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Millionaires ask to pay more tax:
A group of more than 100 of the world's richest people have called on governments to make them pay more tax. The group, named the Patriotic Millionaires, said the ultra-wealthy were not being forced to pay their share towards the global economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
"As millionaires, we know that the current tax system is not fair," they said in an open letter. The signatories included Disney heiress Abigail Disney and Nick Hanauer. Mr Hanauer is a US entrepreneur and an early investor in online retail giant Amazon.
"Most of us can say that, while the world has gone through an immense amount of suffering in the last two years, we have actually seen our wealth rise during the pandemic - yet few if any of us can honestly say that we pay our fair share in taxes," the signatories said in the letter to the World Economic Forum.
[...] It said globally, $2.52tn could lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty and make enough vaccines for the world.
Gemma McGough, British entrepreneur and founding member of Patriotic Millionaires, UK said: "For all our well-being - rich and poor alike - it's time we right the wrongs of an unequal world. It's time we tax the rich."
Ms McGough added: "At a time when simply living will cost the average household a further £1,200 a year, our government cannot expect to be trusted if it would rather tax working people than wealthy people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @09:56AM (1 child)
tax the multinationals
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday January 22 2022, @10:31AM
Don't tax them, eat the rich! Take a bite, take another, just like a good boy would! Sitting down in a restaurant, tell the waiter just what you want. Is that the meat you wanted to eat? How would you ever know? Come on baby, eat the rich, come on baby, bite that sucker!
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @10:00AM (6 children)
Proposal to tax the rich.
Activate the khallow!
(Score: 4, Funny) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday January 20 2022, @02:32PM (1 child)
Shouldn't that be "Release the Khallow!"?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:13PM
I picture him as more of a "Smithers" than a "hound"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @04:47PM
but instead they tax the working class
IRS taxing side hustles NOT going over well with people
Louis Rossmann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHHR7ZYGzmY [youtube.com]
and it's amazing how the LA times tried to spin this as 'tax the rich' and 'closing the wealth gap' and whatnot. They really have to think that their readers are a bunch of idiots.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @09:25PM
At least khallow is not anti-vax, guess he is serious about being Libertarian and not Republican.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @02:43AM (1 child)
Unhinge the khallow!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:10AM
Hmm, a snakes jaw unhinges and he does seem to be the first to devour anti-capitalist commentary, interesting.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snospar on Thursday January 20 2022, @10:00AM (8 children)
Given the current situation in UK politics I don't think the government could expect them to trust us in any regard. The government appears to be made up of the wealthy elite who actively avoid tax using loopholes that they've steadfastly refused to remove or fix. I hope this idea takes off but don't trust the government to get onboard until they're shamed into it.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Thursday January 20 2022, @04:42PM (2 children)
So why do you keep voting them back in office? To be fair, we Americans are just as stupid in the polls, maybe even more stupid. My congressman who is supposed to represent normal Illinoisians voted yes on the Trump tax cuts that actually raised taxes for some in Illinois, whose brother got a million dollar covid business grant the day it was available while the owner of the Feed Store, a popular restaurant President Obama ate at was denied and went bankrupt. The idiots in my district was re-elected him anyway.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:46PM (1 child)
Because the only other option is the other corrupt idiot?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:56PM
Don't forget the majority that do not put any effort into researching anything at many that actively avoid political topics. Many of us here that complain about it too, we need to make voting days mandatory holidays with max half time work schedules if a biz wants to remain open. Most candidates it is hard to find more than their general work history and political party.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:35PM (4 children)
Even though this group of 100 sounds like a lot of rich people, consider that the 0.01% richest people in the world, the 1% of the 1%, is a group of 800,000 people. These vocal 100 only comprise 0.0125% of _those_ 800,000.
I'm guessing they don't represent the majority view, among the top 800,000 wealthiest people in the world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 20 2022, @10:11PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 21 2022, @12:07AM (2 children)
Oh, I'm pretty sure a poll of the wealthiest 8B people (sentient mammals, etc.) on the planet would indeed favor the richest 2-5% of humans paying more tax.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @02:47AM (1 child)
Well, that's not how democracy works.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 22 2022, @01:04AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Thursday January 20 2022, @10:11AM (5 children)
The tax system *could* be very fair! Just look at the taxed percentage in the upper tax tiers. These people could be paying 40% of their income. They're not. It's not because they're not taxed, but because they use piles and piles of loopholes, deductions, shell companies, and who-knows-what else to avoid it, created by lobbying legislatures (or just having rich legislative members who don't want to be taxed).
