Some dude I work with said “man, if they start taxing Bezos more, at what point are they gonna come after me?”
Maybe when you start making billions of dollars? Fuckin idiot
they already coming at that dude with taxes.
the others ain’t paying their fair share.
They’re right tho, millionaires are way more protected by government than the average person
You know what the difference is between a million and a billion? Roughly a billion.
This but actually
Apparently he hasn’t noticed the rate he is already being taxed at. Guy sounds like a genius.
Idk man maybe you should be comfortable paying more taxes if it gets you something worth it. I’d probably be hit by the taxes to get free effective public transit, that’s cool, I’d rather pay my car transit bills into a pool that gets us the metro or subway but free
Well he’s a Michigan libertarian so I think he only wants the US to fund the military, and of course anything that personally and directly impacts him but not if it only impacts some unlocky fool in his immediate neighborhood… because he’s a libertarian
All the libertarians I know are collecting disability paychecks from the military for supposed injuries they didn’t document until after they left… I just don’t talk about politics with them at all, the level of hypocrisy is too much
That dude you work with is beyond clueless.
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Are you talking about a real party in a real country or you just made this all up because it sounds edgy in your head? Fact that you included a rant as “fun fact” half way through your numbered list and that can’t even fucking spell Palestine makes me think you are 15 and came straight from reddit?
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We can all agree that people refusing taxes for the rich is a lack of trust to those in favour of it. I mean that’s what the meme is about right?
But let’s not bring into this a people that are being decimated at the rate of more that 7000 children and women/month by a genocidal neighbour yeah?
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I get what you’re saying but he really is a dumbass. The loopholes drive me loco man. You’re absolutely right about Ireland too. Fuck loopholes
I truly don’t understand these people. Their life is generally stressful to the extreme and the current system of “trickle down” has been for a long time shown to not work. So why not tax the rich, install some decent social systems, make the world better for the general public and move on?
They’ve been made to believe things like this:
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They’d be able to make more than they’re making if taxes were less. In effect, their employer and wealthier individuals would share the additional after-tax income.
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Job prospects would be better. More promotion opportunities, less layoffs, etc. Also, more vacation time, sick leave, etc would be available.
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Just about everything bad that happens economically can be linked to higher taxes.
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Prices for everything would be lower.
I’m not defending these views, but this is just what some people believe, and it explains their voting actions. I used to be one such person and I still live among people who see taxes like this. Blame Fox, radio, and similar outlets for spreading misinformation
Ah yes, if companies made more money, they’d share more with the workers. That explains why corps have been making record profits and… Nothing has improved for workers.
At some point you just have to ask whether these people are disconnected from reality.
At some point you just have to ask whether these people are disconnected from reality.
we’ve past that point. We don’t need to ask anymore, really. FWIW, I blame the sabotages public education
Public education and cognitive dissonance.
These people realize there’s a problem but they’d rather believe the bullshit their side spews than accept reality
The crazy thing is seeing people who work for these companies for 30 years straight, got treated kind of decently like 25 years ago, now the company has grown over 100x in size and their pay and benefits haven’t even doubled.
Yet they still talk about how taxes are the problem. And that things will trickle down. They’ve literally been in that system for 30 years of it failing to work and they still think it’s the right answer.
I can excuse people having their ideas twisted about something they don’t really know about. But if you’re that deep into it, have literal experience showing it not working, and you still buy into that shit and vehemently defend it despite facts being presented that show otherwise… Yeah, there’s no excuse anymore. Now you’re just a fucking idiot voting against your own best interest.
the haven’t made enough money yet, it’s that simple.
No need to ask that when you’ve been paying attention for 16+ years.
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Have you seen politics in this country before? It’s not about logic, it’s about being mad at some invisible boogey man because someone on the TV told you to.
“b-but trans people…”
I feel like we should make up some shit about Muppets. and then get sound bites of GOPers being like "i like muppets… who doesn’t like muppets’ and then, you know, use that to smear them.
(sorry, muppets, your sacrifice is appreciated.)
Already sorta happened when Mitt Romney talked about how he liked Big Bird but wanted to try to kill him off by eliminating funding for PBS…
excelllent. We’ll start with that…
The most enduring conspiracies have an element of truth. (for example, they are building bird drones. for research tracking wild animals that would be spooked by quads flying over head. Funny how that works.)
I’ve never met one in real life, I’ve only heard of their existence through social media.
Do they actually exist or is it an enemy people have fabricated?
The most likely answer is I’m bubbled around good people, which is a result I guess.
You’re absolutely in a progressive bubble. If everyone were progressives, Donald Trump would have been laughed out of the primaries. There are a lot of people who are brainwashed or spiteful or both.
I think it can be difficult to verify directly because the concept is more abstract than those implicated are accustomed to dealing with.
Consider the similar scenario where impoverished seniors vote to have the government be more fiscally responsible by cutting the very services their lives depend on. If they understood how they were fucking themselves, they’d probably stop. Should we really expect any sort of meaningful discussion here? It is a deeply fundamental problem whose solution would require much more openness and vulnerability than our society or collective consciousness is currently able to support.
It wasn’t too long ago we were seeing a constant stream of folks expressing regret for their vocal opposition to the vaccines, sometimes even pleading to be vaccinated upon learning of their imminent demise. If they were better equipped to think through these issues, they’d be better equipped to participate in constructive discussion, and we wouldn’t be talking about this problem.
You may be in a bubble, or maybe you’re just a kind and trusting person who tends to give people the benefit of the doubt.
You’re in a huge bubble. A large portion of boomers very strongly defend this shit. Other generations tend to see past it, some areas of more educated boomers see past it, but even among generally good people, Reagan etc brainwashed the majority of an entire generation into believing this shit and most of them have not let go.
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Sorry, I deleted my comment because I’m starting to be mindful of doxxing
For the record, I said I’m from a rural midwestern state in the US where I am surrounded by such people
Just so you are aware, the Lemmy API exposes your entire comment after deletion. I can see the more accurate location you described.
I could paste it here to prove it but of course I don’t want to doxx you.
Well, “doxxing” was a bit of an extreme way for me to put it. Even though the location is more specific, as you can see it’s not that specific.
