The following is commentary intended for discussion. Add your comments.
A 2% wealth tax, as proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, wouldn’t impact me. It wouldn’t impact most of you. (I think it’s targeting people who have wealth above $50 million.)
I guess it’s tempting to try to play off our jealousy and hope we will be “all for” hitting people who have more than us.
Personally, even when I had nothing, I didn’t resent those who had more. I didn’t hope that they got taxed more, I didn’t spend time thinking about how undeserving they were or how I’d been held back from what was, somehow, rightfully mine. I just tried to show up, work very hard, bounce back, be positive, get motivated after failure instead of feeling discouraged, and help others.
For the ultra-wealthy who speak out on occasion and say they think they should be paying more taxes: nothing stops them from doing so today. They can pay as much as they want over what they owe.
When they’re advocating that “they” should pay more, they’re actually saying they want to control matters so that “others” pay more– because they can do what they feel is their fair share today. No new law needed.
What do you think?
I want a wealth hall of fame; not a wealth hall of shame. It is not the government’s money. It belongs to those who earn it.
We tax ourselves only with our permission for a specific and defined purpose. Not to support a 20 million strong government employee’s wide open maw.
The “covid” bail out bill going almost entirely to the benefit of government employees and their outrageous defined-benefit pensions, that are guaranteed to no one else, should shock the conscience of every single person now force to pay for this Democrat boondoggle.
We the people are asked to raid our own retirement savings just to make government employee pensions whole. This is so fundamentally wrong it leaves me speechless.
Where is the mutual benefit quid pro quo to get this egregious and self-serving windfall, accruing only to government employees and their rapacious public sector unions – the cash cows of the Democrat party?
No to a wealth tax. This opens the door to lowering the threshold of what is considered wealthy. If we are talking about a healthy social safety net, why not eliminate the wage threshold for social security taxes? Many people became wealthy by making this world a better place. We love our smart phones, computers etc.., yet we want to punish hard work and ingenuity. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could report on charitable giving in this country. I think we would find that the wealthy give a lot. Shouldn’t they get to decide who their money goes to?
Too many people wrapped up in the highly “subjective” idea of “fairness”. I learned long ago that the only one who’s going to watch out for me, is “me”! For all of those who obsess over what someone else is making or how much they’ve earned, I’d ask “for all of the bitching you do over someone else’s wealth, how much richer are you for it? How much more do you have in your checking account? How much more do you have in your retirement account”? If your answer is “zero” as I suspect it is, then why are you so concerned about someone else’s wealth? If bemoaning someone else gets you nothing in return, what’s the point in feeding your jealousy? The wealthy are free to do what they want with their money and you’ll see NOTHING from the punitive taxes you’d wish upon them.
Yes. Screw the billionaire bastards that have given us the Potemkin Resident Biden.
It won’t make a sent into our national debt to tax the ultra wealthy heavier than they are currently. Our concern ought to be what we’ll do if our debt is called up. There’s no real solution, just seems like there is. Politicians and their long periods of power should be reigned in. We need to be in control,not the politicians. We should cancel those that have just sat on their asses and achieved nothing meaningful for their constituents. And don’t get me started on politicians that don’t even reside in the same areas where their constituency live. We need to be done with the same old BS.
I personally don’t believe in punishing people who are honestly very successful.
The wealthy who do not want to pay this tax can just leave. When they do, they take with them any taxes they were already paying and any jobs they may have provided. Then we are worse off than before.
“The top 5% paid around 58%.”* [of the Federal taxes]. They are paying more than “their fair share.” They also stimulate the economy more than the average tax payer buy providing jobs, purchasing goods and services and investments.
They only way government will ever have enough money is to cut its size and spending.
*https://www.aier.org/article/the-1-pay-37-of-federal-income-taxes/
A tax on assets is theft, whether those assets are $50M or $50K. Ask anyone who lives in Virginia and has to pay an annual tax on the value of their car. Taxes on property, backed up by forfeiture of the property following failure to pay the taxes, actually mean that we do not really own our property but hold it on government sufferance. The proposed tax would extend that sufferance to everything owned by those targeted.
Moreover, to determine the value of assets would be an extremely intrusive activity, open to fraud by either understating or overstating value.
This tax is another wedge to get us all to the place where we own nothing. It appeals to envy to persuade ordinary people to support it but will eventually target us. The very rich, the powerful, and the connected will all be able to avoid it.
