2997

Not caring about people being fabulously wealthy doesn’t mean we don’t understand the concept. The lottery used to pay out $3 million, then $30 million, then $300 million, and now you have payouts of $1.5 billion. I will literally never win the lottery, but it doesn’t matter to me if the lottery payout grows a hundredfold. They won a billion dollars? Good for them!

Steve Jobs ran two companies simultaneously, and made more money than anyone could ever spend in multiple lifetimes. He created products that are used by millions of people and have opened up entire new markets that never existed before. (All the YouTube and TikTok millionaires are greatly aided by everyone having a tiny computer in their pockets.) He also had a daughter who hated him, and he died of pancreatic cancer. Money seems like a great thing to have, but not at the expense of my health and spending time with the people I love.

2998

If your goal is to make sure that everyone has the same marginal utility to every dollar they spend, then sure, there are easy ways to accomplish that. You see “people being able to save money” as a bug, while I see it as a feature.

2999

I’m sure you would also like them to spend less money of fossil fuels and on fascist indoctrination. Not that a wealth tax does much about that, but their income still matters.

3000

I didn’t mean to drop this but I got busy. I’m putting this here to sort of complete my earlier thought even though the conversation has moved on.

The quickest thought is to basically say I don’t have nearly as much of a worry about compounding unrealized gains as long as there are adequate policies in place to tax them when they are realized (including inheritance, gifting, and trusts). I suppose in some sense it is easier to say tax wealth instead of restructuring what we think of as income but I don’t see it as having any other advantage. The bit about MacKenzie Scott sums it up in a way - a wealth tax isn’t going to stop the accumulation of wealth in the people it is aimed at, only slow it down.

Sen. Warren’s proposal was a 6% wealth tax I believe. This would amount to the fortune growing by 4% or even more than under an aggressive income tax scheme. Yes you could perhaps get both but in reality I suspect that given a Warren/Sanders type of wealth tax there would be very little political capital to push for also cutting out the loopholes such as long term capital gains versus regular income.

3001

I fully comprehend the level of wealth, at least as well as anyone else here does.

It’s not that I don’t understand your position. I just don’t agree with it. You think that reducing that inequality is going to achieve some ultimate goal, and I don’t think it will. Some folks here think that reducing the inequality it ITSELF the goal, and that’s just mindless to me.

3002

But not under both a wealth tax scheme and an aggressive income tax scheme. I’m not saying we don’t need a far more aggressive approach to income tax; I’m saying that it, alone, isn’t enough.

3003

No, but the reply means they are totally missing the point and concentrating on the standard strawman that any concern about incomprehensibly enormous, aristocratic, political and economic system warping, levels of wealth is simply concerned with people having more than them.

That is not the goal. That’s another bad faith argument.

3004

I understand that you think those things happen, I just don’t believe you are correct. I think that you have seized on this perceived inequality as a scapegoat for societal problems which have other causes. I think that your attempts to reduce inequality are fundamentally misdirected, poorly considered, and will not result in the changes you hope to see.

3005

You can’t really believe that money doesn’t warp our political process, or that people with really deep pockets don’t have endless capacity to engage in warping our political process. Can you?

3006

You think those things do not happen? In all of history there’s no example of huge wealth accumulation having economic and political system warping effects? You don’t think that extremely wealthy people are able to warp our political system currently?

Also, things can have multiple causes.

3007

I do not believe that you have any concrete, actionable understanding of any of those things. I think you’re just using intentionally vague terms like “warping effects” that don’t actually mean anything.

3008

Okay then.

3009

Speaking only for myself, when I see someone making something and becoming incredibly wealthy as a result, I see that as a sign that the system is working. I think it’s great that Oprah can build a media empire, or Lin-Manuel Miranda can write plays and make movies that bring so much joy to people, or Steve Jobs can start a company that improves the lives of so many people and opens entirely new job opportunities that never existed before, or an athlete can put tens of thousands of hours of work in and become the best at what they do. Personally, I would not change places with any of those people, but I’m glad that they exist.

Years ago when Tiger Woods was winning golf tournaments, there were people trying to “Tiger-proof” their golf courses, changing them in very specific ways so that they would make it harder for Tiger to win tournaments and easier for other people. That’s what this conversation reminds me of: It’s not about setting up rules and letting the results stand; it’s about changing the rules in very specific ways to target the people who profited.

3010

You really don’t think the Mercers, Kochs or Adelsons of the world influence politics in ways most people can’t? Or do you see that as normal or a good thing?

