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Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

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Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#331

Post by Enginerrrd »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #121
didibus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the way the incentive is supposed to work no? Motivate the economy by furthering investment back into it.

If we tax wealth, people will be incentivized to generate non-wealth things. Why buy a stock if Biden will take 1% of it annually? May as well just buy rapidly depreciating status symbols instead.

I agree and disagree. I do think people would be incentivized to find a store of value that doesn't meet whatever definition of wealth the IRS uses. I think no matter what your definition is, there will be a way to game the system and the wealthy will do so aggressively.

I don't necessarily think it leads to purchasing status symbols. Depreciation already kind of incentivizes that, so I don't think there's anything fundamentally game-changing there.

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#332

Post by riku_iki »

coliveira wrote: post #77
riku_iki wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see that as an incentive to hide the profits by investing in the future. Can it be also an incentive to work less, since most of the results of your hard work will be taken from you in form of taxes, or you would need to 'hide the profits' potentially forever?

That would be true if the owner of the business was doing most of the work. But in a large corporation the workers are doing the brunt of the work, so it makes no difference for the shareholders.

Author of the comment I replied to identified himself as "business owner", probably not an owner of "large corporation".

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#333

Post by czbond »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #290
czbond wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing thing is we can ALL buy assets and be the "grandfather's grandfather's grandfather". It isn't hard. Even very small wealth compounds incredibly after 150 years.

> we can ALL buy assets and be the "grandfather's grandfather's grandfather". How many families/people are wealthy on the basis of the earnings of a regular person in 1870 and their incredibly compounded wealth? The answer is likely none.

This is due to human nature, not what logical, future thinking beings should do.

I'm suggesting, that everyone can feel empowered, because assets or dollars invested today can be worth considerably more after inflation in the future. This should give EVERYONE hope.

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#334

Post by kofejnik »

jostmey wrote: post #17

I’m more concerned about what happens if we don’t start taxing the rich more (in the US). I’m worried about the class divide turning violent

> I’m worried about the class divide turning violent reply

it doesn't have to be if Marxists don't stir it all the time

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#335

Post by bhupy »

rayiner wrote: post #322
tonystubblebine wrote: post #6

As a business owner, when taxes are low, I see that as an incentive to pocket profits. But when taxes are high, I see that as an incentive to hide the profits by investing in the future. I know this isn't always the case with everyone. And especially investors have a case that higher corporate taxes reduce the value of their investments, possibly to the point of not making them. But this incentive is so blatantly obv…

That's actually an example of why wealth taxes aren't a great idea. If you invest money back into the business, that might reduce your profits, and therefore any corporate or income taxes. But that investment it will increase the long-term value of the company. Under a wealth tax, that would cause taxes for everyone who holds the stock to go up! In fact, if investing in say a new line of business causes the value of…

I generally agree with the opposition to wealth taxes (and no, I'm not wealthy), but I'll try to engage with this by providing what I believe is the strongest good-faith counterargument:

> a wealth tax creates a perverse incentive to not invest back in the company.

This is arguably a "good thing" because one could argue that it's "unfair" that large, high revenue / high income corporations allocate so much capital in our economy. It would arguably be better for them to pay the taxes and instead have that capital be allocated by a democratically accountable body: the government.

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#336

Post by mullingitover »

ls612 wrote: post #300
mullingitover wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Near 50% of American pay zero federal tax. I was looking for the lucky duckies argument to rear its head. The Intercept has an article which does a great job of eviscerating it[1] > ...when you take all U.S. taxes into account — federal income taxes, federal payroll taxes, federal corporate taxes, the federal estate tax, federal excise taxes, and the plethora of state and local taxes — the U.S. tax system is just m…

Problem there is that it ignores transfer payments. So the people making 2.8% of the national income are really taking home more than that since they (collectively, not every individual receives all of these) are receiving snap, section 8, tanf, social security/SSI, Medicaid, etc. From a post transfer perspective, America’s tax system is firmly progressive, but less so than European countries. The other side of that…

> So the people making 2.8% of the national income are really taking home more than that since they (collectively, not every individual receives all of these) are receiving snap, section 8, tanf, social security/SSI, Medicaid, etc.

It makes sense to look at these payments to the extreme low income brackets as insurance against revolution. People will put up with a lot of misery, but there comes a point where they start getting angry about it, and as a bonus they're well armed in the US.

