Is it ethical to heavily tax the mega rich just for being rich? Why does it bother you if someone is super rich?

Question

I personally believe having over 100 million dollars is vain and 100% needless but if someone worked for their wealth, I don't believe they should be shamed and having their money taking away from them by heavy taxing them because it seems unfair to others who might be suffering from envy or bitterness.

RavVid · Accepted Answer

100 million is more than you need to live on but the super rich are usually driven and it is just a ticket to play. Elon Musk for example just seems to like taking on difficult engineering projects.

Plus you can't tax them to death.

You and I are easy to tax. The gov't just has to get in between our gross income and are actual paycheck and take what they consider to be their fair share of our earnings.

The super rich have super options. Just about any country would be willing to cut Elon a tax deal if he was willing to revoke his US citizenship and relocate to theirs.

Even the moderately rich have options. They can certainly afford to pay people to legally save them tax. Fundamentally the wall that socialists hit in taxing to death is that people and companies are taxed on profit. That means that companies can invest and deduct from revenue to pay lower effective tax.

If they taxed on just revenue, with no regard to costs, they would destroy most companies. So they can't. So they can't tax that much.

One of our Left wing gov'ts decided to tax BHP to death. It was probably unconstitutional because minerals belong to the State the minerals are in. The Australian people quickly decided the money BHP generated was far more important than the Left gov't. BHP was better and won.

Same argument BHP has this revenue and we the federal gov't gets less than 2%

jjr23 · Accepted Answer

mostly jealousy but most forget rich don't have basement vault like scrooge mcduck there wealth is in businesses gov bonds which are 39.5 trillion stocks real-estate. and for example musk if he had to suddenly dump large numbers of tesla or the rocket co it could cause the stock to drop hurting investors pension funds 401k and could cause panic selling of the entire market and caution favoring wealth tax. remember 1913 people were told only rich will pay income tax the FDR got in by 1941 most people owed inconm tax and thers never been a 1 time tax look how were screwed on out home taxes

emeraldsaphire · Accepted Answer

Taxation is theft. Its simple as that. All taxation is unethical. And before anyone says "wE nEeD tAxEs To HeLp ThE pOoR" They literally just print money; they don't need it. When they pass a new billion-dollar war, they rarely raise taxes. Because they don't need too when they can just print a billion dollars

NathanDavis · Answer

there's a long long long list of things that bother me about the system, NOT THE PEOPLE... but the systems in place (and I say that plural, because it is not just the taxes)

for example... and the latest example, how the people in control of the economy just changed the rules to allow AI companies to become "the richest" when they literally have NO MONEY, but only the promise to make you "virtually rich" over the next decades, on a project that it would take centuries to develop...

that's just stupid

BadApple69 · Answer

No, it’s the most stupid idea ever.
California wants to start taxing the rich 5% because…. Well they are rich.
Tax the rich and they can just lay off workers to make that money back.
People cry because Elon is now worth a trillion dollars BUT he directly employees 150,000 people.
You take 5% that’s $50,000,000 from Elon don’t you think there will be some people who will lose their jobs because of that?
How about this… instead of looking for new places to steal money why don’t we cut costs and eliminate waste, fraud and corruption.

IamRight · Answer

Not really, even tghey pay the same percentage as the rest of us they still pay more,

On a tx related note, remember when the leftists who used to say "sex work is real work" got pissed off when people helped them remember to pay their taxes for this real work

CaptainSmartass · Answer

It's totally unethical to tax the rich just for being rich. And I say this as someone who's completely devoid of ethics.

There was a progamme about it last week on Channel 4. I've been meaning to watch it on 4OD.

Simples...

Anonymous · Answer

Yes. First off you have to look at it as a balancing act. There's a reason so many companies start in the United States. We have a massive consumer market. Think of it as the cost of doing business. But a lot of businesses will ship the raw materials to China have them assembled there and the shipped back to the United States for distribution. Don't feel the LEAST bit bad for businesses. They're ALWAYS going to do what's best for their bottom line. What you NEED to be concerned with is how the UNITED States spends the taxes they collect. If the taxes ever get too high business will go elsewhere. But the fact of the matter the Unitted States is still the best game in town.

Lliam · Answer

I am in favor of the Eisenhower era progressive income tax system that taxed the personal income of the wealthiest at a higher rate but gave them tax write offs if they reinvested their income in businesses that provided jobs and benefited the economy.

People with incomprehensible levels of personal wealth have too much power. They usually use that wealth for nefarious purposes like influencing government to their personal benefit.

DryGermanGuy · Answer

I would argue that overtax minimizes the risk of unethical political and societal impacts by singular persons, e. g. Elon Musk. We don't need his drug-riddled brain cooking up scenarios where he needs to pump money into politically extremist fringe groups in Europe.

BonzoInBitburg · Answer

They'll continue to move to tax havens. There's enough ways to avoid paying tax to the IRS through offshore accounts and trusts which also protects assets in a divorce. That's what all US politicians do.

MerakSahibi · Answer

The state, as an institution, generally seeks to preserve the existing system. That system represents society as a whole rather than any single individual. However, power is not distributed equally; a small minority is often able to exert greater influence over politics. Politics, in essence, is the competition over who gets to wield authority within the state

exitseven · Answer

What will happen is they will, tax anyone who makes over a million dollars a year. Then when they spend all that it will be everyone who makes over $500,000 a year. Eventually it will be $100,000 and finally $50,000.

fishbone77 · Answer

They’re not Somalians. They’re not getting rich because they are stealing tax dollars. They get wealthy by working hard and creating something people want to purchase. Take away the money and innovation will stop.

canamlusciouslad73 · Answer

Sure, give the rich swindlers who rob you and every other American and keep you from having a Universal Basic Income, and Health Care, among everything else citizens of every other First World nation take for granted a nice b. j.

Smegskull · Answer

Wealth is a marker of how much others value you. Others are welcome to re-assess that valuation.

FrodoSkywalker007 · Answer

It typically happens that way regardless

Is it ethical to heavily tax the mega rich just for being rich? Why does it bother you if someone is super rich?

Most Helpful Opinions

What Girls & Guys Said

Do you believe that rich people are too highly taxed?

Is it ethical to heavily tax the mega rich just for being rich? Why does it bother you if someone is super rich?

Most Helpful Opinions

What Girls & Guys Said

Do you believe that rich people are too highly taxed?

We're glad to see you liked this post.