A Wealth Tax Is Simply Un-American It would make the U.S. less hospitable to the most visionary entr

[Prosper]

A Wealth Tax Is Simply Un-American It would make the U.S. less hospitable to the most visionary entr

The vision is to get all the money and create a peasant class that can’t afford to live. Because they sure ain’t investing their money in products for sale prosperity producing jobs. Sorry Bloomberg, we don’t need another person that thinks they are chosen by their almighty to be special and impose their will.

A Wealth Tax Is Simply Un-American
It would make the U.S. less hospitable to the most visionary entrepreneurs.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2019-10-29/wealth-tax-proposals-may-be-feasible-but-they-re-un-american

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. I pay a wealth tax twice a year. It's called property taxes.

There’s an entire bureaucracy in every county in the US set up to figure out how much every property is worth and tax a certain percentage of that value.

Is that un American?

[Prosper]

3. Are you asking me ?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

6. Yes and no. It's kinda in response to the article.

But you are free to answer.

[Prosper]

10. My answer is then to read the body of my post.

[enough]

4. Good point. NT

[TidalWave46]

5. Many right wingers say that is extremely un American. It's a major hang-up with the likes....

of the Bundy crowd. They claim that in the land where property ownership trump all that no one actually ever truly owns their property because of it.

[redqueen]

20. Right but so if we already have property taxes then what is this new system about? nt

[Hassin Bin Sober]

21. The article in the op was about wealth taxes being un American

If you are a “no new taxes” type of person that is a different conversation.

[George II]

2. I don't understand the rationale behind taxing one's net worth.

[BlueMTexpat]

8. Please see

my response below.

It's not all that complicated and certainly much fairer than what is happening now.

[Prosper]

9. Taxing net worth is analogous to forcing a person that

dams up a river to tear the dam down. It is not fair to dam up a river that people depend upon for their livelihood. Money was created to facilitate the trading of goods and services. It should not be used to impose poverty.

[KPN]

16. Good analogy.

[crazytown]

11. Rationale?

Unlike an income tax, a wealth tax incentivizes productive investment.

[KPN]

17. That too -- over and above the equity issue.

[Prosper]

24. ++++++

[KPN]

15. Simple. They (America's wealthiest) accumulated a huge share of their present net worth during the

past 40+ years during which the tax scam known as supply-side economics resulted in almost all of the income gains from economic productivity gains over that period ending up in the accounts of a relative few (the top 1%, but even more so for the top .01%) while wages/income stayed relatively flat overall for the remainder of Americans. In a nutshell, tax and economic policy that effectively transferred more and more of the income from productivity gains away from the working class to the .01-1%.

The wealth has already been transferred. The economic losses to middle and working class can never be recovered by simply taxing income because it is no longer income -- the wealth has already been accumulated. The wealthy already have it. The only way to recover some of those gains and restore a modicum of equity or balance is to tax that wealth, i.e., re-transfer some of that wealth back to the people who did the work to produce it in the form of federal revenue that benefits all Americans, not just the few.

Unless you have more than $50,000,000 in the bank, you don't have to worry about it.

[Gore1FL]

33. They didn't get taxed on their income for 40 years.

Think of it as a catch-up contribution.

[BlueMTexpat]

7. Oh, phfft!

Here's a quick video that shows how Warren's proposed wealth tax would work. Kudos to my fellow Warren supporter "sagesnow."

It's nice and short ... and easy to understand.

****************

No "visionary entrepreneurs" who have <USD 50 million will be hurt.

And don't you think that those who have >USD 50 million should begin to pay their fair share?

I do.

[oldsoftie]

14. Cute, but this tax would only raise enough to pay the interest on the national debt.

But instead of trying to get rid of that, we just talk about starting up even MORE programs that ALWAYS end up costing far more than estimated.
And lets not even factor in how most of this wealth is concentrated in company stock ownership & teh effect on stock price of having to sell share to pay the tax.

[BlueMTexpat]

19. So you've done ALL the math!

Wow, even faster than Warren and her team of experts! Impressive!

Obviously, this little video is quite simple and application of the wealth tax would be more complex (if it even gets passed), but frankly there are way too many Timid Tims who dismiss this out of hand.

The obscenely wealthy have ruined the world long enough and have caused an incredible gap - an abyss in fact - between rich and poor in the US, where we never dreamed it would happen. It is time for serious measures to be taken to remedy that.

I have to sell stock shares NOW to pay MY taxes and I am not in the top One Percent. Nowhere near! And I can still make ends meet. Granted, my comparatively small holdings hardly register with stock share prices.

But if the market stays healthy because not only the economy but ALL Americans are doing well, then it's a win-win situation for all. Any lost share value will soon be made up. I haven't heard either George Soros or Warren Buffet complaining and they are both financial wizards whom I respect.

The millionaires and billionaires will make out just fine despite all their current whining and gnashing of teeth.

[oldsoftie]

35. The bottom line is that it wont raise whats projected & its not NEARLY whats needed.

Certainly the rich should pay more. But planning these special taxes that can and will be avoided is a waste of time. We dont tax nearly all the income NOW. We refuse to use a VAT like almost ALL the countries who have the programs we want. We dont even discuss the debt anymore. When the Debt Commission released their findings several years ago & the steps needed to deal with it, it was immediately ignored.
Thinking that we can fund massive projects solely on the backs of the super rich IS a fantasy. But run on that in the general election and lets just see what everyone else thinks.

[Gore1FL]

34. I can't say I agree with any of your arguments.

Paying the interest on the national debt is a worthy goal.

Government programs can be good things. Spending more to make the country better and it's citizens happier is all part of promoting the general welfare.

I am pretty sure most billionaires have some liquidity. I don't see frantically selling shares as a huge problem for them.

