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This misinformation spree of the last few years is really worrying. A wealth tax would be completely disastrous to the US economy. It would cause shares to be a

This misinformation spree of the last few years is really worrying. A wealth tax would be completely disastrous to the US economy. It would cause shares to be a depreciating asset and cause mass selloffs. The rich would still get around them by shoving all share ownership into another corporation that is off-shored into a tax haven country. And no "it's only for the rich" is not a valid argument. Once it's in place it will gradually be expanded downward. (It's exactly how the income tax started.) It will act as yet another wall for the middle class getting into share ownership and preventing retail investors from getting into the market. Politicians and media are also doing things like renaming the wealth tax a "unrealized capital gains tax" to disguise what it really is to mislead the public. Edit: If anything I want to solve wealth inequality (or at least the perception of wealth inequality) so that draconian politicians don't propose draconian laws that would ruin the economy.

danny_codes 5y ago
What would your solution to rising wealth inequality be? Or perhaps you don't think there's a problem?
- mlindner 5y ago
  This isn't even a solution to wealth inequality so I think your question isn't relevant. Wealth inequality is a complex problem and you can't fix it by just taxing people more. To actually answer your question, I don't have a solution, but I also don't think the problem is as bad as people make it out to be. For this article's specific case I'd just patch the simple hole that you can't skip taxes by passing your shares on after you die. As long as the tax basis date isn't reset on inheritance, everything still works. Someone will pay the taxes eventually. It's an easy change and doesn't really change anything for the lives of most people and it makes more rational sense that way. It's basically fixing a bug in the current law.
  - danny_codes 5y ago
    > This isn't even a solution to wealth inequality so I think your question isn't relevant. Wealth inequality is a complex problem and you can't fix it by just taxing people more. Why not? Redistributive wealth tax seems like a reasonable way to accomplish this, along with raising marginal tax rates, closing tax loopholes, and a 100% inheritance tax. Use the excess money for direct investment in material infrastructure, social benefits, and (most importantly) education, and I would imagine the wealth distribution would look quite different in 20 years. We design the economic system we live in. We can change it any time. Capitalism is a human invention: we create the rules to the game. This isn't some law of physics or some truth of the universe.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  $15/hour federal minimum wage to start, combined with Medicare for all, funded via cuts to the military budget.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    More of the US budget already goes to medical care and social services than military. The problem is how inefficiently it's used.
    - splix 5y ago
      I've got an anecdote on this. I've requested some paper documents, a simple thing that should not take a long time to process. It's literally just to look at the request, check a database, and print a response; the only reason for human involvement is that it's on paper. I don't see how it can take more than 15 minutes, but it's been in processing for 14 months now, and I paid $200 for that service. So in a frictionless world, it produces $800/hr. But I'm sure that the end worker receives something like mentioned $15/hr, which looks like extreme inefficiency. They lose at like 98% of it somewhere just because of that inefficiency. So it's not about taxes, but about the effective use of money. They can easily 2x the wage, and maybe even 10x, if someone would spend some time to figure out where the leak is.
  - sleepysysadmin 5y ago
    >$15/hour federal minimum wage to start, Typically not effective at solving any problem, while also causing new problems. > combined with Medicare for all, funded via cuts to the military budget. Largest and most insane military ever built and if you cut it completely and doubled income taxes(in addition to forcing everyone to pay, no low income exception) you wouldn't put a dent in your proposed plan. You would have so much debt the subsequent inflation would be beyond control.
- ohCh6zos 5y ago
  Remove progressive taxation and other obstacles to generating generational wealth. Forcing equality through pushing downwards has been disastrous so instead let’s remove barriers to moving upwards.
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    This is the mindset that people on the whole lack. Why are people obsessed with taking the wealth away from the billionaires? if the social mobility is high all the undeserving billionaires are going to squander their wealth away!
  - medvezhenok 5y ago
    Countries with less progressive taxation (i.e. Russia, Brazil, etc) have even worse wealth/power inequality than the U.S. The U.S. was at its most "equal" with strong unions and high inflation (1970s). Perhaps that's what we need again. Strong labor bargaining and run inflation hot for a while. Also raise the non-primary home property tax so that the rich can't shelter their wealth in real estate.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      If inequality were the only problem, then your solution would work. Unfortunately, there are other problems as well, and your solution would make some of them worse.
- VirusNewbie 5y ago
  rising wealth inequality is caused by the FED printing money, it's that simple. Expansionist monetary policy transfers wealth from everyone to those who are leveraged into assets with debt. That's mortgage holders, people who take out business loans, large companies and those who hold equities in large companies.
influx 5y ago
So many people claim Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pay no taxes yet the leaks from the irs show that Musk paid $455 million from 2014-18 and Bezos paid 973 million in the same time.
- rvnx 5y ago
  Wow that's almost 0.02% of effective tax rate @ 80 million USD per year!
  - verdverm 5y ago
    You are conflating rise in stock price vs actual income.
- danny_codes 5y ago
  Hmm 250 million a year from Bezos. Who made something like $50 billion in that time-frame. Can I get the 2% tax rate too, or is it just for Bezos?
  - unmole 5y ago
    > Hmm 250 million a year from Bezos. Who made something like $50 billion in that time-frame. Except fot the fact that he didn't make $50 billion.
    - danny_codes 5y ago
      IMO this kind of thinking is narrow-minded. Americans seem very opposed to taxing wealth for some reason. I believe it's a fear of change mostly, or perhaps an irrationally strong belief in some narrow school of economic thought. Even if you are fully indoctrinated though and are ideologically opposed to a wealth tax, perhaps you can recognize the insanity of capital gains tax, whereby Bezos (upon selling his shares) pays just 15%.
      - unmole 5y ago
        The top federal tax rate on long-term capital gains is 23.8%. I'm not sure where your 15% comes from. Calculation of capital gains does not account for inflation. Taxing a nominal increase in value over multiple years at the same level as income makes no sense. I resent the implication that I am indoctrinated in some parochial ideology. Especially considering I'm not even American.
collias 5y ago
This insanity stems from the media misleading the public into thinking people like Musk (for example) actually have hundreds of billions in cash. He doesn't. What he has is Tesla stock, which the public is welcome to buy as well. If you bought say $5000 of TSLA 3 years ago, that would now be worth nearly $100,000. The media will try to tell the uninformed that you've made a ton of money, and "have paid no taxes". But you haven't made a ton of money, you still just have TSLA shares. As soon as you convert them to USD you have to pay tax on the gains like everyone else.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  If you can borrow against it, you can tax the loan proceeds. It just moves the tax realization to when you receive liquidity for the asset versus a bonafide transfer, closing a loophole. Pay the loan back whenever you want. https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/high-net-worth/elon-musk-short-on-cash-keeps-borrowing-more-and-more-money-even-as-tesla-stock-surges https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/high-net-worth/el... (“Elon Musk, short on cash, keeps borrowing more and more money even as Tesla stock surges; Musk has US$548 million in personal loans from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, an increase of 8 per cent since May”
  - collias 5y ago
    I mean...yeah. Normal people do exactly this every month with credit cards, mortgages, etc. Should you pay a tax on your mortgage loan amount?
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Maybe? Depends on your net worth and your income. If the rules aren’t getting the desired results, you change the rules. Clearly (imho) the existence of billionaires demonstrates a deficiency in public policy and tax statute.
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        I don't think "there should be no billionaires" is a good starting point for deriving tax policy. I especially don't think it's good to have that as an undebated starting point.
lg 5y ago
The article is about the estate tax, not an annual wealth tax, and loopholes to work around it ultimately taking advantage of lower tax rates on capital gains than on estates (not to mention wages) and deductions for "charitable" donation. You don't need new taxes on the wealthy to close these loopholes, you just need to eliminate them: charity is a nice thing you can do with your after-tax income, and all income should be taxed on the same progressive schedule.

