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by forgot_my_pwd
2245 days ago
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It is often the case that soft social pressure is the best way to enforce desirable behaviors amongst people. Within friend groups where there are no formally established laws or codes of conduct, there are certain implicit standards of behavior people are expected to abide by, and part of why they do is because of the threat of social ostracism. In a broader scope, in ancient societies social ostracism was often used to deal with those who violated the norms of society; in Athens ostracism was an official punishment. I'm not saying we can or should literally expel billionaires who don't put their liquid wealth towards philanthropy, but far too often we focus on formal, legal means of compelling the super wealthy to part with their money, such as through taxes that are easily avoided. Social pressure put upon the super wealthy using tools like this could be more effective than people expect. There is the threat of social ostracism, but also the reward of social approval granted to the patrons of philanthropy. |
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Taxes are easily avoided only because they're designed to be easily avoidable. Simplifying[1] the tax code costs a lot of political capital due to entrenched interests but is technically trivial - ask a seven year old to design a fair tax system and it'd be less of a trainwreck than ours.
Deductible expenses need to be significantly curtailed and capped and alternative minimums could be introduced to be a stop-gap against any loop holes that were missed. Then you just start playing whack-a-mole with various tax credits to cut out targeted and unjust programs like child-credits and mortgage relief.
1. Actually doing this, not just granting a bunch of money to corporations like the GOP did.