351–360 of 580 posts
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Interesting. It seems to work for Finland. In some countries it would probably make you a kidnapping target.
The kidnapping problem is on a whole other level. Denmark is known for "leaving babies in strollers outside of cafes". The Nordic social-liberal countries (Finland included) solve this problem not by opacity but by having social support and trust.
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> The worse tax situation is always the person who makes 500k in a good year What's the problem here? Income tax rates are moderately progressive. They'll pay a higher marginal tax rate and a moderately higher total tax rate in this year. That seems fine to me. > or sells a house they held for 25 years which went up a bunch in value This is what I have a problem with. This house has already had plenty of favourable t…
Something people forget is the high amount of churn among millionaires in the US. It's the billionaires you're trying to go after, 500k should be ignored.
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The problem isn't that it hurts the sheep as well, it's that it hurts the sheep almost entirely. Raising capital gains would be a decent idea that forces the rich to pay more. Basically zero support for it. Closing loopholes helps too, not what we're seeing in tax policy discussions which focus on rates instead. Raising the top rate on income when most of the ultra-rich's money comes from investment isn't making sens…
> Raising capital gains would be a decent idea that forces the rich to pay more. Basically zero support for it. Zero support among whom, the wolves or the sheep? Taxing the rich more is generally popular[0] and this would accomplish that; it would seem like that's support. > Taxes on the sale of a primary home is not as rare as you think. I would need to see a source on this; I can't imagine a scenario in which any m…
This is a circular argument. Taxing the rich is popular, but the argument is that it would hurt everyone else. Hurting everyone else is not popular.
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This is exactly what happens. If you buy house #2 within 90 days, you can do a 1031 (I think?) property exchange. Then you don’t pay taxes on the first sale.
1031 exchanges are not available to homeowners, they are exclusively available for investment properties. Homeowners receive a $250k/$500k tax shelter as discussed above.
Investments of all kind receive generous tax breaks even when they're simple rent seeking.
So you get the triple whammy of unaffordable prices with unaffordable rents with downward pressure on wages - because the rent-seeking behaviour of share holders is privileged over the value of the work that underpins it.
It's not just a recipe for economic disaster for most of the population, it's also a recipe for political instability. In a democracy everyone should feel like the system is working in their interests.
When essentials become unaffordable and pricing becomes punitive and extortionate, people get angry and start to act in insane ways.
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some countries have a social "fabric" .. the USA is a geographic location with English-style law, and a lot of people who are very divided and increasingly antagonistic.. Try to build the Roman Empire, and you get Roman Empire problems in your population..
While the U.S. certainly has regional, class, and other subcultures, there is very clearly a national culture and "social fabric". The easiest way to see this, if you grew up in the U.S. and have not traveled much, is to read tourist guides for your own country.
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I think you're extending "working class" to mean "people who live on wages instead of capital". But most people make an additional distinction inside wage earners between workers and professionals, i.e. mechanics, factory workers, nurses, assistants vs. doctors, lawyers, software engineers, managers, etc. It's helpful in this little side discussion because policies that might affect people with (as GP says) any abili…
> I think you're extending "working class" to mean "people who live on wages instead of capital". But most people make an additional distinction inside wage earners between workers and professionals, i.e. mechanics, factory workers, nurses, assistants vs. doctors, lawyers, software engineers, managers, etc. This is a meaningless distinction because there was a time where mechanics and factory workers also made 6 figu…
Every time someone tries to make a tax targeting the ultra rich, it ends up hurting the moderately wealthy instead. Every. Single. Time. The worse tax situation is always the person who makes 500k in a good year, or sells a house they held for 25 years which went up a bunch in value. I suspect this is a significant factor in social mobility. Our tax system is punitive to people who try to leave the working class.
Governments around the tax the middle class, because that's where the money is. Our current spending campaign will result in substantial tax increases for the middle class; the only real questions are when, and how much (less if it's sooner, more if it's later).
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When Jeff Bezos buys a yacht, he doesn't buy it with Amazon stock. He cashes out that stock and then buys the yacht. I think a fair approach would be to use their total net worth as the threshhold for which wealth taxes apply, but taxes are only paid when that stock is turned into actual money, or equivalent. If you're not cashing out your company holdings, if your wealth is only "on paper", then you owe nothing. But…
But the article lays out wealth as a baseline, stating that taxes paid are a small percentage of the wealth increases. Wealth is mostly unliquidated because it is stock. If I'm understanding the argument correctly, the proposition is that we should ( morally, not legally ) have levied additional taxes on these folks because their net worth has gone up as calculated by the value of things they own, like stock. I find…
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I would also think that this makes neighborhoods less financially diverse. I can’t see someone with a higher than average income moving into a neighborhood knowing that their neighbors might make 1/4th as much. It puts a target on them.
I think "Diverse" is beginning to be the most over used and applied word of all time.
Also not saying that diversity in this case is a good thing or a bad thing - just that it exists and it may have interesting consequences or change with this policy. I would think making salaries public might limit gentrification. But it might also cause flight and impact the tax base. I do not think neighborhoods need to be uniformly financially diverse...
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>>but they are based on weighing personal freedom above all else and this is largely the primary difference between American Culture /Politics and the rest of the world, specifically European nations European nations have always been more collectivist in nature, where the US was founded on Individualism, and Individual Freedom. There are signs that the US is losing this desire, and it saddens me because unlike you I…
Perhaps they are losing this desire because it doesn't provide the well being it promises? Because personal freedom has become a meme abused by ultra rich to disable any effort to fix systemic problems in the US?