Why doesn't Elizabeth Warren realize how stupid and impractical her wealth tax idea is?

[zagor]

It would be a logistical nightmare. The only beneficiaries would be accountants and attorneys and the hordes of new government employees required to administer it. Jeff Bezos might be "worth" 120 billion today, but if Amazon stock tanks maybe 80 billion in a couple months. Furthermore, if he did try to cash in his 120 billion he would get hit with capital gains tax and possibly state tax too, so it wouldn't really be 120 billion at all. And what if some rich fuck bought a Van Gogh for $10 million 20 years ago but similar paintings are now selling for $60 million? How would the painting be valued?

The idiot appears to think that billionaires are like Scrooge McDuck and keep all their wealth in a big money bin...

Updates

+1 y

Seems several people here leap to the defense of any tax that doesn't apply to them, and never will.

[Soteris]

You do not appear to understand. Wealth is a problem in that wealth has value in being circulated among the population. The ideal economic system involves all wealth circulating equally and the more removed from this the more problems you will have.

The current situation of the top 1% controlling around a 3rd of the countries wealth is not only bad but catastrophic on the scale of a national crisis especially since we can only assume this will worsen as time goes by.

If this was a computer game I would advocate the government seizing their entire wealth by military force and spending all of it locally within your country. This one act, while disruptive and causing issues would be worth it by levels of magnitudes. It would simultaneously allow the government to build or finance whatever it wants for a time but also infuse the local economy with so much wealth that everyone else could easily grow and replace the void left by the 1% as well as grow past what they could achieve.

So yes, I am aware that much of the wealth of rich people are not in simple money but investments of various forms. I do not care. If they fail and have their wealth plummet? Good, they were a problem in the first place. If they can still pay it and continue being billionaires? At least that 3% wealth tax means they are doing something useful and furthermore for them to be able to still maintain means they are still being productive considering their stagnant wealth.

Regardless of the outcome it is an improvement.

[zagor]

You don't appear to understand just what wealth is. Bil Gates $80 billion of Microsoft stock (soon to be about half that perhaps, with his divorce) consists of shares in that organization. That organization employs about 96,000 people in the US and another 70,000 or so elsewhere. Most of those jobs pay quite well and provide a good living, as well as being a lot more fulfilling than a bunch of make-work government jobs. The value of his shares is based on two things - the share of the profits of the the company that they entitle him to, and, primarily, the price that other people are willing to pay to acquire those shares. It is not "stagnant wealth" at all.

And while wealth inequality is a problem, which is why I would support raising the top income tax rate, especially regarding capital gains, instead of this asinine and unworkable scheme, the idea that the ideal distribution is total equality is completely absurd. So someone that works hard to develop a new product that creates thousands of new jobs and transforms business and enhances that productivity of both private and public entities, should have the same wealth as the guy who just sits behind his bong all day?

[Soteris]

I am well aware of the problem with the problem of value but any drop in for example the value of Microsoft stocks resulting in investors losing confident after the government sized the assets would be dwarfed by the benefits I pointed towards.

Secondly social mobility is a measure of how easy it is for someone to improve their position in life. In essence it accounts for how easy it is for someone to invent something, solve a problem or otherwise benefit society and it correlates negatively with wealth inequality. Essentially it prevents people from becoming successful unless they already are successful to start with.

Secondly when it comes to the economy it is that money and resources are more valuable with the less wealthy. They are the ones who makes a larger impact using the same resources such as the economic benefit of giving a poor man 1000 dollars as opposed to giving a billionaire 1000 dollars.

As such all the billions of dollars in GDP owned by the wealthy is doing less useful things than if it was given to the poor. Pretty simple quite frankly.

[zagor]

Social mobility? I know a guy whose Dad left when he was 5. He and his sister and mother were on welfare living in a trailer in his grandparents backyard. He was smart and got a scholarship to university. He is now about a quarter-billionaire. So social mobility is possible for those who don't sit around and grouse about their situation. Two of my co-workers came here as teens with their family and nothing but their clothes - they both own houses now.

[goaded]

[Soteris]

I never said social mobility was zero, just that it was going down meaning less people could make progress or lose progress based on their own ability and instead were trapped by their circumstances. If he made it then good for him but as social mobility goes lower and lower it becomes more a case of luck rather than personal effort if you get the chance to advance or not.

[jshm2]

You're not too intelligent, bucko.

She's proposing something like 3% on fortunes above 50 million. People who have above 50 million in cash and investments normally throw money into deductibles anyway.

She's simply providing a non-tax haven way of doing it.

[zagor]

$100 billion in Microsoft or Amazon stock isn't a tax haven. Most billionaires billions is in ownership shares of some large entities, not in cash and investments. And you didn't even address the impossibility of actually determining total assets of someone like that.

[Anonymous]

It's not meant to actually help anyone, so she's fine with it.

[Astarlessnightsky]

LOL.

Logistic nightmare my ass.

If they can tax the avarage joe and avarage jane, how is it different from taxes people like Jeff Bezos?

If the avarge Joe/Jane is not paying taxes, cause he may or may not work at a different job next month with a lower or higher salary, they will come to his house, beat his ass and put him into jail for not paying taxes.

[zagor]

Wrong. At the end of the year Joe or Jane tallies how much they made and pays the taxes. If their investments made money they aren't taxed until they cash it out.

Works the same way for Bezos, only at at higher rate. What EW wants to change is to add a tax on the "wealth" of the individual, in addition to the income tax. So it would be very different. You would be taxed on the perceived or potential value of your assets. This is already done in many places on real estate and sometimes vehicles. But she wants it on what would be a rather abstract measure of total wealth. In spite of the fact that those assets, if actually cashed in for their value, would already be subject to the aforementioned income tax. So it would be VERY different. Like if they came in your house every year and taxed the value of your refrigerator, TV and wedding ring.

[BCA6010]

You're approaching this from the idea that politicians say and do what they say and do because they think they're making the country objectively better. There's a few legitimately brain-dead politicians who fall into that park, but Warren is not one; she's a con artist, and the real objective is to get as many people dependent on the government as possible while also protecting a chosen/cooperative elite.

[Avicenna]

All of those things are features, not bugs. The more complex a system or tax, the more opportunities for Democratic lobbyists and donors and the more power vested in the hands of politicians like her.

[Anonymous]

the long march towards communism continues as the millionaire democrats vilify the rich while taking even disproportionately more money from them

None of the democrats has any real plan other than "Hey that would make a good slogan"

[EnglishEuropean]

On that basis the whole idea of taxation is unworkable. If rich people can't pay taxes why should anyone?

[zagor]

Rich people DO pay taxes. Her proposal is for a wealth tax based on total assets, not income or physical property. The European countries that had one DROPPED them.

[EnglishEuropean]

That's not an accurate statement. France, Spain and Portugal all have wealth taxes.

[Pterodon]

We’re not them. This country was formed because of European taxes

[zagor]

Wrongo. France abolished its wealth tax in 2017.

[goaded]

I'm just looking forward to watching the outtakes from The Apprentice that Bezos will own, soon.

[goaded]

https://youtu.be/6ntoJPlMRF8

[Massageman]

WHY doesn't she realize it's unworkable? Because her BRAIN is unworkable!

[Pterodon]

Because she’s a liberal democrat

[Anonymous]

is that the lady from the conjuring movies?

[zagor]

She's conjuring something...

[anylolone]

She doesn't care.