I’m just trying to be smarter about how I comment, but ironically, I probably made it worse just by mentioning that lol
Friendly reminder that the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is still essentially one billion dollars. Billionaires shouldn’t exist
Remember nobody can possible EARN a billion dollars. Nobody is that important or effective. If someone made a billion dollars, it was by taking away from the people below, the ones who actually did the work. Billionaires are thieves and leeches.
We have roughly 8 billion people on earth. If a person’s inventions and solutions combined improved the life of every person by a value of 13 cents, then they would have EARNED a billion dollars (because they would have created thta value).
Imagine I made a product that saves the life of 1,000,000 people (from an otherwise deadly desease). Is that not worth 1B dollars?
This is where the disconnect between “left” liberals and socialists come in. Left liberals will often say “nobody should have a billion dollars”, or even “nobody can legitimately accumulate a billion dollars”, and even in your example that’s probably true (no single person can manufacture, distribute, and administer a billion vaccines), but to steelman your argument, a better version would be a solo streamer who has a billion viewers, each donating $2 (half of it going to the streaming platform). That would be a legitimate accumulation of a billion dollars. Whether or not some of that should be taxed is an orthogonal discussion to the whether or not the accumulation was legitimate.
What we actually need to separate is legitimate and illegitimate accumulation of wealth. Socialists do this correctly. We recognize stealing the surplus generated by value of workers through private property rights (either of IP, or industry like factories) is a form of theft, and this happens to be how every current billionaire got their wealth, most millionaires, and even some people with net worths under a million got all their net worth.
It’s wrong to steal the surplus value of labor of your workers, even if it just amounts to 100k a year, while solo streaming to 10k viewers and making 100k a year is not wrong.
Those are very good points and I would agree with everything except for the statement that capitalists are stealing “surplus” value from workers.
Because workers are not (and should not be) paid for the value that the finished product adds to the market if they do not take the risk for it. Otherwise you would have to accept that if the product a worker was told to produce doesn’t sell, he shouldn’t be paid for it (since he produced nothing of value).
Picture this: Imagine I could buy a whole loaf of bread for 5$. I could slice it up into 20 pieces and sell each slice for 1$. If I did that, the 15$ total revenue would be rightly mine, correct? Now if we assume that the work of cutting it up and selling it was next to zero, i basically wouldn’t have worked at all and still made 15$, so you’re saying the 15$ would have to be stolen surplus value. But stolen from who? The baker who made the original loaf? But his laofs are just 5$ in value…
Now, if I had to work hours to sell the individual slices, we can agree that I have added value by working and thus I earned the money. But if I didnt have to invest any time (eg. if I could automate the process), should I still be entitled to that money? In my opinion, YES. What do you think?
Risk isn’t value. Risk isn’t something to incentivize in and of itself. The only reason we want to push capitalists to risk their capital is to circulate money in the economy. It’s not that we have society setup to reward risk takers (as capitalists will often frame it), it’s rather that in isolation, people would hoard all the money they make if there’s no way to use that money to generate more money, so to “effectively” (in the short term) circulate money back into the economy from rich people, the act of recirculating must have a monetary value. Of course in the long term this leads to run away wealth accumulation and massive inequality, as we’re seeing in the real world.
Risk in itself is actually bad. We want to reduce the total amount of risk in society.
If you buy a loaf of bread for $5 and turn it into $20 of value with zero effort, other participants in the market would do the same thing. Some would sell it for $10 (50¢ a slice), and people would continually undercut each other until the difference in price is roughly equivalent to the time-value of the labor spent. This entire process would be feasible in a market socialist setting, you didn’t introduce any capitalistic elements here.
As for automation, did you create the automation? If not, then you don’t deserve the full fruits of the automation. Even the person who “invented” that version of automation was doing so on the backs of other people’s ideas. Nobody has these ideas out in the wild without influence from society. To assert that some inventor of a product or even more specifically some user of a product deserves the full fruits that product yields is ignoring the fundamental reason the product exists in the first place, human cooperation. Capitalism ignores this.
Risk isn’t value.
I disagree: Having something for sure is better than having something with a risk. You also mention that risk is bad. Thus, taking on risk should be compensated for by a higher value.
If you buy a loaf of bread for $5 and turn it into $20 of value with zero effort, other participants in the market would do the same thing.
They still would need the 20$ upfront to be able to buy it in the first place. If I provided the money necessary to buy the bread and another person provided their time necessary to cut it, shouldn’t we both get rewarded?
I think of work itself like a product: I can offer my “workforce” on the market and someone can buy that workforce. If an employer uses my workforce suboptimally so that I dont generate much value, I dont care, they still owe me the amount that my workforce was worth. And if they combine the workforce’s of multiple people and generate more value, I dont think they should owe me more because the value of my workforce has not inherently changed. They just put it to better use.
About the automation thing: If I buy any product (in this case: automatic machine) and both me and the seller agree on a price and exchange the goods, then I concider any future claims on the fruits of that product as unethical and illegitimate. The surplus value that I potentially generate would not be stolen, it would, in my opinion, be explicitely given to me as part of the transaction.
We agree risk is bad, and that it’s the opposite of value. The end of your first paragraph is a non-sequitur though. We shouldn’t compensate things just because they’re risky. Jumping out of a plane and pulling your parachute at the last possible moment is risky, but we shouldn’t compensate that. Doing drugs is risky, but we shouldn’t compensate that. Driving 140mph is risky, but we shouldn’t compensate that.
Like I said before, we don’t compensate wealthy individuals for “taking risks”. Taking risk has no value. It’s about money circulation. Without incentives to circulate money, they wouldn’t do it of their own accord. Of course, we could just circulate money through other means so we don’t run into problems like runaway wealth accumulation.
They still would need the $20 upfront
You mean the $5, right? Nobody was paying $20. Someone was buying a loaf of bread for $5 and selling slices for $1 in your example. At no point did anyone spend $20 in one go.
I think of work itself like a product
Are you making a descriptive claim or a normative one? Work is commodified, that’s a fact of a capitalist society. Are you saying it should be commodified or that it is? You have to do a much more in depth material analysis to arrive at the conclusion that it should be commodified. The act of renting out people and extracting their surplus value alienates people from their labor and continually contributes to further exploitation and inequality. This is how we end up with decades of wage stagnation as the richest people in the world multiply their wealth over and over and over again.
