121–130 of 727 posts
I think 1% wealth tax should be a replacement for income tax. That way only the wealthy will pay taxes.
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How do you propose we measure a person's wealth, when wealth is easily hidden? When it needs to be done now, it is usually a years long audit.
A lot of countries require you to declare your total wealth on your tax forms. Then once someone gets audited, that gets checked. Obviously it’s possible to hide it, but that in itself is a crime, and not everyone is willing to risk going to jail over paying taxes.
If you own shares of $MCD, you can get wealth taking share prices and shares owned.
But if own a McDonald's franchise, how do you measure the 'wealth' of it? Annual profit? Last x years profit, averaged?
Anymore I think the question shouldn't be about some kind of economic fairness (the time value of money thing being discussed) but the idea that wealth accumulation is a disease that afflicts society. I don't think anyone should have the level of control or influence on others that having a billion dollars currently allows. If a millionaire gives $100 to a political candidate it probably doesn't require too much thou…
I know this is tangential to your main point, but in the US, you can only give a max of $3,500 to a candidate per election cycle, for each the primaries and general election. To give more financial support, you have to do independent, uncoordinated campaigning for the candidate. So you can spend a million dollars on ads saying to vote for a candidate, but you can't give that money to the candidate's campaign and the…
Anymore I think the question shouldn't be about some kind of economic fairness (the time value of money thing being discussed) but the idea that wealth accumulation is a disease that afflicts society. I don't think anyone should have the level of control or influence on others that having a billion dollars currently allows. If a millionaire gives $100 to a political candidate it probably doesn't require too much thou…
I know this is tangential to your main point, but in the US, you can only give a max of $3,500 to a candidate per election cycle, for each the primaries and general election. To give more financial support, you have to do independent, uncoordinated campaigning for the candidate. So you can spend a million dollars on ads saying to vote for a candidate, but you can't give that money to the candidate's campaign and the…
> In fact, not a single coordination investigation has ever resulted in a PAC being fined.
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> The math doesn't math for someone on the other extreme end of the spectrum who has zero savings or investments and obtains all his income from labor: To him, a N% wealth tax = 0% income tax for all N. Those with -some- savings are somewhere in the middle. Productivity comes from labor AND assets though. You need the farmer and the tractor. Why would we create a tax system that encourages people to divorce themselve…
The current system without wealth taxes already largely divorces labor from equity stake. Unless you're one of the relatively few tech or office workers who get equity compensation or have a large savings rate, you currently don't have much of a stake in any means of production.
However, if your goal is to increase stakeholdership, how would a policy that explicitly disincentivizes that behavior fix anything?
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> I'd be really surprised to see a 0.1%-er (or 0.001%-er) post $0 income tax. Bezos did, in 2007. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov... > Consider Bezos’ 2007, one of the years he paid zero in federal income taxes. Amazon’s stock more than doubled. Bezos’ fortune leapt $3.8 billion, according to Forbes, whose wealth estimates are widely cited. How did a person enjoying that sort of wealth ex…
Yeah and he lost money for a decade or more. Blame the system that you can loss harvest. Or call it fair that we don’t penalise business for having bad years.
On paper, I'm sure. Let's not pretend that's reality.
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I have some quibbles about the ProPublica definitions -- for instance market liquidity matters when calculating public company stock wealth -- and even if you're going to borrow against it, there are additional costs and pledges that must be made that significantly reduce the available capital. The propublica number was like 4.5% or so if I recall, and does not count the taxes paid by the companies these people owned…
> does not count the taxes paid by the companies these people owned Why should they? Should I get to count the taxes paid by my local water treatment plant workers because I shit in the toilet? > nor does it imagine the financial benefits to say California teachers or firemen who co-own the companies through pension funds They get taxed on that!
in other words, you are talking to someone in the stupid-wealthy class. you are not going to convince them of anything -- especially not that billionaires should pay more.
its like trying to convince Jon Moore (Phillip Morris USA CEO) that cigarettes should be banned.
I sure would, if I was talking about someone who makes more money in a week than most of us will make in our entire lives.
I think pg has forgotten that most people aren't rich.
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I can't speak for others, but this doesn't match my thinking at all. I want to heavily tax the ultra rich because money is power, and vast inequality in power is undemocratic and just plain dangerous. I don't really care if somebody buys ten massive yachts. It's annoying and seems wasteful but it's not worth too much of my attention. But it's another matter if somebody buys politicians, laws, social change. The issue…
Easily solved, remove the power centers and then the billionaires will have no power to buy or influence with their money.
Of course, you probably mean to remove their power centers without removing their money. But that doesn't make any sense. Money is power. You can't remove the power from a billionaire and leave them a billionaire.