5 ms·

"Critics call the surcharge a blatant attempt at redistribution of wealth..." Um, yes? "Critics call John Travolta 'blatantly an actor, playing parts in movies

"Critics call the surcharge a blatant attempt at redistribution of wealth..." Um, yes? "Critics call John Travolta 'blatantly an actor, playing parts in movies.'"

spinningslate 6y ago
that was my reaction too. I don't live in the US, so this is an honest question. Most of the comments here are disparaging about the policy. Is that because: 1. you agree with the principle of addressing wealth polarisation, but don't agree with tax as the mechanism? (in general or the proposed model specifically) 2. you don't agree that increasing wealth polarisation needs to be stopped/reversed? 3. something else? Thanks. -- Edit: fixed the numbering, forgot I wasn't writing markdown!
- d33lio 6y ago
  Most motivated people with the means to scrape enough cash together to even try to start something dislike legislation and the idea of "redistribution" because usually these plans raise far less money than politicians think, but moreover the politicians coming up with these plans have already proven they have no clue how to spend taxpayer dollars. To be frank, as a supporter of capitalism - I generally support the notion of high taxes in europe because the populations who pay these taxes clearly see HUGE societal benefits as a result of half their income evaporating. There also seems to be more respect of the people's money from these gov'ts regarding how they spend taxpayer money is spent and with a clear aim to help the people NOT partisan goals, wars etc. I may be incorrect here (open to correction) but it seems like US politicians (federally at least) seem entitled to taxpayer dollars. Most forget that until WW2 the idea of federal witholding simply wasn't a thing and many middle class families were flushed with savings. Unfortunately, both sides are at fault in the US. The only way this is going to change for the better is to cease the cycle of one political party only pandering to it's base instead of motivated and able americans.
  - RangerScience 6y ago
    > to cease the cycle sooo ranked choice voting? :D
  - stvswn 6y ago
    I don't really agree with you characterization of where our taxes go -- federally, 64% of the government budget is related to mandatory spending, almost all of which is social security, medicare, and medicaid. 15% of the budget goes to the military. That makes the U.S. the largest military spender in the world. 15% of the budget may seem expensive, but it's not fair to compare it to Western Europe. NATO is a big reason why western europe does not need to spend more on their own defense. I believe that's a good thing - it's in the United States' best interest to avoid rearmament in Europe, and Europe has never been at (relative) peace for so long as it has been since the emergence of the post-WWII consensus -- but they do in fact have more money for more non-defense discretionary spending than we do as a result. The Euro area spends 1.4% of GDP on military spending while being protected by an umbrella of security provided by the U.S., which spends 3.7% of GDP on the military. Again, I think this is good for the U.S., we benefit from the liberal world order that we enforce, but I think it has to be taken into context when the EU is described as a great example of how to spend tax money on wise social programs.
    - d33lio 6y ago
      "mandatory spending" - right I take a bigger issue with programs like student loan debt forgiveness which would be a slap in the face to poor people like myself who worked their way through college in order to no longer be burdened by loans. Not to mention the fact that without a refresh of regulation on universities (specifically graduate degrees) loan forgiveness would just further embolden universities to increase tuition. The issue with taxes in this country is that the budget is expected to always be met WITH excess. That's the disgusting part, the assumption that "well we can go over and shell out benefits to our beneficiaries (people who voted for us) and the american tax payer will foot the bill" is atrocious. Both parties are guilty of this, however I also find it ironic that Americans (specifically privileged americans) seem to think that "taxing the rich" is a solution, when a) rich people already pay an overwhelming majority of taxes, b) the rich will always find ways to out-smart the government and avoid taxes they deem as unfit and c) even if you taxed earners above $400k 95% of their income it would only amount to maybe a trillion dollars - so not even close to bringing the national deficit down.