633
Progressives Unveil OLIGARCH Act to Combat 'Existential Threat' of Extreme Wealth
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
633 points (97.9% liked)
politics
19089 readers
4344 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
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
Wealth taxes are super easy to avoid, so I'd much rather see something like cap gains+"luxury" sales/income taxes and such, but it's a step in the right direction
Now raise taxes on everyone making over 100k and we're really cooking with gas
$100k aint that much and those people already have a heafty tax burden. Plus luxury taxes are easily avoided when yachts and planes are purchased in the Bahamas. What we need are 50% taxes on the money they borrow against their assets. Want to buy another mansion? Cool 50% tax on the money Goldman Sachs lends you against your Amazon stock. If I have to pay a tax to borrow against my 401k so should these assholes.
$100k is 150% of median household income, and I'm talking about individual income. It is the boundary between 3rd and 4th quintiles of household income.
People are not overtaxed. They are dramatically undertaxed. I say this as a person earning over $100k - it's not some weird snub. It's just correct
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percentiles/
Rich people do pay taxes on money removed early from 401(k)s, which is why they don't do that.
I do strongly support raising taxes on money borrowed against assets over $150k or so
Warren Buffett doesn't pay income tax because he doesn't earn income.
The billionaires don't have a billion in cash, they don't earn a billion dollars a year. They hold assets worth that much.
Taxing wealth is the only way to combat the wealth gap.
First off you'll need to define "combat the wealth gap." Difference between high and low isn't really a relevant thing.
$100k is a bad metric because somebody making $100k in the Bay Are or New York is basically in poverty. I make over $100k and I'm not well off at all. Not even close. And I'm not bad with money, have zero debt, save 15% in the 401k no kids and still things are tight.
Yeah federal taxation doesn't work based on "I should be able to put 15% into my 401(k) and live where I want."
$100k is not basically poverty in LA/NY or everyone making under $100k would be below poverty and that's considerably more than half the population (median household income - that is, generally 2 working adults - of 68k in NYC, and NYC is more expensive than LA).
But income tax on paper is already higher for the $100k tax bracket than what the ultra rich pay. The ultra rich do everything in their power to not have an "income". Hence why there's this effort of taxing wealth instead.
You should check out cap gains taxes
The cap gains tax that the richest people in the world never end up paying?
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
From 2014-2018 Warren Buffet alone grew his personal wealth by 24.3B, reported 125M in income (0.51% of wealth), and paid 23.7M in taxes (0.1% of wealth). Over 4 years, this man paid taxes on a tenth of a percent of his income. Similar tax numbers under 5% apply for other billionaires.
The ultra rich never pay capital gains tax, loopholes allow them to have their income in portfolios, which isn't taxed. Capital gains is only for realized gains. When your portfolio is worth billions, you don't need to sell it to have spending money, you can take a loan against the value of portfolio.
Capital gains tax only affects those who don't have a bank's worth of money in their portfolio.
My post was specifically that we should increase amount paid via cap gains so I'm not sure where you're going here
These are laws we've written, not magic. We can change them
Edit: also wealth taxes, historically, are among the easiest to avoid via accounting, and the hardest to "fix" as laws
My point is that increasing the amount paid via cap gains does absolutely nothing if the mega rich don't need to pay it in the first place.
If you increase the amount paid, you are inevitably closing loopholes they use to avoid cap gains.
The two best ways to tax money are money in nnd money out because all of that is significantly harder to hide than wealth taxes.
Here's an in-depth look at why:
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wealth-and-taxes-part-iv.html?m=1
And a good, more generalized piece, on cap gains surging:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/26/why-capital-gains-tax-reform-should-be-top-of-rishi-sunak-list-budget