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I mean, jeez, there’s a term to describe people who think having a STEM background qualifies them to run the government.
AKA “Engineer’s Syndrome”. I had to laugh when I saw someone criticising her because she’s not an engineer.
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And right now the republican/right-wing machine is hard at work making up any and very kind of bullshit smear that they can. Just like that scum gingrich did when he realized Hillary Clinton was a bright capable woman. Current creeps are planning far down the road to damage her no matter how they have to distort the truth. The right-wing republican is interested only in power. They couldn’t care less about how the have to damage the USA, the constitution, the citizens. They intend to keep a chokehold on their wealth and power and they’ll fuck over anyone who gets in their way.
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three out of the last four times they did that it failed
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We’re not talking about taxing ASSETS right now. That’s a whole other thing, and generally not a federal issue.
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AND … the whole reason real estate prices are in a permanent money-laundering bubble is BECAUSE the rich have too much goddamn money after taxes and they’re bidding up a limited number of available homes. Once they’ve got their multi-million-dollar suburban ranch houses, they can’t let anybody else build any more housing because it would collapse their “investments.” And thus the rest of us have to spend all our money on housing, and homelessness becomes ever more common and ever more visible.
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If by ‘jump out of the pan’ you mean ‘leave the country just like the rich always threaten to do’, won’t happen. Never has in any of the other countries where higher tax rates are implemented. Simple fact is that the rich tend to whine about it when higher taxes are brought up, but then don’t notice and forget about it once they’re implemented. It’s happened plenty time already around the world.
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Taken from the article in literally the third post in this thread…
France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury group LVMH, took out Belgian nationality, and the actor Gérard Depardieu also moved across the border to Belgium before obtaining Russian citizenship.
Sure, some may whine, but some actually do take action.
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This is a non-profit, and contributions are deductible:
There are also family foundations where they sink wealth to avoid taxes, and then use it to fund their hobby horses, some good, some really bad, some both. And well-paid director seats can be used to siphon money back out.
The restrictions against “charities” really being political PACs have been worn down to nubs.
Ensuring that charities actually have to do charitable things needs some work.
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If you make ten million and one dollar, only the one dollar would be taxed at 70%
I’m late. I’m sure this has been discussed already in this lengthy comment section.
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So they’re going to move to Canada, Great Britain, Australia or New Zealand? Those are the only English speaking countries with all the conveniences of modern civilization that I can think of, and they all have higher taxes IIRC.
The uber-wealthy aren’t going to get off their asses, learn another language and leave their current comfortable lifestyles and neighbors. Arnault and Depardieu already speak the languages and it’s an hour’s drive from a nice French city to an equally nice Belgian city and drive back to their new home the same day.
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Well written piece there - glad to learn of Edwin Black’s research.
Yeah, what counts as a tax exempt org thing is definitely beyond absurd at this point :
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So why are some building bunkers in New Zealand? The 3-year Investor Visa is only $6.7 mil.
Peter Theil got his only after 12 days.
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In other words, a marginal tax rate that is considerably LESS than what we had under Eisenhower. His tax policies created the Great Compression and solidified the existence of the middle class. Now that they have been erased so has the middle class, and so has our infrastructure.
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More interesting statistics:
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And that top rate is WHY CEO salaries were low compared to what they are now. Partly because they managed to hide compensation in other ways, and partly because the rich counted coup on each other by other means…
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Given the lengthy comment section, I’m happy to see replies like yours that are a succinct explanation.
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If I was someone with more than ten million dollars, right now I’d be waking up every morning watching my money burst into flames as hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear daily, thanks to Trump’s trade war and his tariffs, which are being paid not by foreign countries, but by our own taxpayers.
It’s hard for me to imagine what it’d be like to be extraordinarily wealthy, but I suspect that if I was, I’d much rather have a functional trade system and confident bull market and have part of my wealth taxed to support education rather than it being sucked into Trump’s coffers.
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That’s really for last-ditch SHTF scenarios where the NZ government will be too busy with other things to look into that all-whites private Bond villain compound guarded by security goons wearing control collars. There are better options than NZ for the less apocalyptic “running away from taxes” scenarios (also, from what I’ve read, Thiel’s visits to NZ are rare to none).
You’re correct that there are super-wealthy people who flee their original tax jurisdiction, but as I noted above doing so comes at a significant and often irrevocable cost – financial and otherwise.
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That’s pretty much what’s suddenly driving wishful thinking among wealthy people like Fred Wilson:
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Yes, but as many mega-rich are demonstrating these days, they’re not exactly making smart moves as much as failing upwards through systems put in place and strengthened by previous generations of whitebros.
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