They're not being *forced* to pay the taxes that they *could* otherwise pay just by not scheming and gaming the system. Sigh. It's double-speak. It feels like they have enough, now prevent anyone else from getting to where they are. (Yes, please do that last part, and also pull these clowns down from grace.)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @01:39PM (1 child)
You mean things like deducting the interest on a mortgage? That's a loophole too.
But I'm sure you mean only the loopholes you personally aren't able to take advantage of.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @03:06PM
You're right. Deducting $10k on your primary residence is the same as deducting expenses on your private jet and third house. And don't get me started about capping the deduction for state income taxes! Wasn't it Federalist 36 [yale.edu] where Hamilton endorsed the concept of double taxation? Wait, you mean it was the opposite? Just shut up and pay taxes on your taxes and stop trying to exploit loopholes in the system you greedy bastard! If you get to deduct the interest paid on the 2 bedroom rancher in which you live, I get to deduct what I pay on my $50M yacht. Totally the same, and you know those guys who set up the mortgage interest deduction back in 1913 would agree.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:13PM (2 children)
What idiot modded him troll? Zuckerberg or Musk has an account here?
When I was a child in the '50s, the top US tax rate was 75%. Today it's 37%. And then, the CEO earned a salary 40 times what the lowest paid employee made, today he earns 400 times as much.
There were no food stamps then; they weren't needed. The minimum wage was high enough that even a janitor's job afforded him a living. One paycheck was usually enough to raise a family.
No more. Greed rules in the 21st century.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:42PM
Those greedy people are actually Marxists. They are greedy because they know that if they aren't, the revolution will never come. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @10:22PM
In the 50s, much of the developed world was recently destroyed by WW2, and there was no real competition against American produced goods. They needed to buy our stuff, and we could make it. It was a one-off historical event America will not experience again.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Thursday January 20 2022, @10:19AM (12 children)
There is nothing stopping them from paying more taxes than is required. Is this just some kind of virtue signal?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @11:20AM (5 children)
They are 100 of 1,000, publicly whistleblowing. If they want to opt-in vaccinate the world in order to feel good or gain social credit, fine, who gives a shit, they opt-in vaccinated the world and ended or suppressed the plague.
They also want to extend that into the top >100,000 worldwide paying more taxes.
"They can if they want" misinterprets what they want, which is not to personally donate, but to systemically reform to a more just system.
Ad hominem from you is pitiful, not only because it's an ad hominem, but because it's a failure of a criticism in so many other ways, in so few words.
Unlike you, these people hired writers editors and lawyers to draft their proposal, and it's impeccable.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @12:57PM (4 children)
In other words, privileged Jews calling themselves "patriotic" (Jews "patriotic" toward anything but money and the 'Tribe, LOL) know that the Goyim are ready to start picking up torches and pitchforks.
Fuck off, Jew.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @04:51PM (3 children)
You are a horrible person. Stop blaming others for your failures in life.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:01PM (2 children)
Jews have been subverting White nations (including 10's of millions dead and raped/molested) for centuries. Telling people about it (naming the Jew) is not "blaming others for our failures". If you are not a Jew agent and full of shit, why don't you go learn about the truth? Maybe you're just a coward who prefers to live in a dream world while you allow your people to be exterminated?
https://odysee.com/@ETKE21:8/pbry68WhiteGenocideIsReal-InTheirOwnWords:0 [odysee.com]
https://odysee.com/@martyleeds33:6/069---We-Need-To-Talk-About-The-Jews:d [odysee.com]
https://odysee.com/@BNN_Films:a/ADOLF-HITLER---THE-GREATEST-STORY-NEVER-TOLD--FULL-6.5-HOUR-DOCUMENTARY-:91 [odysee.com]
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday January 21 2022, @12:20AM (1 child)
All nations that have been around for at least a few years spend plenty of effort subverting other nations.
Jews have a particular advantage: vile idiots have been killing off Jews careless enough not to escape their tormentors, leaving the surviving Jews with an IQ advantage of about 7 points. Intelligence helps success, and successful people induce jealousy in their inferiors. That's you, by the way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @02:52AM
Thanks for explaining it in a way plain folk like me understand.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @01:03PM
They want an even playing level. They want to pay more, but all those cheapskates that don't bother will have to do that too. They want the 1% to become the 10%, not the 0,1% (that's not them).
