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

• commandlinefan 6y ago
  I'm neither wealthy nor the media and I believe that wealth taxes are a bad idea, too.
  • flashyfaffe2 6y ago
    Would you consider volontarily contribution instead?
    • mhh__ 6y ago
      Possibly not what you mean but I very strongly believe tax rates should he a minimum where you can set your own (and displayed publicly) tax rate above a certain level for your income. Both physically and online, as someone who grew up not poor but far far from rich i.e. I've still only been abroad from the UK twice in my (so far short) life, I am absolutely sick of rich people saying "I'd pay more tax if I could" as a throwaway gesture. I increasingly think an underlying motive of why I study fairly intensely is just to end up better than those who were born better than me. If you really believe that, put your money where your mouth is.
      • lostcolony 6y ago
        Oh please. Of course they don't meant that. Because you can totally give money to the government. https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.h... What they actually mean is "I wish you made me pay more". Because they can't bring themselves to write a check to -give- it away, but -do- feel they should have to pay more. Part of that is the social aspect; why should I, as a rich person, be paying more than other people of similar wealth? But I support all of us paying more.
        • PeterStuer 6y ago
          Saying "I wish you made me pay more" while then turning around and hire the best tax accountants to avoid paying even one cent, and lobbying, funding and grooming politicians that will block any wealth taxes, is just adding insult to injury and insulting hypocrisy.
          • lostcolony 6y ago
            Well, it's the same motivation, isn't it? "All my peers are doing this - I would be a sucker not to do the same". It's that feeling of being taken advantage of that they want to avoid. Let's be clear, there are three kinds of mindsets here: "I don't want to be taxed at all" - lots of lobbying and such to keep taxes on the rich low, and lots of loopholes. "I think people of my bracket should be taxed higher, but I am going to avail myself of every existing loophole and itemization I can" - doesn't want to feel like a sucker, but agrees people in their bracket, themselves included, should pay more. "I think people of my bracket should be taxed higher, and I'm going to give money away anonymously or similar to put my money where my mouth is, even if others of my bracket are not" - a unicorn.
      • lhopki01 6y ago
        This is very similar to saying that charities should deal with these issues (homelessness, drug additction, etc) not the government. Charities rely on donations. I strongly think that the government should be dealing with these things. I think I should be taxed more but I also don't think that me voluntarily paying 1% more tax will change anything. However everyone playing 1% more tax will so fundamentally change everything that it's worth doing. I don't say "I'd pay more tax if I could" I say "I should pay more tax and so should everyone else earning as much as me" >I increasingly think an underlying motive of why I study fairly intensely is just to end up better than those who were born better than me. You might want to consider the fact then that social mobility is generally higher in countries with higher tax rates.
  • RivieraKid 6y ago
    Why? (I mostly agree but it's not a strong opinion)
    • muststopmyths 6y ago
      My guess: because they hope to be wealthy some day.
      • throwaways885 6y ago
        Doesn't everyone? Plus, there's other reasons to be skeptical of wealth taxes, capital flight is a real thing.
        • pmiller2 6y ago
          That's why you pair them with capital controls, to keep that from happening. This, unfortunately, requires significant cooperation from the international community, and ought to be done before any wealth tax is imposed. BTW, have you seen how expensive it is for high net worth individuals to renounce US citizenship?
        • marricks 6y ago
          Isn't that just another myth peddled by wealthy groups? This was a pretty good study and didn't find that effect[1]. Just on the face of it, sure if you're wealthier you have greater ability to move but that also means you probably like where you are because you chose to be there. Most of my high school friends dispersed around the country solely for job opportunities, not because they wanted to be somewhere. [1] https://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2011/02/documents/millionaire-migration.pdf https://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2011/02/documents... > The New Jersey millionaire tax experiment offers a potent testing ground, given the magnitude of the policy change and the relative ease of relocating to a different state tax regime without leaving the New York or Philadelphia metropolitan areas. Using a difference-in-difference estimator, we find minimal effect of the new tax on the migration of millionaires.
        • beardedetim 6y ago
  • marricks 6y ago
    Any chance your opinion was formed based on news/studies funded by wealthy individuals?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • BitwiseFool 6y ago
      I'm not the person you responded to but this kind of comment really bugs me. Why assume someone didn't form their own opinion?
      • tstrimple 6y ago
        No one "forms their own opinion" in a vacuum. Your beliefs and opinions are influenced in a multitude of ways by your environment including the media you consume. Asking how the biases you have were formed is something everyone should be asking of themselves, and certainly doesn't seem like an inappropriate question.
        • pingpongchef 6y ago
          Problem is that it's a subtle accusation of speaking in bad faith or an accusation of lacking agency. In order to have respect for the other person, you can't start from either of those positions.
          • BitwiseFool 6y ago
            This perfectly describes how I feel and what I was trying to get across. You're much better at English than I.
          • marricks 6y ago
            Original comment was pretty threadbare, just “wealth taxes wouldn’t affect me but I don’t want them”. It’s worth knowing why they think that, especially if it’s getting upvoted so much. We have to be able to ask these questions and assume they’re not attacks to have productive dialogues.
