All income should be taxed the same, capital gains, deferred payments, income, inheritance, you name it. If you get it and it's not interest, then it's income.
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At the thought of supporting a 70% marginal tax rate, the global elite at Davos burst into laughter
- Thread starter Ottaro
- Start date
i dunno. This is the rare time where I see a positive to America's gun laws and general lax true rule of law as police goes. Unless you're going for pure mitaristic strikes (bombing of enemies and innocents, etc) you've got a sizable amount of the population fantasizing about taking arms and playing rambo which would be a problem for an army faced with the consequences of firing on their friends/family. The police force as it is now is just basically a self serving unit who's goals are to keep revenue flowing in through tickets and arrests for its municipality beholden to a union that frequently splits with opinion against the local gov. At least in third world infrastructure, basic rules of law (judiciary, etc) are built specifically to work against armed organization. America's on the other hand, see it the lack of direct control as a source of pride.
Fantasizing is one thing, being able to mount a sufficient resistence force is another. Military, police and mercenaries have advantages like training, weapons and organisation an armed mob doesn't. You can't just band together a group of people for a militia, give them guns and expect them to knock over the above like it was nothing. Insurgents like the Taliban and Al Quaeda manage victories like guerrilla warfare, which are heavily organised and have large resources to call on and they still have to try to dodge direct attacks on the US military and that's without bringing in the drones and tanks etc, the police have militarised in many parts of the country. Ferguson police have access to 600 MRAPs, given to them by the military - vehicles built to withstand explosives. Police will usually side with the wealthy and the powerful, and see themselves more like soldiers than officers of the peace these days.
Of course this is all speculation, since the real truth is the wealthy already won and everyone knows it. This is why people only talk about it, and why they're typically disorganised by default despite the fact they aren't peasants in the Middle Ages any longer, but a world with access to the internet and books and people who have the knowledge of leadership and training at their fingertips. Nobody has the brains or the initiative to create a real resistance to the wealthy - or we'd have heard of these organisations by now. Instead they exist in people's minds, not reality. That's why the wealthy are laughing, there is nobody to be afraid of who could hurt them, they've made sure of that - and the ones more inclined to go that route, like the socialists and anarchists, are so disorganised they take themselves out of the equation.
This is why I prefer to fight inside the system itself, at least there there are people and organisations who exist who will fight this and get occasional victories.
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Unless I'm misunderstanding. This suggests taxing income in the personal income tax...
Why is anyone under the impression that any millionaire is paying himself a salary that high?
All of these rich people use company's to hold their money as corporate income tax is lower, and pay themselves the minimum required whilst using their various personal companies to cover their daily expenses.
To me this proposal appears to be completely useless.
Why is anyone under the impression that any millionaire is paying himself a salary that high?
All of these rich people use company's to hold their money as corporate income tax is lower, and pay themselves the minimum required whilst using their various personal companies to cover their daily expenses.
To me this proposal appears to be completely useless.
Although 70% marginal tax rate sounds nice and it works during the 50s, it will never happen or pass approval ever. These are not elites earning 10-15 mil a year, these are elites that earns 100+ mil per year, and thus why should they lose more than half of their earnings? Not everyone up there gets rich using underhanded methods.
The problem lies not with taxing the rich, other countries like Canada, Aus, Singapore are able to provide for good income opportunities and medical aid without resorting to such high marginal taxes, why? Because of the way they appropriate their spending.
The US government doesn't even believe that their citizens should get proper education and medical aid at reasonable rate, what makes you think that an additional tax money will go to fund it? If I am the elite, I will not be willing to pay the government that much money knowing that it won't be put into good use. This is why plenty of people in developing countries hide and evade their taxes, because most of them just go into corruption, not the country.
Corruption within the government is the biggest issue to be tackled in order to solve medical and social problem in the US. That is why kids get shot in kindergarden and US still promote it's gun and never did anything to curb it's distribution, because somewhere up there, people in power get money from these corporations.
