Straight Dope Message Board

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by Ludovic

I calculated that we could get a similar amount just from the multibillionaires that are a small fraction of the 1%. The list of American billionaires is almost 1000 long so it wouldn't surprise me if they had $2 trillion total net worth, and by assuming they earn around 5% on that money (probably more for stocks, less for other categories) they have an income of $100 billion which would yield taxes of $10 billion, since right now they're paying less on this money than everyone else, so we could easily alter it so they are paying only slightly more.

How is that 5% being determined? Dividends? Definitely that income should be taxed. I'm pretty sure it currently is, at least for direct payments to the investor. Wealth from stock price increases? You're going to force people to realise they're investments - sell their shares before they're wanting to - in order to pay for the stock going up. Probably that would lead to some sort of rebalanced equilibrium between share increases and dividends, but if there's any volatility in the stock market, which there will be, finding that equilibrium on tax day is going to be impossible. 151

[amarinth]

Originally Posted by HurricaneDitka

How do you think the multibillionaires, with their armies of tax attorneys and accountants, might react to your plan to extract more of their money from them?

There is no outcome that I can imagine that will be worse than the current state of things. To me, the worst case scenario is "they don't pay it." Tax attorneys and accountants are highly unlikely to set forest fires in protest - that's not their style. Not even when they're part of an army of CPAs & JDs. 152

[Ludovic]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Wealth from stock price increases? You're going to force people to realise they're investments - sell their shares before they're wanting to - in order to pay for the stock going up. Probably that would lead to some sort of rebalanced equilibrium between share increases and dividends, but if there's any volatility in the stock market, which there will be, finding that equilibrium on tax day is going to be impossible.

I'm not sure whether to tax unrealized gains, but if so then those effects for fungible equities could be tolerated (except the odd case of where an employee, even a high level one, has options that they are prevented from selling, which would make it not quite right to force them to pay taxes on them prematurely.). 153

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Of course I do know that some will fund more Trumps in the future, but there are multibilionares that are aware that not paying enough is leading to the end of what we understand as what America is actually great about and becoming more so.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billi...b07ae90da25162

OK, first off, what is a "2% marginal tax on assets"? Is that a 2% tax on the increase in the value of the assets? That's an unrealised capital gains tax, not a wealth tax, although I suppose that's quibbling. Nevertheless, if that's what's being proposed, are there any numbers to back that up? "The richest one-tenth of the richest 1%” raising their assets by 50 times $300 billion a year doesn't pass the smell test.

If the "marginal" is just a fluff adjective, and it's an actual wealth tax, Warren's basically proposing taking 20% of a person's wealth above $50 million over the course of 10 years. So if someone has built up a successful business worth $150 million which has plateaued, Warren will force them to sell off $20 million in that business over a decade to pay their taxes. So someone earning only their salary is losing massive amounts in tax because their business has peaked. At that point, the owner would seek to divest the business in whatever way would disperse the ownership. Which sounds great in communistic terms. However, changes in ownership are fraught with risk. Warren's proposal would basically devalue any family owned business above $50 million unless it was undergoing growth above 2%/year after tax.

Also, where would the valuation come from? The stock market? 154

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by Ludovic

I'm not sure whether to tax unrealized gains, but if so then those effects for fungible equities could be tolerated (except the odd case of where an employee, even a high level one, has options that they are prevented from selling, which would make it not quite right to force them to pay taxes on them prematurely.).

I'm thinking more in terms of new money than old money, but the principle is the same. The government shouldn't be forcing Mark Zuckerberg to sell his Facebook shares until he's ready to. When he's ready to diversify his holdings, he should pay tax on his realised gains. But based on ups and down in the stock market, where he's not receiving any dollars? No.

The same goes for the Waltons, owner of a large portion of Walmart corporation. If their stock is doing nothing from a price perspective, they shouldn't be paying any taxes on that lack of price volatility. But if the price shoots up, the idea that they should pay taxes on a notional profit, without actual receiving any cash from a sale of stock, is simply penalising them for having money in equities, rather than cashing out and spending it. 155

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

OK, first off, what is a "2% marginal tax on assets"? Is that a 2% tax on the increase in the value of the assets? That's an unrealised capital gains tax, not a wealth tax, although I suppose that's quibbling. Nevertheless, if that's what's being proposed, are there any numbers to back that up? "The richest one-tenth of the richest 1%” raising their assets by 50 times $300 billion a year doesn't pass the smell test.

If the "marginal" is just a fluff adjective, and it's an actual wealth tax, Warren's basically proposing taking 20% of a person's wealth above $50 million over the course of 10 years. So if someone has built up a successful business worth $150 million which has plateaued, Warren will force them to sell off $20 million in that business over a decade to pay their taxes. So someone earning only their salary is losing massive amounts in tax because their business has peaked. At that point, the owner would seek to divest the business in whatever way would disperse the ownership. Which sounds great in communistic terms. However, changes in ownership are fraught with risk. Warren's proposal would basically devalue any family owned business above $50 million unless it was undergoing growth above 2%/year after tax.

Also, where would the valuation come from? The stock market?

You know, this point sounds nonsensical when one takes into account that it is normal to give business owners a break if theirs efforts do peak. As in losing money. 156

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

OK, first off, what is a "2% marginal tax on assets"? Is that a 2% tax on the increase in the value of the assets? That's an unrealised capital gains tax, not a wealth tax, although I suppose that's quibbling. Nevertheless, if that's what's being proposed, are there any numbers to back that up? "The richest one-tenth of the richest 1%” raising their assets by 50 times $300 billion a year doesn't pass the smell test.

Oh, and about this, saying insipid things such as not "passing the smell test" are silly when one can find with little effort who else does smell it positively.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-in-first-year

Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, would have to pay $4.1 billion in the first year under U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s soon-to-be proposed wealth tax, based on his current net worth of $137.1 billion.

...

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, plans to propose a tax of 2 percent on those with assets of $50 million to $1 billion and 3 percent on all fortunes exceeding $1 billion, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The tax would raise $2.75 trillion over a decade from about 75,000 families, the newspaper said, citing an economist advising Warren on the plan.

https://www.latimes.com/business/hil...626-story.html

As Saez and Zucman observe, “It is not appropriate to assume that a Warren wealth tax would be as poorly enforced as the estate tax currently.” That’s true: A Congress and White House that enacted the wealth tax would make sure that enforcement would be part of the package.