3011

The combination is good in principle but I don’t think I’ve seen a serious proposal for that.

3012

You do realize that a big chunk of any $1b fortune is going to be as-yet-unrealized gains which are subject to tax when tapped into, right? Tax it at that point. Very few truly large fortunes have been properly taxed on the way up. For example, pretty much all the Silicon Valley billionaires are sitting on billions of unrealized gains in stock form, which can be taxed when sold/transferred/etc.

The problem is, we tax those gains WAY too low and also we don’t recognize all the transfers/sales that are possible, allowing assets to get gifted to charity, stuck into trusts, and otherwise used without tax.

Fix the income tax first, then we can think about a wealth tax.

Period.

3013

We’re circled from a discussion of a tax on wealth being effective against income inequality all the way back to whether income inequality even matters.

3014

I do! I also realize that often, most of it will never be tapped, so will never be converted into a realized gain. In in that event, if your income tax scheme can’t reach more than 70% of any gain, it’s free to grow by 30 percent in perpetuity.

I mean, we have different goals. I want to constrain the accumulation of dynastic wealth in the hands of the very few at the cost of everyone else. Fixing the income tax is part of that, but on its own it can’t possibly accomplish that goal.

3015

Not under my rules about reclassifying many things as taxable events. Put it into a trust? Taxable event. Use it as collateral for a loan? Taxable event. Gift it to charity? Taxable event. And so forth.

If it stays 100% pure paper gains, then yeah sure it can accumulate forever and maybe in that case we would need a wealth tax (although that’s all very theoretical) but in the meantime in the real world what we need is a better income tax system.

I’m not saying NO Never to wealth taxes but honestly all you dudes are putting the cart before the horse. Let’s do something about our wealth-preferring heavily borked income tax system as I outlined, get the revenue we need for many things, and then worry about the wealth tax.

On top of that I also feel you guys who think a wealth tax is going to cause rainbows of equality to flow out of the butts of unicorns are sadly mistaken. Even if you implemented a wealth tax, with the current enforcement we have, with the current definitions of “asset” and “ownership” and all that, with all the many many loopholes of trusts, charities, and so on, you are all expecting WAY too much out of a wealth tax. A wealth tax will be gamed just as badly as the income tax has been. Let’s address that gaming.

I feel like the wealth tax has become a mythical kind of holy grail which will solve all the many economic inequality problems we have in this country. In reality, it’s a distraction. Hell, we can’t even plug the loopholes in the corporate tax cut Trump pushed through to pay for much need infrastructure. A wealth tax is Fairyland.

3016

Well, there are two things here.

First, I think that in some of those cases, you’re dealing with inherited wealth that being spent by people who did nothing to earn it. Folks like Rebekah Mercer, for instance, is generally described as “an heiress”. In cases like that I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to impose dramatically higher estate taxes on the ultra wealthy… although honestly, the mere fact that she has tons of money and spends it in politics is not something I care much about.

The bigger problem, that I feel everyone constantly sidesteps, is that you’re in a situation where tons of people have the power to vote, and yet they are fucking imbeciles.

Because the reality is that for all of their money, the ultra wealthy still only get one vote.

Their political influence (at least when exercised legally), hinges upon the idea that so many people are so fucking stupid, that their entire will can be molded by essentially spending money on commercials.

Now, that idea is certainly true… demonstrably so. It’s not just a political thing, people are constantly convinced of all kinds of stupid shit, every day of their lives.

But removing the very wealthy’s ability to give money to politicians that they will then use to buy ads… will that make those people suddenly into smart, educated voters? It fucking will not, I guarantee you. Their vaccuous minds will still be filled with whatever trash gets shown to them.

You think that somehow it’s gonna suddenly be good stuff then? I seriously doubt it, or at least, I see no reason why that would be the case. Let’s imagine that political ads are less prominent… will there now be a void of political influence flooding into those people? No, of course not. Now it just becomes the case that whoever controls the media has tons of influence, just as they did in days gone by.

And that ignores the fact that there are all kinds of other sources of trash information out there.

In today’s world, people (including some people in this thread) can choose to only hear things that they want to hear… to only consume information that reinforces whatever they already believe. And that’s not due to really rich people. Hell, at this point, we’re now seeing tons of influence coming from hostile actors that aren’t even in our country.

To me, I think that the idea that reducing inequality will fix this (and other) significant problems with our society, is simply wrong.

I’m, personally, more concerned with increasing tax revenues, which can then be spent on programs that could potentially fix such issues.