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#337

Post by taraharris »

golergka wrote: post #275
maxharris wrote: post #86

Wealth taxes are a bad idea because they target everyone with wealth, regardless of the actual views they hold, regardless of the degree to which they have personally contributed to the collapse we are facing. The real inequality we have today is being perpetuated by outdated regulations, primarily from the 1930s. It's also being perpetuated by people that invest in Warren Buffet-style "value" stocks, which extract a…

> regardless of the actual views they hold Are you really suggesting that taxing someone based on their views is a good idea.

Of course not. I'm merely saying that many people that support the wealth tax are looking at it from the perspective of getting back at the boomers. They are onto something, insofar as that generation did support policies that really did effect a huge wealth transfer that benefitted the boomers, at the expense of basically everyone else.

The thing I'm trying to call out is that they might not want to wipe out GenX-ers like me, who invested their personal savings into TSLA, and are working to use the wealth to actually help people rather than to buy fancy clothes, condos and yachts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAZJNe7YtE

(Something to understand here is Weinstein's argument about WWII, embedded growth obligations and institutional decline...)

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#338

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

erentz wrote: post #269
sempron64 wrote: post #125

I'm not wealthy enough for a wealth tax to apply, but a wealth tax is a colossal privacy and administrative burden on _every single taxpayer_. Assets must be accounted for when calculating wealth, so the tax service will be required to track and value assets including vehicles, homes, and material good etc. for every citizen to see if the wealth tax would apply to them -- if we didn't report material goods, the wealt…

One time wealth taxes on things like expensive cars, art, and houses can be levied at the time of purchase. That's just sales tax and already is recorded. Annual wealth tax on land/property is easy, we already do it it's just not done in a progressive manner. Again that's already recorded. Annual wealth taxes on things like securities, stocks, bonds, can be accounted easily by any broker and reported. Again this is a…

Your first proposal is just a standard luxury sales tax, which functions entirely differently from the recurring wealth taxes that are being discussed.

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#339

Post by ls612 »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #290
czbond wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing thing is we can ALL buy assets and be the "grandfather's grandfather's grandfather". It isn't hard. Even very small wealth compounds incredibly after 150 years.

> we can ALL buy assets and be the "grandfather's grandfather's grandfather". How many families/people are wealthy on the basis of the earnings of a regular person in 1870 and their incredibly compounded wealth? The answer is likely none.

Not 1870, but my great grandfather came to the US in 1905 or so with little more than the shirt on his back and worked a series of ‘regular person’ jobs until he died. The money he saved allowed several of his sons to start a small business, which did fine for several decades but went under around 2000. However that modest income split between the three brothers (one of whom was my grandfather) allowed them to save enough money to each become homeowners in the 50s and live a reasonable lifestyle in the suburbs. My grandpas frugality meant that even after he died young my dad could go to college without debt, and my dad has been somewhat frugal his whole life.

So by 2020, based on the savings from a series of people working ‘regular person’ jobs, most of my great grandpas descendants who are in my dad’s generation are very well off, several are millionaires (I’m excluding my dad because he was the smart one in the family and went to medical school, his job pays far more than a ‘regular person’ job). And this story is not at all uncommon across the US. The reason you don’t hear it is because there’s a big (especially in the Midwest) cultural aversion to discussing wealth or showing it off.

Re: Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea

#340

Post by AnthonyMouse »

didibus wrote: post #306
tonystubblebine wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Corporate taxes are an incentive for businesses investing in themselves but, as I understand it, an disincentive for investors to invest in businesses. I'm mostly just bothered by how simplistic the debate is and how most people don't even understand this detail.

> but, as I understand it, an disincentive for investors to invest in businesses I don't see this holding true. Can you explain how? Like, yes as a personal investor you now have less to invest, because you are taxed more on your income. But of the money you have left after tax, investment is still investment. There's no other way to make money of your money then to invest it. So as long as you don't spend all the mo…

> I don't see this holding true. Can you explain how?

Suppose you have $40,000. You can buy some stock in a domestic corporation, or buy some stock in a foreign corporation, or put a down payment on a house, or buy a new car, or invest in government bonds, or ten other things.

If you raise the domestic corporate tax rate, option one becomes less attractive compared to all the other ones.

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