Modeling a Wealth Tax

There are a lot of weird incongruities in what you're saying here. First, how is an income tax more fair than a wealth tax? There is no guarantee at all that "people whose wealth is going up pay more than people whose wealth is going down.", let alone that the relative amounts of those items are fair. Additionally, wealth often accumulates via tax-advantaged vehicles that lower income individuals simply don't have access to.

Next, are you really implying that people will magically move to another country entirely because they can work remotely? The portion of workers who are even able to do such a thing, let alone likely to, is vanishingly small for many reasons (including, interestingly, income taxes).

And to your third point... again, you seem to not be aware of how estate planning works specifically to avoid paying taxes via things like trusts and inheriting shares in companies. Fixing inheritance taxation wouldn't come even close to being as effective as a wealth tax in preventing long-term accumulation of wealth with little economic input.

Here's where we're at: we have been trying income tax and the rich keep getting richer. Demonstrably and repeatedly. It isn't working, unless your definition of "working" is robber-baron era levels of economic disparity in America. If your proposed solution is variants of income taxes, well then you know the saying "define insanity". Wealth taxation is the only plan I've seen that logically prevents workarounds and actually serves to balance economic outcomes for Americans in the long term.

> Inequality in your country has risen dramatically the past 30 years.

Why should I or anyone care?

> How about we just enforce inheritance taxes and call it done?

How about we just enforce an inheritance tax in your family alone, and donate everything you have to a local charity and see if it makes a difference in your community? Your goal is to give away your wealth, as far as your comment goes, so it sounds like a legit plan of action. Just don't impose the same goal on everyone else.

This.

The author is playing the typical Rich man's game. Oh woe is me, look at these poor people who this tax will destroy!

The fact that so many people here are defending them, is maddening and disheartening. Arguing that anyone with a value of over 50mm can't pay a higher tax rate on those funds is disengenous at best.

The exasperated/condescending tone of your comment is really inappropriate, given the number of specious and economically fallacious arguments contained in it.

Let's go through each:

>>There's a reason failed states and unstable/developing countries generally aren't where people are looking to startup the next big tech company.

There's a negative correlation between government spending levels as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth rates. Your implication, that society is better off with high levels of taxation, is not supported by the science on the matter.

>>Third, any smart founder isn't going to just sell 1% of their stock every year and pay the wealth tax with that. They'll take dividends, or take out a loan against the value of the stock, or use some cash from other investments, or whatever, and maintain control of their company. Yes, over the long term they'll lose some wealth, but not necessarily control of their company, unless that's the decision they make.

Completely irrelevant to the point. The point is that you lose much of the wealth you would have otherwise gained, in the absence of the wealth tax. Whether that's because you have to pay out more dividends, that would otherwise have been reinvested, to transfer to the IRS, or take on loans, that have to be paid back with revenue that would have otherwise been reinvested, is incidental.

>>Fourth, this effectively ignores that wealth is a thing that grows and compounds. If your wealth is increasing at 4% a year (very attainable for the class of people a wealth tax would affect) a 1% wealth tax really doesn't have as big an impact on your long term wealth as this makes it seem.

Wrong. The losses also have to be compounded. That 1%, had it remained invested, would have grown at a compounding rate as well. So you lose the 1% and all compounded gains on it.

>>Fifth, the idea that people "will just move to another country" is very silly. If some people do leave, or start companies only in other jurisdictions, that just means there's a market opportunity for the many people who remain.

This is a misunderstanding of the factors behind an investment. Investment does not automatically emerge to fill every market opportunity. It emerges when the ROI on potential investments meets the demands of the available investable financial capital. Investment decreases when the expected ROI decreases, and when the available investable financial capital decreases. A wealth tax decreases both the expected ROI, and the available investable financial capital.

Moreover, you're completley ignoring competitiveness. Firms in low tax tax jurisdictions will outcompete firms in high tax ones, ceteris paribus. Opportunities are not distributed across the world evenly, and one factor that affects opportunity is tax rates.

>>I'd much rather we have well funded schools and welfare for those who need it.

Government spending as a percentage of GDP has increased from 25% in the 1950s to 40% today. Social welfare spending increased by an average of 4.8%, EVERY YEAR, between 1972 and 2010.

How much more do you think government spending should increase? What share of private economic output should be non-consensually redistributed for social welfare programs in your mind? Will there ever reach a stage where you think the negative effects on capital formation, from further tax hikes, will outweigh the positive effects of a greater share of economic output being available to the poor in the form of cash payments and social services?