| > Taxes are not punishment. Taxes exist because a certain amount of wealth is required to maintain a state. Who is saying taxes shouldn’t exist here? I’m advocating for a specific form of wealth tax. I clearly believe taxes are necessary. As for them not being a punishment, this is clearly a silly semantic argument focused on trying to frame this emotionally. People respond to incentives and change their behavior when faced with incentives. Taxes change incentives. If a tax disincentives a behavior, this behavior will be done less. Get your moral policing out of here. > Tax “fairness” is therefore simple. He who earns the most should pay the most. Why earnings? Why should we tax people’s labor? Your definition of fairness is yours, not everyone else’s. > You cannot expatriate dollars. Jesus Christ, yes you can. It’s like you’ve never heard of offshore banks. Where does an idea like this even come up? Go see China’s issues with people expatriating capital and their middling success at preventing it with capital controls. How someone can speak like this and not see the value of a wealth tax in the form of a land tax blows my mind. By the way, concerned with massive disparities in wealth? That’s all from housing which is of course built on what? Land. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r... Tax the shit out of land. The marginal value to a piece of land from the actions of its owner is minimal at best. People gaining wealth from land is the definition of rent seeking. |
> Jesus Christ, yes you can. It’s like you’ve never heard of offshore banks
I don’t think you appreciate how governments already monitor wire transfers, and how they are reversible within a certain timeframe if a legal authority chooses to intercept one.
Again, this is not a complex problem since the tools and authority already exist, it’s a political will problem, in that there are nearly zero elected officials willing to cross a billionaire.
> How someone can speak like this and not see the value of a wealth tax in the form of a land tax blows my mind.
Because I live in a state in the US without income taxes and with a high reliance on land taxes. It makes no difference, corporations bribe their way into temporary (as in decades) exclusions from land taxes, and individuals are left to pay what the chemical plant literally polluting their back yards is exempt from.
There is no logarithm or formula that fixes all of this. What fixes it is 10 years without parole at hard labor for any owner or officer of a business entity who gives anything of value to any employee of the state, whether that employee be elected, appointed, or hired. The same penalty will automatically be applied to the state official who has been paid.