It's Time to Tax the Billionaires
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Why? Far-above average wealth amassed by 1 person represents wealth not in the hands of a wider public. This is damaging to society in many ways.
Example: compare homeless person who has ~0, buys a lottery ticket and wins $1M, with someone who already owns property worth $10M, and doesn't work in a year (and/or has accountant do creative bookkeeping to put income at ~0).
It makes no sense to (heavily) tax that newly minted millionaire since "high-income", while their ~0 income neighbour sits on a $10M home/yacht/pile of stock options/whatever. This holds even more true as you look further up the amassed-wealth ladder.
Redistribute those goodies! Well at least some of it, each year.
These are 100-billion dollar industries. We would save much more than by taxing billionaires.
You seem to not like the idea that a rich person spent money, but that’s the way for the money to get out to other people who are not billionaires. Some of that $120m undoubtedly went to pay musicians, chefs, cooks, florists, security guards, waitstaff, custodians, etc, etc, etc. If that wedding didn’t happen, those people probably would have missed out on their biggest pay day of the year.
Anyone who think billionaires have too much, should be happy when they see billionaires spend excessively, as it means that wealth is getting spread around. People who want some of it can start, or work for, businesses that billionaires would want to spend money with.
Similarly societies can tax whomever and however they see fit.
…should be happy when they see billionaires spend excessively, as it means that wealth is getting spread around.
This reasoning applies when government taxes billionaires and spends it.
I'm not going to apply any morality to an individual spending money they earned. I am going to apply it to a government taking money through taxes. The government has a responsibility to do right by the citizens paying the taxes.
From what I've seen, most of the "tax the rich" people are assuming the government is going to spend the money to help the poor, or support whatever other causes they want... or more transparently, the money taken from the rich will go to them in some way. The reality is that probably won't happen. Even when the government does give out cash, like we saw during the pandemic in the US, look at what happened. A significant percentage of people ran out and bought stuff, costing more than what they were given. A concerning number took on significant debt (like a new car), as if those checks would keep coming. So the money went right back to people who own the companies, raising their wealth by billions, and the people ended up in worse debt than before the wealth was distributed. We see a similar pattern with lotto winners. It doesn't work. A government functioning like Robin Hood isn't the solution, we need education on saving vs spending, living within one's means, and being content with what one has. But these things are all bad for the economy, so there is little incentive for those in power to do it, so it falls on individuals.
No it doesn't for the same reason the statements you made that I replied to don't. I used your same reasoning and applied it to government. Are you going to be consistent or not?
The same reasoning applies if the government spends it or if a billionaire spends it. It's all the same.
A billionaire who got their wealth from renting apartments is like a little mini government. The renter (taxpayer) pays to live in the place in a exchange for certain goods and services. The billionaire (government) who collects rent (taxes) can spend it as they see fit. The effects are the same.
It is inconsistent to think that one type of spender is worse than the other. Government can raise the rent (taxes) to living in a society in the same way the billionaire property owner can. Some of us advocate that the rent paid to live in the country should up dramatically for certain types of people of means.
I disagree with this analogy. I’m not forced to rent to a particular landlord, or any landlord at all. If I feel I’m not getting what I paid for, I can choose to spend my money elsewhere for rent, food, entertainment, or whatever. The switching cost on this is very low. Within the last year I felt Amazon wasn’t a good value anymore, so I cancelled prime and started looking at other stores to get what I need. Amazon got less of my money, and I still got what I need, often by cutting out the middleman.
With a government and taxes, I have no choice. I must pay them specifically. If they decide to raises taxes, I can’t do anything about it, I must pay. The only option I would have is moving to another country, which means there is a significant level of lock-in. Also, the government should be spending how the people see fit. Sure, we vote, but how much tax payer money has gone into funding surveillance programs, for example, that I don’t think any tax payers really want. If my landlord used my rent money to monitor my phone calls, I’d stop doing business with them immediately and seek legal action. It’s likely they would either need to change their business practices or they’d go out of business.
The government is very much like a monopoly in this context. If there was a monopoly on housing where you live, would you be calling to raise rents, trusting that the landlord would use that money to make things better for you by leveraging the services of local businesses? Where is their incentive to do that when you have nowhere else to go? They’d likely raise the rents and divide the extra profits amongst their friends. Meanwhile, all the renters have less to spend with those local businesses.
If the government is given more money, are they going to actually make our life better, or will they fund more questionable programs? If it doesn’t go the way I (or you) want, what’s our recourse? We can’t stop paying (withholding rent), we can’t realistically move (finding a new apartment). A country/government is a completely different dynamic than a landlord.
Not to mention, with the way the US has been using debt, I don’t think they care how much tax revenue is coming in. They just spend and spend, to let future generations worry about it. This isn’t an admirable behavior for those entrusted with the budget.
Maybe the difference in our point of view is that I’m not viewing billionaires as a different and special class of citizen. I’m not interested in paying more in taxes until they show me they can be responsible and use it well. Once they do that, depending on what the planned increases will do, we can talk/vote on it. Just taxing the rich for the sake of taxing the rich, and hoping they will fix things doesn’t seem like a real plan. Are you willing to pay more than you currently do? How much? Are you already doing it voluntarily? Why or why not? I can’t in good conscience call for other people to pay in more when I wouldn’t be interested in doing it myself, and the rich already shoulder a significant percentage of the overall tax burden.
This also completely ignores that most wealth at that level is held in company stock, and taxing unrealized gains isn’t practical or an idea that should even be entertained. So what is really being taxed?