> You realize the top 1% already pay for a disproportionate amount of the taxes?
In absolute terms maybe (though there are some glaring exceptions -- Amazon famous literally pays $0 in taxes), but not relative to how much they make.
> To tax people's wealth on top of the standard tax is plain evil,
I don't see any reason why taxing net worth is at all less sensible than income. If anything I think it makes more sense; why should someone who's had a lucky break but is still not rich have to pay taxes like they are?
> will end up driving all the wealthiest people out of the country...
I don't take seriously the idea that any of them are going to give up living in the US over a couple percent of their income (which is what the wealth taxes folks have been talking about would take, at most).
> Amazon famous literally pays $0 in taxes), but not relative to how much they make.
because they took every penny and reinvested it and lost money for a long time because of such heavy investment.
just a few months ago everybody was complaining about companies not investing enough and returning money to shareholders - there was even legislation floated to force more investment.
companies cant win with people like you - invest and get assulted for tax reasons, don't invest and get yelled at for that.
you have this Utopian view of how you want everything to work, and don't even realize it isn't even possible most of the time.
I'm not really interested in judging Amazon; they're a for profit company, they're going to do what's best for their bottom line. And I'm sure they don't care what I think. This is more about the systemic issues with the tax code itself.
The devil is in the details; a lot of the things they're getting tax breaks for don't benefit the public. Why are they getting tax breaks for building warehouses and data centers for themselves? Stock based compensation for executives?
Also, regardless of what breaks are available for what activities, their baseline tax burden ought to be much higher. We should be drawing funding from people who can afford it and use it to lift the burden on people who can't.
> Why are they getting tax breaks for building warehouses and data centers for themselves?
Are you fucking kidding me? They get capital construction break like every other company gets. If you don't see that as the literal definition of investment you don't deserve to have an opinion on this.
I don't think we should be giving them tax breaks for investments that are only for themselves. They're going to do that anyway because it expands their business. If they were doing something that had a genuine public benefit, that they otherwise wouldn't do, that would be a different story.
that's the same thing. we set up tax structures to encourage long term investment precisely because we hope companies will try to invest to avoid taxes.
Bill Gates once talked about money no longer having a utility for him. The utility of money goes away at a certain point when you accumulate too much and there is no longer something you cannot buy. The utility would be most efficient when applied to a better use such applied as the needy, perhaps in a UBI, or some other strategy, which would free up their time to do something more productive for society.
Unfortunately people don't like to help each other in many capitalist countries, and laws are designed to not be easily changed, resulting in a great majority of the population either not heard or reluctant to voice their opinions.
It took Bill a long time to get there too. But it's the same for any billionaire. They can't possibly spend their money, neither can their children or grandchildren so the only thing you can do with it is give it away. Be that to charity, good works, monuments to yourself (art museums, university buildings) or politicians and think-tanks in an attempt to bend the world to your will.
The money is just one scoreboard among billionaires and not great one. Murdoch would be far more self-impressed with his power he weilds through media than someone with an additionall couple of hundred million.
Gates is more interested in being the great philanthropist. It seems his scoreboard is how much positive effect on the world he can have. It sounds ideal and I don't like to be cynical about it.
Koch Brother(s), Soros also can't spend their money on more houses, cars and private jets. More money is only useful to get more power. Do you like the way either or both weild it? Do you think they should have a bigger say than you purely by virtue of cash rather than making a convincing case?
That's actually the point of the wealth tax. The reason the pay a disproportionate amount is because the own a disproportionate amount. The current system is also a redistribution of wealth, just from the bottom to the top. That's what a wealth tax is supposed to change.
Regarding the argument about companies, I'm sure the French king also employed a lot of people, we still got right of the system of absolutism.
I'm guessing the vast majority of "wealth" is in assets/stocks. That isn't money just sitting around. The value is only realized when those are selled off. They also would owe capital gains tax. So now they gets taxed twice?
> The current system is also a redistribution of wealth, just from the bottom to the top.
I think that capitalism/free markets has been the biggest driver in bringing people out of poverty.
> That's what a wealth tax is supposed to change.
This is also hugely immoral. Property is a fundamental human right. There is no "right" in having as much money as someone else. In the US at least, there is supposed to be equal protection of your rights. Taking money from one person and giving to another is immoral. Besides, wealthy people are also people that donate enormous amounts of money. Let them figure out how they want to give it away.
> Regarding the argument about companies, I'm sure the French king also employed a lot of people, we still got right of the system of absolutism.
You will have to provide me some more evidence on how these are connected.
I don't understand this argument. I've seen it so many times among a certain crowd of people, but I still don't get it. Yes, we, mere mortal humans have to form our systems of government using a patchwork of heuristics as we try to approach a more perfect system.
Sure, an omnipotent being that knew all outcomes in advance could set a perfect single-tax rate for each person's individual circumstance that only affected their income. Is this somehow more valid than trying to approximate this same outcome by taxing wealth as a correction on top of what income-tax and other taxes were supposed to accomplish?