  • bpsh 6y ago
    Well define not wealthy, if you have over $90,000 net worth you would be in the top 10% already.
    • tolbish 6y ago
      Wealthy = enough money to lobby
      • maerF0x0 6y ago
        400k per year income could be 0 saved if one has enough expenses.
        • throwaway2048 6y ago
          so could 1 billion per year.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • TheDong 6y ago
      This is not accurate. For the US, [0] shows the 90% percentile to be $1.2 million net worth. This data is sourced from the federal reserve's survey [1]. [0]: https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/ https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/ [1]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
      • bpsh 6y ago
        Well I never said it was for the US, instead it's globally. If you are in the US you would have even more advantages.
        • TheDong 6y ago
          The article this comment section is on is entirely about the united states and the wealthy in the context of the united states. You would have had to make it explicitly clear that you were talking about something other than the rest of the comments (the whole world) for your comment to be read as such. Anyway, comparing wealth between the developed world and the developing/less-developed nations is tricky, and needs to be done with care. I don't think using that number in this context is useful.
  • Hitorinaka 6y ago
    Wealth taxes that are too high in relation to peers (other countries/states) will often lead to brain drain, capital flight and others. From an individual's perspective, many will see it as a disincentive in starting something new, you may also be incentivized to borrow more money to ensure the leverage is high enough to limit taxation and optimize current quality of life. Your decision to leave assets for your next of kin can also become distorted and you may feel encouraged to spend the money now (on them and otherwise) as opposed to getting tax fleeced. Many other things need to be in place and fully functional for a high wealth tax to work and even then, it is likely to work for a 10 to 30 year period, only to serve as a dragging anchor at a later stage. I would argue that many of the challenges in Europe from a technological innovation standpoint, can be partially derived in high taxation. It is also difficult to determine what is the right amount of taxation while taking into account the importance of incentive mechanisms. Also, at what point do tax hikes stop? Some of the key real solutions to many of societies challenges is to have its populace be more active in all of its inner working, helping them to better understand the constraints and opportunities as opposed to being a bunch of people getting of top of their little soap box. There is also a major need for strong reforms to tackle nepotism, corruption and laziness at all levels of society.
• brundolf 6y ago
  [deleted]
  • pydry 6y ago
    Not really. This is the core problem with a lot of issues these days.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Yes. There are worker-owned media outlets.
  • ceilingcorner 6y ago
    4chan?
    • krapp 6y ago
      Moot was at least a millionaire, and the current owner Hiroyuki Nishimura's wikipedia page[0] doesn't make him seem likely to be poor. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Nishimura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Nishimura
      • pochamago 6y ago
        Moot might have been a millionaire after selling it, but it never sounded like 4chan was making him money. He was still living with his parents, and paying for the lawsuits was very expensive.
  • websitejanitor 6y ago
    Yes, but you wouldn't know it by how Google ranks news websites.
  • TuringNYC 6y ago
    There is a long tail of blogs, podcasts, and independent authors now, no longer beholden to corporate interests (or not as much.) I find a rich selection of everything these days -- and if you subscribe the $ mostly goes directly to the author (e.g., with substack) which is awesome.
• ThomPete 6y ago
  is the opposite the case too?
• tonystubblebine 6y ago
  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 obvious in other cases and so rarely understood. I can only assume that the vast majority of people think businesses are taxed like people. You pay taxes on all of your income. But businesses only pay taxes on their profit. It's a big, big difference that changes the incentives.
  • rbecker 6y ago
    That's a misconception worth clearing up, but the article is about taxes on wealth (i.e. assets), not profit.
    • tonystubblebine 6y ago
      I agree that is what the article is about.
  • riku_iki 6y ago
    > 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?
    • coliveira 6y ago
      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.
      • riku_iki 6y ago
        Author of the comment I replied to identified himself as "business owner", probably not an owner of "large corporation".
• elefanten 6y ago
  This is about as insightful as saying that media catering to the not-wealthy are quick to tell you wealth taxes are a great idea. This organization is not living up to it's name if it's only taking the easiest potshots imaginable at one side of the issue.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • verdverm 6y ago
    Agree that FAIR.org does not live up to its name. After skimming some, their story choices and language used seem to lean away from center and unbiased. Was really hopeful for a new news source from the domain name, such a disappointment
    • DubiousPusher 6y ago
      > center and unbiased Those two things are not the same, nor even necessarily correlated.
      • verdverm 6y ago
        fair point :]
• jostmey 6y ago
  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
  • tonystubblebine 6y ago
    Or not turning violent. Either way is a lot of misery. Also, how about the game of entrepreneurship? I'd much rather play that game on a playing field where there are a lot of customers who are well off.
    • failuser 6y ago
      Learn Mandarin if not already.
  • cpursley 6y ago
    The top 1% of US taxpayers already cover 21% of the share of federal taxes collected with the top 10% covering 48% percent of taxes. The bottom 50% of income earners pay little to no taxes (11%). https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...
    • anthony_romeo 6y ago
      Arguably, that itself can be a sign that income inequality is far too high, as 50% of the population doesn't earn enough to pay meaningful amounts of federal tax.
