"We can't tax rich people because they might leave instead of paying higher taxes"
Bro they're not paying taxes NOW, so what the fuck's the difference?
Tax the rich. They'll either pay their fair share in tax, or they'll leave and stop being a drain on the system. Both options are a win.
@Lana we can't tax the rich because they are rich enough to split their empire in 1000 parts and impersonate a thousand self-employed peasants, and we don't want to tax those.
I don't really know if under capitalism we can really tax them in any meaningful way...
You could hire lots of auditors per billionaire, but you're not necessarily going to find stuff. Because they can hire (and may have hired) just as many accountants to ensure compliance.
And being a billionaire doesn't actually mean that you have a billion dollars that can be taxed. Nor does it mean you have more income than say a professional athlete. Those tax dollars may not be there.
More taxes on rich people requires a real shift in how we do taxes.
@tedmielczarek let's speak to @qwazix's point for a second.
How do you actually roll out a wealth tax that is fair and meets your target goals for tax collection? There is not such a thing as A wealth tax. There are a dozen different forms of wealth that could be taxed in three or four different ways.
If you think there are too many people with a billion dollars in cash and property and yacht money, that's a different tax scheme from billion dollar business owners or from billionaire athletes
And these differences are relevant. If you look at the centi-millionaire athletes in North America, they're mostly union members. They clearly earned this with labor. And they've absolutely paid a ton of taxes already.
Likewise a lot of centi-millionaire business owners have most of that value tied up in shares of a business they own and operate. And so taxing that wealth technically means forcing them to give up ownership of their own company bit by bit...
@tedmielczarek @qwazix and I'm not saying that we cannot do any of these things.
I actually think there's a case to be made that we can and should enact some form of wealth taxes.
But we're not 140 characters away from solving this. And we kind of look like simpletons if that's the extent of our discussion.
šæš¶šš¶ "not yet begun to fight"
qwazix
Ted Mielczarek
Gaƫtan Perrault