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Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

Rather stupid idea to attack those who call the shots. Try doing it and they change the government for the more agreeable one. Because the initiative is leftist, who that will be? Far right. Result: Putin wins.

In the very best case, they simply leave. You end up with the same number of poor, but no rich. Will that make anyone happier? Those speaking of "exit tax": it's no secret that their money is not invested in Europe. So if they leave, they just leave, no exit tax. Why? You seen EU stock performance? They are all in the US. In part because far-left initiatives like that have no chance in the US. But mostly because stocks there work because money isn't being sucked out of the underlying companies by the takers on one hand, and investors also have money to pour in because they are taxed less. Very best end result: you make Europe even more behind on everything because you will have all the same takers, but even fewer makers.

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They won't leave.

For 50 years in the US, the maximum tax rate was right below 80%. That didn't make the country poorer, on the contrary: that was the time the US asserted itself as the main planetary superpower. "The rich will leave" is a myth. Probably some opportunists like Elon Musk will, but he's just the (extremely) vocal minority. Most recently in Norway after a targeted tax, out of 230k+ millionnaires and billionnaires, a lot vocally said they would leave while only 30 actually did, which was just marginally over the usual migration rate for that category of people.

So even though no one ever proved that "the rich will leave" (while the opposing has been shown numerous times) over the last century, the simple workaround is to make the tax global or at least as wide as possible, which is what is attempted here.

Ultimately they still live in the country. They have ties to it. Their assets and wealth may be tied up in the country which is difficult to extricate. And, most importantly, their friends, family and life are in that country. It is absurd to think that it is so easy for people to just pack up and leave a country.

Nobody paid the 80% tax rate btw, tax system was very diff back then.

https://www.aier.org/article/the-rich-never-actually-paid-70...

"Persons in the $1 million income filing bracket in 1963 faced an average effective tax rate of just over 40 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI) for the year."

Let's do that, then.

The initiative is European, not American. They will leave Europe for sure. In America, there's no threat of rising taxes for the rich, they control things too well.

Saying it won't make it real. It's a myth, it's been debunked several times. The myth persists.

No it's not a myth. It happened in France when socialist president Holland imposed a "tax on the rich" and it was quickly backtracked after most of the rich packed their bags.

Doesn't the US have exit-tax already?

It does but for US taxpayers. If you are a US taxpayer, you pay it if you exit. But those people are not us taxpayers, they happily pay NRA withholding tax (15% on dividends) and that's it.

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