Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: poll

Most people are familiar with income tax, because they know that money is removed from their paycheck every month. Many also file tax returns.

A wealth tax, where a fraction of your bank balance is removed every month, is a totally alien concept to most people. If you haven't thought about it before, it can take a minute or two to wrap your head around what it would actually mean.

In a survey context, all of these questions can be answered on autopilot by mistaking "wealth tax for rich people" with "higher taxes for rich people," which are definitely not the same thing.

Whether or not you think a wealth tax is a good idea, I don't think we should let politicians sneak this through unless we're confident that the public actually understands what is being proposed. As other comments mentioned, income taxes started out as "wealthy only" and have since trickled down to the working poor.

I don't think most Americans want a tax on their bank balance.

Edit: No, I'm not arguing that people are dumb, just that they tend to rush through surveys. When rushing, I think this would be an easy mistake to make.

One often overlooked issue with a wealth tax is the damaging effect on financial privacy.

The income tax already has the IRS probing into nooks and crannies it has no business probing. It deputizes law-abiding businesses to snitch on each other through the obligation to report payments.

A wealth tax would ratchet the surveillance up even further. Not, not just income statements, but asset statements would be required. Enforcement would likely require reams of new compulsory snitching laws for sellers of property. It's not an outcome I think many respondents have though through much because privacy still flies well below the radar in the US.

Then there are unintended consequences. If you tax income, it re-appears as capital appreciation. If you tax assets, they will re-appear as invisible wealth. That's an outcome for which I doubt most in the country are prepared.

Once established, taxes have a way of finding their way from the rich, to the middle-class, and then even to the working poor.

Bill Gates and Bezos are the worlds richest because they have >1% ownership in their founding companies.

The rich get richer because the stock market and their companies are doing well. They own means of production.

Capital gains tax rate means if you hold stock for more than an year and sell it, you get taxed a bit less. There’s an incentive for longer term ownership.

Like property taxes, what if you taxed holding stock? Then that’s unfair as AMT crap. Holding stock is fake money. It could disappear in thin air when market crashes. Gains are only realized when you sell.

But when you sell, you still pay income tax.

So if a billionaire has ownership in his founding company but draws <100k of real income from stock, should they be taxed higher than a person who just makes 100k of salary?

I’m all for higher tax percentages at higher incomes but all of it gets very murky.

America was built on the foundations of if you work hard and build something great and have a pie of ownership, you get to reap the rewards.

Removing this ^ incentive causes all sorts of issues in other parts.

I would love estate tax to have a higher tax rate. Transferring property to kids shouldn’t be cheap since they didn’t do the hard work.

I would also love taxes to be 0 below a certain income bracket.

I would also love some form of aid when unemployed/ on the streets. Some sort of buffer. Better affordable healthcare. Less middleman. More transparency.

A lot of this problems aren’t money related but more about refactoring the current way of things and making more efficient use of what’s currently already there.

My 2 cents. Would love to debate.

> "the very rich should be allowed to keep the money they have, even if that means increasing inequality,"

Wording a question like that is so... biased. Maybe we should work on fixing how the enormous amount of tax money is spent now before asking taxpayers for more? $700bn in funding for military (around $1tn all funds considered), yet there's "increasing inequality". US spends 2x the amount the UK does on health per capita, yet the UK can afford single payer health. Administration costs are through the roof.

I think this is a case where "throwing more money at the problem" isn't the right solution.

To get broad support, crafty lefties need only emphasize how much the taxes will affect Hollywood blowhards. That'll make the whole thing much more palatable to those on the right side of the aisle.

A 4% withdrawal rate is about the most you can expect to indefinitely draw on a balanced portfolio without it disappearing in a relatively small number of years. A 2% wealth tax takes half of this.

Wealth taxes are both harder to implement and enforce than income taxes (e.g. how do you appraise an illiquid asset) while conferring no meaningful advantages.

I do think the inequality gap is becoming more of a problem, but simply asking the population if they want someone else to pay more is going to have the obvious result.