danny_codes 5y ago

What would your solution to rising wealth inequality be? Or perhaps you don't think there's a problem?

mlindner 5y ago
This isn't even a solution to wealth inequality so I think your question isn't relevant. Wealth inequality is a complex problem and you can't fix it by just taxing people more. To actually answer your question, I don't have a solution, but I also don't think the problem is as bad as people make it out to be. For this article's specific case I'd just patch the simple hole that you can't skip taxes by passing your shares on after you die. As long as the tax basis date isn't reset on inheritance, everything still works. Someone will pay the taxes eventually. It's an easy change and doesn't really change anything for the lives of most people and it makes more rational sense that way. It's basically fixing a bug in the current law.
- danny_codes 5y ago
  > This isn't even a solution to wealth inequality so I think your question isn't relevant. Wealth inequality is a complex problem and you can't fix it by just taxing people more. Why not? Redistributive wealth tax seems like a reasonable way to accomplish this, along with raising marginal tax rates, closing tax loopholes, and a 100% inheritance tax. Use the excess money for direct investment in material infrastructure, social benefits, and (most importantly) education, and I would imagine the wealth distribution would look quite different in 20 years. We design the economic system we live in. We can change it any time. Capitalism is a human invention: we create the rules to the game. This isn't some law of physics or some truth of the universe.
beamatronic 5y ago
$15/hour federal minimum wage to start, combined with Medicare for all, funded via cuts to the military budget.
- mlindner 5y ago
  More of the US budget already goes to medical care and social services than military. The problem is how inefficiently it's used.
  - splix 5y ago
    I've got an anecdote on this. I've requested some paper documents, a simple thing that should not take a long time to process. It's literally just to look at the request, check a database, and print a response; the only reason for human involvement is that it's on paper. I don't see how it can take more than 15 minutes, but it's been in processing for 14 months now, and I paid $200 for that service. So in a frictionless world, it produces $800/hr. But I'm sure that the end worker receives something like mentioned $15/hr, which looks like extreme inefficiency. They lose at like 98% of it somewhere just because of that inefficiency. So it's not about taxes, but about the effective use of money. They can easily 2x the wage, and maybe even 10x, if someone would spend some time to figure out where the leak is.
- sleepysysadmin 5y ago
  >$15/hour federal minimum wage to start, Typically not effective at solving any problem, while also causing new problems. > combined with Medicare for all, funded via cuts to the military budget. Largest and most insane military ever built and if you cut it completely and doubled income taxes(in addition to forcing everyone to pay, no low income exception) you wouldn't put a dent in your proposed plan. You would have so much debt the subsequent inflation would be beyond control.
ohCh6zos 5y ago
Remove progressive taxation and other obstacles to generating generational wealth. Forcing equality through pushing downwards has been disastrous so instead let’s remove barriers to moving upwards.
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  This is the mindset that people on the whole lack. Why are people obsessed with taking the wealth away from the billionaires? if the social mobility is high all the undeserving billionaires are going to squander their wealth away!
- medvezhenok 5y ago
  Countries with less progressive taxation (i.e. Russia, Brazil, etc) have even worse wealth/power inequality than the U.S. The U.S. was at its most "equal" with strong unions and high inflation (1970s). Perhaps that's what we need again. Strong labor bargaining and run inflation hot for a while. Also raise the non-primary home property tax so that the rich can't shelter their wealth in real estate.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    If inequality were the only problem, then your solution would work. Unfortunately, there are other problems as well, and your solution would make some of them worse.
VirusNewbie 5y ago
rising wealth inequality is caused by the FED printing money, it's that simple. Expansionist monetary policy transfers wealth from everyone to those who are leveraged into assets with debt. That's mortgage holders, people who take out business loans, large companies and those who hold equities in large companies.

