I would also like to have restrictions to prevent access to consumer debt channels as they are economically regressive since they ultimately limit spending in the long term. Eliminating access to consumer debt will radically redistribute access to inventory availability. Many people, and accommodating businesses, would try to shift to a lease/rental model, but that is adjustable through high sales/property taxes.
Wealth is currently taxed at death, so it's totally doable while people are living. Plus, regulations are fairly heavy in terms of disclosing one's wealth, so it shouldn't be that difficult.
Sure some people will hide some wealth, but it's illegal, and the IRS is not really soft on tax evasion. "legal" evasion through offshoring and stuff is a problem but it's a problem for all taxes, not particularly wealth tax.
Plenty of countries have implemented a wealth tax.
In France, the current version only applies to real estate as a way to reduce real estate speculation and value storage and instead encourage investing in stocks and bonds.
It's not stupid.
I don't see why every country should have it though.
I think it's nice that different countries have different rules.
I don't see any point in having every country be exactly like every other.
I'm curious what's your opinion on this. Is it fine for super rich people to go elsewhere because of the wealth tax?
It still makes a little sense if it's a Norwegian living in Sweden, operating businesses in Norway, utilizing Norwegian grants, etc. It doesn't if it's someone who was born in Norway running a business in Thailand.
I think the only country that taxes based on citizenship might be the US.
Like nowhere near as hard as a dishwasher or a waiter or a nurse or a bin man.
It's the entire point of a wealth tax, to stop over accumulation of capital by a small minority of individuals. Who generally do sod all but have wealth.
Let's be realistic too, virtually no-one posting on this thread would be affected.
But they're all so brainwashed by rentiers who have bought all the popular media channels that they're anti-wealth tax and defending a position which actively harms them all.
Instead of taxing successful people additionally with a wealth tax, how about creating new opportunities so there are more wealthy people that pay regular taxes, have employees that pay taxes and so on.
The definition of hard work has nothing to do with a wealth tax. But let's play that game; is it more stressful to lead a company 24/7 and make sure your employees get their paycheck even during bad or turbulent times or simply showing up 9-5 as a dishwasher?
And no, it's obviously not more stressful then working three minimum wage jobs and still wondering if you're going to be able to make rent this month.
And we already tried the "new opportunity" thing, right? You're basically saying "more of the same". But constant growth due to globalisation is over, we're in a phase where consolidation of capital, and by extension power, is happening at a worrying rate in a tiny minority of people's hands.
And again, it's not you. The billionaires are not on HN. W're not talking about wealth taxes for millionaires, or even low multi-millionaries.
We're talking about the filthy rich. Are you filthy rich?
There's no reason for people to be that rich. They're not that good, they're not special, they're just lucky. Their parents will have invariably already been edging into the filthy rich. And then with a moderate amount of work, a lot of good connections due to that familial wealth, a relatively low amount of stress in the big scheme of things and a massive dose of luck they won the money lottery, and now they're convincing you wealth taxes are bad by brain washing you.
And yet you're arguing for more of the same? Seriously, why?
drop your ideals, see reality as it is, double down on the value you can bring on the world, and get paid relative to it.
low agency people always find ways to allocate resources of other people, and never their own resources that they worked for and earned on their own. they always find reasons and excuses to justify it.
The thing that I would tax is ability to take out loans against assets - meaning that you have to pay equivalent capital gains tax if you use equity as collateral for a loan. There would be some exceptions if that loan goes into things like business expansion that directly leads to creating jobs.
I would also tax inheritance transfer even in equity form.
It's also inefficient, punishes good behaviours (saving and investing), requires the state knowing what everybody owns.
If I was designing a tax system, I would try to tax directly where it is used. Car owners and drivers should fund roads, cyclists should fund bike trails, students should fund universities, insured people should fund healthcare, people living in towns should fund their waste removal, firemen, sidewalks, etc.
This would create self-optimising loops where people would spend based on how much they really want something. More drivers paying for roads = more roads; more cyclists paying for bike trails and bike lines = more bike infrastructure.
I think, paying per class or year (but rather class) and having student debt as a separate instrument (that can be private or public), is much better.
