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Donald Trump and Angela Merkel will join 2,500 world leaders, business executives and charity bosses at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland which kicks off on 23 January. High on the agenda once again will be the topic of inequality, and how to reduce the widening gap between the rich and the rest around the world.
The WEF recently warned that the global economy is at risk of another crisis, and that automation and digitalisation are likely to suppress employment and wages for most while boosting wealth at the very top.
But what ideas should the great and good gathered in the Swiss Alps be putting into action? We'd like to know what single step you think governments should prioritise in order to best address the problem of rising inequality. Below we've outlined seven proposals that are most often championed as necessary to tackle the issue – but which of them is most important to you?
- Provide free and high quality education
- Raise the minimum wage
- Raise taxes on the rich
- Fight corruption
- Provide more social protection for the poor
- Stop the influence of the rich on politicians
- Provide jobs for the unemployed
Do you think these ideas are enough, or are there any better ideas to close this wealth gap ? You too can participate and vote for the idea that, you think, works best.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by noneof_theabove on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:56PM (14 children)
Just the taxing as it will cover everything else.
Only one way to fix the taxes. Get in the 21st Century and put it in the "banking system".
When the Dems get back power they must immediately institute the Federal Ingress Egress Tax System [ FIETS ©wap3 ]. I will try to keep this simple as most people do not understand numbers beyond 3 times their pay check, including the "richies", that are running this fleecing of America.
Ingress = coming in
Egress = going out
On each end there this is only 1 transaction, true creators like Monsanto, they create seeds to sell, no ingress, literally, and the end consumer that buys a steak, cooks it and poof it is gone, no egress.
There is between 5 and 15 trillion dollars per day that pass through the banking system, ingress and egress, and it varies everyday. [ Mon-Fri 52 weeks]
So for easy numbers I will use 2% of each transaction both in and out totally 4% for any entity, corporation or person. No homes, children, big money wall streets pay, congress, president, EVERYONE PAYS, Bill Gates, Mark Zukerburg, Warren Buffet, etc. When you sell [in money] or buy [out money] that is a transaction and tax applies. So when your employer cuts your pay check there is 2% [out], when your check is cashed/deposited [in] there is 2%. The grocery store pays 2% when they get stuff [in] and you pay 2% when you take stuff home [out].
Simple so far?
Now the number, and I will use the conservative 5 Trillion $5,000,000,000,000 per day 5 days a week 52 weeks a year.
$5,000,000,000,000 * 0.04 [4% the 2% + 2%] = $100,000,000,000 [100 billion] per day.
times 5 days a week = $500,000,000,000 [500 billion] per week
time 52 weeks a year = $26,000,000,000,000 [26 trillion per year]
The National Debt is $17 Trillion = GONE. Well we will work the on it using left over funds.
Current 2018 budget from federal-budget.insidegov.com [http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/120/2017-Estimate] is Income $3.21T expenditure $3.65T for a 2.6% increase in deficit.
so $26T - $3.65T = $22.35T SURPLUS.
Not exactly a surplus as this now PAYS FOR EVERYTHING.
Full education for all [at least a bachelor, maybe master/phd for those that approve their worth say for doctors, teachers, etc or full Vo-Tech for welders/truck drivers don't need the extended education].
+++++++
Full basic medical for all. [hospital, doctors, pharma but you want the optional botox then you pay a negotiated price that is listed just like prices at McDonald's and stores].
+++++++
Excellent military with FULL BENEFITS to retirees and vets.
+++++++
Social Security is fully funded and solvent at a living amount and adjusted yearly for new cost of living [mainly food/housing as medical is covered].
+++++++
Infrastructure to fix deadly bridges and new mass transit.
+++++++
Get us on non-fossil energy but f*ck that expensive nuclear, there is better less expensive used in submarines and destroyers.
+++++++
NO MORE F*CKING 1040 FORMS AND 35,000 PAGES OF TAX CODE !
I used to have 22-24% pulled from paycheck and got back a few hundred for about 19% on April 15. Yes, 4% and no paper work, that's a real raise of 15% not congressional vodoo magic numbers.
Of course you don't necessarily spend your entire pay check, and money moving within the banking system has not fee.
+++++++
this is all encompassing and in 3-5 years the national debt is gone.
A fractional amount could be included [maybe not needed] that would be allocated to the states, regions, cities instead of sales tax.
Is this doable, YES.
Sorry H&R BLOCK and lower level IRS and tax lawyers. Thank for your prior services as you are no longer needed in the digital age.
The upper level IRS remains to monitor the banking system and collect the payments [ok the banking system could keep a small fee to cover expenses for computers, etc]
NOTE: transaction percent could be adjusted year, 6 months, or maybe 3 months to reflect the overall system status.
NOTE: I wap3 do hearby mark my Intellectual Property Rights for the FIETS, Federal Ingress Egress Tax System concept, use without my permission is forbidden. [K.I.S.S. Legal Stuff]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:08PM (5 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:38PM (4 children)
Suppose your business purchases passenger jets, paints them to order, and then sells them. Each jet costs you $300 million, and you sell it for $310 million.
With VAT: You pay a percentage of $10 million, perhaps 30%. So $300,000 tax.
With this: You pay 2% of $300 million, and then 2% of $310 million. So $12,200,000 tax.
This thing, for the given business, is more than 40 times worse. Of course, no matter what kind of tax is imposed, businesses will restructure their operations to minimize it. In this case, the aircraft would simply never be sold by the manufacturer. They would lease it. That way, subsequent sales wouldn't get taxed again and again on the full value of the aircraft.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @12:04AM (2 children)
"With VAT: You pay a percentage of $10 million, perhaps 30%. So $300,000 tax.
