And what would happen if we did?
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Yes.
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They would fight back, buy all our media sources, and buy our governments to make sure 1 didn’t happen.
Sounds familiar… oh wait…
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In Finland fines are based on percentage of yearly income.
We’re still waiting for Bezos to come here and get a massive speeding ticket to fix our budget for the next decade
Hahaha that’s great. I love Finland, thanks for the sauna’s!
they would threaten to move all operations to somewhere like the Cayman Islands which makes no fucking sense
They can threaten all they want, it’s simply not possible. If it actually was possible, they’d have done that a long time ago.
Like it or not they have assets here. If they move their operations overseas and evade taxes they can enjoy having their assets seized and their IP confiscated.
It’s probably not possible at this point. If there was some kind of revolution, poor people could have access to healthcare, education, shelter, and food. You know, basic dignity and hope for a better future. But the problem is that hopeless wage slaves are better for capitalism.
In theory - sure. In practice - all countries in the world have to agree to raise taxes, even though individually they are better off betraying this agreement and lowering them, thereby attracting the rich and ending up with more, not less, money.
And if all countries agree to tax the rich the way they should, we might as well go and build socialism everywhere, because not having everyone onboard is a main issue there too.
Why are you arguing against reality? In the world today, some states and countries tax the rich at higher or lower rates than other states and countries, and it’s certainly not true that the rich all leave the high tax rate places. The data doesn’t lie. You can argue about why they don’t all leave, but the facts are there for you to see.
You don’t need uniformity around the United States or the world in order to tax the rich effectively. But people like to say what you said, so that you don’t even try to tax them.
But I think it would be fun to run an experiment. Why don’t we jack up taxes on the ultra-rich across the United States. If the ultra rich move to Venezuela, then all of the savings they have in the US stock market will be taxed at an even higher rate and we will actually get more money from them. And if they were working any cushy CEO jobs, those jobs will now be open for other American citizens, and I’m sure there were plenty of people willing to apply… Of course it doesn’t have to be the US. Pick any country, try the same experiment, and get back to us.
Yes, because at the same time they offer a better business environment. US, for example, can do pretty much anything, being de facto commercial center of the world, with highest scale operations historically based there and interconnected to the point they can’t just “leave”.
Should you run this “experiment” in aforementioned Venezuela instead, you’re unlikely to enjoy the result. Although it wouldn’t benefit the US in the long run either.
They write the tax laws and buy the politicians to pass those tax laws. So no, we cannot tax the rich.
The newly elected government is actually quite cost efficient in this regard. Since they already are all crooked business men, they don’t need to pay anyone to get those tax laws passed.
Theoretically, sure. Pragmatically, we just elected a fascist insurrectionist, and it’s not going to happen in the near future.
We?
Yeah, that’s fair. US mindset, I’m just still processing our shitshow.
Yes.
Every country would have to do it. A party here in Switzerland wanted to drastically increase inheritance tax for certain large inheritances, and the rich people threatened so hard to leave the country that everyone believed them and now nobody supports it anymore. (They said their children would not be able to pay the tax because most of their wealth is supposedly in company shares, so if they died their children would have to sell off the companies to Cineese companies which nobody in Switzerland liked to hear)
Of course that’s not true. We have data from around the world showing it’s not true. It’s not even true within the United States if you look at state taxes.
Why not pay in shares?
Yeah, then the corporations would gradually become public too, which would be beneficial.
even if we did (because we used to, after big fights), the burgeoise would reverse it because they are the ones in power rn.
I say we tax them 9x19 times.
The rich don’t earn money from an income. They earn it from investments. We tax investments at the same rate as the top bracket (37%). If we raised the top income bracket to 38%, it would push more rich to receive their income via investment. However, raise the investment tax (capital gains), and we drive foreign investment away. A lot of foreign money is in America because we have a long history of stability and a low possibility of the people rising up and nationalizing ownership of foreign property. Drive that money away and everyone suffers, but that also makes it impossible to raise taxes on the rich.
I should of said “makes it impossible to raise taxes on the rich” … without them passing on the hurt to the poor. Sort of like how Trump thinks a tariff on foreign goods will only be paid by foreigners.
No. If someone’s rich they can lobby if they can lobby they will act within theyre best interest.
go lookup the tax rates in the 60s/70s. we used to
The highest bracket was taxed at 70% until Reagan’s first plan in 1981 lowered it to 50%.
It’s currently at 37% under Trump’s 2018 tax plan.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/historical-income-tax-rates-brackets/
Keep in mind that’s Income Tax. Most rich people don’t actually have income, they have capital gains.
Right, that’s the real problem. We’re over hear bickering about income tax rates, while the wealthy are sitting there playing a shell game with : income? Find the income. Which cup is it under? If you tax the right one, you win a prize. Just like any shell game, the only way to win is to not play.
peaked during ww2 at 94% on high incomes (over what would be about 2.5m today). stayed at 70% or above until reagan… the entire 50s, 60s, and 70s.
And what was the capital gains tax rate at that time? Why do wealthy people get to call their income something else and get taxed less on it?
You have to go even further back, for a time when both sources of income were taxed the same
eyup
