@ChrisMayLA6

I was struck by this:

"In the 1950s about 70% of manual workers voted Labour and the same percentage of non-manual workers voted Conservative. Today, education and age both predict voting affiliation better than class."

It is an example, I think, of the myopia of centrist or 'liberal' thinking. It misses the point that the current association of education and age with political affiliation comes out of the expansion of higher education in the 60s and 70s, then the generational inequality perpetrated by the single-generation handout of neoliberal privatisation, that has produced a society in the UK (and to some extent elsewhere) in which lots of well-educated young people don't have any assets to fall back on - which is really what being working class means - rather than having a regional accent or liking chips, as 'liberals' would have it - and lots of older people living longer that are less well educated but have both assets and relatively generous pensions.

What is 'social class' supposed to mean if not the difference between having no choice but to keep working all hours for somebody else, or conversely receiving unearned asset income ?

But naturally 'centrists', 'liberals', whatever you call them, must never see this, because if they did they would have to admit the economic interests (in preserving the status-quo) that really lie behind their own supposedly a-historical 'ideas' and 'values'.

@GeofCox

Yes, a really good point... and as you say what centrists are (wilfully) blind to

@ChrisMayLA6 @GeofCox

I disagree

(Not with the assessment of how we got here, but with laying the blindness on "liberals)

Every liberal who calls for a #WealthTax (a lot of them) understand the dynamic you mentioned.

Now, "centrists" - yeah they are probably turning a blind eye.

@rpluim @ChrisMayLA6 @GeofCox

As implemented, with lots of holes, sure the few #WealthTax have barely moved the needle.

And yes, let's tax unearned income more

But the real problem is not income. It's the vast hoards of wealth that underwrite loans and favors - and create an exploitive rentier culture.

Just look at Musk. He has little income (of any type) while sitting on historic wealth.

@rpluim @ChrisMayLA6 @GeofCox

Sorry, are you saying a #WealthTax is "confiscation of people's legally acquired wealth"?

Because lots of places already tax property, cars and boats based on the value of the asset. So, I don't see why that same principle cannot extend to stocks, bonds, art, commodities and other sources of wealth storage.

And yes, of course, we need to look at how great wealth was accumulated and where it is being hidden.
#TaxTheRich

@TCatInReality @ChrisMayLA6 @GeofCox Taxing an object every year after it has been legally acquired because you don't like the type of object it is seems pretty confiscatory to me. Taxing it at purchase is fine.

Property taxes are different, they are intended to fund the provision of local services

@rpluim @TCatInReality

This exchange raises many issues. The article argues that 'liberals' and 'centrists' are different terms for the same politics (but prefers 'liberals' as 'centrists' are merely defined by their position in the left-right spectrum. Actually, it's the other way round - the centre is merely the political expression of the status-quo, and it's this that creates the left-right spectrum). What particular policies the centre advocates are different in different times and places. The great European Enlightenment philosophers, like Locke and Voltaire, claimed as the progenitors of liberal democracy, and indeed the US Founding Fathers, were apologists for slavery. So it should not be surprising that in some times and places centrists/liberals support a wealth tax (as, incidentally, does the extreme right here in France).

Having said that, the idea that tax is needed to 'raise revenue' or 'fund services' is another aspect of the false 'household analogy' Chris and I have been discussing in another thread - https://climatejustice.social/@GeofCox/116272097415626100 - ie. it is a centrist conception of tax (which should rather be seen as a mechanism for removing money introduced into the economy by government when it's no longer in useful circulation - as defined by political aims - for example when and where it's accumulation is driving up asset values, whatever the assets may be).

@ChrisMayLA6

@GeofCox @TCatInReality @ChrisMayLA6 I reject the household analogy at the national level, but local taxes fund local spending in many countries, and thus the local books need to balance.

Wealth taxes are an example of what I call "management ideas", where the action is easy to describe "just take 1% of the wealth of people worth more than $x", but the implementation is very difficult, since establishing the value of property, art jewellery etc is both difficult and subjective.

@rpluim

In the UK at present it's true that council tax funds local expenditure, but this is not true in other countries and easily changed (as we see by the fact that newly created central government funding makes up varying proportions of that local expenditure in the UK too).

The difficulty of implementing wealth taxes is of course a live debate among tax experts, and Richard Murphy for example takes your view. I don't find it convincing - all assets are valued, for example on purchase, for insurance, when a notional value is needed for CGT/IHT, etc...

@TCatInReality @ChrisMayLA6

@GeofCox @TCatInReality @ChrisMayLA6 What's the value of a Picasso or a van Gogh? The only way to find out is to sell it. You can set a value on it when someone inherits it, but then what is it worth 50 years later? And if it turns out to be a fake, do you refund 50 years' worth of wealth taxes?

Taxing earnings is just easier to do, and much easier to justify and explain.