Hell, they don't even need taxes for that. They could just donate money to charity (and not take the tax discount!) and prevent untrusty politicians to blow it on useless stuff.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:16PM
Are you drunk this early in the morning? One person, even a multimillionaire, doesn't have enough money to help much, and most people with that much money are anti-social greedy people like Dickens satirized in A Christmas Carol. There are far more Scrooges than Carnegies.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:52PM (2 children)
Paying their share puts them at a significant disadvantage vs the ones that don't, so they want to keep a level playing field against their peers. I can't really fault them for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @07:51PM (1 child)
They can all get together with their peers and decide to voluntarily pay more. Or donate it to a charitable cause (and even get a collective deduction) that would do better than the government (just about anything would do better than the government).
The government takes a TON of money and simply squanders it all while giving us very little in return. Look how poorly the USPS is ran, delivering mail to wrong address is a normal thing (compared to UPS for instance). Here is another recent example out of MANY MANY examples, this is normal, and look how much these places collect in taxes
NYC fines wrong person $259k, doesn't fix it until ABC news gets involved
Louis Rossmann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DoVt5ggGWg [youtube.com]
(note: it too like 20 YEARS to get this resolved after this person paid a whole bunch of money to try to solve it, ie: hiring an architect to deliver paperwork and whatnot)
In fact one can argue that the governments that tax the most are too often the ones that provide the least back (ie: look at socialist countries like China, Russia, and Hispanic countries along with most other socialist countries and you can compare this by U.S. states as well).
If enough millionaires agreed then the very few that don't agree will make no difference. (But, let's be real, giving the government more money is like throwing it away, they will just squander it).
Or is it just a very small percentage of millionaires that claim they want to be taxed more. If the argument is that 'look, they're millionaires and so their opinion should count on this matter and if they think they should be paying more in taxes then maybe they should" and they're only a small percentage then that argument doesn't really work.
If they're a very large percentage then they are free to collectively get together and pay more in taxes or collectively start their own charity or donate to whatever cause they think is best.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @07:54PM
(but my theory is that these are just a small percentage of millionaires that just want a little bit of attention).
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday January 20 2022, @09:24PM
When a business owner doesn't invest back in the company, they lose their competitive edge to other companies. By extension, the wealthy can't afford to be to charitable since the less-charitable will take advantage.
As for this group of millionaires and their efforts, it's quite likely the tax reform they're working towards would affect their competition more than themselves. That's to say, they'll lose money but gain market share.
As for virtue signalling, it's far more effective to throw some money on a "save the cute furry animal" foundation than to talk about taxes.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @12:17PM (1 child)
"we the rich want to pay more tax "
...
"we the rich have the prevalence of paying accountants to not pay tax"
While gov'n can do more to close such loopholes, the rich have the OPTION to use such loopholes so why are they if they want to pay more. This stinks as much as their privilege's
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:25PM
You are obviously unfamiliar with game theory.
If they pay and the others don't, they lose. This is their attempt to get the other rich to ALSO pay THEIR fair share.
(Score: 5, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday January 20 2022, @12:35PM (40 children)
The asset holding class have successfully defined the argument as being about who should pay how much income tax. The main argument in favour being that income is easier to track.
I think we should instead tax wealth and over time drop income tax to zero.
Decide how much money your country's government needs to run. Call this T.
Add up the total privately owned wealth in the country, all of it. Call this W.
Your tax rate should then be (T / W) (x 100%). Charge that against W.
eg, The USA needs $4 trillion a year. The total wealth in the USA is $225 trillion.
Your tax rate should be 1.7%, payable by the owners of W.
For us in AU,
W = $20 Trillion
T = 0.55 Trillion
Tax should be 2.7%.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @12:56PM (5 children)
The "little" people have to pay income tax. Mostly they just have income.
The asset class can't really be wealth taxed as it will destroy the value of what you're taxing. Tax bezos.. he has to sell his shares. Value of shares drop.
Who else owns amazon stock? Retirement funds. So guess what's not happening. It's a suicide pact.
They can, however, push for higher income tax. Gullible will fall for it. Check out how the administration requires reporting of online services with more than $600 of financial movement. That was definitely to go after the "millionaires" and "billionaires".
It's pretty clear where the money comes from for the majority of government spending. They could confiscate ALL of these people's income and it wouldn't be enough to fund much. They want yours.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @02:16PM (3 children)
if the value of shares drops significantly because someone sells them, it means they didn't have value in the first place.
hence the term "CORRECTION" being associated to bubbles bursting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:56PM (2 children)
It can also mean that a major holder sold more than the market could bear, causing the price to go below fair value. The same principle applies to physical goods as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:07PM
Or shorting companies, that is what the whole gamestop thing is about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @07:10AM
if any one person sells more than the market can bear, it means something outside the market is destabilizing it.
for instance if the village chicken farmer gets cancer, and suddenly needs to pay huge medical bills, therefore attempting to sell all his chickens at once (and the price of chickens in the village drops), the problem is outside the market (medical insurance). obviously the example is stupid because there are enough villages, towns and whole cities for the "chickens needed for medical bills" amount not to affect the chicken price.
in the case of ten humans nominally holding a huge percentage of "world wealth", because their stocks have large prices, there are probably many reasons for it, mostly multiple forms of corruption. I doubt any individual human can solve this problem quickly (especially in an online forum), but I will suggest that fighting corruption wherever it is found is a good way forward.
by corruption I mean, here, any situation where people are getting benefits in non-transparent ways.
