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Surely only an absolute lunatic would pass that sort of law. And by then it's too late, because it's Socialism with extra steps.
by philipallstar 17d ago
Surely only an absolute lunatic would pass that sort of law. And by then it's too late, because it's Socialism with extra steps.
- sebzim4500 17d agoDoesn't Switzerland do this instead of capital gains? Makes sense IMO, much better to tax wealth than discourage transactions.
- briandw 17d agoReally? How? Show me a country that taxes wealth and is prosperous. Taxing unrealized gains results in owing tax on money you don’t have and makes starting a funded company impossible.
- superxpro12 17d agoand on the other hand we have trillionaires who spend their wealth on fascist party propaganda and censorship
- tim333 17d agoApparently not. Googling, no one seems to actually do it in spite of some politicians talking about it. It seems quite a bad idea from a practical point of view. Not so much because it's socialist but it leads to all sorts of extra paperwork for no good reason. Like say you buy some utility company share for your retirement in 20 years and it fluctuates. Do you want to be valuing it and paying tax and then claiming it back when it goes down every year for 20 years or just declare the gain at the end?
- philipallstar 17d agoWell, it is socialist in that the government basically gets to own more of everything you own every year.
- spacebanana7 17d agoTaxing capital assets by taking large portions of their value destroys value by forcing liquidity events. Think forcing sales of farms, factories and domain names. I much prefer land value taxes (and similar taxes on non capital wealth like jewellery) and leisure taxes (ideally taxing people for every hour they don't work). Of course these are difficult to administer in practice, but British business rates and US overtime tax discounts effectively approximate this.
- bitmasher9 17d agoThe idea of taxing people for not working an hour sounds incredibly dystopian.
- superxpro12 17d agoWhat will they think of next? tying healthcare to employment that you lose the moment you get fired to meet quarterly profits? Madness i tell you!
- overtone1000 17d agoI had the same reaction. It also seems easy to pull apart. What about disabled people who are unable to work? I think something more like "investment income should be taxed at a higher rate than income earned through labor," accomplishes similar goals but is more intuitive and less problematic.
- philipallstar 17d agoIf your goal is to reduce investment that creates jobs for labour, then you should do that.
- overtone1000 17d agoThis is a false dichotomy. Laborers could just as easily invest in job-creating endeavors as passive income earners. All taxes cause economic drag, not _just_ business and investment income taxes. The economy includes every participant, and laborers are not an externality.
- axus 17d agoIf the government forced transfer of ownership %, instead of forcing a sale, it would be not as bad?
- sebzim4500 17d agoThey could accept either I suppose
- philipallstar 16d agoIt's identical really. It's just instituting the nationalisation over time of all businesses.
- sebzim4500 16d agoIn an ideal world, the government would sell some of whatever shares it gets at good times to pay off debt, for example when interest is high just before a tranche of government bonds expire
- philipallstar 17d ago> Makes sense IMO, much better to tax wealth than discourage transactions. It's much, much worse to tax wealth.
- overtone1000 17d agoI disagree with you in the other thread, so I want to balance that by saying that I strongly agree with you here.
- IAmBroom 17d agoOh, no, not Socialism! That's worse than attending a Macklemore concert!
- kriops 17d agoMacklemore concerts didn't kill 100 million people at minimum.
- nwsm 17d agoDo we have an estimate on the number of people capitalism has killed? Serious question. Include deaths due to poverty and lack of affordable healthcare under capitalism, overworking and dangerous working conditions, and all wars and counter-insurgency waged on alternative economic systems globally.
- thesuitonym 17d agoNo, people who die as a direct result of capitalist economics are not counted because that would be inconvenient and wouldn't fit the CIA's narrative.
- carefree-bob 17d agoYou'd need a definition of capitalism first. Since for most people, it's just the default mode of living -- e.g. the very term "capital" comes from "head", as in "head of an ox", as early cattle culture practiced capitalism, so it predates the agricultural revolution and was practiced by nomadic groups. A lot of the language, for example "interest" comes from cattle culture. If you think about it, a cow produces other cows, so it bears interest. You can eat the cow (consume capital) or let the cow produce a stream of milk. Ownership of cows gave you great power. So asking "the number of people killed by capitalism" is like asking "how many people were killed by everything that's not communism", which is pretty inane, since the point of communism is that it is an ideology, and mass killing for an ideology (that's not religion) is a part of the modern world, not the traditional world of cows and capital. The first ideological genocide was the slaughter of the Vendee peasants by the French revolutionaries, but it was merely the first of many times that urban ideologues slaughtered rural farmers.
- wing-_-nuts 17d agoWhy not? We tax property every year on it's assessed value. I think it's pretty clear that the wealthy will need to pay more taxes throughout the world to deal with an aging population. I'm a little tired of billionaires 'buy, borrow, dying' to get around the paltry taxes they're currently subject to. We need a harder tax to dodge.
- carefree-bob 17d agoWhy would taxing the wealthy be relevant to an aging population? Do you think that we tax stuff? We just tax money to buy stuff. If a nation produces less stuff, then spending more will just cause prices to go up, but will not result in the production of more stuff to go around.
- wing-_-nuts 17d agoBecause our current social safety nets all work by assuming the next generation pays for the care of the current elderly. Those elderly do need 'stuff' they need doctors and nurses and nursing homes. Thus taxes will have to go up, and if it has to, it may as well be progressive.
- philipallstar 16d agoWe already have giant amounts of tax everywhere, all the time. What makes you think we have no money for this?
- wing-_-nuts 16d agoNo, actually, we have explicit taxes for SS and Medicare, and we've known they were not bringing in enough revenue to fund those programs since the 80s. The trust funds are almost dry, so we're either going to have to raise those taxes to fund those programs, or cut a critical safety net to the American public. I know where my vote is going.
- 13d ago
- superxpro12 17d agoThe fascism we CURRENTLY HAVE is far more preferable