As much as I like AOC and would like this to happen, it will not happen. US needs to solve it's corruption, legislation, and spending first, and the marginal tax rate isn't the solution.
The problem lies not with taxing the rich, other countries like Canada, Aus, Singapore are able to provide for good income opportunities and medical aid without resorting to such high marginal taxes, why? Because of the way they appropriate their spending.
The US government doesn't even believe that their citizens should get proper education and medical aid at reasonable rate, what makes you think that an additional tax money will go to fund it? If I am the elite, I will not be willing to pay the government that much money knowing that it won't be put into good use. This is why plenty of people in developing countries hide and evade their taxes, because most of them just go into corruption, not the country.
Corruption within the government is the biggest issue to be tackled in order to solve medical and social problem in the US. That is why kids get shot in kindergarden and US still promote it's gun and never did anything to curb it's distribution, because somewhere up there, people in power get money from these corporations.
As much as I like AOC and would like this to happen, it will not happen. US needs to solve it's corruption, legislation, and spending first, and the marginal tax rate isn't the solution.
Standard of living =/= quality of life, and there have been academics who challenge both the conflation of those 2 terms and the accuracy/efficacy of the calculations that provide standard of living information. Poverty rates may be low, which effects the SoL calculation, but it doesn't factor in how much more people are working to achieve that, and using median numbers disproportionately favours positive results in countries with large urban centres, as the median price of a house is often significantly lower than what the actual house prices are in the urban centres people live in.
So I'd recommend not using SoL numbers to say that the well-being of the population has improved. As would several economists.
I'm sure you have to be kidding. Because realistically, if they gave a shit about how the paupers viewed them, they'd be several decades too late to fix their PR issue. So... nice sarcasm, very understated and well-done; your statement was so ludicrous in its naivety that Poe's law didn't apply but got there without being over-the-top in its language.
Yep, this is right.
But really, the tax loopholes are so out in the open thanks to the Panama/Paradise Papers that trying to lobby for keeping them would be seen for the bare-naked cash grab it is; at least with lobbying against tax hikes, they can hide behind "it kills job growth, trickle-down works" and enough people find believability in that for it to not be an issue.
So instead, they're playing chicken with world governments, with a "go on, I dare you" attitude, in the hopes that one major democratic economic centre won't follow suit with closing the loopholes and can threaten that all their corporations will relocate there as a punitive measure. Look at Brexit causing European HQ relocations for a sneak preview of that and how willing corporations will be to follow through on that threat.
So there is value in handling both of those things.
I couldn't read that last sentence with a straight face. Because I'd bet you all of them at some point or another have had a "fuck yo got mine" moment and done something they shouldn't think well of themselves for. The only difference is some of them might maybe feel a twinge of guilt about it, that's all.
This is a lot of whataboutism, but the simple solution to that is, yes, let's add this to the pile of problems that need to be resolved as part of this. And one need not necessarily come before the other, since they all add value to solving a very real problem.
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To the 'loophole' issue, they discuss it like it's an eternally unsolvable issue so it's pointless, give it up. Writing really solid tax code and getting the right people to cover major loopholes and pseudo-cheats and getting the language on that stuff right, and reviewing and improving it over time, is not a cakewalk I'm sure, but I refuse to believe it's impossible, if the people involved in writing it are not bought off by the ultra wealthy and so on.
I like how succint this is.
Also your avatar is one of my favorite photos.
If you understand all of that, than you should also understand why equality is impossible.
We can definitely improve how we share resources, expecially towards the most disadvantaged parts of the world, but we can't really change how things work in the western world.
it's never going to happen. even progressive leftist congresspeople would vote against it
and even if it did become law, tax avoidance would go through the roof. many of these rich people already avoid paying their fair share, with this policy they'd pay even less, if at all really
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A country with a government shutdown, crumbling infrastructure and no universal healthcare scheme for its citizens shouldn't be smirking at the need for more revenue from taxation.
I assume it's a reference to the French revolution in which the poor revolted against the exploitation and decadence of the super rich before using the guillotine to execute them all.