    • Dylan16807 6y ago
      The top 1% also have 39 percent of the wealth and rising. The "and rising" means it's pretty clear that the taxes are not enough (and/or wages need to be wildly adjusted), if you believe that we currently have too much wealth inequality.
      • ultrarunner 6y ago
• pearjuice 6y ago
  Ah so economic bias in media exists, but political bias is a conspiracy theory?
  • bpsh 6y ago
    I would think most people agree that political bias is rampant in the media? Who is even claiming it is a conspiracy theory?
• shoulderfake 6y ago
  in other words, the sky is blue the grass is green
• el_nahual 6y ago
  Classic circular fallacy. "Wealth taxes are good. Wealthy people don't like wealth taxes, and that's how you know they are good." Or is it an ad hominem even if the "hominem" is a class (wealthy people) instead of a person?
  • throwaway2048 6y ago
    Its not making the argument that wealth taxes are good because wealthy people oppose them, only that their point of view on the topic is deeply self serving and masquerading as an objective analysis.
    • el_nahual 6y ago
      Fair, but that's a weak stance. We should debate the consequences, implementation, and rationale of wealth taxes, not ascribe motivations to their supporters/dissenters.
    • maerF0x0 6y ago
      > is deeply self serving To the extent that they do it for themselves alone, which is making an assumption about intent. Many wealthy people honestly believe that low taxes drive economic growth that is good for all.
      • lostcolony 6y ago
        No one claimed wealthy people aren't cherry picking their data to serve their own pre-existing bias. Only that, like a tobacco study funded by the tobacco industry, their claims are subject to a very evident bias and so should not be given the same weight as claims by those not suffering that bias.
      • HarryHirsch 6y ago
        Alabama with its 1901 constitution is proof that the belief is false, no matter how dearly held.
        • 6y ago
• yters 6y ago
  CNN likes to post rich people in favor of wealth taxes.
• EricE 6y ago
  fair.org? Ha! Confiscating others money is hardly "fair" but here we are.
  • iaw 6y ago
    Not contributing fairly to the society that allowed one to accrue a large volume of wealth is also "unfair."
    • zlynx 6y ago
      "contributing fairly" sounds good but is meaningless. There are too many competing definitions of "fair."
      • iaw 6y ago
        "Contributing fairly" has meaning when compared to "no contribution" or "negative contributions". We can argue about what fair is all day but it hard to say that someone who accrued $1B has contributed fairly. Warren Buffet acknowledges as much in his famous quote about his secretary paying more in taxes than he does. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good when it comes to equitable contribution.
        • zlynx 6y ago
          Of course that was fair. All of the tricks Buffet jumped through to get his taxes that low were intended to encourage that behavior, whatever it was. So his reinvestment of profits in the company, investments in clean energy, contributions to charity, profit losses due to forgiving debts owed by people in disaster zones...whatever it all was. Someone making laws figured all of that was "fair." If someone followed the given rules, dealt fairly and openly with others and made 1 billion dollars they did it fairly. The huge amount of money does not make it unfair in any way. See, my definition of "fair" is followed the law and didn't deceive others. Obviously yours doesn't agree which kind of proves my point, doesn't it.
  • maerF0x0 6y ago
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  PG also seems to think this, is there any evidence wealth taxes make people poorer on average? Even people like Ray Dalio are in favour of redistribution as he thinks the system is unbalanced. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...
• 0xB31B1B 6y ago
  What frustrates me about this whole argument over wealth taxes is that the arguments aren't grounded in facts. The reality is that we "pay" for inequality with reduced productivity. A great example of this is "single family home neighborhoods" in urban areas. They have no societal benefit, they are essentially subsidized land use patterns for the well off, and it makes it harder for less well of folks to move to areas where they can get a better job/improve their lot in life and grow the economy. There is a very strong case that one reason for sluggish economic growth is the concentration of assets and wealth in so few hands, and the continuing stagnation/decline in wealth/living standards/etc of bottom 40% of the US when measured in things like "healthcare", "education" etc. A redistributive wealth tax that was well structured could be a huge boon to GDP growth.
  • _jal 6y ago
    Inequality is mortgaging the future for the comfort of the few.
  • astrea 6y ago
    > A great example of this is "single family home neighborhoods" in urban areas. They have no societal benefit, they are essentially subsidized land use patterns for the well off, and it makes it harder for less well of folks to move to areas where they can get a better job/improve their lot in life and grow the economy. I've seen this talking point twice now this week. What's the alternative? We all live in crowded multi-family buildings? We all live in squalor for the sake of a few saved acres in a country with vast amounts of land?
    • Jtsummers 6y ago
      Multi-family buildings != squalor It sounds like you've never been in an apartment building. Some are crappy, sure, but plenty are pretty nice or at least decent (the building, the apartments will be what the residents make of them).
      • astrea 6y ago
        I have lived in many apartment buildings; mostly why I hold this opinion. If my only aspiration for a future home for my family and myself is one where I have to deal with upstairs neighbors stopping and nextdoor neighbors with no respect for quiet hours, I would have very little to look forward to.
