California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

This is where my libertarianism come roaring to the fore. To me one of the most dangerous arguments for a public policy is "for the greater good" so much misery and suffering has been inflicted on society by groups and policies based on "the greater good"

Further your position requires one to assume the government will inherently spend the money better than allowing a person to keep the money to invest in a business or blow it on expensive cars yachts (and yes even though things are a net good for society) , your scenario of 100million just vanishing is not realistic as people will move investments in response to losses like that. We can however look at history and see clearly that government does not always spend money wisely

Just look at this comment thread for the cognitive dissonance the surrounds government spending. People asking for CA to justify more taxation in the face of their failure of public policy are simply meet with arguments that even more money will solve the problems

You see government programs are never bad, and never fail because they are bad policy, it ALWAYS because we did not tax or spend enough, no matter how many times this pattern is repeated it is never enough. They could steal 100% of all wealth over 30 Million, and when the problems are not resolved (and they wont be) the supporters of the programs will demand more money, say taking all wealth over 20, then 10, then...

Remember the original income/wealth tax only applied to the top 3% of incomes now it applies to 50%...

Government taxation on income only ever expands, that is the big problem here.

Christ almighty, the replies to this are extremely upsetting and missing the point entirely.

"Eat the rich" is not about jealousy, as the parent comment explained, and as the replies all immediately ignored.

"Wealthy people create good things, so why are you mad at wealthy people" is a phenomenally backwards way of looking at things. People who create good things often become wealthy in our capitalist society. That doesn't mean that the accumulation of literal mind-boggling generational wealth is somehow a good and natural thing.

I am so tired of this idea that the natural goal for everyone in the U.S. should be to become a billionaire. If you wanna get radical about it, in my opinion there should not be billionaires. I think the accumulation of that much wealth is inherently immoral. No one person could ever, ever, ever spend that money on themselves, so why should it be theirs?

Alaskan "homelessness" is very different in practice. The institutional definition of homelessness is very self serving. Nomadic peoples are considered homeless under this fiefdom.

The stigmatization and criminalization of not paying taxes to lease a deed of property is a big problem, this planet as a whole belongs to all forms of life inhabiting it, not just the primates that choose to play that game.

> If it’s so small as to not be meaningful, why collect it?

The way I see it, it is small for the taxpayer. It is not insignificant for the state.

Personally, I don't own any land and I'd be pretty happy if we stripped property tax from local government and made one uniform federal property tax set somewhere between five percent and ten percent of the market value of the property annually with the goal that you will pay about the sticker price of the property in taxes every ten or so years. In return, the state will grant a housing allowance to every eligible resident over the age of eighteen which covers two times the cost of a modest two bedroom somewhere in the US. It won't be enough for a two bedroom in mid-town Manhattan but we will have guidelines that enable you to live somewhere habitable (access to decent road/transit options, running drinking water and sewage, electricity, reliable wired Internet access).

No allowance is available to or for anyone under the age of eighteen. No provision shall be made for regional differences in cost of living. No exemption shall be made with respect to tax-exempt status or any other reason. All agreements made with local governments (like the ones corporations like Walmart make to not pay any property tax for a hundred years or something) will not affect the property tax they pay under this new tax regime.

If we implement this and close income tax loopholes, we won't need to have a wealth tax. We will also not need to vilify corrupt officials in the CCP government in mainland China and other investors for "parking" their money in empty properties in the west and driving up the cost of real estate. We will instead thank them for their contribution to our communities through property taxes.

The most important thing is there should be no loopholes in tax policy. I really think most people in the US will agree that we shouldn't be driving policy issues through tax credits/deductions. It makes no sense to me to give tax credits or deductions for buying a house, selling a car, having a child, saving money in a health saving account, investing money for retirement, or donating to charity. All credits and deductions (going forward) in personal income tax should go away forever. All of this is basically a human shield for the wealthy to hide their tax loopholes.

More could be had. That's impossible for anyone to argue against, I think -- there is a lot of wealth in the pie that most people don't have access to.

This idea that poor people need to shut up and stop complaining because "you have TikTok!" when there are tens of millions of people who don't know where their next meal will come from is, frankly, sickening to me.

I don't understand your perspective at all, and I don't know how you can look at the lives of the millions of people in the in the richest country in the world who can't afford medicine, food, safe housing, good education and say that "they should stop being so jealous."

Please, please change my mind. Tell me how your point makes any kind of moral sense.