"good-looking people have higher salaries than ugly people" is corruption.
"transfer the bad stocks to the pension fund" is corruption.
"don't fine the multinationals because their friends can hurt us through our business dealings" is also corruption (despite the apparent care for the countries finances, which supposedly help with education, health, infrastructure etc).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday January 21 2022, @12:42AM
>The asset class can't really be wealth taxed as it will destroy the value of what you're taxing. Tax bezos.. he has to sell his shares. Value of shares drop.
Bullshit. The value of shares = the value of the company / number of shares. That doesn't change just because someone sells a few shares - if it did then every publicly traded stock in the world would tank immediately.
If you get a bunch of people selling shares in a company at once then that does tend to drive the price of the stock down, but only because everyone else assumes that the sellers know something they don't - i.e. there's a "secret" problem that means the value of the company is actually lower than the current price.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @01:44PM (3 children)
Inflation is a wealth tax. All those debt-and-inflation financed handouts from the past couple of years are being paid for exactly that way.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimtee on Thursday January 20 2022, @02:00PM (2 children)
It certainly is not. It is a tax on cash only (and held debt), which is a very small proportion of wealth.
The $value of non-cash assets goes up at least as much as inflation.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:32AM (1 child)
> The $value of non-cash assets goes up at least as much as inflation.
It's literally the definition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 23 2022, @06:30AM
It's a large part of it, but inflation also includes the rise in $ for services.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday January 20 2022, @04:43PM (4 children)
I've had the same thoughts and fully agree (and gave you an "Insightful", because I think that is an insight that too few have made so far). It is entirely stupid to punish people for working, and even punish them more for working harder if you want them to work a lot in the interest of general welfare.
However, you'll have to have some protectionist measures in place that will avoid everyone operating from foreign soil and just having dirt poor holdings locally. E.g. sum up the revenue a non-local company makes locally, under all owned brands and elsewhere, calculate the percentage of total revenue of that multinational, and use that percentage from the market cap as their wealth you're going to tax. If they want to do business and have their IP protected, they'll have to pony up.
You'll also have to have measures in places to avoid money flowing abroad (immigrants western-unioning everything to their family, or elite members passing their gold coin collection to an offshore trust in a suitcase).
Also, it is difficult to assess wealth, but that could be done with anyone rating their property on their own, where anyone on the market can purchase stuff for a significant markup. E.g. you have a little house you rent out (or a mint V12 E-Type), which you value at 100k, and pay taxes for that wealth. Anyone else can come along and pay you 150k and 50k taxes on top (to make it harder to abuse) to get the car. Protections apply for things personally needed.
Finally, what's also much overlooked is that the state provides the monetary system, a rather important service, because the state is so mighty that people believe it is worth something if printed paper is given out. (At least it appears to be more reliable than Monkey-NFTs...) Any transaction, from buying a loaf of bread to high-speed stock trading would be subject to 1% fee, or some other low percentage for the service. That's less than your usual payment provider wants, in exchange for a much more valuabe service. Drop VAT in exchange, for much welcome simplification.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deimtee on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:20PM (2 children)
Obviously a full proposal would be a lot more complex.
Some additional possibilities;
- You get the choice of a primary residence exception, but pay a double rate on everything else.
- You can be forced to sell any major asset at X% of your self-valuation. Only way to stop it is to re-value at the higher price and pay back taxes at the new value. (X is debatable, but I would vote for 150%, two years )
The problem with transaction taxes is they are regressive and intrusive. They also tend to climb over time. Taxing static wealth actually encourages people to do something with it.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 21 2022, @01:04AM (1 child)
>- You can be forced to sell any major asset at X% of your self-valuation...
I believe some states handle property tax that way. There's a few problems though, among them...
- it lets the rich run roughshod over everyone else, *especially* the poor. I want your property, I can force you to sell it to me by offering more than you can afford to pay the back-taxes on. If you're just getting by, that's almost anything more than the current "official" value.