• BunsanSpace 6y ago
  we already have a wealth tax. Have cash? Inflation (cheapens govt debt) Own Property? Property Taxes. Own Equity? capital gains on realization of profits Get Dividends? Dividends are taxed. Income? Taxed. Virtual every form of wealth is taxed. The question should be how much should it be taxed, and enforcement. A wealth tax is a nice song and dance around the issue and cannot be reasonably implemented hence why it's in the zeitgeist.
  • sharemywin 6y ago
    say you had a 100m in stock. did nothing but borrow against it until you die. how much tax would you pay. as long as you borrow less than your stock appreciates.
    • maerF0x0 6y ago
      > until you die Given the amount of future debt we've taken on, it's probably a good thing to have growing deferred income too.
  • davrosthedalek 6y ago
    Inflation and property taxes are wealth taxes. Capital gains tax and tax on dividends is not.
    • zajio1am 6y ago
      Inflation is not really tax, more exogenous parameter of monetary system. It does not give much advantage to government (as expected inflation rate is accounted in bond rate). Property tax would make more sense as a tax on limited resource than as a wealth tax.
      • davrosthedalek 6y ago
        You are right, of course, for inflation. I was aiming at the basis for the "tax", i.e. "wealth" or "positive change of wealth"
• Proven 6y ago
  I'm not wealthy but I can tell you the same.
• 02020202 6y ago
  of course wealth tax is a bad idea. only a mouth-breathing moron will say otherwise.
• maxharris 6y ago
  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 actual rents from people, while delivering no technological improvements. Housing is 80% of the inequality problem, and if we are going to fix that, we have to stop making it illegal to build enough homes for people that need them. And to do it cheaply enough, we have to turn to automated custom home manufacturing, which means overcoming the objections of labor unions. For example, I just saw this in the LA Times - "Labor unions, environmentalists are biggest opponents of Gov. Brown’s affordable housing plan": https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-labor-enviro-housing-20160524-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-labor-enviro-hou... NB: I think we need new, distributed structures to replace labor unions, because the goal they serve is an important one. The existing ones concentrate power at the top, and have become just another corrupt institution.
  • LambdaComplex 6y ago
    > we have to stop making it illegal to build enough homes for people that need them There's already enough homes (in the USA, at least) to house all the homeless people in the country. Unfortunately, giving homes away wouldn't be profitable, and profit is all that seems to matter.
    • maxharris 6y ago
      What about the fact that those homes are not equally distributed geographically? There are reasons people prefer to live near their families, workplaces, places with good weather, etc.
    • kofejnik 6y ago
      without profit as incentive, no homes would've been build. Or maybe they would've been, North Korea style.
• maerF0x0 6y ago
  I will say that this article points out a CNBC article on "$400k in a big city...". And FAIR seems to be missing that both earnings _and expenses growth_ have been growing very fast for those in cities. Progressive taxation of someone earning $100k per year in San Francisco or NYC is hardly fair. At least prior to covid19 causing a crash in the rental market one could expect to pay ~$2500 a month to share a 2bedroom place. That's spending 42% of take home pay to have roommates! Not to mention everything else costs more, a meal out, riding the bus, getting your bicycle repaired, clothing etc. $400k per year is about what it takes to run a middle class family w/ 2 kids in such a city. -- They're already paying $162,121 in taxes annually. When we progressively tax those who actually have less than the median after CoL, we're being unfair (IMO)
  • ceejayoz 6y ago
    > That's spending 42% of take home pay to have roommates! So, probably not affected much by a wealth tax. > $400k per year is about what it takes to run a middle class family w/ 2 kids in such a city. What? The median household income in NYC is about $63k.
    • failuser 6y ago
      Middle class is not median. I’d agree that $400k is barely enough to get to the comparable middle class living in NYC. Earning below $100k will get you subsidized college, right?
      • ceejayoz 6y ago
        Per https://statisticalatlas.com/place/New-York/New-York/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/New-York/New-York/Househo..., $123k puts you in top 20%; $250k puts you in top 5%. "95%+ of NYC are lower-class" is simply an unsupportable assertion. > Earning below $100k will get you subsidized college, right? That's more reflective of the insane inflation in college costs (and our typical "socialize things, but in the silliest possible way" approach in the States) than what lower/middle/upper class thresholds are.
• dpcan 6y ago
  Time to open-source the news.
• carabiner 6y ago
  Not mentioned is anything from media not owned by the wealthy. Who would that be? NPR, AP? The Financial Times' take on a wealth tax seems measured: https://www.ft.com/content/0bab153a-026b-11ea-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47 https://www.ft.com/content/0bab153a-026b-11ea-b7bc-f3fa4e77d...
• exabrial 6y ago
  If the US Government were a charity, the rating would be 0-stars. Nearly all tax money is pocketed by special interests. The usual arguments "yeah what about fire and police" account for a rounding error in tax collection while the vast majority is simply pocketed by friends of your elected officials. You know what'd be nice? Consent. I'd like to be consented before my value is forceful removed from me. I'd like to pick an efficient charity to give this money to.
  • maerF0x0 6y ago
    As an immigrant I concur. I have taxation without representation.
    • theandrewbailey 6y ago
      Filling your census form allocates Congressional and Electoral College representation to your state, regardless if you're a citizen.
