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Because society helps you grow your wealth faster. Better trained workers, happy and healthy workers, a functional medical system. These are things that help y

Because society helps you grow your wealth faster. Better trained workers, happy and healthy workers, a functional medical system. These are things that help your business create more wealth. As the grandfather comment said, it's wanting the 30c bonus without paying the 20c fee.

imgabe 6y ago
Society may make wealth in general grow faster, there is no guarantee that it will help your specific wealth grow faster. You pay a wealth manager because they manage your wealth, specifically. They examine what opportunities are suitable for you based on your goals and risk profile and seek those out. "Society" doesn't do anything like that. Let alone the fact that you are already paying taxes: income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, etc. etc. to pay for all of the benefits that society provides. If the wealth tax is going to replace some of those, then sure maybe we can talk about whether it's more efficient or effective than any of those. If we're just going to keep piling on tax after tax "because society" maybe we should ask if society needs to get its act together and use the tax revenue it already gets more efficiently.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  1) Your reasoning, even if potentially valid (I don't think it is) is incredibly selfish and leads to the exact scenario of rising inequality that we have today. 2) Social benefits accrue to everyone, including wealthy people. They just accrue equally to everyone rather than unequally to your specific wealth. That's an important distinction here because you're basically saying you should get favoritism for your wealth because you happen to have more of it. That's a bit of a weird stance. 3) In case it's not clear, the US doesn't currently collect enough tax revenue to actually pay for a well-functioning society. Take a look at [1]. If you want a first-world society on par with Denmark or Sweden, guess what... [1] https://www1.compareyourcountry.org/tax-revenues https://www1.compareyourcountry.org/tax-revenues
  - imgabe 6y ago
    > Social benefits accrue to everyone, including wealthy people. They just accrue equally to everyone rather than unequally to your specific wealth. That's an important distinction here because you're basically saying you should get favoritism for your wealth because you happen to have more of it. That's a bit of a weird stance. I'm not arguing for any kind of favoritism. You're saying we should welcome a wealth tax as a kind of management fee. I'm only pointing out that that is not the case. The government does not have any responsibility to act in your specific interest the way a wealth manager does. It is a false equivalence. > In case it's not clear, the US doesn't currently collect enough tax revenue to actually pay for a well-functioning society. Take a look at [1]. If you want a first-world society on par with Denmark or Sweden, guess what... Your chart shows taxation as a percentage of GDP. There are two ways that your tax revenue might be a low percentage of GDP, one is low taxes, the other is high GDP. The US also has a much higher GDP than any of these countries. Are you arguing that the amount of money needed to "pay for a well-functioning society" is proportional to the GDP? That if our society produces lots of valuable goods and services then this means that it needs to spend more government money? Intuitively I would think the opposite would be true. A high GDP means a lot of people are producing valuable things, which should mean they need less assistance from the government.
    - mdorazio 6y ago
      Wait, what? You say you're not arguing for favoritism, and then you say that it's a false equivalence because the government doesn't have a responsibility to act in your specific interest. Acting in your specific interest is favoritism. You're not being consistent here. I see what you're thinking on GDP, but the things a wealth tax would go to fund (and does go to fund where it exists today) are percentage of GDP services. Things like healthcare, education, and a social safety net. These services naturally rise in cost in accordance with GDP because standard of living is supposed to rise with GDP per capita as well. This is why topics like healthcare cost are just about always framed in per capita or % of GDP terms. It's just that in the US our inequality distorts things considerably. You're also implicitly conflating averages with medians. It is 100% possible that a high GDP reflects that monetary value is being produced by a small portion of the population (possibly by exploiting workers), while the rest of the population needs more government assistance. There's a strong case that the US embodies this situation more and more over time.

imgabe 6y ago

Society may make wealth in general grow faster, there is no guarantee that it will help your specific wealth grow faster. You pay a wealth manager because they manage your wealth, specifically. They examine what opportunities are suitable for you based on your goals and risk profile and seek those out. "Society" doesn't do anything like that. Let alone the fact that you are already paying taxes: income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, etc. etc. to pay for all of the benefits that society provides. If the wealth tax is going to replace some of those, then sure maybe we can talk about whether it's more efficient or effective than any of those. If we're just going to keep piling on tax after tax "because society" maybe we should ask if society needs to get its act together and use the tax revenue it already gets more efficiently.

mdorazio 6y ago
1) Your reasoning, even if potentially valid (I don't think it is) is incredibly selfish and leads to the exact scenario of rising inequality that we have today. 2) Social benefits accrue to everyone, including wealthy people. They just accrue equally to everyone rather than unequally to your specific wealth. That's an important distinction here because you're basically saying you should get favoritism for your wealth because you happen to have more of it. That's a bit of a weird stance. 3) In case it's not clear, the US doesn't currently collect enough tax revenue to actually pay for a well-functioning society. Take a look at [1]. If you want a first-world society on par with Denmark or Sweden, guess what... [1] https://www1.compareyourcountry.org/tax-revenues https://www1.compareyourcountry.org/tax-revenues
- imgabe 6y ago
  > Social benefits accrue to everyone, including wealthy people. They just accrue equally to everyone rather than unequally to your specific wealth. That's an important distinction here because you're basically saying you should get favoritism for your wealth because you happen to have more of it. That's a bit of a weird stance. I'm not arguing for any kind of favoritism. You're saying we should welcome a wealth tax as a kind of management fee. I'm only pointing out that that is not the case. The government does not have any responsibility to act in your specific interest the way a wealth manager does. It is a false equivalence. > In case it's not clear, the US doesn't currently collect enough tax revenue to actually pay for a well-functioning society. Take a look at [1]. If you want a first-world society on par with Denmark or Sweden, guess what... Your chart shows taxation as a percentage of GDP. There are two ways that your tax revenue might be a low percentage of GDP, one is low taxes, the other is high GDP. The US also has a much higher GDP than any of these countries. Are you arguing that the amount of money needed to "pay for a well-functioning society" is proportional to the GDP? That if our society produces lots of valuable goods and services then this means that it needs to spend more government money? Intuitively I would think the opposite would be true. A high GDP means a lot of people are producing valuable things, which should mean they need less assistance from the government.
  - mdorazio 6y ago
    Wait, what? You say you're not arguing for favoritism, and then you say that it's a false equivalence because the government doesn't have a responsibility to act in your specific interest. Acting in your specific interest is favoritism. You're not being consistent here. I see what you're thinking on GDP, but the things a wealth tax would go to fund (and does go to fund where it exists today) are percentage of GDP services. Things like healthcare, education, and a social safety net. These services naturally rise in cost in accordance with GDP because standard of living is supposed to rise with GDP per capita as well. This is why topics like healthcare cost are just about always framed in per capita or % of GDP terms. It's just that in the US our inequality distorts things considerably. You're also implicitly conflating averages with medians. It is 100% possible that a high GDP reflects that monetary value is being produced by a small portion of the population (possibly by exploiting workers), while the rest of the population needs more government assistance. There's a strong case that the US embodies this situation more and more over time.