To some extent, the actual revenue numbers being debated by economists are beside the point even if, by the most minimalist figures offered by Summers and Sarin, the wealth tax would bring in a mere $250 billion over 10 years.

The real point is that our tax structure has become a major contributor to wealth inequality in the U.S., as the signatories to the tycoons’ open letter acknowledge.

We’ve relentlessly cut the top marginal rate on the richest Americans and endowed them with exemptions and loopholes that have fostered aristocratic family fortunes utterly alien to the America envisioned by our founding fathers. This trend hasn’t made America richer; it has just contributed to the stagnation of economic opportunity for the 99%.

Warren’s concept is right: It’s time to stop allowing the rich to evade their fair share. The details will be worked out soon enough.

157

[octopus]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Oh, and about this, saying insipid things such as not "passing the smell test" are silly when one can find with little effort who else does smell it positively.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-in-first-year


https://www.latimes.com/business/hil...626-story.html

A wealth tax is so impractical and such a deal breaker I wouldn’t vote for any candidate who talks about one on total net worth. Even if they were against someone twice as nutty as Trump.

If you own copyrights, patents, art, or other forms of wealth why would you pay a yearly tax on that? It’s bad enough paying real estate and car tax. If anything perhaps we should work on the repeal of all forms of wealth tax. 158

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by octopus

A wealth tax is so impractical and such a deal breaker I wouldn’t vote for any candidate who talks about one on total net worth. Even if they were against someone twice as nutty as Trump.

If you own copyrights, patents, art, or other forms of wealth why would you pay a yearly tax on that? It’s bad enough paying real estate and car tax. If anything perhaps we should work on the repeal of all forms of wealth tax.

Again, this is really missing a lot just by noticing that a lot of people will not pay this tax. Are you a billionaire or a millionaire? 159

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

You know, this point sounds nonsensical when one takes into account that it is normal to give business owners a break if theirs efforts do peak. As in losing money.

You don't really understand geographical analogies do you? Plateaus, peaks, and downward slopes are all different geographical features. Creditors will go after business owners if their business declines into unprofitability such that the business can't pay its loans. Note the word decline. A feature that occurs beyond a peak. If the business owner is smart, he'll diversify his holdings before that happens. Ideally, when the business is at a high point and has maximised its profit potential. In other words a peak.

A wealth tax based on share price could force owners to sell their stock while the business was still increasing in value. The government is forcing the business owner to realise gains in share value at tax time, not when the owner makes the decision on when it's best for himself and the business. I'm against that. 160

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Oh, and about this, saying insipid things such as not "passing the smell test" are silly when one can find with little effort who else does smell it positively.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-in-first-year

Thanks for making my point for me. From Bloomberg:

Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, would have to pay $4.1 billion in the first year under U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s soon-to-be proposed wealth tax
<snip>
Almost all of Bezos’s net worth is tied up in Amazon stock, and such a tax bill could force him to sell some. He currently has $2.5 billion of cash and other liquid assets, according to the Bloomberg wealth index’s net worth analysis.

If Bezos wants to hold onto his stock, that should be his decision, not the government's. 161

[Mijin]

If your argument is just "his stock his decision" then does that mean you are against all taxes? Because we could say exactly the same thing about income.

Otherwise the argument seems inherently flawed.

Sent from my Redmi 5A using Tapatalk 162

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by Mijin

If your argument is just "his stock his decision" then does that mean you are against all taxes? Because we could say exactly the same thing about income.

Otherwise the argument seems inherently flawed.

Sent from my Redmi 5A using Tapatalk

As stated before:

Income is money that I earned this year. Wealth is the accumulation of money that I earned in the past that I haven’t spent, or that I’ve spent on assets such as shares or property.

I believe income should be taxed and wealth shouldn't be. Increases in cash wealth are income and should be taxed. If someone has $100 million sitting in the bank earning interest, the interest should be taxed. The $100 million shouldn't be. And if it takes the form of property or shares, then someone shouldn't be forced to sell the property or shares to pay a wealth tax. 163

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Warren's basically proposing taking 20% of a person's wealth above $50 million over the course of 10 years. So if someone has built up a successful business worth $150 million which has plateaued, Warren will force them to sell off $20 million in that business over a decade to pay their taxes. So someone earning only their salary is losing massive amounts in tax because their business has peaked. At that point, the owner would seek to divest the business in whatever way would disperse the ownership. Which sounds great in communistic terms. However, changes in ownership are fraught with risk. Warren's proposal would basically devalue any family owned business above $50 million unless it was undergoing growth above 2%/year after tax.

One other point - I presume Warren wants the wealth tax paid in cash, correct? So in addition to forcing the wealthy to sell shares or property for the wealth tax, capital gains tax will apply. So that 3% will actually be 3.75%.

Then again, many liberals want to get rid of the capital gains tax and treat capital gains as income. Is Warren one of them? That would bump the combined tax up to 4.76%. I just ran the numbers for someone with static wealth (excluding taxes) in shares of $2 billion using that rate. They would lose $752 million over ten years, 38% of their wealth. 164

[Budget Player Cadet]

Oh my god, if we did that, they'd only have... *checks numbers*

... More money left over than I or most people will ever cumulatively earn over my entire life.

And meanwhile, that obscene amount of money they "lost" would go towards the common good. 165

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Thanks for making my point for me. From Bloomberg:


If Bezos wants to hold onto his stock, that should be his decision, not the government's.

Too bad that to make this silly point you are ignoring why he is singled out, he and his corporation paid little in taxes last year.

A wealth tax is what happens when one notices that there is an abuse of the law so as not to pay taxes, or in simpler words: "This is why we can't have nice things". 166

[Kearsen1]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Too bad that to make this silly point you are ignoring why he is singled out, he and his corporation paid little in taxes last year.

A wealth tax is what happens when one notices that there is an abuse of the law so as not to pay taxes, or in simpler words: "This is why we can't have nice things".

Abuse of the law, according to whom?
Surely not the intellectual law makers that we the people elect. Surely not the government that we are told time and time again, to trust that they know best. This time, or at the very least, NEXT time. 167

[Kearsen1]

Originally Posted by Budget Player Cadet

Oh my god, if we did that, they'd only have... *checks numbers*

... More money left over than I or most people will ever cumulatively earn over my entire life.

And meanwhile, that obscene amount of money they "lost" would go towards the common good.