[oldsoftie]

37. Oh, I agree on the debt. My point was that no new revenue is slated for that.

theres no mention of the debt in anyones platform as far as I know. Maybe there is & I havent seen it

[redqueen]

22. Great video.

If we can get it through Congress would love to see it work as expected.

[BlueMTexpat]

40. VERY BIG IF, indeed!

But then, that is the situation with ALL Dem plans/proposals.

So why not think BIG as well?

[brewens]

12. Looting by the 1% is Mericun! n/t

[Turbineguy]

13. Yeah

It will make people stop buying lottery tickets too!

[ritapria]

18. I prefer a 1% Wall Sales Tax on financial transactions

There has to be a solution to the horrendous income inequality that is leaving half of Americans behind - living paycheck to paycheck …...Most of these folks work very hard - to little avail ………..Many turn to alcohol and drugs ...Their lives shortened.

[redqueen]

23. Whatever else we do I would love to see

a financial transaction tax and capital gains/carried interest tax get passed.

[Prosper]

25. Need at least 25% tax on non party investing. That would

guide money to the real economy of making products to sale. Money should be regulated like a natural resource preventing money from leaving the real economy of goods and services. If Billionaires would use their wealth to securitize the goods and services economy they would be responsible for prosperity. Stagnating money in Trusts and as security for third party investing removes the lifeblood money from the economy.

[wiley]

26. Warren should emphasize where her tens of millions of dollars came from

She is one of the richest candidates ever to run for POTUS. I wonder if she openly admits she is one of the super wealthy in this country?

[Gore1FL]

36. It's been done.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2019/08/20/how-elizabeth-warren-built-a-12-million-fortune/#2de878b1ab57

Having money isn't a crime or a sign of moral bankruptcy.

[dawg day]

27. Really? Where are they going to go, these visionaries?

Western Europe and the US are where rich people want to live. (There are other places they want to live, of course... that's why they buy 9 houses.) They are where rich companies want to get started.

I will never ever understand why a billion dollars isn't enough for these people, why they carp and moan about having to invest a tiny percentage of their enormous wealth in the country where they live and make most of their money.

And do we really think the Google founders, the Amazon founder, Zuckerberg-- those "Visionaries" == back when they started their companies were thinking, "Oh, I can't start here in Seattle or Silicon Valley or Cambridge because someday I might have to pay a wealth tax if I make a billion dollars"?

Of course not. They all started their companies in high-tax states, after all, and why? Because countries and states with higher taxes usually have good higher education and infrastructure necessary to start a cutting-edge "visionary" company.

"Visionaries" aren't very visionary if they're worried more about taxes twenty years down the road than they are about educated workers and exciting environments.

[Gothmog]

28. A wealth tax may be unconstitutional and will be tied up in the courts for a long time

I personally doubt that the proposed Wealth Tax is constitutional. The direct tax clause of the US constitution is clear and the 16th Amendment does not authorize this tax

Link to tweet

Additionally, a wealth tax would almost certainly face a legal challenge from well-funded conservative opponents. And it’s genuinely unclear whether it would ultimately be ruled constitutional. The issue isn’t that Congress can’t enact a wealth tax. It’s that if a wealth tax counts as a “direct” tax, Congress would have to ensure that the amount of money coming from each state was roughly the same on a per-capita basis, as there is a provision of the Constitution that bans direct taxes unless the amount collected is drawn equally from the states based on their populations. Given that wealth is not evenly distributed across the states, that equal distribution would be functionally impossible to ensure.

The fate of a wealth tax, then, would hinge on whether it counts as a direct tax. That’s a tough question to answer, because the Constitution itself doesn’t really define what a direct tax is, beyond the fact that the category includes a poll tax, which is a fixed amount charged for every person. Taxes like tariffs and certain others that can’t be fairly distributed on a per-person basis are generally not considered direct taxes. But how all of this would apply to a wealth tax isn’t entirely clear. The Supreme Court weighed in on this question more than 100 years ago — and not in the wealth tax’s favor. In 1895, the court struck down a federal income tax law because it taxed income generated from property, including land and other kinds of personal property, like stocks and bonds. The decision was controversial, and Congress and the states effectively reversed part of it 20 years later with the passage of the 16th Amendment which allowed Congress to tax income without worrying about how evenly it was distributed. But Congress’s authority to tax wealth wasn’t addressed by the amendment, and the Supreme Court hasn’t really returned to the issue in the past century.

Warren’s defenders argue, however, that the court simply got it wrong back in 1895, and that a modern wealth tax wouldn’t count as a direct tax. But the court’s right-leaning justices might approach the tax with a less favorable eye. And the existence of the old precedent could give the court’s conservative justices a way to dispatch a wealth tax relatively easily, which gives experts like Daniel Hemel pause. “A wealth tax could raise trillions of dollars — or, if it’s struck down by the Supreme Court, it could raise nothing,” said Hemel, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “That’s a really big risk if you care about the redistribution of income and you’re trying to figure out how to get it done.”

This tax is not likely to survive legal challenge

[dawg day]

30. My state used to have an 'intangibles tax"-- a percentage tax on all stocks and bonds you owned.

Shrug. They dropped it and raised the income tax and the sales tax. So rich people who live off their investments got a break, and working people paid more taxes.

[Gothmog]

31. The US Constitution has a prohibition on direct taxes not allocated by population

The federal income tax is allowed only due to the 16th Amendment

[dawg day]

32. don't we have taxes on investment trades? Or does that not count as a tax?

[Gore1FL]

38. What about the the Direct Tax of 1798?

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/spring/tax-lists.html

[Gothmog]

39. It was allocated in accordance with population

[Joe941]

29. I really don't want millionaires around at all. They do not help society in any way.