Historically, taxes have overwhelmingly been a tool for those in power to extract wealth from those with less power.
I would approach any plan that claims it can decrease inequality via taxes with a highly critical eye.
I would approach any plan that claims it can decrease inequality via taxes with a highly critical eye.
Progressive taxation is very effective at decreasing inequality. What is your alternative?
That's the first thing. The second thing is:
> I am against a tax system that punishes hard working individuals and gives a free pass for those already wealthy and big corporations.
This is exactly the problem a progressive tax system is supposed to solve.
This has a <1 correlation with wealth (richness) and poverty.
You can control a lot of assets with relatively low income via debt (the interest of which doesn’t isn’t taxed, frequently), and can have relatively few assets with high income (a sports player, for example, in part because their careers have intrinsically low shelf lives due to physical requirements).
Related to that last point, progressive income taxes also charge people differential tax burdens based on the “density” of their earnings, even if they have the same lifetime earnings. (Compare a football player who makes all his money from 20-25 to a surgeon who makes the same amount of money from 30-65. Because the football player makes more money per year, he’ll pay higher taxes than the surgeon even if they make the same overall income. This is despite the fact there is 0 ability of the football player to maintain his income at 65.)
The above poster would probably view capital gains tax increases as also doing the same thing. Additionally, these policies are often paired with other social spending (like Cal’s phase-out of asset tests for Medicaid, that privilege the older, asset owning strata at the cost of younger, income rich but asset poor strata).
LVT, wealth taxes, or even sales taxes do not have these features and, perhaps coincidentally perhaps not, have been beyond the pale politically for a century.
It sort of reminds me of what "Die Linke"("the left") party in Germany did in Berlin.
A long long time ago they sold publicly owned apartments for pennies.
A year ago they introduced rent control, which is primarily hurting small private landlords and makes the big landlords just wait it out instead of renting at an absurd price point.
So small landlords sell to big landlords because renting out apartments was banned, landlords sell their apartments because that is the only thing allowed by law.
Once enough small landlords exited the market, rent control was pulled out raising the value of properties back to its original level.
Finally, the government bought huge amounts of apartments from the big real estate companies. Effectively paying them to decimate the small landlords.
I don't know if this was planned but if I was an investor in those companies it would be awfully convenient. How can anyone call this chain of events successful? The fact that "Die Linke" party is against a land value tax which could have avoided all of these bad policy ideas does not inspire confidence. Either they are incompetent, were manipulated or they are hypocrites. I can imagine all three to be the case but I would personally bet on manipulation by special interests because applying reverse psychology to lobbyism does not sound very difficult.