You can construct a society that doesn’t allow people to be bought or rented. That doesn’t view people as property or their labor power as a commodity. We have half of this figured out (you aren’t allowed to buy people), and most abolitionists of the 19th century also wanted to abolish wage slavery along with chattel slavery, but dismantling capitalism didn’t have support from the north like dismantling chattel slavery did.
then I consider (…)
Again, you seem to just be making descriptive claims about how society is currently structured, and then using that to imply normative truths simply on the basis that this is how it is right now. When human labor can be entirely automated in a capitalist society, what we will end up with is the 2 classes of people (bourgoise and proletariat) fundamentally changing.
Right now the bourgoise rents out the proletariat’s labor power, extracts the surplus value and uses property rights to continue this cycle of exploitation. The proletariat still have all the power if organized, and this is why organization (e.g via unions) was originally in capitalist thought a form of terrorism, because it goes against the very nature of what capitalism is about, serving capital.
With a fully autonomous society this changes. The bourgoise ends up being the class with all the power, no matter how organized the proletariat is. The proletariat is no longer the working class, instead they are the destitute class, the class that still only owns their own labor power and nothing else. They becomes worthless in an autonomous capitalist society.
At the very least it should be clear that a fully autonomous capitalist society would entail a utopia for the bourgoise and a dystopia for the proletariat (99% of the population). And the goal of capitalism is to continually get as close to this as possible. We can do better.
You wouldn’t have made a product that saves a million lives. Teams of doctors and scientists, not to mention the pharmaceutical companies they work for, are the plurality of people required to release and market a life saving medicine. If one person did everything, the R&D, the experimentation, the trials, the marketing, the backend business of running a pharmaceutical company, etc, then sure, have your billion dollars.
If we were a team of 1000 people and each saved life was worth 1 million, then we would still have earned enough money to make everyone of the 1000 team members a billionaire…
No. It isn’t
Then a human life would be worth less than a million dollars…
One million seconds is ~12 days.
One billion seconds is ~32 years.
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But they can use that to secure cheap debt, and use those investments as effective capital.
The fact it isn’t technically money in a bank account doesn’t really matter, because it can be leveraged as if it were
It represents the money in their pockets to literally anyone and anything that matters. They can secure multimillion dollar homes with that “fake” money. They can finance yachts, fancy cars, more houses, etc. Whatever the fuck rich people waste their money on.
So for all intents and purposes, it makes no difference does it?
Capital gains tax exists. Whenever they liquidate any assets, they should be taxed heavily. That’s just a start.
Yes, but the ultra wealthy rarely are subject to taxes. They have no income. Their wealth is tied up in stocks, and they rarely sell the stocks therefore nearly never opening themselves to capital gains taxes.
They then borrow against the stocks for spending money. When they want more money, the refinance and get a bigger loan. The loan is only paid off by their estate after they die. The bank is happy to accommodate, because they’re willing to play the long game.
If you tax loans as income, you’d be screwing over the middle class who need mortgages to get ahead.
You could tax loans as income with some limitations. Things like whether the collateral is primary residence vs other property versus stock. Based on amount of loan or assessed value of collateral.
Perhaps with some tax credit on repayment to model the potential for “real” taxed income being used to repay a debt.
There are ways to maybe wrangle borrowing as income just like we wrangle income in interesting ways.
There are ways to maybe wrangle borrowing as income just like we wrangle income in interesting ways.
Ooh there definitely could be a way to track that.
The rich write the laws though.
My dad always says “but then what motivation will they have to make money and innovate.” To which I respond, “they’ll still be millionaires and far richer than either of us will ever be.”
Why is everyone concerned with making humans work? We already have technology to where one human’s work can feed, clothe, and house a hundred more, right? So, pay the one human twice as much, as an incentive, and then give a free ride to ninety-nine more. We don’t need everyone to be at work all their life.
Because boomers want younger people to suffer like they did. Up until them, every generation had it better than their parents, but boomers are just so fucking selfish that they couldn’t stand to see their children do better than them.
“I had to work to get where I am, so you have to work too.”
My aunt likes to talk about how she only made 4 dollars an hour making boat seats, so why are people unhappy with 7 something now. She was making good money for the time 40 years ago, but nothing matters to her anyways.
Our economy isn’t based on providing goods or services, it’s based on the theft of economic output. Without workers providing goods and services for stockholders to steal economic value from, everything about our system collapses.
(To be clear, I’d like to watch it collapse.)
I’d adjust that ratio, but still generally agree with you. The other day me and my coworkers made the packaging for 5 million dum dum suckers. Took us maybe 2 hours.
Well, not starving and being homeless.
Yeah I gave up on scrolling through the 3.2 trillion.
Making money and innovation, in our society, are anathema to each other. Innovation has stagnated in favor of cutting costs and cheaping out on everything to increase margins.
“Yeah? What motivation do I have to work then? Where’s my billions?” Tell him that. As if these billionaires work.
Yeah but they will be millionaires either way. If there is a threashold after which you dont get payed (much) for your innovations, then that will be the cap.
Another answer is that if the wealthy pay more into the system and that money is put into universal health care and a more robust social safety net then other, non-billionaires, would have the motivation to innovate and build businesses. Why the fuck is it only the wealthy that we need to motivate to make money and innovate?
Yeah, it’s a wealth tax we need. 10% a year of everything over $100 million. Yeah, bitch, I’m including all your motherfucking shares and property as well.
No, we need to tax the poor to the death and all the problems will disappear over time.
ah, so the texan solution, i see
Doing consumption taxation, so Only Save No Spend.
Then creating huge loop holes for consumption that only the upper class can access, so we put downward pressure on the value of labor relative to the value of amassed commodities and capital.
I think you need to be careful with a wealth tax because it will just make millionaires “move” to the US but still do business here. Under NAFTA they can live in the US and only pay US taxes while working here, except for services where GST must be charged.
It’ll also really fuck up the TSX because the TSX does not see 10% gains, so we would lose a lot of capital for our business and reduced value of our pension funds.
