I think they believe they’ll be fine. And I tend to agree.
In the French Revolution—before private jets and wire transfers—most of the aristocracy escaped. It’s even debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos. (We can reject that they materially lost it.)
We already have those. We just tax regular folks’ homes and exempt shares, bonds and offshore trusts.
The value of a statistical life is about $14mm [1]. Let’s round that to the nearest $5mm and then have a progressive scale: $15mm 1%, $150mm 2%, $1.5bn 3%, $15bn 4%, $150bn 5%, $1.5tn 6%.
[1] https://www.transportation.gov/office-policy/transportation-...
It reminds me of student loan forgiveness. It's too hard to retroactively forgive them. It may sound good in theory but it's not fair - i.e. for people who worked 2 jobs while going through college.
The laws for wealth accumulation moving forward need to be reformed and I think we have to accept that we let people run away with massive wealth and it turned out to be not the best thing for society.
Some lessons are learned the hard way.
We already have property tax across the country. Sales tax is charged on post-tax spending. Hell, one could argue income is taxed multiple times given the SALT exemption.
Somehow multiple taxation is only an issue for inheritance and the rich.
Imagine tax reform which collects an extra 1% of sales tax for items you have already purchased.
I'm all for reforming tax such that the wealthy cannot dodge them and pay a higher effective tax rate. I just don't know how to get there.
This is precisely the difficulty you cited.
> Imagine tax reform which collects an extra 1% of sales tax for items you have already purchased
Literally property tax.
cactacea•1h ago
roosterIllusi0n•58m ago
Property taxes automatically goes up to cover the missing federal dollars, that is why property taxes are skyrocketing. Republicans cut federal income taxes and made it easier for CEOs to earn unlimited tax free money.
Property taxes have to pay for everything local that back in the 1950s was all taxpayer funded federally because we had a 90% federal income tax bracket and post-1929 financial regulations. Stock buybacks were illegal and CEOs could not pay themselves in stock and bubble the stock price to enrich themselves. When rich people shift money out of pockets of people who pay taxes to their own pockets where they pay no taxes, they defund the entire tax base and property taxes skyrocket. GDP is still at record highs and companies are posting record profits, but CEOs can run these companies so they and their insiders take all the money.
All the protections have been gutted by the republican party. We are back to the late 20s entering a new great depression. Removing the policies that ended the great depression is how you create a new great depression.
cactacea•53m ago
> Property taxes automatically goes up to cover the missing federal dollars, that is why property taxes are skyrocketing.
All property taxes in the United States are at the state and local levels, not federal. I don't know what you're referring to.
> The republicans did not stop wars, foreign spending, or wasteful spending, they stopped domestic spending on things regular people needed.
Yes.
> Republicans cut federal income taxes and made it easier for CEOs to earn unlimited tax free money.
Also yes.
> Property taxes have to pay for everything local that back in the 1950s was all taxpayer funded federally because we had a 90% federal income tax bracket and post-1929 financial regulations.
You're losing me again here.
jdlshore•16m ago
cactacea•4m ago
But where has that actually occurred?
selectodude•14m ago