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I think any wealth (not income!) over something like 1M should be confiscated. :) There's no reason to have that much money and there's no way you personally ha

I think any wealth (not income!) over something like 1M should be confiscated. :) There's no reason to have that much money and there's no way you personally have generated that wealth, most likely you just invested money early enough in something sucessful to extort money from it. This may sound provocating but it's actually quite a sound model, but which would also mean reconstructing what we mean by the economy... No capitalistic ownership (eg investment is at most a loan, you don't get propriety shares in exchange), no for-profit renting, ... And obviously funnelling all that money and economic capital to some central state isn't gonna go well so levels below and above the state need to be reinforced.

eloff 5y ago
This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history. First off you can't buy a home in some parts with that kind of money. But that aside, you'd stifle most incentive to innovate, provide jobs, and live in your country. Anyone who thought they might pass your 1M limit will just leave to a country that doesn't do that. No offense, but I've never been interested in living in the US and you'd have to pay me quite a lot to accept a green card. I certainly wouldn't take it if offered freely, because it comes with a major tax liability. There are nicer places in the world by a variety of metrics. So if you chase away everyone with wealth you'll be left paying 100% of the taxes instead of 60% and with no jobs to pay them with. Good luck with that! Look to Soviet Russia, Cuba, Venezuela for examples of how that plays out.
- lapinot 5y ago
  > This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history. Thanks for the compliment. I guess you must know better than Picketty (he doesn't exactly say what i said, but does promote very aggressive taxation of capital, which is the same goal more gently said). Go study for yourselve before insulting right and left. I know i did, i'm reading monthly issues of "le monde diplomatique". > First off you can't buy a home in some parts with that kind of money. Perhaps instead of 1M$ you'd prefer if i say "the equivalent of 100K ton of wheat at retail price"? Obviously i'm talking from the perspective of my local living standard which is west-european 500M people city. > No offense, but I've never been interested in living in the US None taken, me neither. > So if you chase away everyone with wealth you'll be left paying 100% of the taxes instead of 60% and with no jobs to pay them with. Good luck with that! Ok so that's the only argument of your comment. It has been debunked time and time again that for individuals, fleeing a country because of taxes is minimal. Corporations do that. And it can be fought by taxing international transactions (which every sane economy but the EU does anyway). Yes, in the end, it becomes a frontal fight between the financial and industrial establishment and your local economy, which obviously will need some negotiation because they can hurt you, but let it be clear that without them, it would work quite well (and in reverse, in my economy, it would be quite hard to practically be capitalistic). I don't even want to eradicate capitalism, i'd just want to not mainly depend on it for living and tip the balance to a much more reasonable state. > Look to Soviet Russia, Cuba, Venezuela for examples of how that plays out. You realize that my arguments were communist-ish? You're not gonna scare me off pointing at these countries! Obviously things went bad because the liberals virtually control the world, so these countries had to fight for everything, which breaks at some point. And obviously i'm not defending dictatorship (and please note i'm not using this strawman of the numereous capitalistic dictatorship against you).
  - lapinot 5y ago
    forgot to answer about jobs: Jobs don't need to be "created". Either there's stuff to do for people to live correctly or there isn't. If there is, try to find people who'd like to do it. If nobody wants, either people don't really need it, or it's a chore and organize it fairly and locally (division of labour makes no sense for non-qualified chores, it's just a byproduct of inquality: i'm not taking out my neighboors trash, what we could do tho is mutualize our chores). Then distribute the result of this work fairly. Everything else than life-support can be done without too much constraints, but i strongly believe that even that won't "naturally" be too much capitalistic.
    - eloff 5y ago
      That's pretty clueless about how jobs are created in the economy.
      - lapinot 5y ago
        Yes, i too believe you are wrong and want to express it without substance.
  - andrepd 5y ago
    >I guess you must know better than Picketty >(he doesn't exactly say what i said, but does promote very aggressive taxation of capital, which is the same goal more gently said). Well true, he doesn't say exactly what you said, because he doesn't anything like what you're saying. Taxing wealth above the relatively low ceiling of 1M USD at 100% would be ridiculous. He is, though, in favour of a progressive tax system that, crucially, reduces inequality below “tolerable” levels, where an “intolerable level” is a level which results in imbalances of power which undermine or destroy democratic rule and oppress those without wealth. So his practicable suggestion is a global coordinated effort to tax wealth and reduce inequality, which his utopian suggestion is a trans-national socialist economy with true democratic control over the economy.
    - lapinot 5y ago