      • conanbatt 6y ago
        Not really a replacement for voting.
      • maerF0x0 6y ago
        The point of "Representation" really meant the ability to choose one's representation...
  • ryandrake 6y ago
    The problem with relying on philanthropy to fund the public good, instead of taxes, is that it is one dollar, one vote, rather than one person, one vote. This means the more you have to give, the more you get to decide for the rest of us what counts as “public good.” I’m not sure I like the idea of a handful of billionaires deciding for us what public projects are worthy and good. Today, my neighborhood's roads get paved the same as Jeff Bezos's neighborhood. If taxes were voluntary, then I might not be able to afford more than dirt roads for my house, whereas I bet Jeff's house would be fine.
• oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  No one has mentioned that wealth taxes that have been tried before in other developed countries have not gone well, so based on that alone I'm skeptical. And I heard about this from Planet Money (NPR) so I don't think this is some idea planted in my head by "media owned by wealthy".
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    I think the main argument is that the French billionaires are much more mobile - they were able to simply relocate a few hours away to a nearby French-speaking country. Any sensible wealth tax proposal in the U.S. would probably have to pair it with a similar tax on the transfer of assets abroad.
  • foofoo4u 6y ago
    I think you raise a good point. Why have so many developed countries abandoned wealth taxes? According to wikipedia > Some other European countries have discontinued this kind of tax in recent years: Austria, Denmark (1995), Germany (1997), Finland (2006), Luxembourg (2006) and Sweden (2007). source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Historical_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Historical_examples The WSJ has their take https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-wealth-taxes-failed-11572910833 https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-wealth-taxes-failed-11572.... Criticisms within the same wiki article can probably shed extra light into why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Criticisms
• sempron64 6y ago
  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 wealthy could sock money away in expensive cars, artworks, jewelry and other material non-real-estate assets as they already do for investment. This creates a surveillance society on every possession and purchase, and facilitates confiscation and intimidation, an encroachment on our liberty. In fact, that the IRS and the government have a view on every single financial transaction due to the Patriot Act already has a chilling effect on freedom (consider donations). A wealth tax would absolutely be a massive and unnecessary further encroachment upon liberty as the majority of Americans would ultimately have to detail and report their assets to show they do not qualify, while the wealthy would very likely be able to largely anyway cheat on their wealth tax by manipulating valuations of their assets.
  • sempron64 6y ago
    Another chilling effect may be in motivating barter rather than currency trade so that assets may undervalued. Consider real estate trades or corporate mergers instead of cash purchases that are executed at deflated valuations to lower wealth valuations of the underlying asset. This devalues the dollar in relation to assets.
    • Enginerrrd 6y ago
      This was my thought as well. If you discourage holding stocks and things over other assets as stores of value, I think that could have some deflationary effects. Not only that, but companies are then somewhat disincentivized from growing in valuation, but finding ways to grow in their reach/authority/power etc. The end result seems deflationary... i.e. companies worth more for less dollars.
  • jurassic 6y ago
    I love that you brought up the surveillance aspect; I have not seen that discussed much elsewhere. A wealth tax seems impractical on many levels, including the increased burden of trying to document the value of your items for people of modest wealth levels. Unique or thinly traded luxury items have value that can't really be known until they are sold, which is why capital gains are taxed at the time of a sale. I'm thinking of a rare coin that might be $75,000 or $100,000.... you can't know the value until it goes up on the auction block. Same thing applies to real estate, antique cars, artwork, etc.
• czbond 6y ago
  Near 50% of American pay zero federal tax. The top 10% of all Americans pay 69% of all federal taxes currently. This is a point 'left out' of current discussions. Instead of increasing entitlements or adding yet more taxes - we lower the size of the government spending UNTIL it matches where most people pay for the services received in a more scaled manner. Source: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2018-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...
  • vkou 6y ago
    Nearly 50% of Americans are children, students, and retirees.
    • czbond 6y ago
      I should have been more literal - 50% of federal taxpayers.
      • vkou 6y ago
        The median household income in the US is $68,000, I'm pretty sure that household pays federal taxes. Should we move the goalposts again?
        • brewdad 6y ago
          At that income level, a married couple with two children and childcare expenses could easily end up with zero tax bill and maybe even paying negative income tax. Standard deductions, child tax credit and childcare expense credits get you there without any exceptional circumstances.
          • vkou 6y ago
            The average number of people per household is 2.6. The two adult two child family is not a median american family. It's a much-larger than normal family. Of course if you apply their deductions to an average income, you get a very low tax rate. It's not typical.
• deleted 6y ago
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• rglover 6y ago
  The real solution: a flat tax. 20% for everyone, regardless of take. A fair, non-political solution. Dismantle the IRS, ditch all of the complexity.
  • maerF0x0 6y ago
    > ditch all of the complexity. I fully agree with a flat tax w/ 0 baseline deduction. but we still need a definition of what is "take". Afterall , paying 20% tax on $100 receipts makes no sense if it cost me $105 in expenses already.
