is running for President on the Freedom Dividend. Solve wealth inequality and the social problems attached to it, abolish poverty, without feeding the government extra revenue that could go to waste (aka spent on wars)
I think you'll find our governments will never, ever fail to find the money they need for wars. The "freedom dividend" may do some good but it's never going to abolish poverty or fix wealth inequality without lots of big systemic changes. How would giving everyone a fixed amount remotely "solve" wealth inequality when you still have even hundreds of billionaires out there?
"solving" wealth inequality doesn't mean making everyone's wealth equal though, I think the problem lies with the inability to afford housing, food, and healthcare. If people are able to comfortably live I doubt they'd care that some people have way more money than them.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#177Alternative 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.
Bill Gates, George Soros, and Warren Buffet have explicitly come out for higher taxes, and you can't quite wo easily question their motives.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#178I'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…
> 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 around what it would actually mean. Many Americans already experience a form of wealth tax: property tax. You are taxed a percentage of the value of your property, something not terribly liquid. Incidentally, a ha…
I'd also argue that property taxes are a regressive form of wealth tax. For the average homeowner with a mortgage, they are taxed on an amount largely tied to the size of the mortgage and not their wealth. Also, most homeowner's primary source of net worth is equity in their homes, so they are effectively taxed on an amount exceeding their net worth.
Look at the following two individuals. Both live in $1MM homes with 1% property tax rates.
Individual A: - $200k equity in house - No other assets/savings - $10K property tax/year
Individual B: - $200k equity in house - $50MM stock portfolio - $10K property tax/year
A is paying 5% of their net worth in 'wealth' taxes, while B is paying 0.02% of their net worth in 'wealth' taxes. This is clearly absurd and should be fixed.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not totally alien at all. It's the way we finance nearly all our local governments and school systems. Tallying up property and paying a tax on it annually is something literally everyone does.
I would venture a guess that "property tax" doesn't quite feel the same as a wealth tax to most people, because most people don't have a paid-off house, so it's just one more component of their mortgage (and paid through an escrow account rather than directly). If you're paying a large aggregated bill anyway, it feels like just one more tax associated with money changing hands. If your house is fully paid off, such t…
> I would venture a guess that "property tax" doesn't quite feel the same as a wealth tax to most people
I mean, who cares? This is a tax on people with eight figure fortunes we're talking about. The only issue at hand was can the unwashed masses grok the basic concept here. The answer is of course they can. Sometimes you pay tax on value you earn, sometimes on value you give away, and sometimes on value you have. We all do it all the time on all three counts.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2. It's not the same thing. You can choose how extravagant a house to live in relative to your total wealth and your income to make sure that you can cover the property tax bill while still meeting your saving goals. This isn't really true. Yes, I can control the value of my home at a single point in time but if my neighborhood gentrifies, even if I make no improvements to my home, my taxes will go up. You can tech…
You can move when it gets too unbearable. You wouldn't be able to do the same with your savings.
Given the nature of the wealth taxes that have been proposed, you will never become homeless or destitute. Having to pay a few points above 20 or 50 mil or whatever is not going to break anyone the way property taxes will and do.