4 ms·

In the 1950s, we taxed income over $400,000 at somewhere around 90%. Anything you made less than that was taxed much less, but every dollar above $400,000 the g

In the 1950s, we taxed income over $400,000 at somewhere around 90%. Anything you made less than that was taxed much less, but every dollar above $400,000 the government took most of it, which effectively put a cap on wages. Won't be popular on HN, I think we need to move closer to that again. Maybe not that extreme, but that's the proper direction. We can then use that income to tackle big problems. We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.

gedy 1y ago
> We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages. How about we first bring back pensions and 30 year jobs before we try and fix that?
- fake-name 1y ago
  Maybe we can't do your idea without the quoted idea.
- HaZeust 1y ago
  At that point why not just go to state-controlled capitalism? That way of life was MUCH closer to competing socio-economic theories to capitalism - than capitalism itself. I saw Sanders' Rogan podcast, I heard his plea - it doesn't work well in today's system. One of the best things about the freedom of moving from job to job and not relying on pensions or 30-year contracts is that it enables and empowers everyday workers to have the innate, untenable, inalienable "check and balance" on the labor market to choose who they give labor to at any given time - and picket them as well. For the average person: You SHOULD be able to move jobs at any time, you SHOULD be able to not feel pressure of unrealized benefits of a pension 30 years down the road when you do, your housing SHOULD NOT be directly based on your employer ("company towns"), and normalizing systemic status-quo changes that makes it hard to decide/change who cuts your checks is NOT a step in the right direction. Sanders was right when he said folks in managerial positions - and above - need to care more about their workers, but the businesses that drive the labor market banded together - perhaps unknowingly through a status quo "collective conscious" - to make MOST of your pickings in MOST same-tier jobs look very much alike. There are many ways to fix that in practice across other nations today, like sectoral bargaining; where union experts in a given trade collectively bargain for what SHOULD be an effective minimum wage or minimum benefits package within that trade - instead of the government doing it for them. There's also works councils in Germany that have a similar effect.
HaZeust 1y ago
Of course, this won't be popular on the HN crowd, but I'll say it anyway: What we need is securities tax. Absolutely any conversion, collateral, or divestiture of securities need to be taxed at the rate of those securities at that time. A lot of plutocrats are playing the system by just basing their loans and the collaterals thereof, and their payments for things, on stocks and securities because they are "unrealized gains". If securities are enough of a bearer instrument to give loaners confidence for otherwise no-collateral loans, they're enough of a realized gain to be taxed when you use them for a purchase - or alongside one.
darth_avocado 1y ago
But would higher taxes nationally result in better funding for education? We are in a climate where coming to a agreement on what is acceptable in classrooms nationwide seems to be impossible.
geodel 1y ago
Maybe first find out why it is not just "we" but whole world moved to far lower tax rate in last six decades. > We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages. "We" can tax every breath of every person alive but we are not going back to 50s for sure.
- asveikau 1y ago
  The problem is that Reagan/Thatcher's failed experiment is now considered an inevitable law of the universe. Taxes can only go down. Anything else is crazy. You get people talking about taxation's effect on the economy as a baseline assumption without any evidence that it actually works like that. The 1950s was a period of huge economic boom with very high tax rates for top earners, which is a counterexample to popular narratives about how high taxes supposedly hurt the economy. In the private sector, obsession with short term profits and "shareholder value" is the corollary. Both of these are now polite consensus, inevitable, but have wrecked government, wrecked our economy, and wrecked people's minds.

gedy 1y ago

> We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages. How about we first bring back pensions and 30 year jobs before we try and fix that?

fake-name 1y ago
Maybe we can't do your idea without the quoted idea.
HaZeust 1y ago
At that point why not just go to state-controlled capitalism? That way of life was MUCH closer to competing socio-economic theories to capitalism - than capitalism itself. I saw Sanders' Rogan podcast, I heard his plea - it doesn't work well in today's system. One of the best things about the freedom of moving from job to job and not relying on pensions or 30-year contracts is that it enables and empowers everyday workers to have the innate, untenable, inalienable "check and balance" on the labor market to choose who they give labor to at any given time - and picket them as well. For the average person: You SHOULD be able to move jobs at any time, you SHOULD be able to not feel pressure of unrealized benefits of a pension 30 years down the road when you do, your housing SHOULD NOT be directly based on your employer ("company towns"), and normalizing systemic status-quo changes that makes it hard to decide/change who cuts your checks is NOT a step in the right direction. Sanders was right when he said folks in managerial positions - and above - need to care more about their workers, but the businesses that drive the labor market banded together - perhaps unknowingly through a status quo "collective conscious" - to make MOST of your pickings in MOST same-tier jobs look very much alike. There are many ways to fix that in practice across other nations today, like sectoral bargaining; where union experts in a given trade collectively bargain for what SHOULD be an effective minimum wage or minimum benefits package within that trade - instead of the government doing it for them. There's also works councils in Germany that have a similar effect.

HaZeust 1y ago

Of course, this won't be popular on the HN crowd, but I'll say it anyway: What we need is securities tax. Absolutely any conversion, collateral, or divestiture of securities need to be taxed at the rate of those securities at that time. A lot of plutocrats are playing the system by just basing their loans and the collaterals thereof, and their payments for things, on stocks and securities because they are "unrealized gains". If securities are enough of a bearer instrument to give loaners confidence for otherwise no-collateral loans, they're enough of a realized gain to be taxed when you use them for a purchase - or alongside one.

darth_avocado 1y ago

But would higher taxes nationally result in better funding for education? We are in a climate where coming to a agreement on what is acceptable in classrooms nationwide seems to be impossible.

geodel 1y ago

Maybe first find out why it is not just "we" but whole world moved to far lower tax rate in last six decades. > We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages. "We" can tax every breath of every person alive but we are not going back to 50s for sure.

asveikau 1y ago
The problem is that Reagan/Thatcher's failed experiment is now considered an inevitable law of the universe. Taxes can only go down. Anything else is crazy. You get people talking about taxation's effect on the economy as a baseline assumption without any evidence that it actually works like that. The 1950s was a period of huge economic boom with very high tax rates for top earners, which is a counterexample to popular narratives about how high taxes supposedly hurt the economy. In the private sector, obsession with short term profits and "shareholder value" is the corollary. Both of these are now polite consensus, inevitable, but have wrecked government, wrecked our economy, and wrecked people's minds.