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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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While Tax the Rich is fair and accurate, I wish we could point out that this isn't some undue burden. This is just reclaiming the surplus wealth they've extracted from the economy.
We can and should do far more, but this is a good start.
It's beyond me why Americans, who scream about government taxation, can't see how large corporations essentially have added a hidden, ever increasing line item tax to their paychecks to extract wealth.
And then we fawn over billionaires donating their money to causes we perceive as beneficial to society - they're just returning stolen money without interest or penalty, which could have been better used when money was actually earned.
It is largely because they see these price increases as consequences of some hidden government hand, while price cuts are attributed to a competitive marketplace. In short, its propaganda.
We train people, from an early age, to believe that competition brings prices down and regulation forces prices up. We don't learn about the profit motive as an upward price impulse or spend significant amounts of time on monopolies and their impact on marginal pricing. We absolutely 100% do not ever discuss the difference between Exchange Value and Utility Value when discussing economic productivity. The impact of speculative investments on retail prices is straight out never mentioned ever.
So all anyone has left to go on is "gas prices are up because the government did a war" and "computer prices are up because the government did a tariff" and "food prices are up because the government did a tax".
Philanthropy is when a single incredibly rich guy gives money away for free.
Public Spending is when a soulless bureaucracy steals Peter to pay Paul.
Therefore, public sector bad and private sector good.
Yeah. This is a good first step. But it needs to go further. A lot of the wealth is not in direct income. We should be including in this capital gains, and perhaps imposing a similar tax on people with assets totally $10M+ or so. A lot of valuation comes at people holding huge assets and stocks, increasing in value and they take loans out on those assets to actually buy anything.
You feel no burden when compound interest carries you on angel's wings
Even removing the terms "surplus wealth" and "extracted" - which I don't necessarily disagree with in all instances but which isn't going to win anyone over - this still is not some undue burden.
I'd like to see this tackled as a simple conversation between discretionary and non-discretionary spending. A poor person struggles with even sales tax increases because they have little discretionary income. A rich person has vastly more discretionary income and thus is the least burdened by new taxation of any sort.
Gets around all the "fair tax"/"flat tax" arguments right from the jump.
That's a great point and I'll remember it for the future.