More money than ME is the key here. Those who have less, WANT more.
Always 168

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

More money than ME is the key here. Those who have less, WANT more.
Always

But those who have more also want more.
Of those two, which are likely to need more? 169

[Budget Player Cadet]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

More money than ME is the key here. Those who have less, WANT more.
Always

Okay, let's decentralize "me". I chose myself as a subject because I'm a pretty typical millenial and that may make it possible to sympathize with, but fine, have it your way.

As I said upthread, a million seconds is a little under two weeks; a billion seconds is 37 years. Once you have two billion dollars, you have more money the gross national product of about 20 different countries, many of which have millions of people living them. That is, you personally have more money than combined total value of the entire economy of the 4.5 million people living in the Central African Republic.

Complaining about the well-being of a billionaire after any tax reform where they don't have to carve out a pound of flesh from their body for every million dollars they've stashed away is like complaining about how dry and brightly-lit the Marianas Trench is. Tax a billionare at 99%, and he's still richer than the mean or median worker in the US will ever be.

Would you actually be interested in participating in this discussion, or just throwing out mildly offensive non-sequiturs? This isn't about jealousy. It's about the tangible harm caused by misallocation of resources, and the brazen evil necessary for billionaires to decide to keep most of their billions. Do try to keep up. 170

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Too bad that to make this silly point you are ignoring why he is singled out, he and his corporation paid little in taxes last year.

A wealth tax is what happens when one notices that there is an abuse of the law so as not to pay taxes, or in simpler words: "This is why we can't have nice things".

Bezos isn't singled out for Amazon's low taxes in either of your cites. But since you'd like to throw that into the conversation here's a Forbes take on Amazon's federal income tax breaks:

There are three main drivers of Amazon's tax breaks:

Investment in Research & Development. Amazon invests heavily in research and development and therefore benefits from the tax credit. In 2017, as Recode stated, Amazon topped the list of U.S. companies in R&D spend, at $22.6 billion. The next closest was Alphabet at $16.6 billion. Many of Amazon's innovations have been birthed from this investment.

Investment in Property, Plant, and Equipment. Amazon’s investment in property, plant, and equipment also makes it eligible for tax credits. Cities can benefit from Amazon's investment in real estate and job creation (benefits New York City could have enjoyed). Amazon's PPE expenditure has steadily increased over the last five years, netting to approximately $60 billion as of the end of last year.

Employee Stock Compensation. A move away from cash compensation to stock-based compensation for employees is the third driver of its tax breaks. Tax deductions increase as the stock increases. While this can certainly create adverse incentives, it is important to assess the benefits it creates relative to the cost. While such a tax policy can introduce misaligned management incentives, it also generates incentives for management to drive the best possible return for investors.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephan.../#dafd68c54d5a

So a rich guy directs his company to invest heavily and provide employees with stock incentives which they benefit from when the stock price increases, and the company becomes more valuable as a result. This is a good thing. It's how capitalism is supposed to work.

As to my silly little point, what is the liberal position on taxing unrealised wealth? Are you in favour of it, or against it? 171

[bump]

Originally Posted by Lance Turbo

The question in the thread title is, "Do conservatives genuinely not understand the liberal position on wealth?"

The answer is that they do not understand and they put quite a lot of effort into not understanding.

The real answer is that there's no ONE liberal position on wealth for conservatives to understand. This thread alone demonstrates that pretty clearly. Just like there's no one conservative position on wealth either for that matter. 172

[Kearsen1]

Originally Posted by Czarcasm

But those who have more also want more.
Of those two, which are likely to need more?

Why does what I go out and make matter one whit what you 'feel like you' need?

Now don't get me wrong, I am not going to sit here and state categorically that I will not help you with your needs as I feel like government and it's people should lend helping hands. What I am saying is that I don't give 2 shits what you feel like you need if I don't feel like you need it as well.

The other bridge to cross is once we finally agree that there is a need, how do we provide for it? 173

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

Why does what I go out and make matter one whit what you 'feel like you' need?

Now don't get me wrong, I am not going to sit here and state categorically that I will not help you with your needs as I feel like government and it's people should lend helping hands. What I am saying is that I don't give 2 shits what you feel like you need if I don't feel like you need it as well.

The other bridge to cross is once we finally agree that there is a need, how do we provide for it?

I have not used the words "feel", "feeling" or "feelings", so I have no idea what you are talking about. This doesn't have jack shit to do with "feelings" no matter how much you want to twist it. 174

[Kearsen1]

Originally Posted by Budget Player Cadet

Okay, let's decentralize "me". I chose myself as a subject because I'm a pretty typical millenial and that may make it possible to sympathize with, but fine, have it your way.

As I said upthread, a million seconds is a little under two weeks; a billion seconds is 37 years. Once you have two billion dollars, you have more money the gross national product of about 20 different countries, many of which have millions of people living them. That is, you personally have more money than combined total value of the entire economy of the 4.5 million people living in the Central African Republic.

Complaining about the well-being of a billionaire after any tax reform where they don't have to carve out a pound of flesh from their body for every million dollars they've stashed away is like complaining about how dry and brightly-lit the Marianas Trench is. Tax a billionare at 99%, and he's still richer than the mean or median worker in the US will ever be.

Would you actually be interested in participating in this discussion, or just throwing out mildly offensive non-sequiturs? This isn't about jealousy. It's about the tangible harm caused by misallocation of resources, and the brazen evil necessary for billionaires to decide to keep most of their billions. Do try to keep up.

I am keeping up just fine. What you are failing to comprehend is that it doesn't matter what THEY make, not one single bit. It could be 10 x's the US GDP and I wouldn't care and neither should you. That IS jealousy.
What we both should care about is that we have government spending more than they take in (and some in government wanting to spend a whole lot more).

I do not claim to be Republican or a Democrat, what I am is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I think a lot of people might identify with my position (just not that many on this board).

Until we get spending under control, I don't want you taxing me, my kids inheritance, or my kids any more than absolutely necessary. My name is not Jeff Bezos 175

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

Until we get spending under control, I don't want you taxing me, my kids inheritance, or my kids any more than absolutely necessary. My name is not Jeff Bezos

Are you in the 1%, or the 0.1%? If not, you don't have to worry about anyone taxing your inheritance - or your wealth.

Do you favor rolling back the tax cut, maybe the part for the rich? If not, don't talk as if spending creates the growth in the deficit. That's crap.

