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fair share?
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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes
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The US government is sovereign, it can very much either take ownership of the stock, or estimate its value and construct a loan that the company owners needs to pay back because they owe this tax. Or probably 100s of more clever solutions as well.
It can definitely decide to tax wealth if it wanted to, it could also break up large companies to at least spread the wealth of these institutions wider. It mostly just doesn't "want" to.
This argument is so unnecessary defeatist pretending the most militarised and police ridden country in the world has no power to enforce laws it could write.
Opposite to that notion I think if the US had any interest in fairness in taxation, especially on a more global scale, it could easily get all the common tax havens/financial secrecy jurisdictions, to fold to essentially whatever demands if has. But again it seems like the US government strangely doesn't really want that either.
Which is still the central issue the US government is more captured by the billionaire class than a lot of people like to think they are, and it's never just the dem or just the reps, it's large portions of both parties that are essentially captured in this way, or just fall into it because preserving the status quo is easy.
No you can't tax wealth, it does not make any fucking sense. If I own a peice of land that, for some wild reason, is valued 1 billion, why the fuck would I pay taxes on 1 billion ??? especially if I just work at the starbuck for minimum wage. Like, it's only gonna make the wealthy even wealthier. Only rich people are gonna be able to pay taxes on nice things.
What do make sense is to pay taxes when I'm gonna sell that land 1 billion. That is sound. You pay tax on income, not on wealth. Maybe pay taxes on transactions.
If you wanna tax the rich, start by reforming how capital gains are taxed.
Funny that you should pick land, considering that property tax exists and is based on a valuation of your land. There's a very simple solution if you can't afford the tax on your wealth, which is to sell that wealth. If you can't afford the tax then you can't afford the wealth.
Then take a company that is highly valued ? You understand the point and won't engage with it. That is funny.
Why do countries have wealth taxes and completely reasonable economies when it's supposedly impossible. I'm not saying let me design a US wealth tax I'm saying wealth taxes do make sense, do exist and at least do something and the US could certainly implement them given sufficient political will.
Two of the 5 OECD countries that have wealth taxes are neighboring countries to mine, they do have industry, services etc. certainly not dead places.
Also I've never seen any (proposed) wealth tax start at anywhere lower than 1M in assets and with higher than 1% taxation so I just don't see how any of the opposition is genuine. Why would there be such opposition to a topic that only impacts a few percent of the countries population. And that at the same time is actually properly understood by even fewer people.
Also have you ever moved country with a several billion dollar company, with the US federal government after you for taxes, I don't imagine it'd be particularly easy or cheap, the US has many massive subsidies for local companies, and some otherwise tax favorable conditions in some of it's states, I doubt it would be an easy decision for many of these owners.
Yes I've read the Wikipedia article as well thank you very much but you still don't seem to accept that taxes can and should be used to regulate the economy. That's the entire point frankly. Some business should be destroyed because it's bad for the people at large. Some people should need to get rid of one of their houses so that it doesn't remain empty half the year. That's the point.
And even if Norway and France abandon this policy and Spain and Columbia are supposedly in ruin couldn't their collective healt and happiness not be better even despite a smaller economy. Is it impossible for you to imagine a world where a smaller economy is better for it's people than a larger one.
And on the other side of the coin wouldn't you think not being sovereign over the world reserve currency and the largest economy in the world make it a lot harder to protect yourself effectively from capital flight.
It's also real money, otherwise Musk couldn't have bought Twitter for $44 billion. He sure didn't have that amount on his bank account but he still bought it all the same, thus giving him a substantial soft power through information.
True, but that would mean to tax billionaires by taking money from their lenders?
I don't know, it just feels very convenient that wealth is considered money whenever is useful to the rich, and turns back into "wealth" a second later.
What I find unacceptable is the double standard. I'll keep the Musk example: a few banks and a few private companies made loans (which need to be reimbursed with real money) for Musk buying Twitter. A part of the exchange money came from the value of his own shares of Twitter (deducted from the 44b). Before that he has sold lots of Tesla shares which apparently gave him $20b in cash
Why do we accept that this not-money money can be turned into real money whenever convenient, but cannot be taxed the rest of the time?
There's a problem with how we accept to think of financial money. If it can't be taxed, then out shouldn't be defined as being an equivalent of real-economy money. Or maybe it should be evaluated in a more realistic way?
Not saying I have easy answers, but there's clearly a problem IMO.
Details of how they go about paying it is not really any of my business as long as it gets paid.
I think you meant to say “wealth is not income”. That’s the whole point of it being a “wealth tax”. That said, there’s pretty sound law arguing that wealth taxes are unconstitutional. There are far better ways to effect similar change, such as capital gains tax reform, and closing transfer tax exemption loopholes.