161–170 of 263 posts
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We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041608 and marked it off topic. Not cool. Other users were perfectly able to respond to the parent with curious conversation. I'm not going to respond any further publicly. You can email us if you want to discuss further.
For the vast majority of human civilization, all taxes were based on wealth. Your emperor, pharaoh, czar, or whoever was in charge sent a dude around to take a bit of everybody's stuff. Not how much income they made but how much stuff they actually had . It's only been the last 120-ish years that the idea that wealth and income were totally different things as far as taxation is concerned emerged. I think almost ever…
> I think almost everybody would be better off if taxes were something like 1% of total assets rather than off the top of your income No thanks. Any discussion about tax reform has to start with government spending otherwise it's not serious. Nobody wants to give away a slice of their net worth to pay for bullshit wars and ballrooms.
I'd say almost the reverse. What we need most in terms of "tax reform" is to move away from thinking about taxes as solely a means of funding government operations, and towards thinking about taxes as a way of directly redistributing wealth. That is, the revenues of a wealth tax could simply be given to the non-wealthy as direct payments (possibly in the form of refundable tax credits). Unavoidably there will be some overhead, but there doesn't need to be anything for the money to be "spent on"; it can just be straight-up given to different people than those who paid it.
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> I think almost everybody would be better off if taxes were something like 1% of total assets rather than off the top of your income No thanks. Any discussion about tax reform has to start with government spending otherwise it's not serious. Nobody wants to give away a slice of their net worth to pay for bullshit wars and ballrooms.
> Nobody wants to give away a slice of their net worth to pay for bullshit wars and ballrooms. The vast majority of people in America are already doing this, because their wealth is entirely derived from their income. Your complaint isn't relevant to the discussion of wealth vs income taxes.
Derived is not the same thing. Not even close.
Then why stop at 1%? Why not fork over half of your possessions to the government every year and let them spend it for you, if you trust them so much?
And by the way we already have a wealth tax. Its called inflation.
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We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041608 and marked it off topic. Not cool. Other users were perfectly able to respond to the parent with curious conversation. I'm not going to respond any further publicly. You can email us if you want to discuss further.
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> Nobody wants to give away a slice of their net worth to pay for bullshit wars and ballrooms. The vast majority of people in America are already doing this, because their wealth is entirely derived from their income. Your complaint isn't relevant to the discussion of wealth vs income taxes.
> The vast majority of people in America are already doing this, because their wealth is entirely derived from their income Derived is not the same thing. Not even close. Then why stop at 1%? Why not fork over half of your possessions to the government every year and let them spend it for you, if you trust them so much? And by the way we already have a wealth tax. Its called inflation.
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We are currently killing millions of our own people. Communism is not stuck in time with the USSR.
> We are currently killing millions of our own people. What do you mean?
We know how many people communism killed, but has anyone done the same math on capitalism? Maybe they're both very bad, and we have to find a third way.
The elephant in the room is why governments need more money: old age benefits like social security. I fear that taxing wealth will just be a tax on future investment while funnelling that wealth to the elderly. Already, folks are pushing to make the key asset owned by the old - housing - free from property taxes (if you're over 60, naturally)[1] which will only push housing prices up and drive more budget deficits th…
Again, we can argue the exact numbers, 20% is just an example. Some percentage is also needed for public infrastructure works and stuff like healthcare, and we don't want the total to be too high, nor the component parts to be too low.
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Even if the government took the money and burnt it that would be a net good for society since it would lower inequality and thereby decrease power imbalances.
Wow this is nuts.
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Most ideologies are terrible in those regards. The various forms of democratic capitalism have been pretty big on genocide and oppression too. Most of them were were pretty unconcerned with Hitler until after the marxist-leninists were already fighting him. Not sure what point you're trying to make.
>Most of them were were pretty unconcerned with Hitler until after the marxist-leninists were already fighting him. Britain, France and allies were fighting Hitler in 1939. Russia was allied with Hitler until 1941, when Hitler attacked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
Just i know there were preferred trading partners and aide packages from countries to one side or the other, but if Perl Harbor hadn't happened, it was by no means certain the US and many other countries would have entered the war and instead just let it settle itself.
Of course Europe was involved in the European war. Turns out Europe is only a small part of the world tho.