The only people it’s worth it for are the connected billionaires who can scoop up assets cheap while the rest of us end up as serfs.
The only people it’s worth it for are the connected billionaires who can scoop up assets cheap while the rest of us end up as serfs.
I never said anything about income tax… But again, these are real things that we used to have and they have elsewhere:
Tax brackets to to 90%+ on business profits - incentivize companies to reinvest in r&d while disincentiving investment
Tax inheritance and crack down on forever trusts
Progressively tax money moving in and out of the country, and close up tax loopholes (killing the tax filing industry would be a necessary prerequisite)
You could even revamp capital gains and certain types of loan to somehow figure into a progressive income tax
And most importantly - this has been done before. It has been done, you can pick apart suggested methods and come up with excuses for why it’s impossible… But it’s so clearly not. Everything else is an engineering problem
If you want to hear economists talk about it, Garys economics on YouTube popped into my feed a few days ago. He’s far from the only one, even Warren Buffett has gone through a plan where he says the full tax burden could be put on businesses
And if you want to know why I don’t respect economics… It’s not because I’m not read up on it, it’s because: how can you read up on it and still think taxing the wealthy is impossible? This has been written about by economists for decades, but it doesn’t matter because there’s more convenient economic theories to push far and wide
Buddy you started off with “fuck economic theory”. You clearly know almost nothing about the subject. Why are you trying to make claims about a subject you aren’t educated on?
We abandoned a lot of those taxes because they weren’t effective. Dropping the top rate from 90% to where it was in 1983 brought in more tax revenue as tax evasion and avoidance dropped. These are the kinds of things you would know if you had an education in macro
And there we go… I must not know anything about economics because you’ve been fed convenient models that justify the decision to cut taxes, and I’m not quoting them back to you
And FYI, I even added a side note about this - want to know some tax avoidance strategies that I like? R&D. Higher wages and benefits to compete over talent. Fancy offices and better equipment. Swag and giveaways to capture customer loyalty
This is why fuck “fuck economics”. I tell you it worked, we had a less inequal society, and you come back with “well, cutting this raised tax revenues”.
Of course it did - it let the wealthy open up a spigot from companies to their portfolios, and the government gets a portion.
It incentivized slashing corporate spending, but corporate spending is good - it’s money flowing back into the economy. Even if they keep it in a slush fund, at least that fund will offset loans needed to expand or weather a storm - loans that also funnel money upwards and essentially force companies to pay a tax to the rich to continue to exist
But please, keep dismissing everything I say as “they just don’t understand economics”. No, I understand it well enough to know that what I was being taught didn’t add up
You literally started off by dismissing economic theory and then you needed me to explain basic stuff to you. You can’t claim to have an informed opinion on this subject after that. Your analysis isn’t going to be particularly useful if you don’t understand the basics of a subject as you have already dine.
You clearly don’t understand the subject but rather than lashing out at people who can tell this why not fix it by learning the basics? You might be less angry if you actually understand the subject better.