Regardless of the waste, the government still does things that need to be done. Who else is going to build/maintain the interstate highways and defend the country? Who else is going to provide social security for the elderly? The government is neither a good nor a bad investment. It is a necessary investment, and that is why we have taxes.
Just read what you wrote again… The 1% are paying the vast majority of taxes. And that includes all taxes.
What do assets have to do with income? The federal government has an income tax, not an asset tax. If you have income (more than a minimal amount), you are required by law to file an income tax form. It's not complicated. The assets only get involved when you sell them for more than what you paid for them. How many rich people make their millions from personally buying and selling art, yachts, and planes? If they do make a living selling these things, they probably do so as a corporation, with a paper trail as certainly yachts and planes get registered when they change owners. Same with real estate. Art could probably have some shenanigans or deception involved, but I doubt that art dealing on the sly is where most of America's wealthy people make their money.
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I'm diversified. I buy. I leave it alone. It grows. And then when my cash reserves grow enough from dividend income, I buy again. It requires only infrequent effort.
Get over your envy of the wealth people build. The rich pay the vast majority of taxes. You are not subsidizing them. They are subsidizing the poor.
Billionaires have lots of income. Every investment they make has some form of income long term or they wouldn’t make it.
All taxes do this. Income tax rewards people who don't work over those who do. Besides, with a wealth tax we're not talking about taxing the average saver.
Discouraging savings is the last thing we should be doing, this country is light years behind where it should be. And work is a needed event to pay bills, saving is done by those who actually plan for a future. They are very different things. But what would be your cutoff?
My cutoff would be well above having any effect on the average person saving for the future. It would only affect the extremely wealthy, who as is are paying a lower tax rate (based on level of wealth) than you or I are.
What is inherently wrong with capping wealth? Obscene wealth is unproductive in society. Could be put to better use. Doesn’t seem unethical to me. There is actually $150 Trillion dollars of household wealth in the US and the 1% own $45 Trillion. Just sayin’. And before you call me envious I am doing just fine thanks.
Well for one it’s impracticle. Let’s say you’re Jeff Bezos, and you start Amazon. What are you proposing happens to his ownership stake? If you force him to sell his shares it tanks the stock price for the average investor. And it’s basically the government telling a private citizen they can’t own their own company. Or alternatively, does anyone really want the government owning private businesses if they confiscated it? More importantly though. It disincentivizes private investment. Imagine Musk not starting SpaceX or Tesla because he’d already hit his cap.
I wouldn't necessarily say that obscene wealth is absolutely unproductive in society. The ecological footprint of one billionaire is typically much less than that of a thousand millionaires (combined), or ten thousand people with a net worth of $100k. If you took the wealth of the top 1% of the population and distributed it to the bottom 25%, do you know what would happen? They would buy more stuff and throw away more stuff. Our landfills would quickly overfill. Global warming would increase, since everyone could afford Cadillac SUV's and Ford Expeditions, as well as the gas to go in the tank. The lower classes would be less likely to support the arts and higher education compared to the wealthy. Where would we be as a people without the contributions of DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and others (they all had wealthy sponsors)? People need to be better educated about their responsibilities in life before they get their hands on large amounts of money. Having said that, I do support a slow increase in minimum wage to give industrious people a chance to advance in life.
In the US we typically tax transactions, not wealth. If they’re going after the wealth of the rich it should be on the inheritance side of things regardless of where it is kept. Basically one transaction and the money is going to people that didn’t earn it to begin with. Currently the number of eatates paying tax is around 1/20th where it was in the early 1980s and even lower than the late 90s early 00s.
You may want to read the entire thread. I was responding to a wealth tax being suggested. It is a tax on total wealth not income.
Again I was simply responding to a wealth tax question. It’s idiotic even to propose that tax. With regards to an estate tax there is one in place and the rate is 40%. It’s actually set to go back to 5.49MM per person next year which is too low in my opinion. Just keep it where it is currently and index it to inflation.
As noted we are talking about taxes based on income. Anyone who owns property already pays property taxes. Are you saying there should be a Federal Property tax? As far as the “value” of things like planes, yachts, art etc that’s very much open to debate. It’s only really worth what someone is willing to pay for it when it gets sold…