The reason for this discussion is that the very richest have sucked up most of the gains in the economy, way, way out of proportion to their numbers. A wealth tax is one way of dealing with this. Or do you think this was a result of merit, and the rich didn't do anything to make the playing field anything but level? 176

[Kearsen1]

Originally Posted by Voyager

Are you in the 1%, or the 0.1%? If not, you don't have to worry about anyone taxing your inheritance - or your wealth.

Do you favor rolling back the tax cut, maybe the part for the rich? If not, don't talk as if spending creates the growth in the deficit. That's crap.

The reason for this discussion is that the very richest have sucked up most of the gains in the economy, way, way out of proportion to their numbers. A wealth tax is one way of dealing with this. Or do you think this was a result of merit, and the rich didn't do anything to make the playing field anything but level?

I am not inherently against anything like rolling back the tax cuts, especially if they are only beneficial to the rich. I am not against the rich paying more, but every time these discussions come up, it is always about taxing more instead of spending less. Goring oxen and all that stuff. The cut off for taxing the 'rich' is close enough to me that it opens my eyes to what the government wants versus what I want for my and my children's futures.

As to who did what, I don't think of the rich as evil corporate monsters. I see them as highly intelligent people using what the government allows of them to create riches. The loopholes such as they are , are created for JUST THAT REASON. Why do you think that is? Politicians are the immoral creatures bought and paid for by the rich. But I do not blame the rich.

Taxing wealth just seems wrong. If you don't get it right the first grab, you shouldn't get a second just because someone used what you gave them. As with the Amazon tax structure earlier. Stock options, R & D, all beneficial to US ALL, yet if you listen to some, "They still make too much" That reeks of jealousy. 177

[octopus]

Originally Posted by Budget Player Cadet

Okay, let's decentralize "me". I chose myself as a subject because I'm a pretty typical millenial and that may make it possible to sympathize with, but fine, have it your way.

As I said upthread, a million seconds is a little under two weeks; a billion seconds is 37 years. Once you have two billion dollars, you have more money the gross national product of about 20 different countries, many of which have millions of people living them. That is, you personally have more money than combined total value of the entire economy of the 4.5 million people living in the Central African Republic.

Complaining about the well-being of a billionaire after any tax reform where they don't have to carve out a pound of flesh from their body for every million dollars they've stashed away is like complaining about how dry and brightly-lit the Marianas Trench is. Tax a billionare at 99%, and he's still richer than the mean or median worker in the US will ever be.

Would you actually be interested in participating in this discussion, or just throwing out mildly offensive non-sequiturs? This isn't about jealousy. It's about the tangible harm caused by misallocation of resources, and the brazen evil necessary for billionaires to decide to keep most of their billions. Do try to keep up.

It's not evil to keep what you earn. It's not evil to want to enrich your family with what you earn instead of providing for random people who don't do anything productive. Or are actually counterproductive and/or antisocial. Just because someone exists does not mean they are owed any of someone else's productivity or time.

Now in a society where there is a surplus, sure, mechanism of redistribution can be created. But if the government was so efficient at the creation and distribution of wealth why is it that the largest death tolls of ANY system on earth has been communism? Even fascism can't keep up. 178

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Bezos isn't singled out for Amazon's low taxes in either of your cites. But since you'd like to throw that into the conversation here's a Forbes take on Amazon's federal income tax breaks:


https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephan.../#dafd68c54d5a

So a rich guy directs his company to invest heavily and provide employees with stock incentives which they benefit from when the stock price increases, and the company becomes more valuable as a result. This is a good thing. It's how capitalism is supposed to work.

And... that is not a problem, otherwise no tax base would be available, so not what I was talking about; and my cat's breath smells like cat food...

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

As to my silly little point, what is the liberal position on taxing unrealised wealth? Are you in favour of it, or against it?

Well, as an economist at Bloomberg reports it, you are too late:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...-taxing-wealth

The U.S. already has various wealth taxes that go by other names, but they work badly. Federal taxes on income from capital — in the form of profits, dividends and capital gains — and taxes on inheritance are varieties of wealth tax. Many state and local governments tax houses and other property as well.

The federal taxes are poorly designed and riddled with loopholes. One big channel of avoidance is the so-called step-up basis for capital gains at death. This lets assets pass to heirs at current market values, with any previous unrealized gains simply erased for tax purposes. That means huge accumulations of unrealized capital income escape capital-gains tax altogether. Combine this with a leaky inheritance tax, and wealth can be passed from generation to generation with little or no tax owed.

A theoretical case, based on restrictive assumptions, can be made for not taxing capital at all — but as a practical matter, on grounds of fairness and efficiency, it’s hard to deny that wealth and the income it generates are under taxed in the U.S. relative to income from labor. The question is whether a wealth tax like the one Warren is suggesting is a better remedy for these defects than fixing the taxes the U.S. already has — say, by taxing capital income at the same rate as labor income, taxing unrealized capital gains at death, and/or making the inheritance tax harder to avoid.

Mind you, the economist there points out that the Warren idea has issues and there are other ways to do what amounts to a wealth tax that I'm in favor of, loopholes for the extra wealth and other items need to be taken care of while a more targeted wealth tax is implemented. In any case, the point that inequality is growing and something needs to be done to make the whole thing more sustainable in the long run remains.

https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...tment-wealthy/ 179

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by octopus

It's not evil to keep what you earn. It's not evil to want to enrich your family with what you earn instead of providing for random people who don't do anything productive. Or are actually counterproductive and/or antisocial. Just because someone exists does not mean they are owed any of someone else's productivity or time.

Now in a society where there is a surplus, sure, mechanism of redistribution can be created. But if the government was so efficient at the creation and distribution of wealth why is it that the largest death tolls of ANY system on earth has been communism? Even fascism can't keep up.

Why is that some think that the 'best' arguments must include Red baiting fallacies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-baiting

Red-baiting, also referred to as reductio ad Stalinum (/ˈstɑːlɪnəm/), is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the validity of an opponent's logical argument by accusing, denouncing, attacking, or persecuting an individual or group as anarchist, communist,[1] Marxist, socialist, Stalinist, or sympathetic towards these ideologies.[2] In the United States the term red-baiting dates from at least 1927.

