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I feel the wealth inequality issue needs to be addressed. My only problem with the wealth tax is that it takes money from the wealthy and feeds it to the gover

• sebazzz 7y ago
  It helps if the money can be used to decrease tax on the lower classes or supply basic needs, like medical insurance.
• jandrese 7y ago
  Yeah, it is a total mystery how adequately funding social welfare programs could somehow help the poor.
  • zajd 7y ago
    Welcome to HN, where taxation is "stealing"
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • onepointsixC 7y ago
    Benefits and welfare programs have been increasing dramatically as a percentage of GDP.
    • droopyEyelids 7y ago
      Have people been getting poorer to qualify for welfare?
    • jandrese 7y ago
      Yes, the increasing wealth gap has been killing America. That's what this program is trying to address.
    • kevingadd 7y ago
      If the welfare programs are functioning correctly, any decrease in overall population wealth and/or income would naturally have to raise the welfare spend. The alternative would be for the newly poor to suffer and/or die in poverty, because only the existing poor were being assisted by the programs. Incidentally that does seem to be how much of the US safety net is designed to work and we've been actively trying to push more needy people out of the benefits programs, so that's something. This is a feedback loop. If "spend is going up" is somehow justification for cutting welfare programs or for not funding them, how does that fix anything? The ideal would be to have more than enough funding for all your programs, then work on ideal ways to utilize the extra funding. In the end if there's a surplus you can always cut taxes on the rich again, since US lawmakers are constantly trying to do it anyway.
  • nightski 7y ago
    It's not a mystery at all. But that does not address the wealth inequality. It just provides bare necessities to the poor (which is a great thing, it's just not what I was talking about).
    • jandrese 7y ago
      Taking money from the top of the wealth gap and putting at the bottom seems like it should reduce the gap by simple mathematics.
      • nightski 7y ago
        I just don't feel that is the case. Because money given to a poor person will likely be spent on essentials, not saved. The wealth tax will likely be less than what a wealthy person makes in capital gains/dividends each year so meanwhile their fortunes are growing. So while it definitely helps the poor, it's not going to tighten that gap. Something more fundamental needs to be done with corporations and how disproportional the rewards are to the owners/shareholders and the employees themselves. I have no idea what this would actually look like though.
  • Pigo 7y ago
    I agree that many programs/departments need more funding, but the places with the most money seem to be doing the worst. It seems like more money is only part of the problem. I think if they showed better efficiency and results, the public would be much more inclined to contribute. There's a lot of cynicism from witnessing so much waste and mismanagement.
  • mindcrime 7y ago
    Yeah, it is a total mystery how adequately funding social welfare programs could somehow help the poor. If the government is going to steal my money, I'd like to think that it would go to something like that But in reality it goes to enriching the corrupt bureaucrats and politicians that make the rules and run the systems.
• JohnFen 7y ago
  The argument for a higher tax on income above a certain level is that it helps prevent tyranny. In the US, anyway, wealth equals power. Great wealth accumulated in few hands shifts a great deal of power over the nation from the populace to those hands. Without some constraint, this poses a real threat to overall freedom and liberty.
  • commandlinefan 7y ago
    You say that wealth accumulation poses a (vague, potential, in the future) threat to overall freedom and liberty... but arbitrary wealth redistribution poses an immediate, obvious threat to overall freedom and liberty _right now_.
    • JohnFen 7y ago
      The threat is not vague, potential, or in the future. It has happened in the past (which is why the tax code addressed it), and it is happening again.
    • skitout 7y ago
      Wealth accumulation and inequality poses problems right now, for example IMF says inequality Seriously Damages Growth... Wealth accumulation also means other people does not have this money, with all the problems associated - including a lots of death by suicide. Many free-marketeer are also against wealth accumulation (+ inheritance) as its gives unfair advantages on the market, ruin the meritocracy... I don't see a tax that will have a little impact on the lifestyle of the wealthy as an threat to overall freedom and liberty...
• enraged_camel 7y ago
  >> it takes money from the wealthy and feeds it to the government. As opposed to...?
  • iso1824 7y ago
    giving more money to the wealthy, which is the normal way that the world works
    • matheusmoreira 7y ago
      Giving money to the government is the same thing as giving it to the wealthy. Example: trillions of dollars in student loans have been captured by private education.
      • glogla 7y ago
        The depends - in some cases, there are very entrenched rents that mean money that should go to the people actually go to the wealthy. Like US healthcare, or US education or actual rents. And of course, some times the money goes to the wealthy immediately - like when it's spent on missiles that murder people on other continents. But some parts of the world can somehow make things like healthcare and education rent-free - spent money actually help people and not just add to endless dragon hoards. It's a long uphill battle of course, but it's possible. EDIT: this is why I think UBI is unfeasible without bigger societal changes - it would end up just subsidising the landlords.
  • gdix 7y ago
    Letting people keep the money that they earned.
