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I get that. Taxes generally don’t decrease once put in.
Well first. There is no chance, and I mean zero chance that the government will spend the money wisely. Now that may come down to a number of reasons, many of them partisan. But that's how it is. Even playing off your comment about how people have zero in savings. This is very much what I'm against. Some yahoo doesn't save a dime, because he is a dunderhead, and now Bill Gates has to fund his bank account. Boo.
Agree to disagree to the level of our governments ability to function.supermike80 said:
I'm sorry. I don't have the time to explain the benefits of charity and charitable organizations to you.
Charity is wonderful, it’s not going to fix systemic problems though. It’s not a counter to healthcare costs, higher ed costs, wage structure, etc. I think I am going to just ignore you. I don’t care for the way you handle yourself.
It is not constitutional to tax wealth. Butin most cases it id not double taxation as billionaires accumulate vast wealth by holding shares of their company. Unless they cash out their shares, their wealth escapes personal income tax. The trick would be tax the gains in their stock ownership, whether they sell or not, as income.Shula-holic said:
I follow what you're saying. I think there have been discussions here about this before. Easy to do with publicly traded companies. Use the value at 12/31 and you're done. Not as easy to do if it's a privately held company and trying to determine the value.
Its interesting that folks think a wealth tax in lieu of charity will fix these things.
In saying that a wealth tax is a tax on income minus consumption and donations, I wasn't trying to take a position on how capital gains or inheritances should be taxed. But my understanding is that those things are taxed. Capital gains is part of the income tax, and there's a separate tax for inheritance. (There's also a separate payroll tax, which I'd lump in with income tax even though it's technically not.)fatguyinalittlecoat said:
I've burned thru a lot of mine because of the pandemic, was sitting pretty good for a rainy day. Most everyone in the service industry is far worse off than me. This year is shaping up to be another loss also.
I was with your friend until that last sentence. I think 2-3-2 is perfectly fair. (I think 4-3 would also be perfectly fair, though generally shorter and less exciting. A 3-4 format [with the lower-seeded team at home first] might maximize series length.)randall146 said:
I think what people mean when they say that a wealth tax is double taxation is that the same wealth is taxed annually, over and over again, every year, unless and until it is given away or spent on consumption.
I am not sure about that. I think most people believe that Bill Gates has been already taxed on his wealth. If Bill Gates holds on to Microsoft stock his whole life, it will have never been hit by taxes..
Any sensible tax will punish Americans for being successful. (Good luck raising enough revenue to fund an army by taxing only unsuccessful people.)supermike80 said:
That sucks man. Sorry to hear this. This #### will turn, hopefully sooner than later.
Why higher ed is so expensive (think: government contributed a lot to this)
If this went into effect you just thought quadruple witching day on the stock market was crazy...
Very salient point here.
Maybe the lesson is that we should skip the income tax and the wealth tax, and instead implement a consumption tax.
Why are you trying to disincentivize consumption by the rich? One of the primary benefits of the tax in my view is that it diminishes wealth inequality.* To achieve that purpose, it seems like the best choices, in order would be:
And the government deciding "You have plenty, we'll take some of yours" isn't a healthy place to be either.
But we already have taxes. The precedent that the government is entitled to people’s money is long established.
We’ve spent that money defending the county which includes their business interests and subsidizing the economy so businesses can keep making money. It’s all working together. The US bails out the banks when they hit tough times. The parties need each other and have been mostly good for each other.
I think you took what I said too literally. I am describing the thought process and attitude of it. We are all aware the government wouldn’t go around begging for money. They either pass taxes and take it or don’t.
No. The distinction very clearly matters. It's a warm and fuzzy nice thought to post on the PSF "America helped you succeed, so you should want to reinvest in it."
I want to invest in America and I haven’t even made that much money. If you made a billion dollars in America, I don’t get why it would be such an odd perspective? Anytime we take money from others we do do with at least an expectation of what will be provided in return is beneficial. Government taxation should be no different. Of course not everyone will buy in but it should still come with a sales pitch and a plan.
Because consumption equality matters about a thousand times more than wealth equality.
Slowing money velocity is much more harmful to society than consuming a non-scarce resource. If some dude buys a yacht I guarantee they will build another.
I think a consumption tax would be preferable if we were starting from scratch, but we're logistically already set up to collect an income tax, so it has a path-dependent advantage.
Which means that other non-yacht stuff won't get built. Resources are finite, so everything's a tradeoff.
Which means that nothing will get built. This isn't a zero sum game.
I think we have different views about what makes wealth inequality bad. For me it’s about power, not about consumption. Even if someone doesn’t seem like they’re exercising that power at a specific time, I think it’s a problem for them to have the power in the first place.
I would agree we need to do something. The GOP likes to keep lowering taxes for the ultra rich even if it is already much lower than years past. As you scroll down through this article watch the graph show lower and lower taxes rates for the very wealthiest throughout the last 70 yearsThe General said:
While that's true in terms of the effort and political capital needed for creating policy, "that's how it's always been" is never a good argument.
why ?Ilov80s said:
I think poverty and the concentration of political power are both bad things that we should try to reduce. Which one is more important to reduce at any given time and place will depend on the circumstances.
ultra wealthy as defined by who ?The General said:
Seems to me like this isn't an either/or kinda thing. I think we should be adopting many different strategies to attack both of these issues, and we should pursue them all in tandem so that if one strategy fails to address the problems in the way we want, other strategies will help too. In my judgment a wealth tax would provide help in both areas. Whether it's the absolute best way to accomplish either of these goals doesn't seem like the right question to ask, at least to me.
Sunday I'll start a thread about that.
If you do this, can you figure out a way to do it in bite-sized chunks over time? If you write some long essay then I'm going to feel like I need to write a long essay in response, which will be a bummer for me and nobody will read it anyway, if I even get around to it. My preference would be for you to write a paragraph or two, then I respond with a paragraph or two, etc. That seems more manageable and fun and it will encourage other people to join.
great point, well made.