180

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

I am not inherently against anything like rolling back the tax cuts, especially if they are only beneficial to the rich. I am not against the rich paying more, but every time these discussions come up, it is always about taxing more instead of spending less. Goring oxen and all that stuff. The cut off for taxing the 'rich' is close enough to me that it opens my eyes to what the government wants versus what I want for my and my children's futures.

If you are really that close to being truly rich, you don't have to worry about either your future or your children's. I've got enough money so that I'm retired and don't have to worry about having enough to last us our entire lives, with probably enough for our kids. But they won't need it when they get it, just like we didn't need money we got from our parents.
As for cutting spending, we probably won't ever do that on an absolute basis since the population is growing. But why treat spending as monolithic? There is spending we can agree is useless - Iraq War II, Trump's salary, and money that would pay big benefits, like infrastructure repair which everyone wants to do but which never seems to happen. We need to distinguish high return spending from low return spending.

As to who did what, I don't think of the rich as evil corporate monsters. I see them as highly intelligent people using what the government allows of them to create riches. The loopholes such as they are , are created for JUST THAT REASON. Why do you think that is? Politicians are the immoral creatures bought and paid for by the rich. But I do not blame the rich.

The rich aren't monolithic either. Lots of the rich think their taxes should be raised.
But some of the rich want to spend their money to give themselves breaks. There are some CEOs who deserve every penny. Then there are CEOs who destroy stockholder value and get fired with 8 figure parting gifts. That adds a lot of value.

Senator Inhofe is pretty rich. He has a big house in an exclusive community on a lake, and he likes the water level in the lake to be high to aid in boating. Fine, except that making the water level high causes floods several times a year in the town below. Monster? I'd say so. If Scooby Doo did that story, you'd think the villain was too evil to be real.

Taxing wealth just seems wrong. If you don't get it right the first grab, you shouldn't get a second just because someone used what you gave them. As with the Amazon tax structure earlier. Stock options, R & D, all beneficial to US ALL, yet if you listen to some, "They still make too much" That reeks of jealousy.

During the bubble I made a lot of money on stock options and didn't mind getting bumped to a higher bracket at all. Actual options shouldn't be taxed because they are too speculative. When they become stock, the stock should be taxed - if it is above a certain level. The average Amazon worker is not going to have to pay a penny under any proposal I've seen. If Bezos has to pay, fine. If someone gets rewarded with enough options to go over the threshold, and they cash them in, they should definitely pay.
BTW, cashing in options and not selling the stock is dangerous. During the bubble people who did this were liable for tax on the difference between the option price and the exercise price. Some kept the stock, the stock tanked, and they didn't have enough money to pay the tax. I never made that mistake at least. 181

[octopus]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Why is that some think that the 'best' arguments must include Red baiting fallacies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-baiting

Hey as long as there is agreement that there is some limit to what the state should snatch I’d agree. But in this thread we have people implying that we owe everything to the Man. 182

[Kearsen1]

Originally Posted by Voyager

If you are really that close to being truly rich, you don't have to worry about either your future or your children's. I've got enough money so that I'm retired and don't have to worry about having enough to last us our entire lives, with probably enough for our kids. But they won't need it when they get it, just like we didn't need money we got from our parents.
As for cutting spending, we probably won't ever do that on an absolute basis since the population is growing. But why treat spending as monolithic? There is spending we can agree is useless - Iraq War II, Trump's salary, and money that would pay big benefits, like infrastructure repair which everyone wants to do but which never seems to happen. We need to distinguish high return spending from low return spending.


The rich aren't monolithic either. Lots of the rich think their taxes should be raised.
But some of the rich want to spend their money to give themselves breaks. There are some CEOs who deserve every penny. Then there are CEOs who destroy stockholder value and get fired with 8 figure parting gifts. That adds a lot of value.

Senator Inhofe is pretty rich. He has a big house in an exclusive community on a lake, and he likes the water level in the lake to be high to aid in boating. Fine, except that making the water level high causes floods several times a year in the town below. Monster? I'd say so. If Scooby Doo did that story, you'd think the villain was too evil to be real.

During the bubble I made a lot of money on stock options and didn't mind getting bumped to a higher bracket at all. Actual options shouldn't be taxed because they are too speculative. When they become stock, the stock should be taxed - if it is above a certain level. The average Amazon worker is not going to have to pay a penny under any proposal I've seen. If Bezos has to pay, fine. If someone gets rewarded with enough options to go over the threshold, and they cash them in, they should definitely pay.
BTW, cashing in options and not selling the stock is dangerous. During the bubble people who did this were liable for tax on the difference between the option price and the exercise price. Some kept the stock, the stock tanked, and they didn't have enough money to pay the tax. I never made that mistake at least.

Voyager, I agree with most of this. All spending isn't bad, but spending on ANYTHING that isn't agreed upon by both political factions is counterproductive.
If there was a need then both political factions would be willing to spend money, then agreement could be reached (just like it used to) but currently everyone has a direction different from the other. And you know why? Because either the people are too stupid to realize that politicians don't give a wrinkled cats tit for them, or they haven't been informed well enough by the opposition that this benefits them. Or, it just doesn't benefit them.

The rich cut off I've seen, in order to cut anything from our currently (IMO) bloated budget, easily the 1% gets hit but more likely the top 10%.

We currently have around 50% of our populace not having any skin in the federal game, they are paying in $0 to the federal kitty. I don't see that ever working out.
This is not about them being able or unable to pay, this is about skin in the game. If I pay, I care. If I don't pay why should I care?

Oh but they do you say, they vote. And what do they vote for? Why they vote for themselves, they vote to give themselves more. And the politicians listen. 183

[Wrenching Spanners]

Here’s the question again:

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

What is the liberal position on taxing unrealised wealth? Are you in favour of it, or against it?

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Well, as an economist at Bloomberg reports it, you are too late:

Your Bloomberg cite doesn’t answer the question. It also doesn’t distinguish between realised and unrealised gains, except for inheritance tax.

From Bloomberg:

The U.S. already has various wealth taxes that go by other names, but they work badly. Federal taxes on income from capital — in the form of profits, dividends and capital gains — and taxes on inheritance are varieties of wealth tax. Many state and local governments tax houses and other property as well.

The federal taxes are poorly designed and riddled with loopholes. One big channel of avoidance is the so-called step-up basis for capital gains at death. This lets assets pass to heirs at current market values, with any previous unrealized gains simply erased for tax purposes. That means huge accumulations of unrealized capital income escape capital-gains tax altogether. Combine this with a leaky inheritance tax, and wealth can be passed from generation to generation with little or no tax owed.