Not saying no wealth tax, but wealth tax is complicated and the amounts need to be well considered for their impact to the economy.
Edit: forgot I wasn’t on the Canada instance.
This applies to Canada doing wealth tax specifically, if everyone coordinated and closed loopholes wealth tax could be realistic, it’s a cooperation game.
Two counterpoints:
Norway implemented a wealth tax and millionaires didn’t move. It still has one of the highest rates of millionaires in Europe.
France implemented a wealth tax and millionaires moved causing them to make less than if they hadn’t implemented it. They repealed said tax after 2 years.
Wealth taxes can work if done right. Done wrong and they do leave.
For Canada specifically I could see the situation being like France because we have NAFTA – I’m assuming France can’t simply do this because a millionaire could move to Luxembourg or the Netherlands and still be in the EU.
Not sure about France wealth tax specifically, but the EU has always had a huge problem with taxes being uneven, especially stuff like corporate tax, with smaller countries “stealing” companies from the bigger ones.
This year a minimum of 15% eu-wide was introduced to stop the tax race to the bottom, something similar could and should be applied to a wealth tax.
There were 12 countries with wealth tax in 1990, there are only 3 countries with it today. Wealth tax does not work, we know that since ancient Rome times.
Fine, let some other country have their population exploited for labor, put an import tax on their products, we’ll survive just fine.
Right?? Let the leeches leave! Capital means fuck all when it’s all only for them.
Edit: forgot I wasn’t on the Canada instance.
Fucking CanadaDefaultism. I expected better from you guys. You truly are just Americans with moosephilia. How aboot you kick yourself up the ass buddy, eh?
My most sincere apologies! Our government has deemed I shall be set adrift on an ice floe, with only a Tim Hortons duchie, a double double, and a hockey stick as punishment.
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That’s because it was against the Geneva convention.
If I defend billionaires online, they’ll let me have a mansion on Mars
Dumbasses
The rent will be outta this world.
Astronomical, one could say.
It’s just pure propaganda working out. Our society is composed of roughly the same gene pool it was composed of a millennia ago, and education clearly isn’t compensation when it gets treated more and more as just simply a place to discard children off to so people can work without interruptions.
I would argue that schools are really just a battery farm for obedient workers. Getting good marks doesn’t mean the kid is smart, just means they’re good at doing what they’re told even if they don’t want to, and thus makes a perfect and obedient worker. It also gets kids used to the idea of not having any rights, and having to ask to do basic human rights like eat or go to the bathroom.
US’s schools*
To be fair this shitty way to run schools is getting to Europe too, I remember like a few months ago teachers went on strike for a few days against the government because it wanted to cut funding for schools (country wide), and considering we have pretty decent schools here (compared to the US) and cutting funding meant all of the nice things just going away (like no cafeteria, like bring your own food method, which would suck ass since I live far away from my school for example)
Lucky we didn’t hear from the government ever again after, since it was basically all the schools in the country, this happened in Czechia btw, just so anyone isn’t confused as where this happened
But honestly our government is a shit show and I am not surprised they gave up after 1 day of strike
What does this have to do with the post? We’re talking about creating a higher tax bracket, you’re talking about genes and why schools exist.
He’s talking about the people this post is about.
The irony of not understanding that comment is depressing to be honest. Basically proving their point.
^ The irony of being this guy missing the point
nu uh, i think YOU are missing the point. Quite meta-ironic if you think about it.
omg whoosh central over here ↑
He’s talking what he’s talking about. What are you talking about? Are you talking about what is being talked about or is it talk in general?
I do not understand people who rent caring this much about someone who owns houses, a cruise ship and a jet just for laughs. I feel like I need to start carrying copies of “so. you’re in love with a narcissist” to give out whenever I run into one of these stupids.
He’s just not into you, sweetheart.
America has a huge “fuck you, I got mine” attitude. Not surprised so many of them worship people like Musk.
Wow, he fucked me and got his way harder than anybody else! Idol alert! Idol alert!
Better get a lot of ebook versions and just hand them out on twitter to all the musk stans.
They’re not temporarily embarrassed millionaires. There’s no such thing, really.
They’re groupies. They don’t care how bad their life is, they’re star-crossed and get a weird vicarious thrill from it. They know they’ll never be that rich, but as long as their star is rising, they’re happy. It’s more like fans of a sports team. If their star quarterback is winning – even if that means they’re personally doing worse – they’re on the winning team.
The false narrative of ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ is detrimental because it’s misleading in how we talk to and about them. I don’t remember who started that, but it’s dead wrong.
e: to clarify, they aren’t supporting this shit because they think it will benefit them someday. If that were the case, they could be reasoned with. It’s worse:
They support this shit because they believe those billionaires are deserving or anointed by god. A fundamental part of conservatism is the belief there is a natural order to society with more deserving people on top, and if that hierarchy is disrupted, all of society will fall into chaos. They believe certain people should naturally be on top, and there’s honour in knowing your place and performing it well. Conservatism was born when feudalism died and the historical lords shifted their ideology from feudalism to capitalism to keep their wealth and power.
That ‘knowing your place in the hierarchy’ bit is a large part of racism as well as their penchant for fascism. The world makes more sense and is thus safer when everyone is in their proper place.
Well said. This is especially evident in places like Appalachia where people are demonstrably hurting and maintain an unwavering allegiance.
I find all these strawmen memes very frustrating but I’m glad there’s some actual nuance in the comments, at least
What strawmen? People vote against their own best interests because they’re *uneducated *angry *brainwashed
“No it’s REAL, I swear it’s LEGIT!” Like watching people watching David Blaine specials on tv…
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Should just start by issuing a 80 percent tax in wealth that we haven’t hit yet
Say, 400 billion.
That way when they can pass it and say it doesn’t impact anyone. It’s just there as a buffer… And when musk or zuck hit that eventual trigger we tax the piss out of them
It won’t be Musk. He’s almost as unsuccessful as Trump.
Dunno. He’s still number 1.