influx 5y ago

So many people claim Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pay no taxes yet the leaks from the irs show that Musk paid $455 million from 2014-18 and Bezos paid 973 million in the same time.

rvnx 5y ago
Wow that's almost 0.02% of effective tax rate @ 80 million USD per year!
- verdverm 5y ago
  You are conflating rise in stock price vs actual income.
danny_codes 5y ago
Hmm 250 million a year from Bezos. Who made something like $50 billion in that time-frame. Can I get the 2% tax rate too, or is it just for Bezos?
- unmole 5y ago
  > Hmm 250 million a year from Bezos. Who made something like $50 billion in that time-frame. Except fot the fact that he didn't make $50 billion.
  - danny_codes 5y ago
    IMO this kind of thinking is narrow-minded. Americans seem very opposed to taxing wealth for some reason. I believe it's a fear of change mostly, or perhaps an irrationally strong belief in some narrow school of economic thought. Even if you are fully indoctrinated though and are ideologically opposed to a wealth tax, perhaps you can recognize the insanity of capital gains tax, whereby Bezos (upon selling his shares) pays just 15%.
    - unmole 5y ago
      The top federal tax rate on long-term capital gains is 23.8%. I'm not sure where your 15% comes from. Calculation of capital gains does not account for inflation. Taxing a nominal increase in value over multiple years at the same level as income makes no sense. I resent the implication that I am indoctrinated in some parochial ideology. Especially considering I'm not even American.

collias 5y ago

This insanity stems from the media misleading the public into thinking people like Musk (for example) actually have hundreds of billions in cash. He doesn't. What he has is Tesla stock, which the public is welcome to buy as well. If you bought say $5000 of TSLA 3 years ago, that would now be worth nearly $100,000. The media will try to tell the uninformed that you've made a ton of money, and "have paid no taxes". But you haven't made a ton of money, you still just have TSLA shares. As soon as you convert them to USD you have to pay tax on the gains like everyone else.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
If you can borrow against it, you can tax the loan proceeds. It just moves the tax realization to when you receive liquidity for the asset versus a bonafide transfer, closing a loophole. Pay the loan back whenever you want. https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/high-net-worth/elon-musk-short-on-cash-keeps-borrowing-more-and-more-money-even-as-tesla-stock-surges https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/high-net-worth/el... (“Elon Musk, short on cash, keeps borrowing more and more money even as Tesla stock surges; Musk has US$548 million in personal loans from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, an increase of 8 per cent since May”
- collias 5y ago
  I mean...yeah. Normal people do exactly this every month with credit cards, mortgages, etc. Should you pay a tax on your mortgage loan amount?
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Maybe? Depends on your net worth and your income. If the rules aren’t getting the desired results, you change the rules. Clearly (imho) the existence of billionaires demonstrates a deficiency in public policy and tax statute.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      I don't think "there should be no billionaires" is a good starting point for deriving tax policy. I especially don't think it's good to have that as an undebated starting point.

lg 5y ago

The article is about the estate tax, not an annual wealth tax, and loopholes to work around it ultimately taking advantage of lower tax rates on capital gains than on estates (not to mention wages) and deductions for "charitable" donation. You don't need new taxes on the wealthy to close these loopholes, you just need to eliminate them: charity is a nice thing you can do with your after-tax income, and all income should be taxed on the same progressive schedule.