[lux]

It always blows my mind seeing a post like this on HN and the top comments nitpick whether such a tax is needed.

These people don't need defending and they don't need that much money (for comparison, this was posted on here the other day and really illustrates the disparity quite well: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/).

The reasons for taxing them (including a flat rate on their net worth which would be a terrible way to tax people in lower income brackets but could be a great way to level things off at the top end where avoidance is rampant) are many: funding climate change reversal, poverty, health, housing, medical research, the list goes on.

We don't need more pedants splitting hairs about how to more effectively use the existing tax revenues. That is a distraction. We should do that too, but we should absolutely tax the hell out of the billionaire class who have been taking more than their fair share from our resources for decades and living at the expense of all of our futures.

[avgcorrection]

You are supposed to argue over minutiae of means-testing and bankrupting the economy when it comes to social programs for the poor/average person. However when it comes to taxing the rich, nothing short of the Perfect Government is good enough to administer such an increase in tax revenue.

[Julesman]

Yeah, it's ahistorical. Some of these comments are soooo confident and condescending while ignoring basic history. Many high school kids know that the tax rate has gone down dramatically for the past 40 years. Turning that around even a little isn't some kind of hyper-leftist agenda. Like, is it really that radical to dial it back to where Reagan left it?

[s1artibartfast]

That itself is an ahistorical take. Tax as a percent of the economy has gone through the roof, both as a percent of GDP, and as inflation adjusted dollars.

If you compare to a benchmark like the 1940s, tax% of GDP has more than doubled, and GDP has increased ~4x. This means someone today taxes are about 10X the taxes (controlling for for inflation!)

Consider that 40% of US GDP now is collected in some form of taxation.[1] 40 cents of every dollar earned is taxed and spent as the government chooses. This is more than between FDR and Regan, and much more than the 20s (~15% of GDP).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Federal%...

[appplication]

I see your source here, but something about this isn’t sitting right with me. My data science senses are tingling, and I feel like while these numbers may be correct, they may not tell a complete story. The implication that average joe is paying 10x in taxes what we were a few decades ago really does not feel like a believable conclusion.

[nix-zarathustra]

My presumption is that government spending has drastically increased since then. There are so many more services that the government provides. If you look at government spending, healthcare and social security are the two biggest spenders, which makes sense since the population is ageing and there are a lot more older people to provide money and services for.

[itishappy]

Fascinating! How's that jive with the nominal tax rate being way higher back then? The highest bracket was 79% in 1940, and it's 37% today. Did we just get significantly better at taxing the middle class, or is there more at play?

[pandaman]

The tax code in 1940 was not the current code with different rates but a different code entirely. To make an example (I am not a CPA and even less so a 1940s CPA): if you could have deducted your living expenses (food, rent/mortgage, clothes, vehicle etc.) even at the current rate you would not have been paying nearly as much in taxes as somebody who has to obey the current tax code. Same rate, different tax.

You really cannot express the tax regime with just a brackets table, the tax code alone, without IRS regulations and case law is 2600 pages as of now.

[ulizzle]

How have they been living at the expense of all of our futures? What does that say about (cliche alert) bill gates who is a famous philanthropist (for the most part) and created whole industries worth of jobs with Microsoft?

Tax the rich (which we already do btw on the account they are citizens) is just another badly thought out cliches people love to throw out at bleeding hearts for internet points

[DreamFlasher]

Crazy idea, but maybe inheritance is flawed? What would happen if there wouldn't be any inheritance at all, the money goes to the state and in return gives people a basic income and a lump sum when you turn 18?

[pandaman]

Pretty much feudalism: the current middle class would have to rent housing and agricultural land, owned by corporations, where the heirs of the current upper class hold high-paying but undemanding positions.

[nickpp]

It always blows my mind seeing people defending any tax when they can clearly see with their own eyes how ”good” is the government at spending the money it currently takes from us. And you want to give them more?!

[voisin]

Massive right wing strategy is to use the laws to make it nearly impossible for a government agency to function effectively, and then point to the ineffectiveness as a reason to defund it.

The fact is, government works pretty well in a lot of ways in a lot of countries.

[nickpp]

That excuse does not explain the fact that the government services are crappy no matter what wing is on power and that the costs and size of said government are ballooning every year. Come on, for half the money I make I get a handful of substandard services while the other half gets me everything else in my life?!

There are ~200 countries on the globe. In how many do you think the government works well? 10%? 20%? Certainly in a minority of them.