I agree with you he’s an idiot, but he’s still rich and making money
We (U.S.) should revisit the Alternate Minimum Tax. The whole idea was to mitigate excessive deductions for the wealthy by earablishing a more straightforward way of calculating that their tax must at least match the minimum. I believe it even worked for a few years.
- AMT was not indexed for inflation so affects more people every year with inflation , not just the wealthy
- there are still too many loopholes so “money finds a way”
An income tax would be pointless for the wealthy. Most of their wealth is in unrealized capital gains or other investment vehicles, not from salaries.
There would need to be a mechanism to tax unrealized capital gains, or just networth in general.
tax unrealized capital gains
I don’t know that there’s a fair way to do that, since they are unrealized: people can’t really use that wealth yet.
However, let’s worry about taxing capital gains: why is that rate so much lower than income tax
Let’s worry about hiding wealth through corporations to lower tax rates
At one point there were reports that Donald Trump managed his real estate through a network of over 500 companies. While I don’t know anything beyond the news articles, I find it believable that it could be both legal and could be used to hide both income and expenses from taxes and lenders. We need to use things like this as an example of what not to allow
While I completely agree on your later points, we do have a system already in place for taxing unrealized gains. They’re called property taxes. I’m sure we could create a similar system for taxing other types of assets.
You can just literally take the ownership of a portion of the stocks and investments off them and place them in control of a government run sovereign investment team instead. It’s not exactly hard to figure out what these are worth at any moment anyway, realized gains or not, that’s what the stock market tracks for us and what they use to estimate worth and use as collateral for loans with banks. If banks trust this way of doing it then so can we.
It’s not pointless, because there are plenty who make an excessive salary. However, yeah, it’s not really sufficient because the well-off are already paying less taxes by using different types of income.
We also need to fix how low tax rates are on those other types of incone
If you look back on the tax reductions of the last several Republican administrations, you’ll see they predominantly reduce taxes in these non-salary situations that really only affect the more wealthy
It’s pointless in that it’s not going to earn enough tax revenue to make a difference. Billionaires didn’t become billionaires from their paychecks.
I suppose it depends on what segment of “wealthy” you want to focus on. Billionaires make the news but there are very few of them
Massachusetts recently passed a “millionaires tax” on those earning $1M in the state. It affects 0.6% of the state’s population and has brought in enough to fund school lunches for everyone
tax unrealized capital gains
This actually happened with bitcoin a while back due to its under-regulated nature. A few people lost their pants when the value of bitcoin skyrocketed on one day in december and then plummetted in early January, and the IRS came knocking for those unrealized gains.
Largely, We don’t tax unrealized gains because unrealized gains is value that hypothetically can disappear as quickly as it shows up. It’s like taxing someone after every hand of blackjack - you can end up broke AND owing 10x your starting money in capital gains taxes. In theory, a stock portfolio can go from way-up to way-down in 24 hours. Ditto with real-estate if there manifests an uncovered loss event or the title gets fucked, or environmental regulation changes in a way that affects the property, etc.
…I’m not saying there’s not a way to do it right. It just needs to be done very VERY carefully so as not to bankrupt people. It would likely have to be more complicated than most tax law is now.
I know very little about stocks, unrealized gains, and taxes in general, but wouldn’t it be simple to tax the incremental gain or loss of capital assets?
“What? Tax the gain of a gain? What’s that?”
I believe that would be called a derivative in math speak. Basically, if there’s a “spike” the up-spike would have a positive tax. The “down-spike” would have a negative tax. What you end up owing is the change from before to after.
How would this be done?
That’s for someone smarter than me to figure out, but I would think there would be a way to plot the value over time, plot the derivative, then the value at the end of the year is what you owe. If it’s negative then you get some back, if it’s positive you owe.
wouldn’t it be simple to tax the incremental gain or loss of capital assets
That’s what happeend with bitcoins. High volitility investments are quite literally the problem with taxing unrealized gains. If something is worth $1 for 364 days, an $1B for 1 day, how much do you tax? If that day was 12/31 and it’s cryptocurrency, you tax that $1B, even if it’s back down to $1 and the person’s total net worth is in the single digits. YES, that’s an exaggeration of what’s really happened, but only to exemplify. This is also a real issue with forex and non-blue-chip stocks. To a lesser extent, it’s true for real estate, especially high-risk real estate investments. There’s a lot of things like possibly-landlocked properties for sale where the buyer is assuming fairly heavy risk. If things go well, they got a steal. If things go badly, they have a worthless deed.
Despite the general trends of property, the value of an actual piece of property (or any investments) any time before the moment it’s sold is an estimate at best. That bitcoin example above was never worth $1B if the owner was not actionably able to liquidate it for that price, regardless of the estimated worth.
I HATE to defend Bezos on anything, but attempting to tax the value of his Amazon stock is problematic because he would 100% get MUCH less than the value of his stock if he sold it. Since he’s ultra-rich, I’m ok with taxing him as if he made $1B if he could only get full price if he liquidates the first $5M of $1B in stock, but that same effect will happen to people who make a lot less than him. Now, he deserves to be paying more than he does, a whole hell of a lot more, but taxes are not just anti-rich corrupt, they’re COMPLICATED to get money from the rich without having unexpected outcomes for everyone.
“What? Tax the gain of a gain? What’s that?”
Not sure who you’re quoting on that. Taxing the “wealth acceleration” seems bizarre and pro-ultra-rich to me. That actually WOULD punish people who make their first million while rewarding someone who makes $1B/yr consistently. I do have enough understanding of calculus to follow the ball on that one, and I don’t think it lands how you think it would.
They still make liquid money no? Well above what any normal person takes home.
They do, but the point is it’s not those millions of dollars that are mentioned, so that high marginal rate just wouldn’t do a whole lot on its own.
Yes because there’s no chance that this would end up having to be paid by every homeowner whose house has gone up in value since they bought it while rich people would just find another loophole to avoid it, while the government would piss all that extra money away on wasteful spending without addressing any actual problems.
Heh, this post is about you.
They’re not wrong. The people who would write these laws are paid for by the people who would be negatively impacted by them, so I guarantee they’d be full of loopholes.
I hope you love your landlord, because with that attitude, you’ll never own a home.