    • enraged_camel 7y ago
      Letting the people keep the money they earned on the backs of others, you mean. Because that's what is needed to hoard the enormous concentrations amounts of wealth that are proposed for higher taxation.
• qntmfred 7y ago
  this is why Andrew Yang is running for President on the Freedom Dividend. Solve wealth inequality and the social problems attached to it, abolish poverty, without feeding the government extra revenue that could go to waste (aka spent on wars)
  • kevingadd 7y ago
    I think you'll find our governments will never, ever fail to find the money they need for wars. The "freedom dividend" may do some good but it's never going to abolish poverty or fix wealth inequality without lots of big systemic changes. How would giving everyone a fixed amount remotely "solve" wealth inequality when you still have even hundreds of billionaires out there?
    • Konnstann 7y ago
      "solving" wealth inequality doesn't mean making everyone's wealth equal though, I think the problem lies with the inability to afford housing, food, and healthcare. If people are able to comfortably live I doubt they'd care that some people have way more money than them.
  • keanzu 7y ago
    “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money” -Alexis De Tocqueville
    • qntmfred 7y ago
      bribes are conditional
• WhompingWindows 7y ago
  1. Held wealth past a certain threshold (500k? 1 million?) will be taxed at X% yearly. 2. US budgets get a huge new source of Y revenue, to balance current deficits, pay off debts, or fund progressive programs that help the needy. How is that not helpful? It wouldn't help most HN users, it would help children, the elderly, sick, disabled, etc. It depends on the legislation, you can funnel the funds or you can keep them general purpose.
  • commandlinefan 7y ago
    > Held wealth past a certain threshold (500k? 1 million?) will be taxed at X% yearly. By definition, the revenue stream will run out. You tax, say, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates until their net worth is exactly $500,000. Then, next year, they make $50,000, so you tax it again and their net worth is now exactly $500,000. Nobody else can ever pass that magic threshold once everybody’s been leveled down to it (unless they play games with offshore accounts in which case you still can’t get it). Now you have progressive social programs that rely on a steady stream of billions of dollars of confiscated wealth and nowhere to get it from.
    • dorchadas 7y ago
      Notice they said "x%", not "100%". It's not like they're taking all the extra money. Rich people will still have more, and still be able to get richer, but a higher percentage of that is going to help the disadvantage (which the technology rich people developed often hurt).
• keanzu 7y ago
  "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." -Reagan
  • glogla 7y ago
    It's not surprising that monster like Reagan who destroyed millions of lives through his terrible "economic" policies has stupid quite like this.
• munk-a 7y ago
  This is a wholly American problem - in Europe the view of the government isn't as the most efficient actor but certainly one that is acting responsibly to provide needed services that benefit the nation - in America the government is viewed as a garbage can on fire that money is continuously thrown into because that fire is heating some water that funds the military and we all sort of accept that if the military collapsed things would be bad while concurrently thinking that this might be the absolutely worst way to do things... the weird thing is that in America that's absolutely correct, because everyone expects rampant government corruption it isn't scorned but lauded when people managed to defraud the government and get away with it (Oh, you managed to get a refund on your taxes after making 270B revenue - good on ya Amazon, you're really screwing us over and making it look good). The result is that acceptance of this being inevitable has led to apathy towards the problem and gradual acceptance as contractors massively defraud the government, with calls for accountability being coloured as wasteful by those contractors and all that being accepted by the populace at face value. So, America's way is stupid and idiotic and it's not clear that we can actually fix it - but, we need to try.
• svachalek 7y ago
  This is not likely to actually happen, but I'd put it toward finally updating our creaky infrastructure. It would create jobs and put off the eventual reckoning of a power or water grid failure.
• 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  Every time the government is involved they fuck it up. They are incompetent and make a career out of being maliciously incompetent. They will spend the money on stupid programs and unnecessary foreign wars. We already cannot trust the government with our tax revenue. These sickos are salivating over additional income to do extremely immoral things with.
  • kevingadd 7y ago
    We've cut taxes repeatedly in the US and repeatedly cut benefits spending but we're still starting new wars. Starving the beast isn't going to fix anything, there's always money for war. If they're really salivating over additional income why aren't taxes increasing? (Other than on the poor, of course) Want to stop wars? Stop wars, directly. Then once the war expenses are gone, you have way less government spending (we drop an OBSCENE amount of money on the military every year) and you can easily argue that the brand new surplus should be returned to the taxpayer via tax cuts (or via benefits program expansion). Instead, we have everyone arguing over whether we can "afford" to make university cheaper or get uninsured people onto health plans even though those things are a massive benefit to the people and potentially even cost-neutral. Meanwhile, we cut taxes, to make absolutely sure the only thing we can afford is more wars.
    • 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
      > If they're really salivating over additional income why aren't taxes increasing? Because a socialist hasn’t been elected President yet. World will wake up when that happens, and will no longer buy your funny money IOUs. When that happens I will happily watch you tear yourselves apart. I’ll be nowhere near this country when that happens.