Wall Street Democratic donors warn the party: We’ll sit out, or back Trump, if you nominate Elizabeth Warren
- Thread starter Scrooge
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The point is, rich donors obviously have a huge influence on fundraising; that's how they make sure their voices are heard. Their money will go elsewhere if they feel left out or targeted.
I won't respond to your other comments painting wealthy people as "morally bankrupt tools". Totally uncalled for.
America is not a country of "haves" and "soon to haves". There's a limited amount of money to go around...that's how money works. If you're hoarding it all while people starve, get inadequate health care, the country falls behind in education, etc. etc. Yeah, I'm gonna blame you for it. Take that a step further: I'm not sure what you can be if someone says "Hey, if you're a millionaire/billionaire, we're going to tax you so America can be less shitty for poor people" and your response is: "Nah I'm good, I'd rather vote for a racist rapist.", what else can you be than a morally bankrupt tool?
I don't deny wealthy people shouldn't be taxed fairly, but there are various ways to do so which are less harmful than a wealth tax; raising capital gains/dividends tax, raising the top federal/state level income tax brackets, raising property taxes, etc.
Taxing unrealised wealth is not only extremely punishing (not just to gazillionaires, but also small-to-medium sized family businesses), but will be rife with manipulations and fraud. I'm not even sure how this is going to work practically.
Do you actually know someone who works on Wall Street?
I dont know much about the Democratic candidates but from what I've seen and heard Warren is far and away the best candidate in my eyes, really hope she gets the nomination.
She'd make a mockery of Trump during debates, well, even more than he does himself anyway.
She'd make a mockery of Trump during debates, well, even more than he does himself anyway.
Okay hold on a sec. Warren's wealth tax is largely supposed to be hitting people making in excess of $50m. i'm not trying to hear about no "small to medium sized family business" that's pulled in money like that in net worth.
These people are generally greedy fucking scum, but yo, let's not call people subhuman, please.
Having stacks of cash is absolutely useful in campaigns, that's the carrot these types wield for Democrats because they know they need it. It's hard to run for office when the party's coffers run low.
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A. All those taxing mechanisms you mention not being in place in some form are EXACTLY why you have to preface your comment with the sentiment that the wealthy need to be properly taxed (it's because they aren't properly taxed and have benefitted from nearly two generations' worth of a system rife with :checks notes: manipulations and fraud).
B. Elizabeth Warren is a renown professor specializing in bankruptcy law, even wrote a couple books on the subject that many economists like to reference chiefly because she's a keen researcher who has plenty of hands-on experience with companies that have needlessly gone belly-up because of corporate malfeasance and dual income families losing their homes in an era where productivity has helped everyone in the top 10% at the expense of all other income brackets below that. She caught the attention of politicians and policymakers when she was sounding the alarm on the mortgage lending crisis years before the crash in 2008. If there's anyone who can figure out a way to make a desperately needed fiduciary realignment "work practically," I think she'll likely have the best chances.
I genuinely believe you lack imagination if you just don't see the modern economy working any other way than it has for the last 40 years. Either that, or you're too invested in the system continuing just as it has been.
You're confusing wealth with income. I may have exaggerated with small but medium-sized family businesses could definitely be worth in excess of $50m.
I don't deny Warren is an incredibly smart individual, and she's very sound fiscally/financially unlike a lot of her peers. However, the wealth tax has already been tried in other developed countries and has been quickly repealed in some instnaces (France). Truth is, it's very hard to assess the market value of certain assets, and also exposes certain income streams to double taxation which is nuts.
The French government did away with the wealth tax citing drop in private investments; I suspect the same will happen in the States if this is enacted.
I agree. If anything, they show how much of a piece of shit a human can be.
Boilerplate praise and validation of her credentials and ideas, followed up with an immediate, across the board dismissal citing a single country's poor policy execution and the implication that 2 cents on the dollar is just too much to ask of the literal ultra-rich?
You really are too invested in the status quo.
But it sounds good to average Joe as to why you can't tax the rich!!
I don't want to get drawn out in the technicalities but a wealth tax has many flaws. It has nothing to do with the status quo. Given how mobile capital is these days, this could be a very harmful strategy. As mentioned, there are other ways to tax billionaires, and other ultra high net worth individuals; increase estate/capital gains tax. A wealth tax, especially on unrealised investments, is just bonkers.