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  In a basic way, all taxes are "wealth redistribution". If you tax every taxpayer $0.02 for public roads and non-tax payers get to use them, well, that's redistribution - and nobody (seriously) has problems with this. The problem comes with policies of the form "We're going to tax [some wealthy group] and redistribute the money to [some other group]". There's a few sets of issues: 1. The money never gets to the downstream group. It gets eaten up by fees and processing, etc. Great for the middleman but not anyone else. If it does get to the downstream group, the total amount is gravely reduced. 2. You have to make a very strong case for taxing [some wealthy group]. Simply having wealth doesn't seem a good basis for taxation - "You're successful so we're going to charge you more taxes, maybe next time you won't be so successful" Obviously there are other arguments that can be made - the wealthy stole their money, or gained it illictly, etc - but those arguments tend to be individual cases and don't allow acting against an entire class of people unless you go into weird theoretical territory. 3. Solving "wealth disparity" isn't a meaningful goal. A thousand homeless folks all in the same campground have no wealth disparity - that doesn't mean you've improved their life. Simply funneling money doesn't solve problems, and making the end goal to shift around bits of paper is mistaking a process for a goal. If your goal is "We should provide a base level of healthcare to those who can't afford it" and can name an actual price for that, then that's a meaningful goal and you can tax appropriately if voters approve it.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I think there are essentially three schools of thought. 1.) wealth/income inequality is inherently wrong, so redistribution is automatically good. private property is theft! 2.) whatever people get paid is theirs, fair and square. therefore redistribution is automatically bad. taxation is theft! 3.) some people are genuinely much more productive than others, and their pay may reflect that. at the same time, people can acquire more than their "fair share" by exploiting vulnerabilities in the system. from the perspective of 3.), redistribution via tax looks like a dirty hack to mitigate the consequences of a deeper problem. it makes things a little better in the short term, but it doesn't address the root question: why are some people able to capture outsized compensation for their work? but hey, sometimes you have an urgent issue and the quick fix is all you have time to implement.
  - danans 6y ago
    > from the perspective of 3.), redistribution via tax looks like a dirty hack to mitigate the consequences of a deeper problem. Scenarios 1 and 2 don't exist in the real world. They are just theoretical models. Every law is a "dirty" hack, because the deeper problem is the nature of humans - which is to hoard privilege, wealth, power, and security - and the way that influences their societies. Almost every non natural constraint civilization has imposed on humans has been to either support one group's hold on power and security (i.e primogeniture in feudal societies, taxes imposed on non-believers in the state religion) or the opposite: to redistribute power and security across the broader population (Magna Carta, The New Deal, Social Security / Medicare in the US).
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    I think #3 is close, but it's not just that some users concentrate a disproportionate amount of wealth. It's also the quirk of human society that great hoarding of wealth winds up distorting it such that economic worth becomes directly tied to human worth. This is undesirable generally, and taxes are the main mechanism for the government to regulate this tendency.
  - thomasahle 6y ago
    > 1.) wealth/income inequality is inherently wrong, so redistribution is automatically good. private property is theft! There is a version of this that doesn't care about "right and wrong": Wealth inequality may happen for good and natural reasons, but too large quantities lead to a worse society for wveyone, and so redistribution is one way to reduce it.