Let's say in 15 minutes, I can walk 1 km, go 5 km on a bike, 10 km with a public transport and 15 km with a car.
Area = pi * radius*2 Walking = 3.14sqkm Bike = 78sqkm Public transport = 314sqkm Car = 706sqkm (All is just example ignoring parking, looking for bike stands, waiting for public transport or changing stations)
If I want to do Yoga, and it is in 706sqkm around me, but not in 314km, I have to use car and no other transport is going to get me there in 15 minutes. When the city have a policy that prohibits me from using the car, I need to choose the second most preferred activity, which might be for example going to a café nearby.
Cities that slow down transport are in fact harming people's interests by limiting their choices and pushing them to suboptimal choices. (Which also inherently means that faster is always better and people who want to slow down traffic in cities are evil, but that off-topic)
If there were no subsidies for cars, public transport and bike lines and all this was based purely on contributions from users, it would create a self-optimising feedback mechanism. Going to yoga could for example cost $2 to build & maintain roads. I might not want to spend it and I might go to a café instead because everyone living in the city already pays for his sidewalk anyway.
Depends on who is defining "good". Consumerism drives economies and some might not want to encourage saving.
For the most part, these kinds of taxes hurt the people who are being honest and declaring their wealth. Some billionaires are bad, some are good, and these will almost exclusively target the good ones.
So in practice, no, unless the magic button fixes the loopholes that come with it.
Microsoft/Bill Gates is a good example. Without MS, we'd have open source and stuff like that. But it's just nice to have Windows, MS Office, less polio. People like Warren Buffett stabilize the economy, while people like Soros destabilise it. Nearly all the Big Tech ones are pretty good - they pay wages as high as possible.
Most are law abiding. Most of them actually want higher taxes but also want their competitors to be paying them as well. Bezos gets slack for dodging taxes, but he does it legitimately - most profits are reinvested and they actually pay good salaries even if they overwork their staff.
Bill Gates is doing a lot of good too, although he was pretty ruthless in the beginning against other companies.
A 'bad rich person' is often someone who supports the opposition party or once tweeted something disagreeable. It doesn't matter if they employ thousands of people and generously give to charity.
And any individual "employing thousands of people" is really "exploiting thousands of people" unless the thousands of employees' wealth is increasing at a faster rate than the employer's.
We still have plenty of robber barons who are doing borderline human trafficking but I don't think these are even that bad. They're exploiting some helpless guy in Bangladesh, but in the end, that guy is better off.
The truly bad ones imo are the "silver or lead" ones - you do things their way and you become rich, you go against them and you're literally dead.
The wealthy would often donate the bulk of their wealth to the foundation which they had sole control over. This foundation would give “jobs” to their children and also provide loans for the owners. Another perk of the foundation is that interested people could also “donate” to the foundation.
https://jacobin.com/2022/07/private-charity-wealth-inequalit...
allows them to dip into the foundation’s “charitable” funds to take out loans or be compensated to the tune of potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars
TLDR If you implement a wealth tax, you will find rich people donating all their money to their private foundation.
Our government has been wasteful and reckless with what it has.
Countless wars, political graft and corruption.
When the government has all the money. It will look like china’s political class.
All the wealth in the hands of the political class… why is this good?
Everything in life is a tradeoff. there is no perfect world. Choose your poison…
Socialism, and by extension communism, are cancers.
When wealth gets stuck in the hands of a few, it creates recessions and political instability.
In some countries, the poor do not have access to medicine - an injury can bankrupt them, especially as they become unable to work with the injury. Only the brightest may have access to higher education. The purpose of tax is to generally improve the social mobility so that gifted poorer people get a shot at making their own wealth. And also because the improved quality of life reduces things like rich people shootings and arson and other issues from inequality.
The other end is it gets invested heavily into profit making stuff. Plantations and farms and power plants are great. But not all of this money benefits a society in the long run. There's stuff like garbage and prisons. There's things that require a lot of investment like educating certain minority groups. Tax money is generally more effective for this. Too much is not good though; we need a balance between state and corporations.