Sure not all but......... I've seen a couple of people go from rags to riches and.....money just changes people.
They've had decades to address inequality issues, but have done nothing. If the above methods are what they prefer, they should have made an effort to make them actually work. But they haven't.
Fraud by who? I mean look at the people we're talking about here.
It's important to differentiate between Wall Street and wealthy people. Plenty of people become wealthy through building a business that creates good jobs. Or learning skills that are highly useful to society. There's nothing morally bankrupt about that.
But when people choose to work on Wall St, they are specifically not doing that. They're deciding to enrich themselves by skimming off the top of other people's productive work, because it's so lucrative. It is morally bankrupt and they are parasites on society.
This is part of why I would prefer a more moderate candidate over Warren. No need to risk losing the election.
Cant just go and make our banking masters upset. We got to tread lightly, and hopefully they'll have mercy on us and let us have a sufferable president.
Having worked on "Wall Street" myself, I can tell you it actually serves a purpose. The financial sector industry is hugely important to ensure an efficient flow of capital which allows "people to build businesses that create good jobs". Those business don't appear out of thin air, they need capital. And that's where "Wall Street" (i.e., financial institutions) come in.
That isn't to say that there are no grifters and greedy individuals (but you could say that about pretty much sphere of society). Dumping everyone in the same "Wall Street bad" basket is wrong.
Is it really efficient though? How can you be efficient when there is such poor accountability? Furthermore can you really say there is an efficient flow of capital when systemically it contributes to the epic problem of income inequality?
Sounds like Wall Street is trying to give her a boost, which wouldn't surprise me because obviously they're desperate to have Warren (who will at the most tinker with the market) Vs Sanders (who is a fundamental threat to the hegonomy of the ruling class).
1) There shouldn't be a capital gains tax. Capital gains should be taxed at standard income levels without special treatment. But if you're talking about a capital gains tax that increases taxes over wage income levels that sounds good to me too.
2) The stuff about mobility of capital is bullshit. Sure it is, but that doesn't really mean a lot.
So you moved your assets out of country, that's fine, you're a citizen, you still get the wealth tax enforced. Doesn't matter that you moved your stuff to the Caymans, you still owe the tax.
Want to leave the country and renounce your citizenship? Surprise, that doesn't mean you get to stop paying taxes. That just means you can stop paying taxes in like 5 years.
Don't want to pay those 5 years of taxes? Welcome to becoming a wanted felon, better hope you never have to visit the country again, or visit countries with an extradition treaty to the US, or have any assets left inside the country.
The talk as if billionaires are just going to up and leave is their own personal fantasy bullshit that doesn't have any serious basis in reality. Don't buy their bullshit.
This sounds like a perfect campaign ad endorsing her.
In my opinion, she may have made a misstep with the heritage stuff and she's definitely from an older generation than I would like to have in a president... but she gets it! She has been so good at baiting and debating Trump and his bullshit. I really hope she gets the nomination and Beto as the VP, maybe?
In my opinion, she may have made a misstep with the heritage stuff and she's definitely from an older generation than I would like to have in a president... but she gets it! She has been so good at baiting and debating Trump and his bullshit. I really hope she gets the nomination and Beto as the VP, maybe?
Jumping in a little later here
There are actual concerns with a wealth tax about it being an ultimately ineffective way of accomplishing what you want (heavier taxation on the very wealthy) due to the way asset exemptions inevitably end up warping both the investment patterns of the wealthy and the way in which the exemptions end up only on thing the very wealthy have access to in ways that end up accidentally pushing the actual tax burden down.
Here's a thread on the implantation issues in France and the concerns that it raises. - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1170754190735527936.html
I apologize in advance for the author's love of memes.