- it lets the rich avoid taxes - you can value your property extremely low, but still higher than 99(.99...)% of people could afford - while the remaining potential buyers are all part of the same tax-dodging country club and are very unlikely to rock the boat by trying to force a sale. And even if they did, you have lots of other assets to pay the back-taxes with, unless there';s huge
- there's essentially no reason NOT to severely undervalue your property - someone tries to force a sale, and you've got to pay a few years taxes at the rate you should have been paying anyway? Score! You still dodged many years of fair taxes. There's no down side.
The last one could potentially be partially addressed by much more severe penalties - but that makes the first problem worse.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday January 21 2022, @02:23AM
Those are all easily corrected problems.
Have a low-value exemption for sentimental personal items. Also a minimum time between the offer and the forced sale so a rich asshole can't just pay $1500 for your $1000 clunker and leave you stranded in the desert.
If you value your home at say, $300,000, then [nasty rich person] has to pony up $450,000 to force you to sell. Cool. Take the money and buy a nicer house. They won't stay rich long if they get their kicks paying 150% of market value for the stuff the poor own.
Also, make them follow through. If someone lodges a "force a sale" claim, then they must lodge a 5% deposit. If the owner doesn't raise the valuation to match then they must purchase it, else the deposit goes to the owner to compensate for dealing with a frivolous claim. If the sale does go through you now have a new higher valuation to charge the new owner taxes on.
If the owner does raise the valuation then the claimant gets their deposit back and 5% of the additional tax revenue. A new occupation will arise of looking for undervalued assets.
Note that a forced sale is fundamentally different to just offering to buy. You can't harass someone by offering 140% and raising their tax bill. You have to lodge a claim and deposit with the taxman. The counter to any harassment is simply going to be to take the money.
Note that the probable outcome of this is that everyone will value things at about 2/3 of market value. Just high enough to make a forced sale uneconomical. There is a trade-off, and it might take some adjusting of X to find the best rate. Higher X leads to more undervaluing and lower taxes, but more penalties. Lower X leads to the overhead of more forced sales but higher assessed taxable assets.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @09:41PM
It is difficult to have the right amount of protectionist measures.
China has protectionist measures on wealth. Wealthy Chinese have come up with all sorts of schemes to get their money out of China but I imagine it mostly hurts the middle class looking to move.
I suspect any attempt by a western nation to impose restrictions on movement of capital would be compared to China, and (rightly or not) nobody wants to be compared to China these days. And that's on top of the issue of none of the wealthy (or wannabe wealthy) politicians wanting to do anything that disadvantages themselves or their donors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:01PM (1 child)
"Decide how much money your country's government needs to run."
The problem is that the government has gotten WAY too big already.
Politicians funnel money into programs because they have a cousin invested or their aunt is one of the partners or their uncle works there. Look at Joe Biden and Hunter Biden with the Ukraine. They had to give his crack head son (with a history of doing crack) a 600K+ a year job because Joe Biden used his power as vice president to help him out. That guy was not deserving of such a job at all. Then CNN defended them saying how great and honest the Bidens are. Also is Hunter Biden's art really worth as much as he sells it for?
Look at the stuff that happens in New York. Money that's supposed to go to fix the homeless problem ends up getting funneled into government officials with huge salaries. Now there is more and more crime, more and more homelessness, etc...
The TSA is another waste of money. We have so many redundant agencies in defense and whatnot as well.
The solution is never to just keep giving the government more and more money, they will simply find more and more ways to squander it. We need to hold them accountable for all its wasteful spending. Trying to solve a problem by giving the government more money is no different than trying to solve a problem by giving a drug addict more money. It doesn't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:35AM
Uh, Space Force to the rescue?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:14PM (7 children)
"The asset holding class ..."
Wealth is inversely proportional to number of children.
Those that have the most children tend to be poor. Those that are the most irresponsible tend to be poor and have more and more children.
The problem is that we have limited assets/natural resources and we have way more people. So we need to figure out how to get irresponsible people to stop having so many children.