  • spaetzleesser 6y ago
    A flat tax is a big tax cut for higher incomes without reducing complexity. The complexity of the tax code is to determine taxable income. The flat tax doesn’t help with that. Once you have determined taxable income then calculating taxes owed is easy no matter how the curve looms.
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    Progressive taxation is viewed as more fair by more people that flat taxation. You're using "income" as your input variable to calculate "fairness", but you could just as easily use "disposable income". Someone making $25,000 per year might have a disposable income of $0. Asking this person to kick in $5000 seems ludicrous. I honestly don't know how you could assess fairness without looking at ability-to-pay: (income) - (basic survival needs) = (money leftover you can potentially contribute to the government) This is obvious, fair, and is why most nations have progressive taxation structures.
    • rglover 6y ago
      I'd rather see a tax floor than progressive taxing. Assuming deductions weren't a thing, if you're making less than $40k per year (for example, I'd have to do the math to figure out the exact amount based on commodity and housing prices), you don't pay taxes. That, or a progressive tax with a ceiling at 20%.
• lanevorockz 6y ago
  Sad to see ignorance being spewed all over. The Wealthy have tax engineers that make sure they pay as little taxes as legally possible. High Taxes only punish the Working class and Business owners making sure that social mobility becomes nonexistent.
• m1117 6y ago
  The same argument can be used against the poor. Poor-people-oriented media will be quick to tell that wealth taxes are a good idea. Communism was an approach to gain fair equality, but humans are so corrupted it never was achieved. Wealth taxes mean another evolution iteration for loopholes. Of course the politicians whose audience is poor would promote that idea. But is it fair?
• andrepd 6y ago
  I will never understand the people who think that media outlets are biased... toward the left. Yes, I'm sure that if this multinational conglomerate of 100 TV channels and 200 newspapers, owned by a multibillionaire, is a communist propaganda outlet.
• kart23 6y ago
  Wealth tax unconstitutionality is not some 'dream'. I think that a wealth tax is a great idea, but I dont see any good way of implementing it. The constitution (16th amendment) only specifically allows for income taxes, not property taxes. What makes the famous carriage tax legal is that its a tax on consumption and spending, and is therefore not a direct tax. The carriage tax was never argued to be a property tax, thats the key distinction here. The only way to pass it is to argue its a consumption and usage tax, or get every state to pass a wealth tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional... There's actually a decent amount of precedent that holds the property tax as a direct tax, and therefore unconstitutional on the federal level. Even a liberal court would make this decision I think.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
    Why can't there just be a new amendment? Income tax was "unconstitutional" before the 16th amendment, right?
    • kart23 6y ago
      Sure, you could pass a new amendment. That requires 2/3 majority in both houses which I think would be tough. Most of my issues with it are in the implementation, its just not practical. Theres lots of other insightful comments here talking about that issue.
• jquery 6y ago
  We aren’t printing enough money: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tAThqgpJwSueqhvKM/frequently-asked-questions-for-central-banks-undershooting https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tAThqgpJwSueqhvKM/frequently... We can look at France, which used to have a wealth tax, after they elected a socialist in 1981. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_tax_on_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_tax_on_wealth It not only failed to raise the expected revenue, it was estimated it actually led to a net negative revenue due to capital flight and a higher percent of French people renouncing citizenship. Because it was unpopular and didn’t raise much money, in 2017 it was abolished. There are some types of wealth taxes that I believe can succeed, such real estate taxes and inflation (which operates effectively as a tax on unspent money). How about instead of proposing wealth taxes which have failed in the past and cause strange incentives, we try to hit our inflation targets first?
• newcomputer 6y ago
  Wealth taxes are the equivalent of stealing from somebody just because you know you can get away with it. They are morally wrong even if they are beneficial to you personally.
• ish 6y ago
  Open Question: Why don't taxes actually go down over time? Who is capturing the value generated by productivity gains that might make things cheaper to run?
  • benmccann 6y ago
    The services provided by the government have not been stable over time and have dramatically increased
  • conanbatt 6y ago
    This is a pet-peeve of mine. There's a part of taxes that has to grow with the economy size because the service is provided by people and they need to be compensated at market rate. Say the army, education, etc. But of course there is a bunch of things the government does that should be getting cheaper, like administration of services, etc. Its the problem with income-taxes, naturally government increases expenditures without need for legislation. It's a bad rule. This is why I think government should be financed by flat-expenditures: sum of costs / people and send a bill. This framing would make government very sensitive to increase of expenditures.
• fintacky 6y ago
  Imagine the government intends to cut a social benefit that you use. A person from media reaches out to you to get your take, what are the odds you will try to protect your interests? Depending on how you answer this, it becomes easy to see how people with the means and resources try to protect the resources that they have worked for or received.
• thoughtstheseus 6y ago
  Just throwing some thoughts out here. Wealth and income need to be broadly distributed to create somewhat equal power dynamics between people and communities. If the market is not creating that type of outcome government has stepped in through taxation and spending to mitigate this imbalance somewhat. If you want a smaller government more people need more wealth and income so they don’t need government services and can do it themselves. Wealth taxes are great in theory but tough to implement. The value of large pools of assets can be easily reduced by marketability and liquidity discounts. See the real estate industry. I’d like to see wealth taxes work but I think having value accrue to people over capital is a better approach.
