this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
1453 points (96.7% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9788 readers
188 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You don't need to tax wealth. Amased wealth will be taxed when the wealth is spent.
I understood your argument. It's just not how it works. Even if amassed wealth was used to buy stuff as a exchange of goods, it wouldn't be anything significant, and it would be less significant the more wealth we're talking about. That in itself should clue you in on why this doesn't work.
If taxes is a problem in terms of inequality, why... not tax it more progressively then? That's the whole point of it. Reduce taxes for lower brackets, increase for higher brackets. Even if you thought 0% tax makes sense, which sort of already exists for the lowest bracket, and you want this to apply to more people... then, just do that, starting at from lower income side. Do the same starting from the upper income side, but there you increase it significantly. How far you go, is politics.
Put into place stricter regulations for the exploitation of workers. Actually enforce this stuff, not just give fines that are less than the gains. Replace your election system, it's broken. Etc. There are soooo many things, that actually make sense, and would have a good effect. But looking at say 400k+ incomes and thinking "tax it at 0%". Reagan's grave would look like the classic zombie stereotype, except it would be his dick protruding from the ground.
The thing a consumption tax fixes is eliminating all the tax avoidance schemes. People living off their wealth don't pay high taxes, they take out loans against their wealth and pay the loan back at 5% instead of the 20% capital gains tax. Carl Icahn, an investor was able to pay no income tax using this scheme. He had an adjusted gross income of $544 million but deducted it all from paying his 1.2 billion dollar loan.
That's... why you might want to tax wealth? Sales tax does literally nothing to address the problem of neither wealth nor income inequality. Income tax does address some of it. Removing it just because it doesn't address all of it is absurd. Thinking it is covered by sales tax, is even more so. Those who would be in the lower tax brackets would have less buying power, and those with high incomes would be having a party, well... until the fairly immediate collapse of the economy and the riots start, that is. Just because one aspect doesn't cover everything doesn't mean you remove it all-together and replace it with... well, I'm still curious.
The ways to circumvent paying taxes, is what you go after, but you don't do that by just removing existing obstacles. You do it by adding more obstacles. You can still tax income, and you adjust it to tax the high income earners much more. You evaluate wealth and tax that. You put a tax on absurd inheritances. You limit the profitability of trading necessities (e.g. housing) as goods by also high taxation.
The only thing I objected to in your original comment was to suggest 0% tax on income... and that this is compensated for by increasing sales tax... as if it solves anything at all. Income tax accounts for about 50% of the US federal budget. Tricks to avoid paying income tax are well known, but the idea of not addressing the issue, but instead just "start from scratch", or suggest to remove something fundamental to the function of a modern state, is ... tiresomely American. It's like the Churchill quote of Americans always doing the right thing, after having tried everything else.
Income inequality hasn't been solved by progressive income tax, it's not a magical sacred cow. It's always been flawed.