The wealthy can simply move elsewhere in the world, or at least move their money elsewhere, where no one can get their hands on it. That leaves the rest of us holding the bag as it were. What good is a wealth tax if the wealthy can find loopholes to get out of paying it?
Can the recipients of the redistributed ‘wealth tax’ spend the money more effectively than the wealthy? I think Elizabeth seriously needs to address that important issue.
I just read the book Socialism Sucks written by Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell, the Foreword was written by Tom Woods.
Here are three three paragraphs from the Foreword of the book that helps address the issue of the overall effectiveness of how the wealthy spend their money.
‘The rich’ meanwhile, are caricatured and despised as a matter of routine. And while it’s true that some people have come by their wealth in disreputable ways, made possible by government, socialist critics are not making distinctions like this. It is wealth per se, no matter how acquired, that is to be condemned.
Not a moment’s thought is applied to wondering what the rich might actually do for the economy. We are to believe that they roll around in their cash until it sticks to their sweaty bodies.
Not a word about investment in capital goods, which make the economy more physically productive and increase real incomes. Nothing about capital maintenance, which keeps the structure of production up and running. Nothing about saving at all, since most popular critics of capitalism appear to think consumption is what really contributes to economic health – as if simply using things up could make us rich’
My concern is how this would be implemented. If you are a farmer with a ranch worth $50M but not turning a profit, you might have to sell it. I am sure some Chinese corporation would snap it up. If you own a manufacturing business, is that “wealth”? Would you then be laying off employees to cover the tax? Or would you just pass the cost on to us consumers. Would more millionaires then just transfer their wealth to a foundation like the Gates and Clintons to avoid the tax? In theory it sounds ok, but in practice these things just don’t work. You also have lots of valuation issues for assets – say an art collection. Sounds like an administrative challenge to this accountant.
I’m not in favor of income tax. I’m in favor, best described by Keyes prior to running. States can do what they like.
NO! Any sort of tax on the “rich” — particularly an “envy” tax like this one — will eventually trickle down the lower net worth individuals. The government black hole can never be filled. It just keeps sucking in money and wasting it. We are so in the toilet now and we will have passed the point of no return if Kamala Harris becomes president under the 25th Amendment. It’s what they’ve wanted from the beginning of Biden’s come back in June 2020. Very clever, but sinister.
Abolish the 16th Amendment.
A wealth tax will not impact me – YET! Fact is that originally Social So Security Tax was only 1%, and it was only on the wealthy. Today it’s 12.4% (plus 2.9% for Medicare) and everyone pays it. This illustrates the fact that once to gov’t gets it’s greedy hooks into us they figure they’ve got a good thing and it grows. There are many other examples. So if a wealth tax is initiated history shows us it will grow, and sometime in the future middle class people will be paying a wealth tax on every asset they own, Their homes, cars, savings accounts, IRA’s will all be subject to a wealth tax. You can be sure of it.
Agreed!
Reading your comment led me to think of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
I recall being shocked when I learned it applied to me even though I just covered my expenses with a tiny savings on the 5-figure income I brought in, living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where sadly that salary doesn’t go very far.
That tax measure was implemented at a time when a high 5-figure annual salary was indicative of wealth in all parts of the country.
Your observation matches my experience.
I have a feeling that a ‘wealth tax’ is for show considering the most wealthy placed Biden into the White House.
Pfizer, J&J, and Moderna board members, Gates, Bezos and Zuckerberg have all grown their wealth by more than 2%.
I’m sure this tax hike will be followed with one for those not privileged to get a ‘non-wealth tax’ levied on them.
Of course gas prices have already gone up 30% since Biden seized power.
How about the wealthy just pay the increase felt at the pump for the rest of us proles?
There are I believe three countries with a wealth tax – Norway, Spain and Switzerland and I live in one of them. The tax is progressive and tends to max out at 0.45% to 0.50 % exceeding $4’000.000. After allowable deductions is a relatively minor burden for average wage and savings workers. It does not apply to pension funds. The wealth tax varies by state and there is rarely any political discussion about abolishing it – after all it was implemented around 1800. Compensation for it is that the inheritance tax is low, and there’s no capital gains levy or tax on movable property such as equities. One might say that it is politically appreciated by the population in that the wealthier do pay more.
2% x 0.00 = 0.00