Elizabeth Warren wealth tax

[Hack]

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/income-from-abroad-is-taxable
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expatriation-tax
To prevent rich citizens from just renouncing their citizenship, there's a big tax imposed on you (treating you as if you'd sold all your assets) if you expatriate while being rich.

Most high income Americans can't just up and move nor would they want to. There's tons of money to be made in the US, even with slightly higher taxes. For any rich person who gets upset at having to contribute their fair share of taxes and leaves, there will be at least 2+ people fighting for that business opportunity. You think the oil and rail barons just left when we taxed the shit out of them, or how about large car manufacturers, Citi bank, etc. You think that only being #89 on the Forbes top 100 wealthiest individuals in the world instead of being #1 on that same list is somehow going to disincentivize people from trying to build a company? In either instance you have, for any practical life purposes, unlimited money. A relatively small tax is not going to destroy the best and brightest or stifle success if anything the Amazons, Apples, Microsofts are doing that by monopolizing literally everything. Plenty of geniuses and successful people have done far greater for far less.

The 4 most powerful companies in America are headquartered in CA which has some of the highest tax rates and regulations. You still can not fathom that large companies and wealthy people simply do not pay their fair share in taxes currently. Yes, I also understand business are moving out of CA, however, next to none are moving outside the U.S. nor will they ever. Many states have already called their bluffs.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double-irish-with-a-dutch-sandwich.asp

Crazy how only 0.0002% of Americans worked hard enough to become Billionaires. Can't believe we're so lazy. Also, we should scale regulations to help smaller businesses.

In my opinion it's not fair that wealthy people have to pay higher taxes than poor people. The top 1% of people pay more income tax than the bottom 90%. Wealthy people are currently paying far too much income tax.

That is completely unfair. Income tax is completely unethical. It's theft.

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[watisthis]

In my opinion, it's not fair that wealthy people have to pay higher taxes than poor people. The top 1% of people pay more income tax than the bottom 90%. Wealthy people are currently paying far too much income tax.

That is completely unfair. Income tax is completely unethical. It's theft.

Nothing wrong with believing that, however, lets first understand why we have them.

You start your day. You wake up in a house that is standing and secure due to a government agency that mandated a minimum building code. You make coffee and breakfast of some sort, not even questioning where the food came from or how it was handled. Government regulations and health inspectors maintain tight controls on the handling of food products that ensure they remain as safe as possible. The stove, coffee maker, microwave, and every electronic device conforms to required safety standards, so they don't burst into flames or electrocute you when you use them.

You leave for work in a car that has thousands of safety requirements. While driving on the road paid for by taxes, you obey the traffic signs. Stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits. They weren't just put there on a whim. Traffic engineers decide what intersections require what signage paid for by the government to keep people as safe as possible while keeping traffic moving as best as it can. For those that ignore the law, government agents in the form of police will enforce those laws and issue fines to keep people in compliance. We don't really need to worry about people driving the wrong way and doing what they want because of law and order provided by the government.

The government provides us services and structure for our society, but no one is going to do that all for free. Everyone benefits, so everyone pays for it. The more you earn, the more you can afford to contribute to society. You might have earned that money, but you wouldn't have earned it without the structure and support provided by the government, wither it's banking regulations that keep the economy strong and your money safe or taxes that pay park rangers to keep a green space clean and safe.

I don't even like Elizbeth Warren; however, she isn't wrong when she said, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now, look. You built a factory, and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

If you can think of a better way please enlighten the rest of us.

 

[Hack]

Nothing wrong with believing that, however, lets first understand why we have them.

You start your day. You wake up in a house that is standing and secure due to a government agency that mandated a minimum building code. You make coffee and breakfast of some sort, not even questioning where the food came from or how it was handled. Government regulations and health inspectors maintain tight controls on the handling of food products that ensure they remain as safe as possible. The stove, coffee maker, microwave, and every electronic device conforms to required safety standards, so they don't burst into flames or electrocute you when you use them.

You leave for work in a car that has thousands of safety requirements. While driving on the road paid for by taxes, you obey the traffic signs. Stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits. They weren't just put there on a whim. Traffic engineers decide what intersections require what signage paid for by the government to keep people as safe as possible while keeping traffic moving as best as it can. For those that ignore the law, government agents in the form of police will enforce those laws and issue fines to keep people in compliance. We don't really need to worry about people driving the wrong way and doing what they want because of law and order provided by the government.

The government provides us services and structure for our society, but no one is going to do that all for free. Everyone benefits, so everyone pays for it. The more you earn, the more you can afford to contribute to society. You might have earned that money, but you wouldn't have earned it without the structure and support provided by the government, wither it's banking regulations that keep the economy strong and your money safe or taxes that pay park rangers to keep a green space clean and safe.

I don't even like Elizbeth Warren; however, she isn't wrong when she said, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now, look. You built a factory, and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

If you can think of a better way please enlighten the rest of us.