And the tldr:
Now, this isn't a 1:1 situation with the US, so it's worth going over some some of these things. The Warren Tax is designed to hit 50M+, unlike the much lower implementation of the French Tax. This is at least a good start to trying to avoid the pitfalls there. But some of the other concerns would still apply. Tax exemptions would still be warping things is the economy- which is less of a concern with encouraging ridiculous fine art investments but much more of an issue if land/property ends up included as it would jack up rates. The way in which these types of exemptions play out pushes the tax incidence down the food chain, putting more of the burden on those at the lowest end of the tax bracket. This is less an issue here of "oh no those poor *checks notes* people with 60M in assets" and more that pushing that down likely relates to why wealth taxes tend to raise a lot less money than predicted. And that in turn plays into an aspect of this on the enforcement end: It requires a lot of work for the IRS due to them having to effectively due the work required for an estate tax for every living person w/ 50M In assets every year. This would result in a pay increase for accountants/CPAs nationwide due to the increased public and government demand, but would also raise legit questions about the enforcement cost:tax earnings ratio and how it compares to other areas of tax policy and enforcement.
Also, in the category of really minor things you probably need to deal with, there's an accidental marriage penalty that encourages divorce to split assets, which is probably worse than setting the combo rate in a way that encourages people to get married to duck it, if only for the bad political optics whenever you see these sorts of accidental tax incentives.
And to make it clear- none of these arguments are arguing for not taxing the wealthy more. It's that in taxing the wealthy, there's a real possibility that a direct wealth tax isn't actually the most effective option, and that it would probably be a good idea for researchers at left wing think tanks and such to brainstorm alternative tax proposals over the next 18 months that set out to accomplish the same thing through alternative taxation methods. However, a direct wealth tax is by far the easiest way to sell it to the public in language they can understand, so it's worth having up there for a campaign.
The discussion following the thread on twitter is super good btw, and I wanted to highlight parts of it as they aren't caught in the unrolled thread-generally scroll up to the top and follow the thread discussion down from the linked tweets here.
There are actual concerns with a wealth tax about it being an ultimately ineffective way of accomplishing what you want (heavier taxation on the very wealthy) due to the way asset exemptions inevitably end up warping both the investment patterns of the wealthy and the way in which the exemptions end up only on thing the very wealthy have access to in ways that end up accidentally pushing the actual tax burden down.
Here's a thread on the implantation issues in France and the concerns that it raises. - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1170754190735527936.html
I apologize in advance for the author's love of memes.
And the tldr:
Now, this isn't a 1:1 situation with the US, so it's worth going over some some of these things. The Warren Tax is designed to hit 50M+, unlike the much lower implementation of the French Tax. This is at least a good start to trying to avoid the pitfalls there. But some of the other concerns would still apply. Tax exemptions would still be warping things is the economy- which is less of a concern with encouraging ridiculous fine art investments but much more of an issue if land/property ends up included as it would jack up rates. The way in which these types of exemptions play out pushes the tax incidence down the food chain, putting more of the burden on those at the lowest end of the tax bracket. This is less an issue here of "oh no those poor *checks notes* people with 60M in assets" and more that pushing that down likely relates to why wealth taxes tend to raise a lot less money than predicted. And that in turn plays into an aspect of this on the enforcement end: It requires a lot of work for the IRS due to them having to effectively due the work required for an estate tax for every living person w/ 50M In assets every year. This would result in a pay increase for accountants/CPAs nationwide due to the increased public and government demand, but would also raise legit questions about the enforcement cost:tax earnings ratio and how it compares to other areas of tax policy and enforcement.
Also, in the category of really minor things you probably need to deal with, there's an accidental marriage penalty that encourages divorce to split assets, which is probably worse than setting the combo rate in a way that encourages people to get married to duck it, if only for the bad political optics whenever you see these sorts of accidental tax incentives.
And to make it clear- none of these arguments are arguing for not taxing the wealthy more. It's that in taxing the wealthy, there's a real possibility that a direct wealth tax isn't actually the most effective option, and that it would probably be a good idea for researchers at left wing think tanks and such to brainstorm alternative tax proposals over the next 18 months that set out to accomplish the same thing through alternative taxation methods. However, a direct wealth tax is by far the easiest way to sell it to the public in language they can understand, so it's worth having up there for a campaign.
The discussion following the thread on twitter is super good btw, and I wanted to highlight parts of it as they aren't caught in the unrolled thread-generally scroll up to the top and follow the thread discussion down from the linked tweets here.
That's the narrative I hear allll the time with Sanders. He will raise everyone's taxes, and give everything away "You get a car! And you get a car!" style. Over and over.
And they get it from this absolute trash media like Comcast owned MSNBC.
I just donated to Warren because of this. Only a few bucks, but any canidate that the rich are worried about is a winner for me.
