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by nielsbot 290 days ago
But does that mean we shouldn't raise taxes?

"Effective Income Tax Rates Have Fallen for The Top One Percent Since World War II" https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/effective-income-tax-rate...

2 comments

> "Effective Income Tax Rates Have Fallen for The Top One Percent Since World War II"

That link has an agenda. Choosing the height of WWII as the baseline is cherry picking. Effective rates were higher during WWII than they were before or since, but that was eight decades ago, not for very long, and for an obvious reason.

They're also achieving even that much difference by applying speculative math to capital gains, which is meaningless because doing that in real life would result in major behavioral changes.

And it's still not clear how any of that is supposed to solve it. Suppose the founder of MegaCorp has to sell more of their shares to pay the money in tax. They sell them to BlackRock or China or whatever. Is that going to cause MegaCorp's lobbyists to stop trying to capture the government? How? You need there to be more, smaller companies, not change who owns the shares of the predatory megacorps.

It just means to me that you haven't put much thought into this.

What about the federal government gives you the impression that they'd be responsible stewards of the money you want to confiscate and redistribute?

That's not a point, actually. The only people who haven't thought this through are libertarians.

The government does lots of things well. That's why those in power are trying to destroy it right now.

Here's where you go "But it's not perfect, therefore it can't work." or maybe "all taxation is theft".

Keep deflecting.

It's clear you have very little historical or economic knowledge about taxation, and it seems like the sum total of your thoughts on the matter is: taking money from people I don't like makes me feel good.

What I really want to do, specifically, is take your money and give it away. Hope that helps.