Assets are subject to the laws of supply and demand like anything else. We have more people and the same supply of natural resources so those available resources become more and more scarce per person.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:23PM (1 child)
Assess the value of the children. Add that to the tax bill. (If you can't agree to the value, put them up for auction and see what they bring.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:41PM
uhm ... I imagine they would bring ... $0 ... I see what you did there ... that's messed up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:34PM (3 children)
Also we need to control immigration. Especially illegal immigration. Immigrants (and likely illegal immigrants) are likely the ones that have the most children since they tend to be less educated and education tends to be inversely related to number of children as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:38PM
(ie: people that come here illegally don't even have to pass any test so they are likely to be even less educated and have even more children. Of course this makes sense to all other countries because pretty much all other countries do a much better job of controlling illegal immigration than the U.S. but in the U.S. even criticizing the government's failure to address the problem is discrimination and not politically correct).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 21 2022, @04:00AM (1 child)
I take it by "we" you mean the US? The US controls immigration fairly well. The real problem is not the control of immigration, but the bureaucracy that's been thrown in the way of immigrants. That's wasting a lot of economic energy that would be better put to use elsewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @05:19PM
We don't want the U.S. to be more densely populated. We also don't want the rest of the world to be densely populated. High population densities are undesirable and perhaps if the rest of the world wasn't as densely populated it would be more desirable as well.
However, just because the rest of the world is irresponsible and keeps on having way too many children doesn't mean we should just keep allowing more and more people into the U.S. to also make it more densely populated.
There needs to be some level of population control.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 21 2022, @03:56AM
Assets have a tenuous relationship to resources. You can get a lot of asset from an amount of resource. Bitcoin is a great example. The primary ingredient from the resource point of view was electricity and that's a sunk cost for any bitcoins presently in existence.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:23PM (10 children)
I can't agree with that at all; property tax is the worst of all taxes. Income is new, property isn't. I knew a man whose retired parents became homeless because the tax on their house rose to four times the mortgage payment had been.
The problem is that for most of the rich, their income isn't taxed as income. Raise the capital gains tax to 75% like income tax was in the '50s and make payments yearly, like income tax, instead of when they sell the asset, because they never have to sell the assets. Your property tax isn't going to fix that problem.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:46PM (9 children)
Even a long term mortgage payment is usually around 10% of the property value per year. I find it hard to believe there is a place with a 40% annual property tax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:04PM (8 children)
It doesn't matter. Allowing yourself to be subject to property tax means you never own your home and the property it sits on. Which means once you get past working age you may be in trouble if you don't have family or a large nest egg. it's ridiculous on it's face to all but the most sycophantic slaves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:14PM
uhm ... if you collect social security and own your property ... the government pays your property tax? (though sometimes owning property may ... affect your ability to collect social security?).
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 21 2022, @01:11AM (5 children)
Hint - you can never own land. It was there for billions of years before you came along, and will be there for billions of years after you're dead. Many civilized (aka non-European) cultures recognize that you are at most the current caretaker of the land. But those cultures tended to lose their land to the Europeans who believed it could be owned, and had the benefit of iron, gunpowder, and endemic bio-weapons with which to steal it. (Americans for example got curb-stomped because there are no surface deposits of iron on the continents to have enabled a transition to the iron age)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @07:38PM
Right. You never own anything because one day you will dieeeee!!!!!!11!!
That's not what ownership means, try again. Maybe this time you'll impress people over middle school age.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @10:14PM (3 children)
What do you think the Indian tribes did amongst themselves before the white man ever showed up? They fought each other over who owned the land. Use the word "control" instead if your concept of ownership is limited to signed deeds. Some tribes dominated the others, and the others hated it. Killing galore to try to get on top. So, contrary to your racist theory, the Indians are just like people everywhere. Were it not so, Hernán Cortés could not have conquered all of Mexico with just a handful of Spaniards against a well-developed and sizable Aztec army. It was the hordes of other oppressed (by the Aztecs) Indian tribes who fought on the side of the Spaniards that allowed the conquest of Mexico.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 21 2022, @11:46PM (2 children)
Controlling something is a *very* different relationship than owning it.
Your boss (nominally) controls you at work - they do NOT own you. A feudal lord controlled their vassals, and their peasants even more so, but did NOT own them either.
There are very important distinctions between the relationships - most prominently you have every right to destroy what you own on a whim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 22 2022, @12:50PM (1 child)
The lord did own the peasants, indirectly. The peasants belong to the lands, the lands are granted to the lord...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 22 2022, @02:44PM
The peasants were bound to the land, they did not belong to it (what would that even mean?)
The lord couldn't do what he willed to the peasants. He could not kick them off the land, nor kill them without justification, nor breed them like livestock, nor...
There was bondage in the eyes of the law, but not ownership. Perhaps a bit more akin to indentured servitude, though really that was an entirely different third kind of relationship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:42AM
Property tax pays for sewers, roads, running water, as well as *spit* education for poor bastards. The idea being that those are so important you cannot opt out of contributing to them. As those services diminish, you should rightly pay less property tax.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:42PM
Property (real estate) tax works very much like this.
