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Warren wants to levy a 2 percent annual wealth tax on all households with a net worth of over $50 million and a 3 percent annual tax on those households with a net worth of more than $1 billion. Unlike an income tax or a sales tax, both of which tax money when it moves around, a wealth tax draws on the same pot of money every year, making the pile smaller and smaller over time. It's essentially a tax on large savings—the money that investors and entrepreneurs rely on to start new businesses.
The economists who helped Warren design her plan have said that the idea is to make rich people less wealthy: "If very rich people have to pay a percentage of their wealth in taxes each year, it makes it harder for them to maintain their wealth." Analyzing her plan, they wrote that one of its "key motivations" is "to curb the growing concentration of wealth."
So this isn't really about raising tax revenue. It's about using government power to make sure rich people have less. Still, Warren often pitches her plan as a way to raise money to pay for more government entitlements. And on that count, it's likely to fall short
“Once enacted, initial taxes just on the very rich wouldn’t raise much money, and the government would still have massive deficits with rising entitlement costs, so the liberal politicians would push to lower the wealth tax into the middle class,”
“The problem with these plans is … it always starts out that way, you know the income tax was only going to be on the wealthy – these taxes only are going to be on wealthy people – and then before you know it, if you own a nice home, if you own your car, if you have some savings for retirement, before you know it these wealth taxes are going to catch you as well,”
...there could be near-term repercussions for the economy. Rich Americans invest their wealth, creating jobs and income. That means a loss of innovation and opportunity if capital investment is discouraged. It also potentially means slower economic growth.
Bill Gates is willing to give half his wealth to vetted charities of his choosing, and I don’t think that anyone could argue that such a pledge is not morally admirable. What he seems less willing to do is give the government license to forcibly confiscate his property at arbitrary and ever-changing levels, as it deems appropriate ongoing, to serve the purposes of government.
...there is an eternal moral difference between Bill Gates pledging his own wealth to provide for the public good via charitable institutions, and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders telling you that they will confiscate his wealth in order to provide “charity” for others via government redistribution. The moral argument as to why one is morally righteous and the other is morally evil really couldn’t be simpler, and we never have to look at a single number to understand why.
Should I not be afforded the same rights to property that another might have who owns less property than I? I should be so protected, in a culture where genuine morality is intact and individual rights are equally applied. So should Bill Gates, and any other American citizen. However popular the unconstitutional notion of a “wealth tax” may become, it will never be anything more or less than a morally depraved and evil proposition which can only serve to erode Americans’ property rights.
originally posted by: pheonix358
All that is needed to increase tax revenue is to tax wall street transactions
Tax the whole structure at 1 or 2% per transaction.
Sit back and watch enough money roll in to completely replace a countries infrastructure.
Other taxes just pale into insignificance.
P
originally posted by: pheonix358
All that is needed to increase tax revenue is to tax wall street transactions
Tax the whole structure at 1 or 2% per transaction.
Sit back and watch enough money roll in to completely replace a countries infrastructure.
Other taxes just pale into insignificance.
P
originally posted by: Edumakated
a reply to: shawmanfromny
Most of the people who will respond don't understand the difference between wealth and income. All they see is that someone has a ton of money and they believe they should take it from them.
Never mind that you could literally confiscate every dollar of all the billionaires in this country and it wouldn't even fund the government for a year.
We know wealth taxes don't work because it has been tried before and failed. But like all the people who favor socialism, they think their brand is the version that will work.
A good simple example of how wealth taxes don't work is PROPERTY TAXES. See the property taxes on your home are based on the value of your home, not how much money you make in income. Wealth vs Income. So if your home increases in value, your property taxes go up. The problem is as people stop working, change careers, retire, etc the value of their home may still be increasing, but their income is not. The end result is situations where you have retirees and others who may live in a house that might be worth $1 million if they sold it, but they cannot afford the annual property taxes on their retirement income.
As a result, they often have to sell the homes. Most jurisdictions recognize this problem and often have exemptions for elderly homeowners. However, most still wind up having to move. I know this is a huge problem in my community.
The taxes are paid with income, not wealth. The income is the money you make from your job. Your wealth is all your assets. The problem is wealth is not always liquid, so you can't access that money.
When you hear Bill Gates is worth $100 billion, it doesn't mean he has $100 billion at his disposal. It means all his equity in Microsoft and other investments IF HE SOLD EVERYTHING HE OWNED is worth about $100 billion based on the prevailing stock price of any given day. He may only have about $5-$10 billion liquid.
He can't liquidate huge amounts of his shares of Microsoft because it would tank the stock price.
The problem I have with folks like Warren is that they don't care about making the poor richer, but the rich poorer....
originally posted by: MisterSpock
a reply to: Edumakated
Tim does a pretty good job in his videos. I don't agree with him on everything(actually more like 50 percent of the time) but he's genuine from what I can tell and FARRRRR more of a journalist than anyone on television.
I'll plug another guy that I think most people who follow tim would like(i've been seeing a lot more people putting tim's videos up).
Andrew, over at Don't Walk, Run!, usually does a fantastic job of putting forth the work(hard data, facts, logic) when he does a video. His videos on yangs rambling UBI nonsense are scathing. Makes me wonder how yang could even manage to balance a checkbook.