A theoretical case, based on restrictive assumptions, can be made for not taxing capital at all — but as a practical matter, on grounds of fairness and efficiency, it’s hard to deny that wealth and the income it generates are under taxed in the U.S. relative to income from labor. The question is whether a wealth tax like the one Warren is suggesting is a better remedy for these defects than fixing the taxes the U.S. already has — say, by taxing capital income at the same rate as labor income, taxing unrealized capital gains at death, and/or making the inheritance tax harder to avoid.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...-taxing-wealth

Income from capital — in the form of profits, dividends and capital gains – is taxed if it’s realised. If I buy a million shares of stock worth $50/share at the beginning of the year, and $60/share at the end of the year, I’ve made $10 million in unrealised capital gains. If I sell 100,000 shares, I’ve realised capital gains of $1 million and I should and will pay taxes on that. If before the sale, a cash dividend of $1/share is issued, I’ll receive another $1 million in income and pay taxes on it. No one’s arguing against that. The question is what do I owe based on the 900,000 shares worth $60/share I still own? Warren says I owe somewhere between $40,000 and $1,620,000 on that stock, even though I haven’t sold it. I disagree. I should pay taxes when I sell the stock, but not have my investments whittled away simply because I’m a successful investor. (Not that I’m ever likely to own $54 million in stock.)

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

And... that is not a problem, otherwise no tax base would be available, so not what I was talking about; and my cat's breath smells like cat food...

Maybe your cat’s breath wouldn’t smell so bad if you stopped feeding it garbage? 184

[Cheesesteak]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

As to who did what, I don't think of the rich as evil corporate monsters. I see them as highly intelligent people using what the government allows of them to create riches. The loopholes such as they are , are created for JUST THAT REASON. Why do you think that is? Politicians are the immoral creatures bought and paid for by the rich. But I do not blame the rich.

Lemme get this right. The Rich pay politicians to create loopholes and favorable tax laws. The Rich use those loopholes and laws to become richer. Wealth disparity in our country grows wider every year, with a larger and larger piece of the pie going to the very wealthiest among us.

But we shouldn't blame the rich?

You just described a situation where the rich literally engineered our laws to enrich themselves, but they are blameless for using those very laws to enrich themselves? 185

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by Budget Player Cadet

As I said upthread, a million seconds is a little under two weeks; a billion seconds is 37 years. Once you have two billion dollars, you have more money the gross national product of about 20 different countries, many of which have millions of people living them. That is, you personally have more money than combined total value of the entire economy of the 4.5 million people living in the Central African Republic.

Complaining about the well-being of a billionaire after any tax reform where they don't have to carve out a pound of flesh from their body for every million dollars they've stashed away is like complaining about how dry and brightly-lit the Marianas Trench is. Tax a billionare at 99%, and he's still richer than the mean or median worker in the US will ever be.

If you want an end to poverty, it’s going to depend, among other things, on globalisation, innovation, and investment, not wealth transference. Some of that innovation is being done by start-ups with young smart people who hope to become rich. Some is being done by mega-corporation with investors who are already rich and want to become richer. The investment is going to be done by people who believe there are profits to be made in emerging markets, or companies that can connect to global markers. Globalisation is going to provide the networks to connect the poor people who want to make their labour more productive and more exchangeable for goods and services with the corporations who are going to provide them with jobs, goods and services.

Is a wealth tax of 1%-3% above $50 million going to stop the above from happening? No. What it will do is take money out of the system which will limit the investments and the money going into the R&D that produces the innovation. Check out Fiverr, a company that had its IPO back in June. (It’s Israeli based, but listed on the NYSE.) Their goal is to create a gig economy for professional services by connecting freelancers to companies with demand for those services via the Internet. If they’re successful, and if they connect to a supply market of freelancers in the developing world, they’ve got the potential to generate a lot of positive activity, both economic and social. However, despite their stock price, it might be years before they generate a profit. They’re not going to be paying a dividend any time soon. Although their initial investors may have diversified a bit, most of them are maintaining their stakes. It’s a company that depends on long-term investors. And if any of its investors, such as the venture capitalists who enabled the company’s expansion to where it could have an IPO, are wealthy US investors, then a wealth tax on shares is going to eat away at their holdings. They’ll be having to cash out before they want to, which discourages further investment, and will demand dividends to pay that wealth tax earlier than the company is ideally ready to pay them.

So here’s a company that’s poised to help the developing world that could potentially have its growth decelerated by a wealth tax. It’s more complicated than “rich have money and poor don’t have money; let’s switch.” That’s why conservatives don’t like wealth taxes. 186

[Snowboarder Bo]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

Surely not the government that we are told time and time again, to trust that they know best.

Just by writing that you're showing how untrue a statement it is: for decades, nobody in America has said this. In fact, for decades, all the propaganda has said the opposite, which of course is what you really mean: "don't trust government". Right? 187

[Snowboarder Bo]

Originally Posted by Cheesesteak

Lemme get this right. The Rich pay politicians to create loopholes and favorable tax laws. The Rich use those loopholes and laws to become richer. Wealth disparity in our country grows wider every year, with a larger and larger piece of the pie going to the very wealthiest among us.

But we shouldn't blame the rich?

You just described a situation where the rich literally engineered our laws to enrich themselves, but they are blameless for using those very laws to enrich themselves?

And then they use their money to get people to write articles and tell stories and make movies about how wonderful they are and how smart and how brave and how morally upstanding and good-hearted they all are for having all that money! Success all around! Everybody wins! Right?

188

[Snowboarder Bo]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

If you want an end to poverty, it’s going to depend, among other things, on globalisation, innovation, and investment, not wealth transference. Some of that innovation is being done by start-ups with young smart people who hope to become rich. Some is being done by mega-corporation with investors who are already rich and want to become richer. The investment is going to be done by people who believe there are profits to be made in emerging markets, or companies that can connect to global markers. Globalisation is going to provide the networks to connect the poor people who want to make their labour more productive and more exchangeable for goods and services with the corporations who are going to provide them with jobs, goods and services.

