FFS dude. So you think the plan is to collect that 70% tax and then flush it down the toilet?
Anyway, maybe this thread should focus on what Warren is actually proposing rather than flailing at generic liberal boogeymen.
That’s why it doesn’t raise any revenue.
But does it wind up somewhere productive? Not unless there’s a plan to use it for something productive. AOC’s idea just takes a few billion and adds it to the government coffers. Very low impact on the government’s balance sheet, very high impact on individuals.
That’s fine because I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how smart Warren’s written proposals have been so far.
So I assume that it is your opinion that all else being equal a single individual having too much money is never a problem
But I think you would have a hard time arguing against the following two axioms:
- In our society, money = power
- A single individual having too much power can definitely be a problem.
So in order to keep lining in a free society we either need to correct axiom number 1, or else prevent individuals from getting too much money.
I don’t think it’s consistent with freedom and the pursuit of happiness though to limit people’s ability to achieve as much as they want to achieve. The way to deal with money equalling power is to regulate how money can be used to wield power, not just take away people’s money because we think they’ve made too much.
It raises more than you think, and was a staple of our tax system for decades.
They lowered the top bracket and then made Unemployment taxable to make up for that. How is that fair?
The rate was something we did, but no one paid it. The real tax rate for rich people was about 30%. So why not take the simple approach and just eliminate all deductions on the 39.6% tax bracket?
Phasing out deductions is complicated. New tax brackets are immensely simple.
If someone needs 50x more than they can possibly spend in one lifetime to be happy, rather than merely 3x, I’m gonna say it’s a rather trivial imposition on their pursuit of happiness to tax that difference at extremely high rates.
Would be nice if we could regulate how money can be used to wield power, but Citizens United took care of that.
And that’s just how it goes. Economic power will constantly try to turn itself into political power. You can throw up dams - and it’s worth doing - but the money will do its damnedest to try to find its way around the dams. And then along comes a Citizens United to blow up the dams.
You would be including the deductions for investing and charitable contributions, in which case, expect a lot of companies and charities to suffer.
I agree, but will make this one response to some posts that came after mine:
Some on the left are doing exactly that. “Maximum wage” is huge on Twitter, for example.
I’m not arguing that income inequality is good, but I am arguing that changing an income-inequality status quo by fiat gets you into the worst sort of old-Soviet-economic-disasters territory.
Humans respond to incentives, and removing the incentive to innovate and take risks (by saying, as some do, ‘no one needs more than $100,000 per year so that’s all anyone can have’ or such) is wildly stupid. Ignoring this facet of human nature will not provide positive outcomes.
Incentives need to remain in place, but we need to be sure that our economic and legal systems do not protect exploiters and discourage competition and participation in democracy. Rulings such as “Citizens United” definitely do protect exploiters and discourage participation in democracy.
Warren is one of those prioritizing removing such rulings and laws—basically, she proposes examination of the entire apparatus of a system that, currently, fosters greater inequality. She’s not the only one, but to my mind she’s offered more concrete ideas on how to do this than have any of her competitors (so far).
Something many rich folks don’t seem to realize is that, based on history, if things get bad enough, the poor will kill them. But only if the rich are eating cake while the poor are eating shit. Things like a 70% top bracket might bring in a bit of revenue for new programs, but much more importantly for the rich, they might demonstrate to the masses that the rich are not just eating cake, but actually being required by law to contribute a significant amount of their wealth to the public good, and thus convincing them that maybe they don’t yet deserve to be killed.
As an aspiring wealthy person myself, I generally favor policies that will reduce the chance that I will be murdered by the poor in the case that one day I become a hugely successful author.
Given how much money billionaires are spending on philanthropy I doubt that’s going to be a problem, and in order to get a mass of poor people with pitchforks you need a mass of poor people. If anything, the ranks of the affluent are growing faster than the ranks of the poor. The poor just don’t have the numbers.
If a 39.6% tax rate causes problems that require loopholes to address, maybe it’s too high.
If orange is too much of a fruit color maybe we shouldn’t have colors at all.
No one’s calling for no taxes. Just taxes that can actually be paid. The actual effective tax rate on the top 1% is 25%. So make the top tax rate on paper what it actually is in reality.
Elizabeth Warren gets a new puppy. I really hope it was just a decision between herself and her husband and not an attempt to seem more folksy and ‘regular person
And when the paper rate was lowered, the actual rate would magically remain the same? Or would the actual rate then decrease to 15%?
Because the idea is to encourage economic activity. Those deductions were for spending money.
One problem we had post-2008 was the rich just not investing, & not spending much; just waiting for the business cycle to come back around. If you know that over half your income will simply go away if not put into a use that makes it not taxable, that calculus changes a lot.
As for AOC, you yourself said taxes on the rich are fine if they build infrastructure. That’s literally what the Green New Deal is. She’s saying she wants to raise taxes to overhaul the USA’s energy infrastructure to something sustainable. That’s an attempt to stop climate change from destroying America’s wealth. *You *should be for this.