I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes • Hacker News Board

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#71

Post by jelliclesfarm » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

xvedejas wrote: post #35

But why raise income or wealth taxes when you can raise land value taxes or carbon/pollution taxes instead? My income does not harm anyone else, nor does being wealthy. But my hoarding of land does exclude land from others. My release of carbon / pollution into the atmosphere even more obviously harms other people. I think we're doing a huge disservice taxing the wrong things, when there are things that are useful to…

By the same logic, should we tax having babies too? Especially multiple babies. Large carbon foot print for a bonded set of genes.

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#72

Post by antisthenes » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

Causality1 wrote: post #30

It's always been fascinating to me that "things that poor people spend most of their money on" is subject to a sales tax but "things rich people spend most of their money on" isn't. Services from beauty shops, car repair, home maintenance and repair? Taxed. Services from lawyers and accountants? Not taxed. Buying a TV, food, gasoline? Taxed. Buying a piece of land or stocks? Not taxed.

Land is taxed yearly. Stocks are taxed in cases where you profit from their sale. Dividends are also taxed in most cases as ordinary income.

I can see merit in taxing both transactions for land in stocks, but it's inaccurate to say that they aren't taxed.

You can also argue that buying land is way more necessary than a TV. Everyone needs to live on a piece of land, not everyone needs (or wants) a TV.

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#73

Post by antisthenes » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #71

xvedejas wrote: post #35

But why raise income or wealth taxes when you can raise land value taxes or carbon/pollution taxes instead? My income does not harm anyone else, nor does being wealthy. But my hoarding of land does exclude land from others. My release of carbon / pollution into the atmosphere even more obviously harms other people. I think we're doing a huge disservice taxing the wrong things, when there are things that are useful to…

By the same logic, should we tax having babies too? Especially multiple babies. Large carbon foot print for a bonded set of genes.

Given the current state of AGW and Climate Change, taxing babies beyond replacement rate (2.1) is not a bad idea.

I mean it's political suicide, but I don't see anything morally wrong with it.

After all, we already subsidize babies with our taxing scheme. So you wouldn't even need to tax babies. You would just cut off the subsidy after 2 kids.

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#74

Post by xvedejas » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #71

xvedejas wrote: post #35

But why raise income or wealth taxes when you can raise land value taxes or carbon/pollution taxes instead? My income does not harm anyone else, nor does being wealthy. But my hoarding of land does exclude land from others. My release of carbon / pollution into the atmosphere even more obviously harms other people. I think we're doing a huge disservice taxing the wrong things, when there are things that are useful to…

By the same logic, should we tax having babies too? Especially multiple babies. Large carbon foot print for a bonded set of genes.

No, this would be a double-tax. We should tax carbon as it is emitted. Anything else is prediction and is a much harder, unnecessary problem.

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#75

Post by Gibbon1 » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #13

jsnk wrote: post #3

Does IRS prohibit people from paying extra in tax if they want to?

I think people are taking this question in bad faith, which I understand, because I can see it come off as you essentially saying "if he wants to pay more, maybe he should voluntarily," which isn't at all in the spirit of the article. He CAN pay more, and he does donate to charity - his entire article though is about how the ultra wealthy are getting away with far too much, and society needs to step in. Non-voluntari…

> bad faith

Yeah that's my thought. 'Why don't you personally go do that and get back to us' in response to argument for collective action is a bad faith response.

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#76

Post by youareawesome » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #69

youareawesome wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think an extra $100B-$200B added to federal revenue of currently ~$3.6T (5%) will have any noticeable effect on poverty?

Yes, because the amount the US spends on welfare is a smaller fraction of the whole budget. For example, the US spends around ~$100 billion on food assistance [1]. Wikipedia estimates that all non-medical poverty assistance accounts for around $400 billion of the US budget [2]. Increasing expenditure by 10-20% (or even 5%) will almost certainly have a noticeable effect on poverty. [1] https://media.nationalpriorities…

Yeah I don't think increasing welfare is really the solution to ending poverty. Lots of evidence that welfare actually prolongs poverty, not to mention the waste endemic to bureaucratic administration. How about instead of taxing individuals we tax corporations to incentivize paying their workers more?

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#77

Post by youareawesome » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

happytoexplain wrote: post #68

youareawesome wrote: post #6

If you took the total combined wealth of the wealthiest 100 Americans, you wouldn't be able to fund the federal government for more than half a year or so. Taxing the rich sounds nice as virtuous political rhetoric but it won't effectively address poverty, just further erodes the liberty of private citizens. If you want to fund more social programs then tax corporations, like the oil companies and the large investmen…

You could fund the entire federal government for half a year with the wealth of only the top 100 people in the US? That's mind-blowing, and makes me way more optimistic about the practical effect of taxes on extreme wealth than I have been.

After that first year there would be no one left to tax, so how would you sustain your government's revenue long term?

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#78

Post by youareawesome » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

moate wrote: post #70

youareawesome wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's not literally applicable doesn't mean it's meaningless, it emphasizes an important point that people overlook. The amount of wealth held by the top 80K is a drop in the bucket when compared to the total revenue of the federal government. The greatest effect of this policy is that it will harm individual liberty. It will have nearly no effect on improving poverty or increasing social programs.

But it's not. 45% of the federal government's income comes from individual taxes. In 2016, the US took in about 1,442,385,000,000 total of which 839,898,000,000 was from the top 5% of individual earners. That's OVER HALF of the total amount[1]. You're wrong. You're point is not valid or based in the actual data. To say that hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in extra revenue couldn't help fund social program…

The IRS only enforces tax collection on the wealthiest individuals because it isn't efficient to do otherwise, that's why you see most of the tax revenue coming from the wealthy. They only go after the big fish.

You're wrong if you think that taxing individuals is going to decrease poverty or wealth inequality. Wealth inequality is not due to wealth individuals holding assets, but due to pay inequality. Corporations hold their profits instead of paying their workers fairly. It would be much more effective to impose a wealth tax on corporations to incentivize them to pay their workers.

Large multi-national monopolies are the problem, not rich people. If you can't see that, the corporations have effectively used your own morals against you. The uber rich won't be affected, only the new rich, people rising from the middle class.

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#79

Post by jhasse » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

youareawesome wrote: post #40

ninkendo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never claimed the top 1% is just the top 100 wealthiest Americans. But in a response to an article about the top 1%, you used the top 100 wealthiest Americans as a counterpoint. If you're not trying to make a connection, why bother with the analogy?

I never brought up the top 1% and the top 1% has nothing to do with the wealth tax. The wealth tax will apply to all Americans with assets over $50 million, which is roughly ~80K people, or 0.02% of the population.

The top 1% has been brought up by the articles title you commented on.

Re: I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes

#80

Post by jhasse » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

youareawesome wrote: post #77

happytoexplain wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could fund the entire federal government for half a year with the wealth of only the top 100 people in the US? That's mind-blowing, and makes me way more optimistic about the practical effect of taxes on extreme wealth than I have been.

After that first year there would be no one left to tax, so how would you sustain your government's revenue long term?

No one left? Only 100 gone!