eloff 5y ago

This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history. First off you can't buy a home in some parts with that kind of money. But that aside, you'd stifle most incentive to innovate, provide jobs, and live in your country. Anyone who thought they might pass your 1M limit will just leave to a country that doesn't do that. No offense, but I've never been interested in living in the US and you'd have to pay me quite a lot to accept a green card. I certainly wouldn't take it if offered freely, because it comes with a major tax liability. There are nicer places in the world by a variety of metrics. So if you chase away everyone with wealth you'll be left paying 100% of the taxes instead of 60% and with no jobs to pay them with. Good luck with that! Look to Soviet Russia, Cuba, Venezuela for examples of how that plays out.

lapinot 5y ago
> This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history. Thanks for the compliment. I guess you must know better than Picketty (he doesn't exactly say what i said, but does promote very aggressive taxation of capital, which is the same goal more gently said). Go study for yourselve before insulting right and left. I know i did, i'm reading monthly issues of "le monde diplomatique". > First off you can't buy a home in some parts with that kind of money. Perhaps instead of 1M$ you'd prefer if i say "the equivalent of 100K ton of wheat at retail price"? Obviously i'm talking from the perspective of my local living standard which is west-european 500M people city. > No offense, but I've never been interested in living in the US None taken, me neither. > So if you chase away everyone with wealth you'll be left paying 100% of the taxes instead of 60% and with no jobs to pay them with. Good luck with that! Ok so that's the only argument of your comment. It has been debunked time and time again that for individuals, fleeing a country because of taxes is minimal. Corporations do that. And it can be fought by taxing international transactions (which every sane economy but the EU does anyway). Yes, in the end, it becomes a frontal fight between the financial and industrial establishment and your local economy, which obviously will need some negotiation because they can hurt you, but let it be clear that without them, it would work quite well (and in reverse, in my economy, it would be quite hard to practically be capitalistic). I don't even want to eradicate capitalism, i'd just want to not mainly depend on it for living and tip the balance to a much more reasonable state. > Look to Soviet Russia, Cuba, Venezuela for examples of how that plays out. You realize that my arguments were communist-ish? You're not gonna scare me off pointing at these countries! Obviously things went bad because the liberals virtually control the world, so these countries had to fight for everything, which breaks at some point. And obviously i'm not defending dictatorship (and please note i'm not using this strawman of the numereous capitalistic dictatorship against you).
- lapinot 5y ago
  forgot to answer about jobs: Jobs don't need to be "created". Either there's stuff to do for people to live correctly or there isn't. If there is, try to find people who'd like to do it. If nobody wants, either people don't really need it, or it's a chore and organize it fairly and locally (division of labour makes no sense for non-qualified chores, it's just a byproduct of inquality: i'm not taking out my neighboors trash, what we could do tho is mutualize our chores). Then distribute the result of this work fairly. Everything else than life-support can be done without too much constraints, but i strongly believe that even that won't "naturally" be too much capitalistic.
  - eloff 5y ago
    That's pretty clueless about how jobs are created in the economy.
    - lapinot 5y ago
      Yes, i too believe you are wrong and want to express it without substance.
- andrepd 5y ago
  >I guess you must know better than Picketty >(he doesn't exactly say what i said, but does promote very aggressive taxation of capital, which is the same goal more gently said). Well true, he doesn't say exactly what you said, because he doesn't anything like what you're saying. Taxing wealth above the relatively low ceiling of 1M USD at 100% would be ridiculous. He is, though, in favour of a progressive tax system that, crucially, reduces inequality below “tolerable” levels, where an “intolerable level” is a level which results in imbalances of power which undermine or destroy democratic rule and oppress those without wealth. So his practicable suggestion is a global coordinated effort to tax wealth and reduce inequality, which his utopian suggestion is a trans-national socialist economy with true democratic control over the economy.
  - lapinot 5y ago