With this: You pay 2% of $300 million, and then 2% of $310 million. So $12,200,000 tax."
That's what the parent is trying to hide. The fact that under his small 2% rate, the cost for EVERYTHING will skyrocket. There's no way someone will buy and paint a jet with just a 10 million upgrade on the price in the new system. You would expect them to sell it at 330 million or more, minimum. The exact same thing happens with the groceries you buy, which in most sane countries not taxed at all (except junk food etc), the cost of the ingress tax will be passed along to the person paying the egress tax in the form of an increased price tag.
The bottom line is greed. The producers will not accept the additional cost. It will be passed along to the final consumer.
I'm not saying tax reform is long overdue (And in the opposite direction Trump pointed it in recently) but any new system that magically creates trillions of tax dollars DEFINITELY has a price that the consumer will pay in full. What you need is to close off ALL tax loopholes used by the rich (personal and business).
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:35PM
The claim that all taxes always fall on the consumer is an oft-repeated statement, but isn't actually true.
Who ends up paying the tax depends on the nature of the market where the tax is applied. Some of the many variations that you can learn all about in Econ 102:
- In highly competitive markets (enough buyers and sellers that no one player has the power to set prices) for a product that everyone can do without completely, the tax as an additional cost of production will push the supply curve upwards. However, because demand decreases with price, the sellers will typically find it's more profitable to take a partial hit on their profit margin in order to sell more product than it is to push the entire cost of the tax onto the buyers. That puts some of the cost of the tax on their owners / shareholders.
- In highly competitive markets for products where there's a viable substitute (e.g. pizza vs Chinese food delivery), and the tax is imposed on only one of those markets then there will be a shift from the taxed good to the un-taxed good, and again the sellers of the taxed good will consider taking a partial hit on their profit margins in order to compete with the untaxed good.
- In monopoly markets with viable substitutes (e.g. prescription drugs with not-quite-as-good generics available), again the monopolist will find it more profitable to take a partial hit to their profit margin to reduce the people who opt for the substitute.
- In monopoly markets for essential goods and no viable substitutes (e.g. prescription drugs with no generics available), the monopolist will indeed push the entire tax onto the customer, because they have absolutely no reason not to.
- In monopsony markets (one buyer), basically the entire tax will fall on the seller.
And the simplest example of why taxes don't always fall on the buyer: When income taxes go up, what pretty much never happens is the boss immediately giving everybody a raise.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Kalas on Friday January 26 2018, @04:44PM
30% of 10M is 3M, not 300K.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @10:33AM
your business purchases passenger jets, paints them to order, and then sells them. Each jet costs you $300 million, and you sell it for $310 million
Where do I get some of that paint?
It sounds absolutely magical.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @02:56AM (7 children)
You just know that something smells when they have to invent a whole new name for it when there's already sales tax, VAT, etc out there. How about a better idea? We just don't do that and thus, don't have to pay the consequences of making that mistake. Sales taxes and such are already known to be regressive. This would end up being yet another such tax which the rich would be adept at avoiding, such as by leasing everything (as AC noted [soylentnews.org]).
Sorry, this is a idiotic approach. Transactions aren't wealth inequality. Everyone needs to trade to get what they need, but the rich would be particularly well positioned to trade in ways that don't incur this new tax. This is not the first time I've seen someone try to solve wealth inequality by counterproductively attacking something that isn't part of wealth inequality.
And who again is paying for this? There's not going to be 5 trillion in transactions when it's all taxed at the massive rate of 2%. It would be educational to see how quickly the free lunchers use up this bonanza for all the frivolous crap you mentioned (as well as plenty you didn't mention), but not worth $100 billion a day.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @09:37AM (6 children)
I wish we had someone like you to push against military funding
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @11:39AM (5 children)
You do have me. But military spending is only 20% of the US federal budget and very little of the state or local level budgets. To solve things, you also need to deal with (and by that, I mean greatly reduce) entitlements. Personally, I'm in favor of a 25-50% reduction across the board in benefits and spending on everything in order to get spending in line with revenue. There's not much point to increasing taxation more when in the case of the US, it's spent so poorly and the political establishment borrows so readily.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @01:25PM (2 children)
Personally, I'm in favor of a 25-50% reduction across the board in benefits and spending on everything
You are about to find that the poor favour a 20% reduction in the rich - and in America the poor have GUNS. Another problem is
that they may be very poor in money terms and also poor at identifying the rich. The killing may not be the right people
and may not be easy to stop.
There is a natural balance between rich and poor - it is established and maintained by the poor killing the rich. However,
(read up on chaos theory) some transitions are smooth and others are abrupt. In a smart administration, the rich see the
poor coming and make concessions. In others they lose their heads (see French Revolution, Haiti).
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday January 21 2018, @02:37PM
Your violent fantasies overlook that a person with more money can afford
* More/bigger guns
* Security people to wield the guns
* Fences, alarms, cameras, walls...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @03:13PM
The poor isn't necessarily on your side. Most of them want a functioning society too.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:54PM (1 child)
Why is that necessarily the solution, and not, say, taxing rich people to fully fund the entitlements in question? For example, we could completely eliminate any kind of debt in the Social Security system by eliminating the cap on wage income subject to FICA tax. We don't do that because we don't choose to do that.
Bear in mind that when you translate "greatly reduce entitlements" into real rather than financial terms, what you're saying is "We should let millions of poor cripples and elders die."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:36PM
Who needs death panels when you've got death legislation?