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Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

> and the richest 10% of americans own 84% of all stock.

The top 20% of earners also handle close to 90% of the tax burden, while close to 50% of the population pay nothing in taxes.

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Man, that 50% of the population that's able to buy things without paying sales tax is really fortunate. How do I sign up for that benefit?

You could move to Oregon...

...In all seriousness, the parent comment was probably referring to the Federal Income Tax.

Yes, I'm aware that's what he was referring to, but it's not the entirety of the tax burden in the US, and even people who pay nothing in income tax still pay taxes.

This is precisely why a flat tax disproportionally impacts lower income people.

Unless it’s a flat tax on capital assets.

I think it would be interesting to try out a model where _only_ capital assets are taxed. No sales tax, no income tax, no capital gains tax.

It should dampen the effect of the rich getting richer only from rent collecting, while still making sure the market allocates capital to where it provides the most economic value (I.e can be turned into enough revenue to pay the tax in question)

I agree with a wealth tax in principle, but it's not without many difficult implementation challenges. For example, someone's entire net worth could be held in art. How do you accurately gauge its value if it hasn't been sold in two decades?

Auction it out. Highest bidder on rent gets to keep it.

This doesn't make sense. You're now saying that the government is going to be in charge of inspecting every citizen's property and auctioning it for them?

I'm as liberal as they come, and that just seems ridiculous.

Yes. Perhaps not the government though, what I have in mind is an institution representing the commons and all individuals right to it. So the income from said auctions could not be used for arbitrary government spending but only for the interest of the commons: The ones agreeing to respect the ownership deal by being non-owners of the asset in question. I imagine most of the revenue would just be payed back as a dividend.

Edit: (I do not think of wealth in the form of art though. Imagine most wealth is tied up in capital assets$

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

There’s a good moral argument about dividing capital into land and other assets.

But I suspect that from an economical efficiency perspective that division is less interesting than between revenue and assets.

It's really more about dividing capital into the kind that is "natural" and limited - land, mineral rights, EM spectrum; some would also say copyright and patents - and the kind that is produced by human labor. It's a bit fuzzy in practice.

> 50% of the population pay nothing in taxes.

Sales tax is almost 11% here. And I'm in a red-leaning purple state, not "Taxachusetts" or anything. Property tax on vehicles. FICA ("it's not a tax!" yeah OK, but it is really)

> The top 20% of earners also handle close to 90% of the tax burden,

Only if you only count the income taxes, and ignore other (mostly regressive) payroll, excise/sales, and other taxes at the federal and state levels.

Including all those taxes, the top 20% still pay 66% of all taxes.

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2019/04/ch...

The top 20% also owns 86% of the wealth, so it seems like they are still coming out ahead.

Well, they do have all the money. Besides, the 19.9% shouldn't complain to the 80%. Rather, they should complain to the 0.1% whose lobbyists write the tax code in the first place. We can be sure they had their reasons to set up this level of progressive taxation rather than some other level.

That's because the top has looted the economy, leaving little or nothing for the rest of us. Its not a reflection on the bottom 50% at all.

> That's because the top has looted the economy

Can you explain how this happens? How does one "loot" one of the largest economies in the world?

Monetary policy and globalism. We've got an economy built on debt. We went from a production based economy 40 years ago to a consumption based one. We exported skills. We believed that a service-based economy was sustainable in the long run. We went off the gold standard and embraced an inflationary monetary policy that punished savers. Then we built a retirement system (including state pensions) dependent on yields, which causes retirement funds to chase ever riskier asset classes. We made debt so available for so many things, like education, healthcare, real estate, etc, and we made it so artificially "cheap" that it drove up prices. We never really recovered from the 2008 real estate bubble. The Fed's answer was to buy mortgage-backed securities by the trillions, and bailed out the people responsible without punishing anyone. So we kicked the can down the road and now, this downturn is so massive that we will not be able to escape the deep financial consequences and it is going to take years to overcome this. We have nothing left to borrow against and we're in tens of trillions in debt.

Thank God for this comment

The U.S. Dollar is backed by an ass whopping!

You pay people less than their cost of living, demand that the state make up the difference in food stamps and health-care subsidies, and then pocket the difference.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/time-for-postcapitalism

It's simple:

Think about it, a CEO of a big company is more likely to be in social circle of the politicians, judges and regulators.

They are more likely to be sympathetic to their immediate acquaintance who they see every week rather than those poor social economic class people who they have nothing in common with.

Add some dilllusion and descrimination in the mix, like "they are poor because they are lazy" and it becomes easy to make policies which benefit your immediate social circle.

And lot of poor people don't even have time or motivation to analyze those policies and even if someone manages to do that, they don't have enough influence to do anything about it.

Even simpler. The folks in a company that can write checks, write them to each other.

I don't think it's because top are lotting, more like people at top have bigger leverage. But in all, all people are equally likely to loot if the places were changed.

In a society where the bottom 50% have virtually no wealth and are in debt, how much do you think they should pay in taxes and how do you expect them to pay for it?

If someone making 1m/yr pays 1% in taxes and someone making 10k/yr pays 90%, the millionaire is still covering over 50% of the tax burden despite being impacted far less by the taxes on his wealth.

In that case, I would love to be handling 90% of the tax burden right now.

They pay sales tax, social security tax, and they never make anywhere near as much in wages as the value of what they produce, which is the biggest tax of all but since it’s a hidden, implicit tax, you can’t see it.

Sure, but without the bottom 50% the top 20% would not be able to make nearly as much money as they do.

Progressive taxation is aware of the exploitive nature of capitalism. Just because people are being exploited doesn't mean they don't contribute, much to the contrary.

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