Is a wealth tax of 1%-3% above $50 million going to stop the above from happening? No. What it will do is take money out of the system which will limit the investments and the money going into the R&D that produces the innovation. Check out Fiverr, a company that had its IPO back in June. (It’s Israeli based, but listed on the NYSE.) Their goal is to create a gig economy for professional services by connecting freelancers to companies with demand for those services via the Internet. If they’re successful, and if they connect to a supply market of freelancers in the developing world, they’ve got the potential to generate a lot of positive activity, both economic and social. However, despite their stock price, it might be years before they generate a profit. They’re not going to be paying a dividend any time soon. Although their initial investors may have diversified a bit, most of them are maintaining their stakes. It’s a company that depends on long-term investors. And if any of its investors, such as the venture capitalists who enabled the company’s expansion to where it could have an IPO, are wealthy US investors, then a wealth tax on shares is going to eat away at their holdings. They’ll be having to cash out before they want to, which discourages further investment, and will demand dividends to pay that wealth tax earlier than the company is ideally ready to pay them.

So here’s a company that’s poised to help the developing world that could potentially have its growth decelerated by a wealth tax. It’s more complicated than “rich have money and poor don’t have money; let’s switch.” That’s why conservatives don’t like wealth taxes.

No offense but Fiverr sounds like a bunch of fucking assholes who are not going to "help the developing world" so much as "take advantage of people who need work and/or money" and "help other people take advantage of people who need work and/or money". Uber isn't "helping the developing world"; Uber is taking advantage of people who need work and/or money. 189

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by Snowboarder Bo

No offense but Fiverr sounds like a bunch of fucking assholes who are not going to "help the developing world" so much as "take advantage of people who need work and/or money" and "help other people take advantage of people who need work and/or money". Uber isn't "helping the developing world"; Uber is taking advantage of people who need work and/or money.

Also no offense, but I have had a lot of people take advantage of my need for money by giving me work. As a matter of fact, it is happening as I type.

I am a consultant. My company finds the work, I do the work, the company takes some of the money and provides me with health care and benefits and some for profit, and I keep the rest of it. Everybody's happy.

If you think Fiverr or Uber should find work for other people out of the goodness of their hearts, that kind of a deal, IME, is not as sustainable as one where everybody makes a buck. YMMV, but most of the rest of the world's doesn't.

Regards,
Shodan 190

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Your Bloomberg cite doesn’t answer the question. It also doesn’t distinguish between realised and unrealised gains, except for inheritance tax.

[/snip]
Of course; by you omitting the "mind you", that explains that I'm indeed pointing at the inheritance tax as one way to approach this, you want to give the impression that that is not part of the answer.

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Maybe your cat’s breath wouldn’t smell so bad if you stopped feeding it garbage?

Maybe you will sound less aimless if you had stopped to notice that what you said is not in opposition to what I said, it was a very, very bland description to what everybody can agree with (yes, one needs to have profitable enterprises so workers at the high end can be part of the tax revenue), hence the saying about the cat's breath, it is just repeating what was already common knowledge and you think you made a great counter when it was just very underwhelming.

Not my problem that you grab that meme and demonstrate to others that you miss what that meme is about. 191

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

So here’s a company that’s poised to help the developing world that could potentially have its growth decelerated by a wealth tax. It’s more complicated than “rich have money and poor don’t have money; let’s switch.” That’s why conservatives don’t like wealth taxes.

Based on the most serious tax plans that I have seen, Fiverr would not be a target of the proposed tax. 192

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Kearsen1

The rich cut off I've seen, in order to cut anything from our currently (IMO) bloated budget, easily the 1% gets hit but more likely the top 10%.

I was easily in the top 10%, and I could have paid more, so I'm fine with this.

We currently have around 50% of our populace not having any skin in the federal game, they are paying in $0 to the federal kitty. I don't see that ever working out.
This is not about them being able or unable to pay, this is about skin in the game. If I pay, I care. If I don't pay why should I care?

I'm all for them having skin in the game, but I'd like to do it by reducing income inequality so they have more, not taking from those who can barely get by today.

Oh but they do you say, they vote. And what do they vote for? Why they vote for themselves, they vote to give themselves more. And the politicians listen.

Republican politicians are doing all they can to try to discourage these people from voting, so they are hardly listening to them. And lets be serious - do you think politicians listen more to those in areas the politicians hardly ever visit, or the lobbyists and fat cats who drop by with big checks for their reelection campaigns? 193

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by octopus

Hey as long as there is agreement that there is some limit to what the state should snatch I’d agree. But in this thread we have people implying that we owe everything to the Man.

Well, we do.

As Larry Gonick from his funny “Cartoon history of the universe” (relax: he does document his stuff) mentioned:

“The people of Lagash threw out the old king and replaced him with Urukagina, the first tax reformer known to history! Urukagina cut taxes, fired most of the tax collectors, restored confiscated property to the temples, and passed many laws protecting widows, orphans, and poor people. The tax cuts, however, caused a new problem; the government went broke! When Umma attacked again, Lagash was both too peaceful and too poor to resist. Urukagina's social revolution ended only eight years after it started, and the king of Umma, Lugalzaggesi, became the "big man" of all Sumer for the next 25 years.”

That was 4500 years ago and some people never learn, It is good to remove the tax excess, but the real problem comes when the cows get fat and there is no government that will not do the sensible thing and then raise taxes to beat an evil axis, control the deficit, reform health care or other good things that can be done to keep a civilized country going on.

But, the point there about "owning everything" is mostly philosophical, even I can understand the difference of what things should be vs what can be done in practice.

“Everything should be devoted initially to getting greater productivity,” said Warren Buffett at Columbia University in 2017. “But people who fall by the wayside, through no fault of their own, as the goose lays more golden eggs, should still get a chance to participate in that prosperity. And that is where government comes in.” 194

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

If you want an end to poverty, it’s going to depend, among other things, on globalisation, innovation, and investment, not wealth transference. Some of that innovation is being done by start-ups with young smart people who hope to become rich. Some is being done by mega-corporation with investors who are already rich and want to become richer. The investment is going to be done by people who believe there are profits to be made in emerging markets, or companies that can connect to global markers. Globalisation is going to provide the networks to connect the poor people who want to make their labour more productive and more exchangeable for goods and services with the corporations who are going to provide them with jobs, goods and services.

