| The point I’m getting at is taxes should be for raising revenue, period. The minute you step into trying to influence behavior via tax code, as the US has done, you are doing something wholly different from raising revenue. > 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. |