- stvswn 6y ago
  I find it interesting that you frame income inequality as "wealth polarisation." Are you implying a bimodal distribution of some sort? My personal theory of "inequality" is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing. A distribution of income levels will always have a long right tail as you cannot make negative income but there is no theoretical limit to the maximum income. If all wages grow by the same relative amount, you would see increased inequality. I think it is a problem if wages aren't growing for all portions of the distribution, but that is precisely because of the lack of growth for some and not because of the existence of growth for others. So, yes, I do think that growing income inequality may be a societal issue, but only if it is an effect of wage stagnation for middle and lower classes (which it is). I do not believe that the rich getting richer is the cause of the stagnation, though. If anything, automation and globalization have been the main reasons for stagnation among middle and lower income levels. Automation and globalization may also be the cause of the continued growth in the very high wages. Even if they share the same underlying cause, one didn't cause the other. I understand, but don't agree with, the argument that increased inequality causes social problems on its own. According to this theory, as I understand it, you can't have the differences among people be too great because it will cause too much power imbalance and resentment and eventually the masses will rise up and destroy the system from within. I don't agree, I think social problems come from the difference in reality compared to expectations of how one thought their future would go -- in other words, it is much worse for someone to see low wage growth in a stagnant economy where their standard of living is declining relative to their parents than it is to see moderate wage growth in a growing economy but there are some other people getting super, super rich. I don't think one's life relative to rich people is that important compared to one's life relative to personal expectations. So, in that sense, I don't agree with redistribution schemes that intend on fixing a symptom of a problem (that rich people exist) rather than fixing a cause (wages are stagnant). If the idea isn't to just reduce the inequality, but rather to supplement lower incomes -- there is absolutely no version of "taxing the mega rich" that we could do which would raise enough money to redistribute to the rest of workers such that it compensates them for the lack of wage growth at the lower end. It can't be done, there's not enough money. Eventually you have to tax the (productive) middle class. From that perspective, I prefer policies that focus on wage growth for the lower and middle classes, even if that's a harder problem to solve.
- noobermin 6y ago
  The people posting here are the ones who are going to be taxed, that's why they are complaining.
conanbatt 6y ago
Well, they could decide to burn the collected tax money while achieving this same goal.
smolder 6y ago
It's funny/sad that people act like "redistribution of wealth" is a scary concept. Wealth is constantly being redistributed by commerce, and mostly it is being redistributed to the people with the biggest piles already. Overpricing products, underpaying workers, lotteries, taxes, rents, and investor/borrower arrangements are all mechanisms to shift wealth around.
- nelsondev 6y ago
  A trade between two parties is not a redistribution of wealth . If I buy a car for $10,000, then I now have a car worth $10,000, and the seller has $10,000. Wealth was not redistributed, we’re both where we started.
  - smolder 6y ago
    When the price isn't optimal, which it never really is, it's not an equal exchange of value. The typical tautology toted that if you spend X then it's worth X is just willfully missing the point that there's such thing as a bad deal. When you build bad deals into a system such that some group of people only has bad deals as options, you are able to extract wealth from them. That's what life is for many people -- a series of bad deals with no other options.
newfriend 6y ago
Taking away from productive people, and giving to unproductive people is not a recipe for success.