Says who? You would be surprised how things can change. I.e the rise of authoritarians.
Is this a joke post? That's the most disgusting post you have ever seen? Are you a baby?
First you'd have to persuade someone to make that low.
Then you'd have to tackle the fact that you can't shackle people or capital to your country, so if you make it so that being rich in your country sucks, they'll just go be rich somewhere else and take their capital with them.
70 % above 10 000 000 is a damn bargain for the ultra-rich. You could easily make an argument for it being 95 %.
I'm Swedish. Our highest marginal tax rate is effectively 70 % and kicks in around 80 000! That's arguably a bit early, but it's proof enough that it's doable. Those rich asshole don't know how pampered they are.
I'm Swedish. Our highest marginal tax rate is effectively 70 % and kicks in around 80 000! That's arguably a bit early, but it's proof enough that it's doable. Those rich asshole don't know how pampered they are.
So you think they'll separate themselves from the source that generated that wealth and would generate more in the future to go to a less productive economy?
That sounds like what a stupid person thinks is the smart thing to do. Their vacant space will just be taken by someone else.
Then again, America.
This is a total catch 22 as you realize. I think it's also concern trolling which you don't realize. The major revolutions in world history have not been planned. In fact planning, especially in house planning, is antithetical to what most revolutions are. The only strong exception appears to be 1688 and I'm lf the opinion that itself isn't the Revolution.
I've said it multiple times in this thread. No one in 1788 knew what was going to happen. No one could have guess Robespierre let alone Napoleon were to become its leaders. That's how revolution works. It's a context, not a telos in itself.
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Yup. People should read 10 Days That Shook the World for an insight into how chaotic revolutions tend to be, with competing groups all trying to sieze power and put forward their own agenda, and how arbitrary who ends up in control can be
It is disgusting. And even then I still don't think it is even nearly as disgusting as the disparity in the global distributition of wealth.
Most of these people reach their heights by standing on the broken backs of the poor of the world.
I mean, I'll just say that economists (Actual economists, not somebody who majored in economics thirty years ago and is now a high executive in some company or a bank) are well aware that private interest is not always the same as public interest, they are literally the ones who came up with these things. (And with marginal taxation too)
A 70% marginal tax rate is utterly laughable. You can talk me into a 50% marginal rate, but once you're paying more tax per dollar than actually getting in pocket than it just becomes counter-intuitive. And please don't explain marginal tax rates to me, I know how it works.
Most? Try all.
You cannot be that wealthy without the direct exploitation of someones labor.
It's only counter intuitive if your worldview centers around the individual rather than society as a whole.
Probably true, I was just trying to avoid absolutes. I'm not a sith, after all.
I agree. 70% sounds crazy to me and I'm broke af.
Maybe 49%. And if the government wasn't wasting who knows how much that would be just as much of a help if not more so I bet.
Not sure how that's relevant at all.
On principle, I can't get behind asking someone to give up more than half of a dollar they've earned.
It's not crazy considering the huge sums of money involved at those levels. These people will want for nothing, and can probably live well enough without that third yacht they could have bought instead of paying higher taxes.
As a swede myself I'm quoting this poster from earlier in the thread, saving me the trouble of typing it out again.
Pretty much this.
You missed the obvious joke referencing the post from the other day.
It isn't crazy.
If they want to not get taxed higher, invest more in your workers instead of hoarding the wealth.
Wow, what an abstract concept.
I just cant help but laugh at this. The global elite is responsible for killing millions of people each year, but its ''truly disgusting'' if the suggestion that they should be taken care of is done.
Of course it's counter-intuitive you were raised in a liberal society and took in liberal norms with your mother's milk. There is no asocial intuition about things like money, fiscal systems, and the state because they are all profoundly social.
While taxing the richest is absolutely the right thing to do, I think the first thing that needs to be done is to crack down on tax evasion and actually enforce tax rates. It doesn't matter what the rate is if the richest can just hide their money effortlessly. Secondly, it depends on what that tax money is being spent on - social programs, infrastructure and social goods are great, wasting obscene amounts on an ludicrously bloated military industrial complex less so.
