Does economic success deserve to be punished? The Democratic Party will have to answer in the coming primaries. Joe Biden is on the correct side of it.
Wealth Tax
14 thoughts on “Wealth Tax”
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Elizabeth Warren's 'Wealth Tax' Is Punishment, Not Taxation
Island in the Net by Khürt Williams
Technology and Photography Musings. Established circa 2000.
@islandinthenet.com eh. That’s why I put it in quotes.
@nitinkhanna 👍
@islandinthenet.com random comment from my end ?
@islandinthenet.com breaking monopolies is getting tougher, since monopolies have had some time to create the loopholes they need to survive.
@nitinkhanna that article and the conversation are about wealth and taxes.
@ronguest @khurtwilliams I find it vaguely interesting that people in the US often say that the federal govt is wasteful and more power to states and private entities, but companies spend millions on lawyers and lobbyists to find or create loopholes and states spend hundreds of thousands to fight cases where it would be easier and cheaper to do the “right thing”.
@nitinkhanna I am unsure what you mean by the "right thing". I think religion and culture are often too intertwined with defining what the "right thing" is.
@islandinthenet.com My comment had nothing to do with people’s character but was referring to an aversion to taxes across all income brackets. Also that wealth taxes generally fail. E.g. this NPR report on the recent failure in France where 42,000 millionaires left the country. I think there are taxation and equality issues but that a wealth tax isn’t a viable solution.
@ronguest understood. Thanks for the clarification.
@ronguest thanks for sharing the NPR link. I learned that our tax system only exists due to a constitutional amendment in 1913.
@khurtwilliams My first problem with all these notions is that rich people hire extremely smart people to find all the loopholes and there are always loopholes. Rich people can get citizenship in nearly any country in the world...
@ronguest goind back to the premise of the question, are you saying that ALL wealthy people are jerks and that "we the people" must punish them as a group "collectively" by inventing new unjustified taxes?
@khurtwilliams there’s a phrase at the end of the article that I take issue with.
The article says that wealth creation involved hard work in building a product that people voluntarily pay for. But with the way monopolies and duopolies work in this country, I don’t think ‘voluntary’ is accurate.
What do you think?
@nitinkhanna That little bit bothered me as well. I know that there are many who already have a leg up on wealteh creation and many for whom hard work means just being able to buy food. So ... yeah,
But monopolies can be broken. Go ask AOL, BlackBerry, Blockbuster, taxi drivers in New York City.