"Critics call the surcharge a blatant attempt at redistribution of wealth..." Um, yes? "Critics call John Travolta 'blatantly an actor, playing parts in movies.'"

spinningslate 6y ago

that was my reaction too. I don't live in the US, so this is an honest question. Most of the comments here are disparaging about the policy. Is that because: 1. you agree with the principle of addressing wealth polarisation, but don't agree with tax as the mechanism? (in general or the proposed model specifically) 2. you don't agree that increasing wealth polarisation needs to be stopped/reversed? 3. something else? Thanks. -- Edit: fixed the numbering, forgot I wasn't writing markdown!

d33lio 6y ago
Most motivated people with the means to scrape enough cash together to even try to start something dislike legislation and the idea of "redistribution" because usually these plans raise far less money than politicians think, but moreover the politicians coming up with these plans have already proven they have no clue how to spend taxpayer dollars. To be frank, as a supporter of capitalism - I generally support the notion of high taxes in europe because the populations who pay these taxes clearly see HUGE societal benefits as a result of half their income evaporating. There also seems to be more respect of the people's money from these gov'ts regarding how they spend taxpayer money is spent and with a clear aim to help the people NOT partisan goals, wars etc. I may be incorrect here (open to correction) but it seems like US politicians (federally at least) seem entitled to taxpayer dollars. Most forget that until WW2 the idea of federal witholding simply wasn't a thing and many middle class families were flushed with savings. Unfortunately, both sides are at fault in the US. The only way this is going to change for the better is to cease the cycle of one political party only pandering to it's base instead of motivated and able americans.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  > to cease the cycle sooo ranked choice voting? :D
- stvswn 6y ago
  I don't really agree with you characterization of where our taxes go -- federally, 64% of the government budget is related to mandatory spending, almost all of which is social security, medicare, and medicaid. 15% of the budget goes to the military. That makes the U.S. the largest military spender in the world. 15% of the budget may seem expensive, but it's not fair to compare it to Western Europe. NATO is a big reason why western europe does not need to spend more on their own defense. I believe that's a good thing - it's in the United States' best interest to avoid rearmament in Europe, and Europe has never been at (relative) peace for so long as it has been since the emergence of the post-WWII consensus -- but they do in fact have more money for more non-defense discretionary spending than we do as a result. The Euro area spends 1.4% of GDP on military spending while being protected by an umbrella of security provided by the U.S., which spends 3.7% of GDP on the military. Again, I think this is good for the U.S., we benefit from the liberal world order that we enforce, but I think it has to be taken into context when the EU is described as a great example of how to spend tax money on wise social programs.
  - d33lio 6y ago
    "mandatory spending" - right I take a bigger issue with programs like student loan debt forgiveness which would be a slap in the face to poor people like myself who worked their way through college in order to no longer be burdened by loans. Not to mention the fact that without a refresh of regulation on universities (specifically graduate degrees) loan forgiveness would just further embolden universities to increase tuition. The issue with taxes in this country is that the budget is expected to always be met WITH excess. That's the disgusting part, the assumption that "well we can go over and shell out benefits to our beneficiaries (people who voted for us) and the american tax payer will foot the bill" is atrocious. Both parties are guilty of this, however I also find it ironic that Americans (specifically privileged americans) seem to think that "taxing the rich" is a solution, when a) rich people already pay an overwhelming majority of taxes, b) the rich will always find ways to out-smart the government and avoid taxes they deem as unfit and c) even if you taxed earners above $400k 95% of their income it would only amount to maybe a trillion dollars - so not even close to bringing the national deficit down.
vorpalhex 6y ago
In a basic way, all taxes are "wealth redistribution". If you tax every taxpayer $0.02 for public roads and non-tax payers get to use them, well, that's redistribution - and nobody (seriously) has problems with this. The problem comes with policies of the form "We're going to tax [some wealthy group] and redistribute the money to [some other group]". There's a few sets of issues: 1. The money never gets to the downstream group. It gets eaten up by fees and processing, etc. Great for the middleman but not anyone else. If it does get to the downstream group, the total amount is gravely reduced. 2. You have to make a very strong case for taxing [some wealthy group]. Simply having wealth doesn't seem a good basis for taxation - "You're successful so we're going to charge you more taxes, maybe next time you won't be so successful" Obviously there are other arguments that can be made - the wealthy stole their money, or gained it illictly, etc - but those arguments tend to be individual cases and don't allow acting against an entire class of people unless you go into weird theoretical territory. 3. Solving "wealth disparity" isn't a meaningful goal. A thousand homeless folks all in the same campground have no wealth disparity - that doesn't mean you've improved their life. Simply funneling money doesn't solve problems, and making the end goal to shift around bits of paper is mistaking a process for a goal. If your goal is "We should provide a base level of healthcare to those who can't afford it" and can name an actual price for that, then that's a meaningful goal and you can tax appropriately if voters approve it.
leetcrew 6y ago