Most US schools are funded by property taxes - which really pisses off some old people who "don't have children."
House we bought in Houston (Clear Lake area) was $160K to purchase, $5K/yr property taxes in 2003.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by ChrisMaple on Friday January 21 2022, @12:34AM (2 children)
Income tax is a tax on the reward for productive effort, which is a fundamental human virtue. Hence, an income tax is inherently an attack on moral behavior.
A property tax is better because just holding property is an inaction divorced from morality.
A major moral problem with changing from an income tax to a property tax is that new wealth will end up being double taxed, first as the innovator earns it and second after those earnings are turned into property.
The overriding problem is that federal taxes are 5 to 10 times what they should be, and state taxes about 2 times what they should be. If taxes were reduced to reasonable values (preventing slime like Fauci from becoming a multimillionaire in government employ) few people would be seriously upset by the form of taxation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @01:43AM (1 child)
The proposal is to drop income tax entirely. There is no tax as you earn it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:35PM
Problem is, it's not just income tax. It's every other tax that touches the productive process, from stamp duties to eximport rates. It's sales taxes to B&O taxes.
If you want to have a blanket tax, payroll or sales are likelier places to start because they will get pretty much anything major done with any substantial assets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @02:16PM (1 child)
Inflation is coming, PR devaluates less than money!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:01PM
I wasn't aware that Puerto Ricans had any value to begin with.
(Score: 5, Informative) by jrmcferren on Thursday January 20 2022, @03:01PM (4 children)
If the Rich want to pay more, instead of lobbying to pay extra tax, they can literally cut a check to treasury account called "Gifts to the United States." The information can be found here https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html [treasury.gov]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @03:09PM
You are missing the whole point. Please reread it again (or read it for the first time).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @03:25PM (1 child)
lol. This exactly. Taxing the rich isn't going to do shit, anyway. Not even taxing the wealthy would help. These folks are, 'above it.' Above, way and beyond. Their wealth is SO unimaginably vast, they literally ARE the economy. It's a lose lose situation, and they are the winners; we saw it with the banks that were, 'too big to fail.' They literally, DESTROYED, the economy; but, what did we do? We bailed them out, so people could continue to go to work, have a mortgage, etc.. etc..
For them, it's about assets, holdings, etc.. etc.. That's why they don't want anybody to OWN anything anymore. You don't own your house, you don't own your car, you don't own music you listen to, the films you watch, etc.. etc.. etc.. By the time you pay anything off you acquired through debt money, it's worthless; and what you do physically own, is nearly worthless the moment it becomes yours.
A sane approach to a tax system would be a tax system that is simple and equitable/equal. But, we don't do that. Why would some one prefer a complicated, out dated, absolute fucking mess, as opposed to something, simple, efficient, and tidy? Simple, if they've concluded it wasn't in their best interest, then they aren't going to do it. Why tax everyone the same flat rate, automatically, with computers, when there is so much money to be made in the tax industry, coupled with all the money to be made in the increasing surveillance state?
To their credit, I don't think the so called, 'elites,' even really know what they are doing. I think they honestly believe they are trying to do, 'good.'
A flat income tax of 10% sounds fine to me. Apply it to everyone. Make it automatic where it can be automated, and then leave room for the occasional outlier cases for manual intervention. Simple. For the vast majority of hourly wager earners or salary earners, it's deducted out the paycheck automatically, and from that point, it could be directly sent to the government; you wouldn't even need a formal tax season, a year deadline would be enough for extraneous cases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:46AM
Herman Cain! Is that you posting again from the dead?
(Score: 2) by Username on Friday January 21 2022, @03:23PM
Yes, Yes, but then who will recognize their deeds? How will they get to brag to their socialist friends about how rich they are and that they want to be taxed even more to help the poor, without actually helping anyone.
If only you would listen to what they're saying. The only way they will help people is if the government forces them too. Otherwise, they can only virtue signal. They'd like to help people, they really want to, it's just their greed is too great. They cannot overcome it without help from the government. They need the government to force them to do what they say. They can't just do it themselves, otherwise someone else besides them might get rich.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @03:19PM (1 child)
SOCIALISTS! SOCIALISTS! SOCIALISTS!
Please Tucker, save us! You are our only hope!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @04:11PM
You won't tax the rich, you'll tax the middle class. If you want the super-wealthy to pay their share, go after the tax status of their foundations and trusts. [bloomberg.com] Moron!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @03:57PM
it's the rich that loan money to the government for projects.
maybe it's time to stop doing that and use money (from taxes) to do "stuff".
else the clubbermint is just "biting the hand that feeds it."
not to mention government-bond financed vanity projects that don't benefit enough and in the long run have to be upkeep-costed by more government bonds (which the rich invest in)?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @06:44PM
"it's time we right the wrongs of an unequal world"
So disgusting, it's palpable. Nature is not equal, nor should it be.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:26PM (17 children)
It's the biggest scam in the business
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:47PM (16 children)
Death to most corporate structures.