Yes because there’s no chance that this would end up having to be paid by every homeowner whose house has gone up in value since they bought it
A chance? Sure. But it would require willful malicious writing of the bill. Many (most?) states have homestead protections for homeowners up to a certain conservative value. That protection could pivot to capital gains trivially. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to tax valuation skyrockets in excess of (say) $500,000. The government can depreciate those value skyrockets, and we’d still honestly be paying less than our due since property value skyrockets cause property tax decreases (in most (all) municipalities, property taxes are just the town’s expenses divided by property value).
while rich people would just find another loophole to avoid it,
In real state, that “loophole” is a law that exists in most states specifically saying you don’t have to pay tax on property gain if you follow a specified process to reinvest into property in the same calendar year. But it’s not a loophole if it’s the damn law. The only way people are dodging real estate taxes now is because they wrote laws to. A law that says “fuck off, you still have to pay” would absolutely work.
while the government would piss all that extra money away on wasteful spending without addressing any actual problems
Across the world, tax rates are largely proportional to health, happiness, and quality of life of the citizens. I prefer to trust the numbers over someone’s distrust of the country they live in.
A chance? Sure. But it would require willful malicious writing of the bill.
Have you been keeping track of politics AT ALL? You’re if fool if you don’t EXPECT precisely that to happen. The vast majority of politicians will foam at the mouth at the prospect of passing another tax and then happily add a few provisions to make sure their top donors aren’t hurt too much by it. Or do you think it’s just a tragic accident that the majority of taxes keeps getting paid by the poor and middle classes?
Across the world, tax rates are largely proportional to health, happiness, and quality of life of the citizens
I don’t have any data to prove or disprove that claim, but assuming it’s true, then there’s certainly better ways to achieve that, like increasing income tax rates on the wealthy. Yes sure, they’ll try to avoid it by deferring or offsetting gains where they can, but in the end, whatever they own, they’ll still have to convert a certain amount of it to cash in order to spend it, and that can be taxed. No need for such harebrained schemes as taxing unrealized gains.
Have you been keeping track of politics AT ALL? You’re if fool if you don’t EXPECT precisely that to happen.
I largely disagree. I don’t wear a tinfoil hat, sorry. I have seen successful execution of homestead related profit protections, and there are very few “gotchas” in it, if any, for non-millionaires.
I’m an American, so blame my patriotism. But I like to think if EVERY other country can do it, we’re not so pathetic as a country that we cannot.
like increasing income tax rates on the wealthy
There’s a ceiling on the revenue potential in that. The wealthier you get, the less your income is “income”. The wealthy don’t even try to “avoid” it, it’s just not relevant to them. Bezos wasn’t lying that year he only made $80k in income. His unrealized capital gains simply were not taxable unless he chose to sell off lots of Amazon stock (which has non-tax-related repurcussions for him).
It’s income, not assets. Anyone who’s house increases value from 9 million to 10 million wouldn’t have to pay it.
Unrealized gain is by definition not income, that’s what “unrealized” means.
Let’s say you buy a house for $300k and the value goes up to $400k. But you don’t sell it because you want to keep living there. Too bad, now you have an unrealized gain of $100k and you owe taxes on that. At the current rate, if your regular income is between $47k and $518k, this would cost you 15 grand. Not to mention you’d have to pay this tax every year that your house appraises for more than you bought it for.
Still sound like a good idea?
Yeah, you don’t magically have to pay income tax on unrealized gains. You pay income tax on income. That’s why it’s called income tax.
Too bad, now you have an unrealized gain of $100k and you owe taxes on that.
You owe property taxes on it, if it’s an asset property, and your location has property taxes. If it’s stocks and bonds, you wouldn’t have the same problem.
Yeah, you don’t magically have to pay income tax on unrealized gains. You pay income tax on income. That’s why it’s called income tax.
This was a hypothetical, because thread OP was suggesting a tax on unrealized gains. I was just trying to explain the possible consequences of such a tax.
In order to tax unrealized gains, they WOULD have to be treated as income, even though they really aren’t, because if you didn’t sell an asset, you didn’t make any money. Unless you rented it out, of course, but rental income is already treated as such.
As far as stock or bonds go, it’s the same. Imagine you buy some stock to hold for the long term. Well, if it goes up, and there’s a tax on unrealized gains, you’d be owing taxes on every dollar it has gone up from the purchase price, EVERY YEAR that you hold it. It would almost be like having to pay rent on something you already own, and of course that would make long term investing extremely unattractive, not to mention it would basically eliminate any chance that normal people have at building any wealth whatsoever.
Also, if long term investing becomes unattractive, that means people would likely just try to sell everything the same year they bought it, meaning there’ll be a lot more short term trading (and thus rampant speculation) going on. Even if you put generous exemptions in place to avoid penalizing the lower and middle classes with this, taxing unrealized gains would lead the super rich to engage in more short term speculation, which means the markets would become much more unstable. It’s literally the dumbest idea anyone could think of unless their goal is to just cause as much pain and chaos as possible.
I think you lost the thread. The grandparent post here said “There would need to be a mechanism to tax unrealized capital gains”
We’re talking about someone thinking we ought to be taxing things that aren’t income. What is currently true is not relevant to that discussion.
Sorry, I didn’t realize the comment changed direction from the OP meme.
No worries :)
Measures like these often fail, because a lot of people dream of being these people that earn that much money. They don’t want to limit their possibly future unrealistic imaginary self.
This is commonly repeated, but I wonder if the majority of folks are actually against something like a 70% tax rate on $10 million per year in the absence of all other issues.
I think most republicans are actually in favour of such a tax, they just care about the other issues they are told about by their news sources like crime, religion, and immigration more.
There is also a legitimate concern about the tax money being misused or stolen. The amount of taxes already collected per year is already incomprehensibly large, yet society gets almost nothing for it.
but I wonder if the majority of folks are actually against something like a 70% tax rate on $10 million per year in the absence of all other issues.
What do you mean by “absence of all other issues”, though? I find figures as high as 62% of Americans favoring a Flat Tax (admittedly, it’s all over the place). Many MANY Americans are convinced that everyone paying the same percent of their income is “fair”.