Expenditure and income are two separate fiscal issues.
Of course they are, but again there's not much point to high tax rates if those revenues are not being spent in a worthwhile manner
I have some terrible news for you. The vast majority of European billionaires aren't citizens of the country they were born in or where they started their businesses. Fiscal shopping has existed since well before globalization.
Why would America be any different? Rich people moved to the US precisely because the tax rates were more favourable. Change that, and they'll move out. They already are doing that.
So what's your solution then, the status quo? Wealth inequality is a problem when there are 500,000 homeless people in the United States and people are going bankrupt for health reasons and when many people aren't earning a livable wage.
I didn't say it would be easy, but first there needs to be actual people who can take leadership and have the capacities to follow up on real revolution. I was acknowledging the barriers revolutions face today were they to act in the US. None have appeared in the 21st century, otherwise we'd have discussing them right now. I'm not concern trolling, all that I've said was true - you're more than welcome to dissect my stances to test my thesis. I gave you plenty to pick apart.
This ignores the facts that currently there is no sign of a revolution boiling anywhere in the US at the moment, despite the shut down for weeks and Trump being Trump. There are no equivalent on the streets of the Yellow Vests even. Revolutions have to be revolutions in the real world otherwise all it is talk, which it usually ends up being in America. We haven't had a civil war on America's soil since the 1800's. The Socialists and anarchists certainly aren't leading any such organisations or movements today.
There have been successful revolutions which weren't improvised, like the Russian Revolution. That was like a rolling revolution of organised groups fighting each other to the death until the dust finally settled and Stalin took centre stage. Another was Mao taking over China. Pol Pot lead a successful revolution with the Khmer Rouge against the Cambodian government. What began the movement may be an unexpected development but when it gets to a civil war stage the side who isn't organising a legit army will lose because the other side has their own. These occurrences did not occur with riots and protesters, they were full blown civil wars. Coup d'état's are common, and many horrid regimes have been installed from Iran to Chile by actors from the military to intelligence agencies which don't improvise and get results with disturbing regularity. Meanwhile peaceful revolutions, like the Green Movement in Iran were slaughtered mercilessly and failed because they were unarmed college kids against armed, highly trained soldiers who destroyed them.
In the long term the French Revolution produced good results, but it wasn't instant. It caused immense destruction and death in its wake, like many revolutions do once they seize power. Supporting revolutions does not begin and end with how they began, that's one part of an long process which can include the aftermath when the victors aren't that different from their oppressors. The French revolution did have immense organisation, that's how they gained Louis XVI's favour when he refused their offers via the National Assembly. They didn't simply put the king's head in the guillotine and take over the government by force.
You've mentioned the iconic French revolution but what others are you using as a examples?
edit: I wasn't kidding about the police, military and mercenaries, either. Any US revolution that succeeds would have to put them down, which I'd say being skeptical would be an understatement. The US military are one of the most dangerous armies in the world, and was able to neutralise the Iraqi army during 2003 in just over a month. So if you intend to get between them and the wealthy I'll be sitting over here, safe, rather than being arrested or killed.
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We are fucking doomed.
The rich is gonna take all the money, keep ruining the environment, keep destroying societies for profit, and when things get too bad they are just gonna fuck off somewhere else to keep doing what they are doing. And it feels like it is too late to do anything meaningful to stop it, they are becoming too powerful for anyone to do anything. These tax rates mean that they would still have fucking millions of dollars to earn, but no, the greedy cunts wants ALL the money or I guess life aint just fuckin' worth it.
The rich is gonna take all the money, keep ruining the environment, keep destroying societies for profit, and when things get too bad they are just gonna fuck off somewhere else to keep doing what they are doing. And it feels like it is too late to do anything meaningful to stop it, they are becoming too powerful for anyone to do anything. These tax rates mean that they would still have fucking millions of dollars to earn, but no, the greedy cunts wants ALL the money or I guess life aint just fuckin' worth it.