I agree that some kind of wealth tax probably is necessary in order to limit growing inequality in our society, especially from inter-generational wealth transfers. (Bring back the estate tax!) But whether or not taxing wealth directly is a good idea, it’s not entirely clear that it’s constitutional, or at least it’s not clear that it would be possible to convince the current supreme court that it’s constitutional. The 16th amendment clearly allows for federal income taxes, but wealth taxes may be considered different legally. Article 1 section 9 explicitly limits “direct” taxes, for example.
But I might be way off! Anyone know more about this than I do?
This is incredibly false, the MIC accounts for about 16% of taxes collected but about 57% of discretionary spending (and even then the number has to be boosted a little to get there). Half the government’s spending of tax dollars is in Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare.
Also untrue, the military is just one of the easiest bipartisan areas to find in a hyperpartisan Congress. The Democrats are still all for war, but the attempt to assign it to a side is false when the House has both anti-war libertarians (more accurately privatized military libertarians) and anti-war Democrats. The Senate is where things are pretty unanimous.
This also is not true. Government spending while cutting funding benefits the powerful because it means they have to shrink government programs or let their funding expire, while funding the government does not have the same effect. Funding the government leads to stronger regulatory bodies and entitlements that are not starving. It’s why the deepest entrenched corporatists don’t want the government funded.
Not only that, a government that passes a tax like this isn’t a government trying to cut programs people rely on.
I agree with the comparison, and I’m sure that states COULD collect wealth taxes if they wanted to, just as they currently do with property taxes. Nothing in the federal constitution suggests states can’t do that. But whether the federal government can do it is another question, legally. You’ll note that there currently is no federal property tax.
And again, I am in favor of a tax like this so I hope it is constitutional, I’m just not sure.
I still don’t get it. The 16th Amendment allows specifically for an income tax. It neither allows or prevents a wealth or property tax. Property taxes are constitutional. Where’s the crisis?
I mentioned state’s rights, so 10th amendment, but that gets ignored like a Osmond reunion concert in Greenwich Village.
If I had my way I’d increase the capital gains tax rate. Capital gains are basically money you made because you have money, taxing them at a lower rate than productive labor seems entirely backwards to me.
We have record high tax revenues right now and are still running a large deficit. I would argue that it would be more fruitful to cut the fat out of the budget than to constantly look for more rich people to pay the bill.
The United States existed for a over half of its history with zero income tax and zero payroll tax. Total tax revenue was only 3% of GDP just before WWI. Income tax was supposed to be temporary to fund the war effort. But this is the problem with taxes, once the money grab is established, it becomes the new normal. And budgets always increase and stay ahead of whatever tax revenues we can generate.
We HAVE been doing that, pretty consistently since the 80s. It’s not working, empirically.
It was a very different country back then. We have a lot more services to cover now. I’m not sure any of us want to go back to living in the mid-19th century.
WTF are you talking about? Tax revenues were slashed by the President leading to the monumental deficits we are experiencing today. And these are good times, once the economy turns sour those deficits are going to really take off.
But it’s still TOOOOOO MUCH you see, that rich people are tragically having to pay to support the rest of us dead beats and give us perks like roads and schools and the military and welfare and public parks and cultural engagement and air safety and federal domestic law enforcement and environmental protections and food and drug inspections and diplomacy and benefits for soldiers and support for research and support for historical preservation and… well, as you can see from that list, nothing of real importance… /s
The Bezos’s would owe about $4B the first year of this tax. They’d of course have to liquidate about $5B+ of Amazon shares to generate the liquidity to pay on this b/c they’d also have to pay capital gains tax from what is surely a near $0 basis. And then the next year, another $4B? That would get old really fast.
And what if they didn’t own liquid shares of a public company, but rather owned real estate like a lot of very rich people? To generate the liquidity to pay the tax, they would have to start rapidly shedding real estate holdings or levering them.
It’s one of the worst ideas that I’ve heard in days.