Massachusetts, a very left-leaning state as far as that goes, managed to pass a much more conservative millionaire tax by ballot initiative, but only managed to get 52% yes votes. And the vote arguably only succeeded because it was mere a 4% (?!?) tax on income over a million.
And the entire “NO” push was based around “what if YOU make a million for one year? It will devastate you!” And they got 48% of the vote.
Arguably, a flat tax could tax the rich more, as long as it applies to capital gains, qualified dividends, municipal bonds, and other tax shielded types of income. Maybe muni bonds can be excluded, since that would harm all local and state governments.
If you are rich and living off investments, your total tax is less than 20%. It could be 15% or less, depending on your sources of income. A flat tax of 20% (or more) would tax these people more. Of course that reduces all the policy the US has implemented through tax breaks (donations to charity, green improvements, investments in disadvantaged areas). Voters can be dumb and may not realize that tax cuts are spending money.
I think we’re thread-mixupping here. I was directly replying to someone talking about a 70% tax on income over a certain arbitrary number ($10M/yr)
You’re not wrong that a blend of flat tax and treating all material gain as income could tax that one specific scenario more. But it really is a different topic. My take on that topic is “sure, but let’s not do it as a flat tax at all. Progressive tax PLUS carefully situated handling of capital gains”
Honestly, we’re 99% there if we just revisit all the laws that defer or waive capital gains tax and set a networth ceiling on them. It’s ok to defer retirement gains, but maybe not after you have $20M in retirement? The way it works with selling owner-occupied real-estate in my area is a $250K “grace area” for profits, then you’re taxed on gains less all bills/investments into the property. For most Americans even lower-upper-class, that’s $0 of liability.
We can do the same with retirement, say at the $4m mark (twice the current recommended retirement total, or just round up to $5m). With stocks "ditto, pick an arbitrary large number more than most Americans have). Whatever.
But add a flat tax to that? Why.
Voters can be dumb and may not realize that tax cuts are spending money.
That’s true. Voters are more than happy to spend $500 on a $400 tax cut instead of spending that same thing on something that increases their quality of life by approximately $1000 (either by increasing the buying power of the dollar or community-profiting subsidies like EBT).
$5 million is far too low for a wealth tax but maybe ok for an income tax. I’m not sure which one you were proposing. No need to alarm all the people who will reflexively vote against tax increases that don’t affect them. 70% is also too high.
I think everyone could agree that a wealth tax of 2% on amounts over $1 billion would be fine. Even $100 million might be acceptable. All unearned income over $500K could be taxed at 30% as well. But these are beating around the bush.
Corporate income taxes are what really need to rise. 35% at least. Tax the income where it’s generated too. I don’t care if Apple says their IP is all owned by a tiny company in Ireland. They need to pay US taxes on all income generated in the US.
$5 million is far too low for a wealth tax but maybe ok for an income tax
In context here, I was sorta referencing a capital gains tax. Note the comparison with homestead sale exemptions.
70% is also too high.
Not sure whether I agree or disagree. It’s in line (if a little on the high end) for the highest marginal rate in a lot of Europe. After a certain point, no human can claim to actually need the money they’re making anymore, with a logarithmic return. As such, sharp taxation increases after that logarithmic point of return make sense from a strict “utility per dollar” mindset.
I think everyone could agree that a wealth tax of 2% on amounts over $1 billion would be fine
I simply don’t think that’s true. I think it’s a no-brainer. But I don’t think it’s true. Wealth taxes terrify people who will never see that kind of wealth.
All unearned income over $500K could be taxed at 30% as well
I’m assuming you mean unrealized income? Yeah, that’s where the problems start, and what my whole comment was about. Are you accounting for liquidity? For risk? Sometimes people simply have hundreds of thousands in unrealized income that they will never be able to realize because it will coincide with equivalent losses in past/future years. Again, the Bitcoin example I used elsewhere. Some people who genuinely do not have a lot of money were hit with some massive “unrealized gains” taxes greater than their entire net worth, possibly greater than they’d ever earn in their lives, due in part to the unregulated and volitile nature of bitcoin.
In fact, Bitcoin is the perfect example why we need to be incredibly careful with unrealized gains taxes. They’re called unrealized for a reason, and realizing gains can be incredibly costly. You tax a single-owner business for sudden growth and the owner might find themselves owing more in taxes than money made, but selling the business to realize those gains would also involve destroying their source of income. In fact, the wrong capital gains tax would (as always it seems) decisively benefit large businesses and superwealthy individuals. They would go around buying those “taxed out of business” companies for pennies on the dollar because they could afford the taxes.
That’s why it’s complicated.
Corporate income taxes are what really need to rise. 35% at least
ALSO complicated. But I agree. There is a real risk of corporate flight, but I’m not convinced Delaware-Based corporations that primarily employ people in third-world countries are really providing much value in the US.
I don’t care if Apple says their IP is all owned by a tiny company in Ireland. They need to pay US taxes on all income generated in the US.
…they already do “pay US taxes on all income generated in the US”. Apple pays a majority of their taxes to the US. The Ireland thing was largely about 10 years of crazy tax breaks back in the 80’s based on loopholes that the EU cracked down on. Yes, their $170B profit is disgusting, and the $35B in taxes they pay are merely 20% of their margins… but it’s not going away by just expecting them to pay based on US income. Corporate taxes are a complicated game with hundreds of deductions and thousands of defensible reasons for those deductions.
I’ve never loved that businesses pay taxes on profit, but individuals pay taxes on income. It’s “understood” that hitting a business on the bottom-line is unreasonable, but individuals are often taxed on the very remediation techniques taken to deal with overwhelming debt (yes, in the US, debt forgiveness is taxed as income!)
No, I meant unearned income. “Earned income” is income from a W-2 or 1099-Misc or something similar. “Unearned income” is dividends, interest, distributions from a trust or partnership, etc.
Basically it’s income you don’t work for and it’s taxed less than income from your job. You don’t pay FICA taxes on it (and conversely you don’t get credit for social security in the future). This is part of the reason why wealthy people pay lower % taxes than people who work. And it should be addressed.