Is a wealth tax of 1%-3% above $50 million going to stop the above from happening? No. What it will do is take money out of the system which will limit the investments and the money going into the R&D that produces the innovation. Check out Fiverr, a company that had its IPO back in June. (It’s Israeli based, but listed on the NYSE.) Their goal is to create a gig economy for professional services by connecting freelancers to companies with demand for those services via the Internet. If they’re successful, and if they connect to a supply market of freelancers in the developing world, they’ve got the potential to generate a lot of positive activity, both economic and social. However, despite their stock price, it might be years before they generate a profit. They’re not going to be paying a dividend any time soon. Although their initial investors may have diversified a bit, most of them are maintaining their stakes. It’s a company that depends on long-term investors. And if any of its investors, such as the venture capitalists who enabled the company’s expansion to where it could have an IPO, are wealthy US investors, then a wealth tax on shares is going to eat away at their holdings. They’ll be having to cash out before they want to, which discourages further investment, and will demand dividends to pay that wealth tax earlier than the company is ideally ready to pay them.

So here’s a company that’s poised to help the developing world that could potentially have its growth decelerated by a wealth tax. It’s more complicated than “rich have money and poor don’t have money; let’s switch.” That’s why conservatives don’t like wealth taxes.

Wow, what an innovative concept Fiverr has. Except that I've found freelancers in Russia and India five years ago. Just a me-too company who clearly has sold you a bill of goods.
The Trump tax cut dumped a ton of money into corporations and the rich. Look up what it has done for business investment some time. Answer - not much. Lots of stock buybacks though. That really helps innovation and R&D. With low interest rates we've been awash in investment money for some time - it has driven up the stock market. Saying that taking some away is going to tank R&D is absurd.
Plus, the increased tax money is not going to be flushed down the toilet. Maybe it can pay for advanced research that is the basis of industrial R&D? Maybe it can pay to repair our infrastructure which has a high ROI. Maybe it can help do something about climate change which has an even higher ROI.

Who do you think staffs these start ups? Answer: young smart people who could afford to go to good universities, either here or abroad, and often to good grad schools here. If you want to increase the number of people who can work in start-ups you do it by improving the education and environment of smart kids who might not have access to computers and books today. Would free college help these kids? Probably a lot. Reducing the cost of state schools would help if you can't make them free.
Don't believe in the impact of free college? Check out City College in NY in the '30s. My mother could never have afforded an expensive college, but got a degree from Brooklyn College, Tons of poor kids got a great education there. 195

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by Snowboarder Bo

No offense but Fiverr sounds like a bunch of fucking assholes who are not going to "help the developing world" so much as "take advantage of people who need work and/or money" and "help other people take advantage of people who need work and/or money".

I’ve worked as a freelancer. For me, it was easy money to use my skillset in the evening or over a couple of days to do work I generally enjoy rather than watch TV, read, or mess around on the Internet. I probably won’t be signing up to Fiverr because I work in a niche profession. I doubt they have a market for me. There are also issues of data confidentiality with my job. But could some of the project tasks I’ve been assigned to work on be accomplished by an outside resource more cost-effectively and better? Sure.

As an example, my French is terrible and my German is non-existent. Yet I’ve tested both French and German application web pages. My task was to test the English pages, and then see if I could follow the same procedures on the French and German pages. Somewhere else, someone checked those pages to ensure the spelling was accurate. Could those tasks have been accomplished more efficiently by an outside resource fluent in those languages? Absolutely. So if there was a practical way to outsource that testing to Moldova or Slovakia, would I recommend my clients take advantage of that avenue? Absolutely.

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Based on the most serious tax plans that I have seen, Fiverr would not be a target of the proposed tax.

You don’t believe that the Fiverr owners and investors want to become billionaires?

SPOILER:

I’m ignoring the fact that Fiverr is an international company, because we’re discussing philosophical viewpoints, rather than specific tax systems. However, I think the discussion of an Israeli wealth tax versus a UK or US wealth tax is inconsequential to the overall point.

196

[Wrenching Spanners]

Originally Posted by Voyager

Wow, what an innovative concept Fiverr has. Except that I've found freelancers in Russia and India five years ago.

So, sounds like you've missed an opportunity. Oh well. That's capitalism. You have to take risks to succeed. Too bad you didn't recognise a situations where you could fulfil an opening in the market. 197

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

You don’t believe that the Fiverr owners and investors want to become billionaires?

SPOILER:

I’m ignoring the fact that Fiverr is an international company, because we’re discussing philosophical viewpoints, rather than specific tax systems. However, I think the discussion of an Israeli wealth tax versus a UK or US wealth tax is inconsequential to the overall point.

Swing and a miss again, .

Elsewhere, and many times before, I made the comment that many conservatives have a very bad time when dealing with timelines or the march of time. In this case you seem to grossly ignore that the tax will not take place until they do manage to become multimillionaires. 198

[Wrenching Spanners]

Yeah, you’re still dodging the question:

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Here’s the question again:
What is the liberal position on taxing unrealised wealth? Are you in favour of it, or against it?

Is this your answer?

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

There are other ways to do what amounts to a wealth tax that I'm in favor of, loopholes for the extra wealth and other items need to be taken care of while a more targeted wealth tax is implemented.

So you think that unrealised capital gains should be passed down through inheritance, and you’re in favour of closing unfair tax loopholes? Is that the liberal position on taxing unrealised wealth? Because that sounds pretty mild. But hey, if you’re backing a centrist position, that sounds alright to me.

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

Not my problem that you grab that meme and demonstrate to others that you miss what that meme is about.

Is the meme, the “element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means” a reference to unrealised capital gains, or to stinky garbage-smelling cat’s breath? I’d be astonished if it was the former. Given the nature of the Internet, the latter wouldn’t surprise me, but Google doesn’t recognise it as a meme. 199

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Wrenching Spanners

Is the meme, the “element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means” a reference to unrealised capital gains, or to stinky garbage-smelling cat’s breath? I’d be astonished if it was the former. Given the nature of the Internet, the latter wouldn’t surprise me, but Google doesn’t recognise it as a meme.

You know there is also the old adage that goes "Stop digging your own hole"

The meme, as it is clear you do not even see how it applies, comes from the Simpsons as the most lame example of a reply to more educated subjects made by the kid of Chief Wiggum.


So it is indeed referring to your lame attempt at trying to make hay about how the employees at Amazon make money, as pointed before that is not the issue, so your point about garbage is still a dumb one. The issue is that when they make money they are taxed based on their income, and the point made before still stands, when we talk about executives and CEOs it is clear that at some levels some are not paying what they should. 200