• dmje 6y ago
  I just see tax dodgers as morally redundant people. I try hard to think about it another way, but I just can't. It seems obvious to me from reading extensively around this that we have very little basis for arguing the case for free will. Our entire existence: our personal lives, our business lives, our investments, our health, our wealth - are driven by luck. I run a successful small business in the UK. I can squint and pretend that everything about this success is down to me, but the reality is: I'm white Middle class Have a great family Have had the luck to have a wonderful family background including supportive parental influence as well as a generational (mother + grandparents) financial safetynet all the way through my life. Have (so far) had great luck as far as health is concerned. Are ANY of these things down to me and my skill? No, none. They are down to luck. Am I a good business person? Yes, I like to think so. What's that down to? Luck. So for me, now, to turn around and say "No, I'm not paying my taxes. I don't believe in taxes. I don't believe in helping those less well off than me. I don't believe in helping people. I don't believe in the state"...? That is bullshit. Utter, total bullshit. And it makes me f*g sick when I see people gathering vast quantities of wealth and then somehow making out that they are somehow separate from the [majority] of people in this world who really badly need help. We should all be getting off our fat, lucky arses and doing more to help people instead of squirreling away our wealth and pretending we're somehow special. And we should start by taxing the bejesus out of the wealthy. They [we] [I] can afford it. Rant over. As you were.
  • ultrarunner 6y ago
    If all choices are reduced down to luck that would include moral choices. If morality is a matter of deterministic luck, there is hardly any meaning between right and wrong. If there's no way to be morally right or wrong, what's motivating you to be so upset with others' pseudo-random choices and opinions?
    • dmje 6y ago
      That’s a terrible reductionist argument, and you know it. It’s also avoiding the point.
  • nickpp 6y ago
• padseeker 6y ago
  Is it worse than running up a multi trillion dollar deficit? The tax cut was sold as it would give a boost to the economy and we would make it back with additional revenue due to economic growth. However the required growth rate to justify the tax cut was estimated by 6.5. Even when the economy was good before the pandemic it never got above 4.5 percent. And now we're not even close. Maybe a wealth tax is not the best idea but based on the current economic realities and the budget deficit what is a better alternative? Conservatives will say "cut the budget or spending" but which expenditures are you going to cut? It might be a bad idea but compared to 23 trillion dollar? The super wealthy have benefitted from how many tax cuts and yet we are still running a massive deficit. Many like to say 'its a spending problem' but then ask them where to cut spending and usually its spending that does not affect them. Plus you need to factor in the affects of austerity on the economy, as the UK has tried it and it did not work, which will reduce revenue and make the deficit and economy worse. Hate it all you want but it should be on the table as an option to stop the bleeding. Bring on the downvotes.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  I always thought they were just a provocation to make other measures seem more reasonable, or a kind of signal for filtering off thoughtful people and attracting rubes for a rabble. When you realize wealth taxes are economic cannibalism, you just can't unsee it. Sure, eat the rich, but you are left with the same question the sort people who advocate that kind of thing never seem to ask themselves, which is, "and then what?"
• nimbius 6y ago
  slightly offtopic but ive always considered media to be the most fascinating asset controlled by wealth. The news ensures rote reinforcement and education of the class system for the masses, while celebrities act as a sort of failsafe to avoid things like the 18th century French revolution. individual celebrity popularity is permitted to ebb and flow, however a general aversion to or boycott of celebrities acts as a canary in a coal mine, alerting the most wealthy and opulent to the existence of a systemic backlash against the fundamental tenents of class inequality and, most importantly, the ruling class of wealth. This sort of unilateral distaste for celebrities was last seen during the COVID quarantine when celebrities insisted solidarity with their fans while sequestered in lavish mansions or private estates. the acrid contrast between pawns forced to work multiple jobs and elites who merely benefitted from the inconvenience of isolation in paradise produced a widespread backlash. In response, celebrities were recalled by media owners and a greater focus was put on thanking "essential workers" in media (print, tv, and billboards) as well as the Amazon news piece, which acted to repair and maintain the US populations perception of wealth as a net-good.
• smitty1e 6y ago
  Those who theorize that we can accelerate the economy via pressure on the tax and regulatory brakes are not the ones desirable for decision-making positions.
• chmod600 6y ago
  Wealth taxes are fundamentally ex post facto, which changes the nature of voting. Voting should be about changing the rules for the future rather than changing the rules for the past. And it has real consequences for the spirit of democracy. It opens up the idea that people can literally vote to take other people's stuff and give it to themselves. That process will not have any good results for anyone.
• padseeker 6y ago
  If wealth flight is really going to be your justification for being against a wealth tax, at bare minimum name the country the wealthy are going to flee to in order to avoid it. The US has a significantly lower marginal tax rate compared to pretty much any nation in Europe.
