Just wanted to say, I'm currently reading Good Economics for Hard Times by Banerjee and Duflo (the 2019 Nobel Prize winners), and it talks about this. It's a really interesting read about how we can make a more just society without giving up on capitalism as a whole, and quite a shocking transition from what you hear a lot on TV or from older economists (about trickle down, etc.). I'd recommend everyone read it; I got it from library, but now want to go buy my own copy to keep coming back to and rereading.
Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
161–170 of 198 posts
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#162The biggest issue I have with this is: > "the very rich should be allowed to keep the money they have, even if that means increasing inequality," Wording a question like that is so... biased. Maybe we should work on fixing how the enormous amount of tax money is spent now before asking taxpayers for more? $700bn in funding for military (around $1tn all funds considered), yet there's "increasing inequality". US spends…
Hell, there's NOT increasing inequality by sane definitions - meaning if you count government taxes and transfers. Yes, pre-tax, no-transfer income inequality has increased, but by definition increasing taxes and transfers won't fix that. And once you include ss/welfare/snap/eitc/etc as well as taxes, income inequality today has barely changed over the past century.
And the recent "increasing wealth inequality" papers have based on the dubious assumption that "wealth = capital gains income / risk-free instantaneous rate of return", [0] which means that wealth goes up as interest rates go down if income holds steady.
0: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wealth-and-taxes-...
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Held wealth past a certain threshold (500k? 1 million?) will be taxed at X% yearly. 2. US budgets get a huge new source of Y revenue, to balance current deficits, pay off debts, or fund progressive programs that help the needy. How is that not helpful? It wouldn't help most HN users, it would help children, the elderly, sick, disabled, etc. It depends on the legislation, you can funnel the funds or you can keep th…
> Held wealth past a certain threshold (500k? 1 million?) will be taxed at X% yearly. By definition, the revenue stream will run out. You tax, say, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates until their net worth is exactly $500,000. Then, next year, they make $50,000, so you tax it again and their net worth is now exactly $500,000. Nobody else can ever pass that magic threshold once everybody’s been leveled down to it (unless they p…
Notice they said "x%", not "100%". It's not like they're taking all the extra money. Rich people will still have more, and still be able to get richer, but a higher percentage of that is going to help the disadvantage (which the technology rich people developed often hurt).
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#164this 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…
If workers are 5x more productive and wages are flat after inflation, why are profits also flat (after inflation and population growth)? This isn't a case of the corporate oligarchs taking a larger share, this is the pie not growing as fast as that 5x productivity improvement would imply.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#165A 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…
Strictly speaking, it means you can still have a wealth tax, it just has to average out to the same amount per person in each state. Which would go rather poorly for the poorest states.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#166Alternative 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.
We might take a page from John Rawls here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance If everyone were behind a veil of ignorance and had to craft a just tax system without knowing whether they, themselves, would end up as poor or rich in such a system, would they nevertheless agree that those who are extreme outliers in terms of their wealth should contribute more? My guess is that this proposal probably passes…
If we were behind the veil of ignorance, I think most economists would choose a consumption tax of some sort as that's both the least distortive and one of the easiest to administer, with transfer payments added on top to achieve the desired level of 'progressiveness'.
Wealth taxes only really make sense if you want to hurt the rich, NOT to raise revenue. (Well, strictly speaking a one-time, no-warning, credibly-promise-to-never-do-it-again wealth tax is a good way to raise revenue. But governments can't credibly promise such things)
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#167I'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 don't think most Americans would have a tax on their bank balance. Hence, wealth tax on the rich.
They asked if rich people should pay taxes for being rich. This has nothing to do with regular people. This is the EXACT same gas-lighting technique used by the wealthy and their lobbyists to convince gullible employees that they have something in common with their boss.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#168Earlier 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)
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money” -Alexis De Tocqueville
bribes are conditional
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#169Just tax capital gains as income if you want to hit the rich. Wealth taxes are both harder to implement and enforce than income taxes (e.g. how do you appraise an illiquid asset) while conferring no meaningful advantages.
Indeed. We have a top capital gains rate of 23.8%, a top dividend tax rate of 28.6%, and a top earned income tax rate of 40.6%. I can't think of any good reason capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than earned income.
If you want a wealth tax, without the overhead of having to value all of your property every year, repeatedly forcing sales of illiquid assets, the easiest way to do it is the estate tax, which you only have to pay once in your life. This has also been gutted, and now a married couple has to have an estate of over $22 million to be subject to it at all.
We really don't need any new types of taxes, we just need to put fair rates on the ones we already have.
Re: Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Letting people keep the money that they earned.
Letting the people keep the money they earned on the backs of others , you mean. Because that's what is needed to hoard the enormous concentrations amounts of wealth that are proposed for higher taxation.
Translation: "Anyone who makes more money than me stole it". I suppose you don't think your enormous amount of wealth compared to the average human means it was earned off the back of others do you? How much money would be fair for rural Chinese and Indians to steal from you?