Yes the government has important functions, even though you are mixing up local government in with state and federal. All the items you listed are a minuscule cost compared to the pork barrel spending that happens at the federal level.

 

[watisthis]

Yes the government has important functions, even though you are mixing up local government in with state and federal. All the items you listed are a minuscule cost compared to the pork barrel spending that happens at the federal level.

A little backstory, there are only two kinds of money inside the country: public money and private money. If the government is running a deficit, the private sector has a surplus of the exact same amount (ignoring foreign trade/aid for the time being).

When money is invested in the private sector - through grants, programs and tax breaks - the hope is that businesses and households will spend more money buying, building, researching and doing more things. The total amount of money inside the system remains constant, but the flow of money increases - meaning taxable income but also work done. Deficits are good as long as you're seeing a relative growth in non-inflationary GDP.

If the government is consistently running a deficit and GDP isn't increasing, it means that it is investing more money in the private sector than it is getting back in taxes, ie. the money isn't fostering economic growth as intended.

So how do you stimulate private economic growth? that's where the political schism is and probably another week worth of my time trying to explain that. But basically you have to encourage growth in both the supply side (make sure businesses can afford to make stuff) and the demand side (make sure people can afford to buy stuff). Supply side or trickle-down investment is usually favored by conservatives because rich people "write the checks" but has historically led to inequality when done in excess. Demand side investment is favored by liberals but is often seen as "income redistribution" or socialism. The truth is that both are necessary in moderation. I know a tad bit off topic with some of this but you can't just claim federal spending is a problem without giving ANY information as to why or what.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/death-and-taxes.html

A little old but still relevant.

 

[watisthis]

Federal spending is a very big issue and not an easy one to balance as you can tell from the graphic. Either we tax less and spend less (GOP), or we tax more and spend more (DEMs.) Both work, however, we hardly ever spend less and it's always 'spend less on things I don't benefit from,' but no one likes getting taxed either because they believe its just lost income. It's never an easy task and certainly why being informed on fiscal policy is so important.

 

[Hack]

Definitely higher taxes will lower consumer demand, because consumers will have less money if taxes are raised.

It's funny how many people repeat the myth that the Republicans are for the rich. The Democrat's actions all support the rich at the cost of hurting the poor. Excessive regulations block the little guy from starting a business. High personal taxes also block the little guys from starting businesses. Almost all Democrat policies are aimed at keeping the little guys down, keeping lots of people on welfare, etc.

 

[watisthis]

Definitely higher taxes will lower consumer demand, because consumers will have less money if taxes are raised.

It's funny how many people repeat the myth that the Republicans are for the rich. The Democrat's actions all support the rich at the cost of hurting the poor. Excessive regulations block the little guy from starting a business. High personal taxes also block the little guys from starting businesses. Almost all Democrat policies are aimed at keeping the little guys down, keeping lots of people on welfare, etc.

Thus why I don't lean one way or the other when it comes to fiscal policy. More taxes = more spending = more money, this is economics, even the republicans know this but they go about it as spend less to tax less which is obviously hard to do just as taxing people is because of how dumb and misinformed people are about economics. I've already stated we need scaling regulations as to help small business. Andrew Yang has already said he would support a VAT tax which is far better than what most others are suggesting, however, others make great points as well. We have tax brackets and incentives for a reason, no personal tax that I have suggested is blocking small business, maybe you should read into why tariffs and trump policies are.

Who needs help more, someone who wants it or someone who needs it? This is basically our argument.

Care to elaborate on why you believe democratic policies are aimed at keeping the little guys down and keeping people on welfare?

 

[watisthis]

Entitlement? You're making it sound like anyone supported by taxes didn't earn their income or social program. Are you suggesting members of the military didn't earn the right to pay for basic survival?

 

[2018OFPP1?2]

The scary part is how many readily accept this rhetoric as fact.

 

[watisthis]

"For no man goes home with five shares, that four don't go home without". There are no "self-made" Capitalists. This is a zero sum system, all be it the best one, imo.

You think rich people worked hard to get their money? Nah, dude, that money came from the labor of the workers, and if the workers got paid based on what the value of their work was, there would be far fewer reasons to tax the highest income earners. Also, if they paid their taxes and didn't find unethical loopholes and tax havens to hoard their money that does no good being kept outside of the economy, or hell even went to prison for breaking the law.

Edit: However, I too love exploiting peoples emotions when it comes to making money in forex. So I am guilty as well.

 

[2018OFPP1?2]

I don't even like Elizbeth Warren; however, she isn't wrong when she said, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory... Now, look. You built a factory, and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Talk about looking at the world through rose colored glasses. Or maybe pinko colored glasses?

This spin on reality completely ignores the fact that it takes expensive permits to build factories, permits to run a business, licenses to operate over the road trucks, etc, etc, etc, all of which is paid for by the business. Not the gen pop.

