I think so. Welfare does very little to equalize income, its supposed to be a safety net, not an elevator. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was followed by a period of much lower unemployment and poverty among those that would normally be on welfare. Now a lot of this is the result of a generally good economy but if there were no significant negative effects, then why would we want to count it against him?
Impractical. People would rely on contractors, subsidiaries, or outsource stuff like janitorial services.
I’m not opposed to social programs that may be productive instead of demonstrably destructive.
Not a fan of means testing. Would be interesting to see math models on each version.
Those are examples of destructive policies.
Are you saying we should be proud because we can’t offshore Starbucks? Well robots are coming.
Outside of communism, which humans are incapable of, how do you solve wealth inequality? I don’t even think it’s a worthwhile concern.
And this is part of my rationale for rejection of the left’s misguided economic policies. They want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
The 4.6% is a cut of a much larger number than the 3%. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for the wealthy, chump change for the proletariat.
If we decide we need to compete with the third world with respect to wages, the only way to do it is to become a third world nation ourselves. Someday we’ll be saying that child labor laws don’t let us compete.
Companies don’t compete on wages, right now it is a buyer’s market for wages. Even that isn’t enough for the greedy corporations, they want to eliminate the workers’ only voice- the union.
Raising the estate tax is necessary because it is the fairest tax there is. Republicans hate it because it affects the rich.
Your examples just prove that a single firm can’t fight market forces effectively. Which is totally true, but not really relevant to the question of what would happen if there were a law that required this.
Whole Foods and Ben and Jerry’s had to abandon their plan because competitors could outbid them, and they couldn’t afford to increase the pay of everyone.
A national law mandating this would mean the only competitors that could outbid you would be foreign companies. And the law would probably be written to cover American residents, meaning that you’d actually have to go live elsewhere to be free from it. There are a few high-profile cases of individual wealthy tax-exiles, but I doubt seriously that all the American CEOs would move to other countries if this were the law.
I’m not sure what would happen. It would definitely distort the market, but there are tons of laws that distort the market with the aim of providing a social good.
I think probably what you’d see is that corporate structure would change to provide more layers of individual corporations. Instead of the BigCo CEO making a multiple of whatever the entry-level BigCo employee makes, each business unit of low-paid workers would be spun off as its own company with a contractual relationship to the mothership, and the actual employees of BigCo would be the very well-paid people at the top.
The estate tax is an abomination and should be removed entirely. Once you pay taxes on receiving your money, it should be yours to do with as you will.
Inheritance should just be treated like any other income and taxed the same. For very large inheritances, you could even structure it through a trust over many years as you like, but as the heirs receive the money, they should pay income tax on it just like the working stiffs pay income tax of their wages.
I think the point is that they are all unionized in Japan and Germany and they don’t seem to be withering on the vine in those countries.
Liberals are all about progress, but their ideas are all stuck in the past. There have been two liberal solutions proposed, unions and high taxes. How are those solutions different than the liberal solutions proposed at any time over the past 80 years?
Government is the most anti-change institution in society. Look at Uber, they are having to fight governments at every turn because governments represent the special interests of the taxis.
So the estate tax should be eliminated, and the estate should be taxed? 
Start transferring assets as gifts or use other loopholes to shift wealth. You honestly think that the people in power, which includes the government class, are going to implement rules to cripple their own families? Even the ruling classes of nominally communist countries never drank that Kool Aid.
No, you shouldn’t ever tax someone just for leaving an estate. No double taxation on that person.
Yes, you should tax anyone receiving money from an estate (just like you tax them for income received from any other source like a job.)
Often, there has never been tax paid on the income. Let’s say you buy $1000 worth of stock. When you die, it’s worth $1,001,000. When was tax ever paid on that million dollar capital gain?
The estate tax is absolutely the fairest tax of all.
Interest is already taxed at the ordinary rate.
[quote]
We should also stop taxing corporations at all; this would achieve 4 things that I can see.:
[ol]
[li]It would remove the whole double taxation argument that is used to keep capital gains / dividend taxes low.[/li][/quote]
I’ll bet you a case of scotch that if we ever eliminated corporate income taxes we would figure out how to keep preferential rates, perhaps not across the board but they will be there for the wealthy.
[quote]
[li]It would remove the incentives for companies to stockpile money overseas.[/li][/quote]
Tax deferral of foreign income until the income is brought back into the country is the oft cited reason for this. Would you eliminate this by getting rid of taxes on international income or would you do this by eliminating the deferral?
[quote]
[li]It would remove some of the arguments used to justify the political rights given to corporations.[/li][/quote]
What?!?!?
This is not how it works. We know this because we have seen corporate tax rates go up and down and we have not seen a corresponding increase and decrease in prices. Sure some of it flows through but most of it is absorbed by the shareholders, hence the arguments of double taxation. If the burden was actually borne by the customers there wouldn’t be a double taxation argument.
This represents a decrease in overall tax receipts that have to be made up somewhere. How do you propose we fill the hole in the budget? More debt?
A good starting point would be cracking down on wage theft. More money is stolen that way than all other property crimes put together – between 50 and 60 billions. (Wage theft - Wikipedia ; http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18115/doubling_the_price_of_wage_theft). It should rally both sides of the aisle, the law and order conservatives and the concerned-about-the-poor liberals.
And since that money is mostly stolen by the rich from the poor, it would help reduce inequality.
Yes, this takes care of that entirely. Whoever receives the $1,001,000 pays income tax on it when they receive it.
Our time of greatest prosperity was an era where the highest tax bracket was over 90%. And that was under a Republican President.
OK, I had to look it up.
Most of the people complaining about the estate tax don’t have to worry about the estate tax. I’m not going to worry about it until someone leaves me an estate worth more than $5.5 million.
So you think there should be a tax marking event when you die?
For example, when George Steinbrenner died, his estate was worth billions. he never paid taxes on that money.
I don’t think the wealthy would have a problem with that. A lot of them do that right now. For example, if I am David Koch and I put 10 billion dollars in trust and I get to pass that on without ever paying ay taxes on it until the money is distributed to my heirs, that trust can get bigger and bigger each year with my heirs living off of a fraction of the income generated by the trust. It keeps getting passed on and we have what used to be referred to as a dynasty.
I see four possible responses.
- Your scenario which just means lower level workers have fewer benefits at the smaller companies. 2. More companies buying foreign companies and moving their headquarters overseas, which means less tax money here and fewer jobs. 3. The best CEOs heading to foreign companies and US based businesses having worse leadership, which means worse economic growth and fewer jobs.
Or, 4. some of the greediest people in the world just throw up their hands and accept much lower salaries and much higher taxes.
If you believe the last scenario will happen then I know a Nigerian prince with a great offer for you.
OK, take two scenarios.
In the first case I sell the stock right before I die. I get $1, 001,000 and pay 25% income taxes on the million and end up with $751,000 which I pass onto my kids who then pay 40% income taxes and they end up with $450,600.
In the second case, I never sell the stock and my kids get the whole thing and they pay a 40% tax on it and end up with $600,600.
Inn the first case I pay a tax and my heir pay a tax. Should I have a perverse incentive not to sell something if I am getting old?
The argument on the estate tax has largely been between the ridiculously wealthy that wanted to lower the rate and the moderately wealthy that wanted to increase the exemption. After a long and bitter struggle, they both got what they wanted with a lower tax rate and a higher exemption.
This happened at the height of the real estate bubble when everyone thought they might be leaving their kids a hovel valued at a million dollars.