>I don't understand this argument. I've seen it so many times among a certain crowd of people, but I still don't get it.
Wealth tax makes no sense because if you earned that money, then you have already paid taxes on it. Taxing assets/stocks makes no sense because the value is constantly changing. One day you could have millions and the next you could be broke. Plus, if you had zero cash on hand, you would have to liquidate an asset just to pay the taxes on it?
> Sure, an omnipotent being that knew all outcomes in advance could set a perfect single-tax rate for each person's individual circumstance that only affected their income.
A flat tax would work fine too, and be the most "fair".
> taxing wealth as a correction
I don't think the main purpose of taxation is redistribution. Who says there needs to be a correction in the first place? I don't think people really care about equality, because no one cares about the inequality of the rich vs. the super rich. They care about the lowest end, and if they have at least enough to support themselves. Which if you're making under a certain amount and have kids you pay basically zero taxes. In fact, you may even get money from the government.
>Taking money from one person and giving to another is immoral
Basically every society in the world does this, how is it immoral? I think it is immoral not to do that, considering that there is no way that any society can guarantee absolute equality of opportunity for all citizens.
> Basically every society in the world does this, how is it immoral?
The difference is taxes should be paying for public goods, to which everyone is equally entitled and able to use. Taking money from one person to give directly to another person is stealing, how is that not immoral?
> considering that there is no way that any society can guarantee absolute equality of opportunity for all citizens.
It's impossible to guarantee that. Some people are born rich, some are born poor. What can be guaranteed is equal protection of your rights and your individual freedoms. There is no right to equality in the economic sense, because it requires infringing on the rights of others.
Taxation is not stealing. In the ECHR for example your right to property is completely superseded by anything the government decides is in the best interest of society:
>(1) Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.
>(2) The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a state to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties.
> No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest
As I mentioned, taxes for public goods makes sense. If they are just going directly to someone else's pocket then it's not exactly for the "public" at that point.
The ECHR is missing the freedom of speech, so I wouldn't look to that as a leader in individual rights.
> The Pew Center’s analysis of IRS data showed that in 2014, people with an adjusted gross income, or AGI, above $250,000 paid 51.6% of all individual income taxes, even though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed. These “wealthy” individuals paid an average tax rate (total taxes paid divided by cumulative AGI) of 25.7%.
> By contrast, while people with adjusted gross incomes below $50,000 filed 62% of all individual returns in 2014, they paid only 5.7% of total taxes collected at an average tax rate of 4.3% per person.
- If those with AGI above $250k paid 51.6% of all individual income taxes, what did they each pay per year in individual income tax?
- What did those with AGI above $2,500k pay? What percentage of annual revenue is that compared with someone on a decent professional wage, or on minimum wage?
Some billionaires may, but at least in the US this often isn't true. Off the top of my head, the Collison brothers or Sergey Brin don't need the US in any fundamental sense; they weren't born here, but came here because they thought the US was a great place to build a valuable business. If we decide that we don't like this as a matter of policy, maybe the existing crop of billionaires will be too enmeshed to leave, but the next set of foreign entrepreneurs with billion-dollar ideas won't show up in the first place.
If you renounce your US citizenship you still owe income tax for a decade. They can leave if they want, I don't really want billionaires running our country
Percentages and dollar amounts don't matter. A low income person paying taxes hinders their ability to buy food and housing and clothing. A billionaire paying taxes means they have 6 megayachts instead of 7. It's apples and oranges.
It is unethical to allow billionaires to thrive while people die from poverty.
There's some point between "take nothing" and "take everything including your family home, dog, and toothbrush" where most people would believe a wealth tax to be unethical. I think this is what GP was trying to say, without picking a spot on the continuum.
There are several founders of YC companies that are self-made billionaires and they post on this very forum.
Do you really think they made it on the "backs of society" through "corruption and bribery" rather than building a company that provides value to those willing to pay for it?
If they made their money in a vacuum with no interaction to society then they would owe nothing to society. That isn't the case. They absolutely made their money on the back of society, including the decades of wealthy lobbying/bribery that came before them that has allows them to keep their immoral gains
The internet was created by governments, much of its technical infrastructure through open source projects, and I’m pretty sure most of those billionaire companies had at least some employees (many of whom I assume were also educated in public schools and state universities).
So, yes, quite obviously, they made it on the “backs of society.”
Taxes are not equally paid either. I'm not sure what your point is. Do you want to limit wealth? Do you want to ban entrepreneurship? Do you want communism?
What I want is for the value workers create to be returned to them, not hoovered up by the wealthy in some distortive, unjustifiable scheme that prizes Capital ownership over everything else, including the lives and well-being of the majority of citizens.
No thanks. No need for an ideology that has killed hundreds of millions while keeping the ones the survived in poverty.
Any wealth inequality that exists in capitalism is only magnified in communism where an even smaller group of people have both political and monetary power.