If all these freely available resources were the contributing factor to a successful business, then why isn't everyone a millionaire with their own business?

Because this is just socialist propaganda that people who can't think for themselves accept as an excuse to steal someone else's money.

 

[watisthis]

Talk about looking at the world through rose colored glasses. Or maybe pinko colored glasses?

This spin on reality completely ignores the fact that it takes expensive permits to build factories, permits to run a business, licenses to operate over the road trucks, etc, etc, etc, all of which is paid for by the business. Not the gen pop.

If all these freely available resources were the contributing factor to a successful business, then why isn't everyone a millionaire with their own business?

Because this is just socialist propaganda that people who can't think for themselves accept as an excuse to steal someone else's money.

True, why would I want to be ethical when I can just outsource my work to child labor camps. Capitalism is great when I can reap all of the advantages and can exploit the less fortunate because I have the means and pockets to do so.

It is such a shame that businesses need to pay to make sure they operate in accordance with laws and regulations almost as if we were worried about human rights violations, see: anywhere you can people to look the other way.

I've already bashed the taxes = stealing money bullshit in earlier posts and the other thread about socialism. If you care I can repost, or you could read through them, quote me, and debate.

 

[watisthis]

True, why would I want to be ethical when I can just outsource my work to child labor camps. Capitalism is great when I can reap all of the advantages and can exploit the less fortunate because I have the means and pockets to do so.

It is such a shame that businesses need to pay to make sure they operate in accordance with laws and regulations almost as if we were worried about human rights violations, see: anywhere you can people to look the other way.

I've already bashed the taxes = stealing money bullshit in earlier posts and the other thread about socialism. If you care I can repost, or you could read through them, quote me, and debate.

To make things easier I'll just repost my latest reply from the other thread.



Not entirely; in the 50s-70s the marginal tax rate for the highest income brackets was somewhere between 80-90% (that is, all dollars earned above $200,000 were taxed at some 90 percentile); this was during one of the biggest boom periods in American history, and during this period the unemployment rate was at one of its lowest points, apart from during WWII

It wasn't until the 1980s when there was an oil bust that we got above a 10% unemployment rate again; it can likely be argued that Reagan's tax cuts helped ease this, and during depressions/recessions tax cuts can be the right move for GDP growth. But the years of growth before when the marginal rate of 91% was holding strong counter the claim that higher taxation causes higher unemployment, but another point is that unemployment and GDP don't tell the whole picture of the health of the economy:

Since the late 70s, average CEO pay has grown almost 950% while average worker pay has only grown by about 12% (both adjusted for inflation) as of 2018 per an EPI report released in August 2019

This tells us that even though our GDP has grown considerably, it's a very small pool of people who are seeing any tangible benefit from this. This widening pay gap means that unemployment isn't quite the right metric, we also need to look at underemployment.

78% of American workers live paycheck-to-paycheck and can't weather a loss in income without taking on debt. Further 11.1% of employed Americans are underemployed, as defined by the Economic Policy Institute as a part-time worker who wants full-time work, and has searched for work in the past year but has given up actively searching for it and this is a fairly narrow definition that doesn't include people who are just not making enough to meet their needs. It has been admitted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that underemployment is tricky for them to get data on and they don't have a stat to track it.

Now to be as fair as possible here: these figures are ones that weren't tracked in the 50's-70's, but something we do know is the average net worth of people who entered the workforce at certain times, and almost universally people who entered the workforce between the end of WWII and the beginning of Reagan's presidency (or the end of Carter's) own significantly more wealth than those who entered the workforce in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, and those folks own significantly more wealth, and owned significantly more wealth at the same stage of their employment (we don't have that data for the boomers) than people who entered the work force around the time of the housing crisis in the late 2000s and onward from there. More people from past generations of workers were able to get more wealth, were able to buy affordable housing, were able to save for retirement, than are able to at present.

Also in the interest of fairness, I will grudgingly accept that at the most basic level, having some income is better than no income, if you don't first take into consideration means testing on government safety nets; anecdotally, when I was unemployed for a few months due to taking time off at my previous job (military ETS), my unemployment was contingent on me remaining unemployed (which makes sense), but it also created an incentive to only accept job offers that would clearly beat my unemployment benefit checks, as I think almost anyone when presented the choice of "work for $X, or stay at home and get $X while you look for a job that pays more than $X" will choose the latter. I was fortunate enough that I didn't have need of things like SNAP or Medicaid, but it can be demoralizing to find work that might be good, but you end up essentially earning less for working since you are now over the threshold for some programs like that. Based on that, in some instances I think the underemployment numbers are much more worth noting in the conversation about unemployment.

The fact that we need to face, and that tax cuts won't help, is that the economy isn't working for a vast majority of the American work force, but it is working to prop up numbers.

Edit: Some fixes

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