# What could be done with a 10% tax increase on the very wealthy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 15, 2015, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716 "2015-10-15T12:49:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/41 "2015-10-15T20:47:10Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Question: Does the ‘top 1%’ include corporations? Or only individuals? Well, looking at the linked article it seems clear they mean the people since it’s talking about income tax. Corporations pay a different kind of tax (corporate taxes) so would be in a different category. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/42 "2015-10-15T20:57:50Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > If the US takes in 1.7 trillion in incomes and the top 1% pay 45.7% of that, it means they pay 777 billion dollars a year. An extra 10% would be 77 billion dollars. Since the government spends about 831 billion on healthcare a year and only covers half the population and extra 77 billion would not get us anywhere close to universal health care. You could pay off about a third of the interest on the current debt or have a deficit 18% smaller. One, universal healthcare lowers the cost/person, so it’s quite possible a tax increase and negotiation could make that amount of money sufficient. Two, universal healthcare doesn’t usually cover everyone and every medical expense. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/43 "2015-10-15T21:38:28Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Well, looking at the linked article it seems clear they mean the people since it’s talking about income tax. That’s what I took from it. I’m not sure whether asking about raising the tax rates for the top 1% of individuals is useful. (FWIW, I think that capital gains should be taxed as regular income.) While the U.S. has (I think) the third-highest corporate tax rate in the world, I seriously doubt they pay that rate. For example, they move money offshore, and/or set up headquarters in foreign countries. (Burger King is now technically a Canadian company.) I think corporate taxes should be considered when asking about ways tax revenue could be used. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/44 "2015-10-15T21:43:22Z")
The top 1% earn about 23% of GDP, so about 3.8 trillion. 10% of that is 380 billion. Free public college would cost something like 70 billion a year. So you could do some decent things with that money. However the real money is in health care. If our health care were as efficient as the OECD average, we would save over 1 trillion a year. You’d have to hike taxes on the top 1% by 30%+ to come up with the kind of money we could save by reforming our health care system. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/45 "2015-10-15T21:51:57Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Raising taxes to get a better income distribution target is probably not possible. According to a recent [study](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/09/28-taxes-inequality/tax-rates-redistro-simulation-release.pdf)if you raise the top income tax rate to 50% and distributed the new money to the bottom 20% of household it would afford each poor household less than 150$ a month and not affect inequality very much at all. Irrelevant, since I don’t propose to distribute the money to anyone, but use it as an investment in needed improvements. It does reduce inequality by taking from the top, but not by giving to the bottom. Perhaps the economic growth from this measure would help the bottom, but not by giving them cash. They’d improve through reduced unemployment. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/46 "2015-10-15T22:20:30Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I am not generally a fan of CG tax rates being different (other than indexing for inflation), but if you’re going to have them, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have different brackets for different income groups. The (alleged) purpose is to spur investment, and raising the rates on higher income earners sort of defeats the purpose. I don’t see how that follows. The CG rates just need to be relatively attractive compared to the ordinary income rates. When I invest, I can choose to sell early or hold onto it to receive the long-term CG rates. My decision is largely based on the difference between the two, so it makes sense to scale both of them together (as long as the CG rate is always less than ordinary income). ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/47 "2015-10-16T00:16:07Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Question: Does the ‘top 1%’ include corporations? Or only individuals? > [@XT](#): > > Well, looking at the linked article it seems clear they mean the people since it’s talking about income tax. Corporations pay a different kind of tax (corporate taxes) so would be in a different category. It probably includes S-corporations. So that’s maybe the taxes on a half a trillion? Hard to say what that adds up to from which income group. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/48 "2015-10-16T00:20:40Z")
Maybe it could be less about taking what is already possessed than altering the stream so that more of it flows “downhill”. Doesn’t bother me much about rich folks who can buy more crap than I can, they can knock themselves out with that shit for all I care. Enough to eat, schools for the kids, medicine for the sick, help for the infirm and/or elderly. Yeah, that matters. Adjust the stream. Got a lot of gripes about a consumer economy, but it is what it is. But it _isn’t_ if people don’t have money to spend. The food stamp program, for instance, is good for farmers but manna from Hell for Con Agra, Cargill, and General Foods. As for health care, isn’t it too obvious even to say that a healthy country is a stronger one? Can I a get a “Duh!”? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/49 "2015-10-16T01:23:27Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Maybe it could be less about taking what is already possessed than altering the stream so that more of it flows “downhill”. Doesn’t bother me much about rich folks who can buy more crap than I can, they can knock themselves out with that shit for all I care. Enough to eat, schools for the kids, medicine for the sick, help for the infirm and/or elderly. Yeah, that matters. > > Adjust the stream. Got a lot of gripes about a consumer economy, but it is what it is. But it _isn’t_ if people don’t have money to spend. The food stamp program, for instance, is good for farmers but manna from Hell for Con Agra, Cargill, and General Foods. As for health care, isn’t it too obvious even to say that a healthy country is a stronger one? > > Can I a get a “Duh!”? What does it mean to “alter the stream”? Are you talking raising the MW? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/50 "2015-10-16T02:33:15Z")