Corporations should not be able to bankrupt with the relative impunity they do today.
If a corporation bankrupts, the principals of that corporation (by mutual agreement among themselves as to the apportionment) should be carrying personal liability for the debt, just the same as they can mutually agree to award themselves "bonuses" from the surplus. Maybe some banks / insurance companies would be willing to shoulder some of that risk (for a healthy fee, of course), but the idea that you can pay some lawyers to set up a fake person to take the fall for your failed risky business schemes is utter insanity.
Oh, and taxes? Yeah - if your corporation has income or cash in the bank, there should be tax on that much the same as people are taxed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:48AM
But if the principals go to prison, who will create the jobs??!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @03:43PM (4 children)
And just like that, you remove the point of having a limited liability structure, because you've just turned it into an unlimited liability structure.
This turns out to be a bad idea.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 23 2022, @12:26AM (3 children)
Bad according to who? I would say that the majority of the population, those who don't benefit from the limited liability legal structures, would benefit from their demise.
We can't all get extremely reduced rate insurance policies backed by the bankruptcy laws
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 23 2022, @09:08PM (2 children)
Bad according to people who understand that they are deriving benefit from an economic system where mobilisation of capital was achieved by enabling structures in which entrepreneurial and managerial classes could actually pursue constructive ends without the owners of the capital having to breathe down their neck for fear of being imprisoned or fined or otherwise abused for things over which they had no control.
But if that confuses you, nobody expects you to actually understand that crap. It's all billionaire hornswoggle! Ignore it, just as you choose to ignore the fact that it's not millionaires asking to pay more taxes, so much as a bunch of millionaires asking to implement political ideas that they'd never squeak by the electorate themselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 25 2022, @03:35AM (1 child)
>mobilisation of capital was achieved by enabling structures
You mean the rich got pouty and wouldn't share their toys unless we guaranteed their toys would be replaced if they played too carelessly with them and broke them?
Too big to fail? Owners of the capital should actually be putting their capital at risk, not using it to stand up fake people to sign loans on high risk ventures then shrugging it off when the gamble fails and leaving everyone else collecting pennies on their dollars of debt, while they go dribble out a little more of their capital plus a ton of other people's money and do it again and again until maybe they get lucky and actually run at a profit for a while.
The investment banking model of "shoot for the stars, sure we'll miss over 95% of the time, but that one big hit makes it all worthwhile." Is utter crap. Those big hits aren't great companies with superior business models, they are just lucky jerkoffs who were in the right place at the right time. Like last year's top stock pickers, they were just lucky and sometimes not too stupid, but as often you have to try something stupid if you really want to win big. Koyaanisqatsi.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @01:31AM
No, no, that's not what I meant. I meant what I said, not your internal monologue.
But feel free to return to the theory that it's all billionaire hornswoggle. It's comfy in there. They have blocks and teletubbies for you.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 22 2022, @07:26PM (9 children)
At the very least revoke the charter of the offending organizations
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 23 2022, @12:28AM (8 children)
Doesn't help when the principals can start two more copies, whack a mole style.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 23 2022, @12:43AM (7 children)
I believe we can prohibit them from doing so, put them on a global "No Buy List"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 23 2022, @02:07PM (6 children)
Nice thought, implemented basically nowhere in law.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 23 2022, @07:23PM (3 children)
Well, that's our obligation, to elect people that will write such laws
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 23 2022, @08:20PM (2 children)
I feel that the political tide of the last 50 years has been flowing in the opposite direction.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 24 2022, @01:07AM (1 child)
And you would be correct, it's a cycle, but the pendulum doesn't really swing that far, change will happen on an evolutionary time scale, and it can go either way
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 24 2022, @02:09AM
Since I am just a bit over 50 years old, this particular 50 year swing of the pendulum feels more like a death spiral than a cyclic phenomenon.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 23 2022, @09:10PM (1 child)
Wrong. The SEC kicks people out of the mix all the time. It's one of their favourite regulatory threats. It's why guys like Madoff don't get to be directors of companies after their scams go down.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 25 2022, @03:39AM
You mean "guy like Madoff.". Big players getting yanked from the game are rare (it's really bad for the remaining players when it happens, so they really try to avoid it.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]