I think there are essentially three schools of thought. 1.) wealth/income inequality is inherently wrong, so redistribution is automatically good. private property is theft! 2.) whatever people get paid is theirs, fair and square. therefore redistribution is automatically bad. taxation is theft! 3.) some people are genuinely much more productive than others, and their pay may reflect that. at the same time, people can acquire more than their "fair share" by exploiting vulnerabilities in the system. from the perspective of 3.), redistribution via tax looks like a dirty hack to mitigate the consequences of a deeper problem. it makes things a little better in the short term, but it doesn't address the root question: why are some people able to capture outsized compensation for their work? but hey, sometimes you have an urgent issue and the quick fix is all you have time to implement.
- danans 6y ago
  > from the perspective of 3.), redistribution via tax looks like a dirty hack to mitigate the consequences of a deeper problem. Scenarios 1 and 2 don't exist in the real world. They are just theoretical models. Every law is a "dirty" hack, because the deeper problem is the nature of humans - which is to hoard privilege, wealth, power, and security - and the way that influences their societies. Almost every non natural constraint civilization has imposed on humans has been to either support one group's hold on power and security (i.e primogeniture in feudal societies, taxes imposed on non-believers in the state religion) or the opposite: to redistribute power and security across the broader population (Magna Carta, The New Deal, Social Security / Medicare in the US).
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  I think #3 is close, but it's not just that some users concentrate a disproportionate amount of wealth. It's also the quirk of human society that great hoarding of wealth winds up distorting it such that economic worth becomes directly tied to human worth. This is undesirable generally, and taxes are the main mechanism for the government to regulate this tendency.
- thomasahle 6y ago
  > 1.) wealth/income inequality is inherently wrong, so redistribution is automatically good. private property is theft! There is a version of this that doesn't care about "right and wrong": Wealth inequality may happen for good and natural reasons, but too large quantities lead to a worse society for wveyone, and so redistribution is one way to reduce it.
stvswn 6y ago
I find it interesting that you frame income inequality as "wealth polarisation." Are you implying a bimodal distribution of some sort? My personal theory of "inequality" is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing. A distribution of income levels will always have a long right tail as you cannot make negative income but there is no theoretical limit to the maximum income. If all wages grow by the same relative amount, you would see increased inequality. I think it is a problem if wages aren't growing for all portions of the distribution, but that is precisely because of the lack of growth for some and not because of the existence of growth for others. So, yes, I do think that growing income inequality may be a societal issue, but only if it is an effect of wage stagnation for middle and lower classes (which it is). I do not believe that the rich getting richer is the cause of the stagnation, though. If anything, automation and globalization have been the main reasons for stagnation among middle and lower income levels. Automation and globalization may also be the cause of the continued growth in the very high wages. Even if they share the same underlying cause, one didn't cause the other. I understand, but don't agree with, the argument that increased inequality causes social problems on its own. According to this theory, as I understand it, you can't have the differences among people be too great because it will cause too much power imbalance and resentment and eventually the masses will rise up and destroy the system from within. I don't agree, I think social problems come from the difference in reality compared to expectations of how one thought their future would go -- in other words, it is much worse for someone to see low wage growth in a stagnant economy where their standard of living is declining relative to their parents than it is to see moderate wage growth in a growing economy but there are some other people getting super, super rich. I don't think one's life relative to rich people is that important compared to one's life relative to personal expectations. So, in that sense, I don't agree with redistribution schemes that intend on fixing a symptom of a problem (that rich people exist) rather than fixing a cause (wages are stagnant). If the idea isn't to just reduce the inequality, but rather to supplement lower incomes -- there is absolutely no version of "taxing the mega rich" that we could do which would raise enough money to redistribute to the rest of workers such that it compensates them for the lack of wage growth at the lower end. It can't be done, there's not enough money. Eventually you have to tax the (productive) middle class. From that perspective, I prefer policies that focus on wage growth for the lower and middle classes, even if that's a harder problem to solve.
noobermin 6y ago
The people posting here are the ones who are going to be taxed, that's why they are complaining.

conanbatt 6y ago

Well, they could decide to burn the collected tax money while achieving this same goal.

smolder 6y ago

It's funny/sad that people act like "redistribution of wealth" is a scary concept. Wealth is constantly being redistributed by commerce, and mostly it is being redistributed to the people with the biggest piles already. Overpricing products, underpaying workers, lotteries, taxes, rents, and investor/borrower arrangements are all mechanisms to shift wealth around.

nelsondev 6y ago
A trade between two parties is not a redistribution of wealth . If I buy a car for $10,000, then I now have a car worth $10,000, and the seller has $10,000. Wealth was not redistributed, we’re both where we started.
- smolder 6y ago
  When the price isn't optimal, which it never really is, it's not an equal exchange of value. The typical tautology toted that if you spend X then it's worth X is just willfully missing the point that there's such thing as a bad deal. When you build bad deals into a system such that some group of people only has bad deals as options, you are able to extract wealth from them. That's what life is for many people -- a series of bad deals with no other options.

newfriend 6y ago

Taking away from productive people, and giving to unproductive people is not a recipe for success.