Well, now, there’s an idea! What else you got? Always open to new ideas… ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/51 "2015-10-16T14:52:01Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > One, universal healthcare lowers the cost/person, so it’s quite possible a tax increase and negotiation could make that amount of money sufficient. Two, universal healthcare doesn’t usually cover everyone and every medical expense. It might lower the cost/person a little but nowhere near enough. The tax increase would cover 77 billion dollars, leaving 1.723 trillion dollars for negotiation to cover. That amount of money could never even come close to being made up by negotiation. If private insurers can not negotiate lower prices there is no reason to think that government run healthcare could either. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/52 "2015-10-16T15:08:04Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Irrelevant, since I don’t propose to distribute the money to anyone, but use it as an investment in needed improvements. It does reduce inequality by taking from the top, but not by giving to the bottom. Perhaps the economic growth from this measure would help the bottom, but not by giving them cash. They’d improve through reduced unemployment. The amount of money taken from the top would not seriously affect inequality. The number of workers who build roads is nowhere near enough to seriously affect the unemployment. If you doubled the number of people employed building roads and bridges from 300,000 to 600,000 you would only shrink the number of unemployed by less than 4% and would drop the unemployment rate from 5.1% to 4.9% if everyone of the new workers was drawn from the ranks of the unemployed which probably less than half of them would actually be. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/53 "2015-10-16T16:46:54Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The amount of money taken from the top would not seriously affect inequality. This statement is nonsense by definition, since it ignores how much money is taken from the top. My proposal was to raise rates enough so that the vast increase in wealth of the 1% since the end of the recession was returned. That would make a difference. > [@](#): > > The number of workers who build roads is nowhere near enough to seriously affect the unemployment. If you doubled the number of people employed building roads and bridges from 300,000 to 600,000 you would only shrink the number of unemployed by less than 4% and would drop the unemployment rate from 5.1% to 4.9% if everyone of the new workers was drawn from the ranks of the unemployed which probably less than half of them would actually be. From [here](http://www.cfr.org/infrastructure/encouraging-us-infrastructure-investment/p27771). > [@](#): > > The United States has huge unpaid bills coming due for its infrastructure. A generation of investments in world-class infrastructure in the mid-twentieth century is now reaching the end of its useful life. Cost estimates for modernizing run as high as $2.3 trillion or more over the next decade for transportation, energy, and water infrastructure. Yet public infrastructure investment, at 2.4 percent of GDP, is half what it was fifty years ago. $200 billion a year is slightly more than 300,000 jobs. Just California has massive amounts of needed upgrades and repairs. Luckily the road I take to work got vastly improved thanks to Obama’s stimulus program. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to spend $200 billion a year on roads and bridges even if we wanted to, but we could spend a lot. I found an estimate, [here](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/00septoct/impacts.cfm) of labor hours per $1 million in construction contracts. It varies by region, but 10,000 is a conservative figure. That’s about 5 jobs were million dollars, 5,000 jobs per billion, or a million jobs for the $200 billion needed infrastructure spend. That’s jobs more or less directly involved in the construction or the supplying of the construction, and it does not include extra jobs created from these new workers spending more than they do now. BTW, I never mentioned a decline in unemployment, since we are near full employment already. (Thanks, Obama!) We could probably pull out some people who have given up. What we should have is training for these jobs and rising wages as demand increases. Where I live we don’t need any more employment - I can hardly get through the traffic as it is. So, getting 500,000 additional workers just for this could be tough. I’m not against using some of the money extracted from the 1% to pay down the debt either. Just not all or most of it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/54 "2015-10-16T16:48:40Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > It might lower the cost/person a little but nowhere near enough. The tax increase would cover 77 billion dollars, leaving 1.723 trillion dollars for negotiation to cover. That amount of money could never even come close to being made up by negotiation. If private insurers can not negotiate lower prices there is no reason to think that government run healthcare could either. So if a 100 pound gorilla can’t get what he wants, that shows a 500 pound gorilla can’t either? ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/55 "2015-10-16T19:19:20Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > This statement is nonsense by definition, since it ignores how much money is taken from the top. My proposal was to raise rates enough so that the vast increase in wealth of the 1% since the end of the recession was returned. That would make a difference. > > From [here](http://www.cfr.org/infrastructure/encouraging-us-infrastructure-investment/p27771). > $200 billion a year is slightly more than 300,000 jobs. Just California has massive amounts of needed upgrades and repairs. Luckily the road I take to work got vastly improved thanks to Obama’s stimulus program. > Obviously we wouldn’t be able to spend $200 billion a year on roads and bridges even if we wanted to, but we could spend a lot. > > I found an estimate, [here](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/00septoct/impacts.cfm) of labor hours per $1 million in construction contracts. It varies by region, but 10,000 is a conservative figure. That’s about 5 jobs were million dollars, 5,000 jobs per billion, or a million jobs for the $200 billion needed infrastructure spend. That’s jobs more or less directly involved in the construction or the supplying of the construction, and it does not include extra jobs created from these new workers spending more than they do now. > > BTW, I never mentioned a decline in unemployment, since we are near full employment already. (Thanks, Obama!) We could probably pull out some people who have given up. What we should have is training for these jobs and rising wages as demand increases. Where I live we don’t need any more employment - I can hardly get through the traffic as it is. So, getting 500,000 additional workers just for this could be tough. > > I’m not against using some of the money extracted from the 1% to pay down the debt either. Just not all or most of it. Your link says that modernizing the infrastructure will cost 2.3 trillion dollars over the next decade. It also says the US is spending 2.4% of GDP on infrastructure. Over a decade 2.4% of GDP is 4.16 trillion dollars if the economy does not grow. That means we will have an 1.8 trillion dollar surplus over what we need without raising taxes at all. If your numbers were correct about the number of jobs created it would mean we should have 2 million workers working on infrastructure but we only have 300,000. Your numbers are way off. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/56 "2015-10-16T19:26:26Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > So if a 100 pound gorilla can’t get what he wants, that shows a 500 pound gorilla can’t either? The doctor’s lobby is one of the most powerful in the country, nursing is one of the most popular professions out there. The idea that politicians are going to be able to cut money going to those two groups in half is just crazy. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/57 "2015-10-16T20:13:59Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > It might lower the cost/person a little but nowhere near enough. The tax increase would cover 77 billion dollars, leaving 1.723 trillion dollars for negotiation to cover. A change to government-paid healthcare for everyone would be a major change. A family that no longer needed to pay $1000 for healthcare premiums (or which received $1000 in salary hike because the employer no longer needed to pay it) would be able to afford $1000 in higher income tax. This all seems too obvious to mention, yet your arithmetic ignores it. Argue against Marxist medicine if you wish, but don’t pretend that progressive thinkers believe free healthcare doesn’t cost anything. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/58 "2015-10-16T20:31:39Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Your link says that modernizing the infrastructure will cost 2.3 trillion dollars over the next decade. It also says the US is spending 2.4% of GDP on infrastructure. Over a decade 2.4% of GDP is 4.16 trillion dollars if the economy does not grow. That means we will have an 1.8 trillion dollar surplus over what we need without raising taxes at all. > If your numbers were correct about the number of jobs created it would mean we should have 2 million workers working on infrastructure but we only have 300,000. Your numbers are way off. The number I gave is additional spending necessary to replace infrastructure reaching the end of its life, above the maintenance we are doing now with 2.4% GDP. And remember, the jobs number from my cite is not just those directly working on roads and stuff, but also includes those bringing material to those people and those manufacturing the steel that goes into bridges. When we’re looking at the impact on employment, we need to look at them also. Just out or curiosity, do you agree that our infrastructure is in trouble with our current spending level? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/59 "2015-10-16T20:35:47Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The doctor’s lobby is one of the most powerful in the country, nursing is one of the most popular professions out there. The idea that politicians are going to be able to cut money going to those two groups in half is just crazy. Huh? Doctors don’t negotiate drug prices. Neither do nurses. (I suspect some nurses will be in here to dispute their power.) If you want to buy $10 billion worth of stuff you have more clout than if you buy $1 billion. That’s the way WalMart (and everyone else) works. Capitalism 101 I’d say. You’d have more of a point if you had said drug lobby - they won with the revision to Medicare, after all. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716/60 "2015-10-17T11:52:21Z")
Take it all, 100%, from the “wealthy”, and it still will not be enough. When you give away freebies the demand is endless. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-done-with-a-10-tax-increase-on-the-very-wealthy/734716.md?page=4)