Agreed, but …
selling owner-occupied real-estate in my area is a $250K “grace area” for profits
I’d argue this is too low. I do t know how long it’s been like that but doubt it has risen with inflation. It affects more people every year and arguably shouldn’t, and it is too much impact on people who own their house a long time
I live in a high cost of living area. Despite this being low percentage growth, my house has gained that much over the 20 years I’ve lived here. I suppose you could argue I should pay more but I’m certainly not wealthy. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt me too bad while I’m working, but…
what happens to someone retired after owning a house for decades. You’d easily gain more than this just by time. However now we have a trap of no income do can no longer afford taxes on your home and taxed take a bite out of selling, making it harder to pay for retirement, healthcare, nursing home
Any adjustment needs to be kind to the elderly, plus I’d argue someone like me is not the target so should not be affected
I’d argue this is too low. I do t know how long it’s been like that but doubt it has risen with inflation
I’m on the fence here. Realistically, if you can show “normal” bills related to wear&tear and maintenance, that gets you out of paying taxes in even the most expensive parts in the country. I live outside of Boston and have never come close to owing a penny on selling my home.
I live in a high cost of living area. Despite this being low percentage growth, my house has gained that much over the 20 years I’ve lived here.
So the problem is the paper trail, and a good real estate attourney can help you maneuver it. What have your expenses been on the house over the last 20 years? They all count. Profit isn’t just “selling price minus buying price” in this situation. At least in my state.
what happens to someone retired after owning a house for decades
That does get complicated. To my understanding, normally the law works reasonably well in situations like these, but I don’t know all the nuances. It’s a “lawyer-up” situation, especially if there’s an estate involved. I’m sure there are edge cases, but largely people end up not owing taxes on their home residence even in very pricy areas, unless their gains on it are absurd. If you bought a Boston apartment building when it was cheap and sell now, then you’re likely going to be paying taxes on some of that $5M+ windfall.
Realistically, if you can show “normal” bills related to wear&tear and maintenance, that gets you out of paying taxes
But is that realistic? Who would keep such things over potentially their whole adult life? Even knowing that, I replaced my roof about 5 years ago and already misplaced those receipts. I do t know how people do it
This isn’t true. They don’t do it because they see themselves as rich at some point, they do it because they feel like they’re in the rich club just saying this shit.
Also simply because rich people have a lot of ability and incentive to “optimize” their taxes. Increase their taxes too much and they will just move to a different country and not pay you a penny.
People
cosplaying as folksmaking under $50k per yearFriendly reminder that Joe The Plumber wasn’t named Joe, wasn’t a Plumber, and was earning well into the six-figure tax bracket before he spent a year on the right-wing freak show talk circuit.
It isn’t even temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Its astroturfed outrage by paid performers and fellow grifters, intended to give their wealthy peers cover when they pile out into the suburbs waving No Step On Snek flags from their BMWs and F-350s.
I think the thing for everyone not making >$1m/yr to firmly understand is that when top marginal rate income isn’t taxed seriously and antitrust laws aren’t enforced, they have to bid for housing in markets where the prices are set by top-bidders, and your grocery bill is whatever they feel like charging you and that means your normal $50k/yr income can’t afford rent and food without roommates. High inequality means everything becomes expensive.
It’s the “low-tax” countries that create unaffordable real estate, the ‘free market’ countries are where you can’t afford necessities. It’s the ones that invest in public goods and infra (and regulate their capitalism) that yield high standards of living for most people.
Billionaires make money off stocks and asset gains, so taxing income higher generally only hurts the upper middle class (i.e. doctors, high earning professionals).
In Canada the average effective tax rate actually decreases once you hit like $750k (I don’t have exact numbers, it’s been a while since I analyzed this one) because those people stop paying as much employment tax and instead pay capital gains which are taxed at 50%.
So, if you’re middle class, or upper middle class, you’re paying twice as much as the millionaires and billionaires are per additional dollar made.
And that’s the best case because the really rich people put their assets under a corporation and continually “reinvest” their gains while harvesting their losses (businesses pay 26.5% tax).
So Rich people pay a marginal rate of 26.5/26.8%, while the upper middle class pay 53.5% on their income.
I don’t know any doctor or high earning professional that makes millions of dollars per year. You’re still thinking about the wrong bracket. We’re talking about the mega wealthy, hundreds of millions to billions in net worth. Also, no, the effective tax rate never actually decreases in Canada. You get taxed at higher percentages the more money you make. Someone making $750k a year gets taxed at a higher rate, both marginally and effectively, than someone making $50k. You’re assuming that all of this extra money is just coming from capital gains. It’s not.
Fair point about marginal vs effective rates. My criticism is two points:
- The top tax bracket is still in the employed professional income range, like a doctor or lawyer type job. Those people are wealthy but not problematically so.
- The capital gains exemption and incorporation loopholes allow wealthy people to lower their effective taxes by a lot. For example a CEO with a $1 salary – their income is grants of shares and the capital gains on those shares, resulting in a lower effective tax rate than their real earnings should. It gets more nebulous when you incorporate your finances and “reinvest” gains or use other tax loop holes like lending against stock.
Those are the things where I think just increasing income tax ends up burdening the middle class the most. Adding new brackets would help, updating capital gains based on income like the US does would too, so would closing loop holes and exploring new taxation strategies.
Omg 50% capital gains tax sounds insane. I feel like that would dissuade people from investing. “Okay you invest in this asset. It might go down, which would be bad, but if it goes up you get to keep half of that and pay me the other half!”
The capital gains exemption is that you only pay tax on 50% as income.
So if I make $100k, I pay taxes on $50k, at my marginal tax rate (max of 53% in Ontario, so the effective tax rate on capital gains is at most 26.5%). If I work 9-5 and I make $100k, I’m taxed on the whole thing.
Plus if you lose money you can apply it 3 years back to get taxes back.
Ah this makes much more sense. Thank you for the explanation
sounds like a great deal for doing literally zero work?
But they took the risk of becoming checks notes … a wage worker.
Whats your definition of work then? Id actually be interested…
things that wouldn’t do if you don’t get paid for it
They wouldnt invest in assets if they didnt get paid for it so by your own definition, they are doing work.
(And technically if someone loved their job so much that they would do it even if they didnt get the money, then they would not be doing work and still getting paid for it)…