What is law? What ought it to be? What is its domain? What are its limits? Where, in fact, does the prerogative of the legislator stop? I have no hesitation in answering, Law is common force organized to prevent injustice;—in short, Law is Justice. It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.

Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice. And as every individual has a right to have recourse to force only in cases of lawful defense, so collective force, so which is only the union of individual forces, cannot be rationally used for any other end. The law, then, is solely the organization of individual rights that existed before law.

###

Legal plunder has two roots: one of them, as we have already seen, is in human greed; the other is in misconceived philanthropy. Before I proceed, I think I ought to explain myself upon the word plunder. I do not take it, as it often is taken, in a vague, undefined, relative, or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptation, and as expressing the opposite idea to property. When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by force or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is perpetrated. I say that this is exactly what the law ought to repress always and everywhere. If the law itself performs the action it ought to repress, I say that plunder is still perpetrated, and even, in a social point of view, under aggravated circumstances. In this case, however, he who profits from the plunder is not responsible for it; it is the law, the lawgiver, society itself, and this is where the political danger lies.

It is to be regretted that there is something offensive in the word. I have sought in vain for another, for I would not wish at any time, and especially just now, to add an irritating word to our disagreements; therefore, whether I am believed or not, I declare that I do not mean to impugn the intentions nor the morality of anybody. I am attacking an idea that I believe to be false—a system that appears to me to be unjust; and this is so independent of intentions, that each of us profits by it without wishing it, and suffers from it without being aware of the cause.

Any person must write under the influence of party spirit or of fear, who would call into question the sincerity of protectionism, of socialism, and even of communism, which are one and the same plant, in three different periods of its growth. All that can be said is, that plunder is more visible by its partiality in protectionism, 3 and by its universality in communism; whence it follows that, of the three systems, socialism is still the most vague, the most undefined, and consequently the most sincere. Be that as it may, to conclude that legal plunder has one of its roots in misconceived philanthropy, is evidently to put intentions out of the question.

With this understanding, let us examine the value, the origin, and the tendency of this popular aspiration, which pretends to realize the general good by general plunder. The Socialists say, since the law organizes justice, why should it not organize labor, instruction, and religion? Why? Because it could not organize labor, instruction, and religion, without disorganizing justice. For remember, that law is force, and that consequently the domain of the law cannot properly extend beyond the domain of force.

Bastiat - The Law

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44800/44800-h/44800-h.htm

Majority of Americans favor stealing wealth from others.

“Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.“

How do you calculate a wealth tax on a house? How about a piece of art? This is nonsensical and shows how uneducated the average American is, to support this socialist nonsense.

I also just can’t see the government putting a large general fund to good use. This image shows what various billionaires would have been left with if a wealth tax were in place since 1982 (https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5d7a63377d7e360008bd5fbe/...). Bill Gates would have only $36b left - and he’s donated around that much to his foundation. Clearly if he felt the government was good at allocating and efficiently spending large funds, he would have given the government a bigger payment (https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html) rather than starting his own foundation. This is why I don’t buy his recently claimed support for a wealth tax.

Bill Gates came out in favor of a limited wealth tax as well - I think a mild cost to citizenship for the uber-wealthy is a great idea. Feels like political malpractice to not attempt it.

Sidebar:

> Kathy Herron, 56, a Republican who lives in Santa Rosa, California, said her support for Trump - a self-proclaimed billionaire - stems from his hardline policies on illegal immigration. In her view, the president would do well to support higher taxes on rich Americans. “We’re taxed from one end to the other, and it just seems the rich don’t pay their share,” she said.

Welfare chauvinism is an underrated political force in America. The next re-alignment will most likely be along these lines.

Related article: "Millionaires support a wealth tax — as long as they aren’t getting taxed: CNBC survey" https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/millionaires-support-a-wealt... . It found that the majority of millionaires supported a wealth tax that kicks in at $50 million, but not at $10 million -- because they fear it would hit them, now or in the future.

Using the tax code to pull people down is morally wrong.