• chadash 6y ago
  Eh, true wealthy people are against a tax that hurts them, but that doesn't mean that their argument is without merit. Think about what a wealth tax means. Say I found a company like WeWork (bear with me and try to forget the shenanigans pulled by their CEO). Things are going pretty well and before you know it, we raise money at a $200 million valuation and my stake is 50%. On paper I'm now worth $100 million dollars, but that money isn't in my bank account... it's an imaginary number that my investors decided to invest at. Based on E. Warren's wealth tax plan, I now owe 2% of my wealth above $50M. So where do I get that $1 million from? I don't have cash or liquid assets, so likely I have to dilute my shares to get some personal money. No problem... investors will understand. So I go on for a few years paying some taxes on my new wealth, 3-5% of my equity a year. Now, the company has grown and we raise a big amount of money. Say Softbank gives us $5 billion at a $20 billion valuation, and i've been diluted to 25% at this point, but now I'm worth $5 billion on paper. Under EW's plan, I owe 3% of my wealth above $1 billion, plus 2% of wealth between 50M and 1B. My tax bill is gonna be $139,000,000. Again, my wealth doesn't exist in the bank... it's in my private shares. But okay, I raise money from investors to dilute my shares and pay taxes... at this point they expect it. OK... now I make plans to take my company public. Finally I'll have some real liquid money and paying these taxes will be easier, because I can just sell shares on the open market. But wait, I put some feelers out and the market thinks my company isn't worth $20 billion... it thinks it's worth $10 billion. Do I get a refund for past tax payments? The point is that the government will have a very hard time determining what things are worth. It's easy to tax income or sales, because those are known values. The price of WeWork, or a Picasso for that matter are not. So what's gonna happen? I can guarantee that billionaires are gonna come up with a 1000 ways to claim that they are worth much less than they are. They'll start taking companies private. They'll put money into hard-to-value and illiquid assets. Some will revoke their citizenship and move elsewhere. On the whole, it may not gonna be great for the economy, even though in a sense there's a moral justness to it. There are better ways to tax the wealthy. Higher capital gains taxes and estate taxes to name a few (estate taxes run into the same issues as wealth taxes, but at least it doesn't burden people to value their property every year).
• rayiner 6y ago
  Do people really find these sorts of articles compelling? They're nothing more dressed up ad hominem--attack the messenger without engaging with the substance. Here are the facts that aren't in dispute: 1) Other countries that have tried wealth taxes have started abandoning them, most recently France and Sweden: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-europe-axed-its-wealth-taxes https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-europe-axed.... 2) There is little economic consensus on whether wealth taxes would be efficient or hamper economic growth: https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2019/09/Wealth-Taxation-An-Overview-of-the-Issues.pdf https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2019/09/We.... 3) Economists do generally agree, however, that consumption taxes on individuals are the most efficient and least distortionary strategies: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... > Three: Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people. > Four: Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like income, so why tax it? Payroll taxes discourage creating jobs. Not such a good idea. Instead, impose a consumption tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower-income households. 4) Warren's and Sanders' proposed wealth taxes would be dramatically higher than anything a developed country has attempted (up to 6% and 8%). And even based on the candidates' own projections, they would raise not very much money (under $300 billion per year, or less than 1/6 of what would be required to fund Medicare 4 All). 5) Billionaires just don't have that much money in the aggregate to warrant such an outsized attention in tax policy. All the wealth of all U.S. billionaires adds up to $3.4 trillion. Even if you confiscated it all in one go, that would fund the local, state, and federal governments for a bit over six months, without even accounting for the new spending proposed by Warren and Sanders.
  • bhupy 6y ago
    I'm also not convinced that wealth taxes in the US are constitutional, since wealth isn't income (unlike salaries, dividends, and capital gains), and the Federal government is explicitly prohibited from direct taxation with the explicit exception of income. Same reason we don't have a Federal property tax.
• dannykwells 6y ago
  Can someone tell me - what's to stop me fro taking my assets and buying land/assets in a foreign country? Will the US claim jurisdiction over all countries? How will they audit this? BI sucks but even they said as much for why Europe has scrapped most of their wealth taxes: https://www.businessinsider.com/4-european-countries-wealth-tax-spain-norway-switzerland-belgium-2019-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/4-european-countries-wealth-... The US is a country with a terribly funded IRS. They can barely audit those who obviously don't pay their taxes. If you are someone with 10 or 100M of assets it's easy and obvious to hide them in assets that can't be tracked.
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    The IRS is a strange beast - it might be the only government department that, when you give it an extra dollar, it generates more than a dollar in tax revenue. I'm sure there's a theoretical tipping point where they become too bloated to do their job well, but their current levels of funding are far below that. People who subscribe to the "wealthy people should pay their fair share" meme would probably be better off directing their efforts toward advocating for more IRS funding, than for changing laws and closing loopholes. The laws are already there - we just need to properly fund the folks that enforce them.
• padseeker 6y ago
  Why the hell has this article been flagged? PG literally just wrote a blog post that definitely took an anti-wealth tax position. So this is the other side and now its off the front page. What kind of cowardice is this?
• nine_k 6y ago
  I suppose that if a wealth tax is enacted, one of the consequences will be mass-splitting the stock into voting and non-voting. Wealthy people who have a majority stake in their companies will transform shares to e.g. 5% voting + 95% not, and the big shareholders will only sell the non-voting stock to keep control of their companies.