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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.