It’s my opinion but that was a very one sided view. And I need to read more on this but I don’t think the way he pointed it out is how anyone is proposing wealth tax.
What's the opposing view, other than "they are rich, they can afford it + we really need the money for $good-things"? I'm not sure if you are disagreeing with the math or making a separate point about why we should do it anyway?
I truly don't know the answer on whether the wealth tax is a good idea (and there probably isn't a single right answer). But, that sure is a shitty way of saying, "I don't understand, can you explain your viewpoint to me?"
What PG describes is basically what's proposed - the main difference is that most American proposals have a floor before it kicks in.
That floor is pretty high depending on the proposal ($30-50 million), but that doesn't stop the problem of equity ownership being eaten away over time when a lot of your worth is tied up into a successful company (like Bezos).
You also get other incentive problems with things like angel investing. If someone is at the wealth cap they're less incentivized to risk money when they'll either lose it because the investment fails, or lose it because it gets eaten by the wealth tax.
Other proposals have low floors where you just have the problem of a lot of wealth getting taken.
In general it's good for a society to incentivize wealth creation/growth and still protect the lower bound of society. A wealth tax dis-incentivizes wealth creation - and for what? It just comes across to me as a 'hate the rich' policy that creates perverse incentives.
Disclosures so people don't think there's hidden motivated reasoning here:
- I'm nowhere near the wealth cap and probably never will be
- I think trump is an idiot and the republican party is a disaster
- I voted for Hillary and will vote for Biden.
I still think the wealth tax is a bad idea and bad policy.
> It just comes across to me as a 'hate the rich' policy that creates perverse incentives.
Indeed, wealth tax sounds good because there are problems with income inequality and it's currently fashionable to hate the rich. But that's about where it ends, while second-order effects are ignored or at least not taken seriously.
Andrew Yang was one of the few high-profile Democrats brave enough to push back on it.
"I think the wealth tax is an idea, in spirit, that makes sense, given the wealth distribution. But in practice it would have massive implementation problems. There would be capital flight, wealthy people would renounce their citizenship. And the bigger problem isn’t even the money. It’s the annual inventorying of their assets. The truly wealthy in this country have zero interest in submitting to an annual audit of all of their assets. They barely know what all their assets are. And the last thing they’re going to do is report them every year and then pay a toll. So you would have massive compliance problems. And to me there are better ways to make this economy fair, though I understand the spirit of it and the intent of it. But I agree that it would be somewhere between problematic and a disaster in practice."
Why is disincentivizing the accumulation of massive wealth in a small subset of the population bad for society? What is the advantage to society of an individual accumulating tens of billions of dollars worth of wealth?
ghufran_syed|5 years ago
darkerside|5 years ago
qppo|5 years ago
gonehome|5 years ago
That floor is pretty high depending on the proposal ($30-50 million), but that doesn't stop the problem of equity ownership being eaten away over time when a lot of your worth is tied up into a successful company (like Bezos).
You also get other incentive problems with things like angel investing. If someone is at the wealth cap they're less incentivized to risk money when they'll either lose it because the investment fails, or lose it because it gets eaten by the wealth tax.
Other proposals have low floors where you just have the problem of a lot of wealth getting taken.
In general it's good for a society to incentivize wealth creation/growth and still protect the lower bound of society. A wealth tax dis-incentivizes wealth creation - and for what? It just comes across to me as a 'hate the rich' policy that creates perverse incentives.
Disclosures so people don't think there's hidden motivated reasoning here:
- I'm nowhere near the wealth cap and probably never will be
- I think trump is an idiot and the republican party is a disaster
- I voted for Hillary and will vote for Biden.
I still think the wealth tax is a bad idea and bad policy.
Reedx|5 years ago
Indeed, wealth tax sounds good because there are problems with income inequality and it's currently fashionable to hate the rich. But that's about where it ends, while second-order effects are ignored or at least not taken seriously.
Andrew Yang was one of the few high-profile Democrats brave enough to push back on it.
"I think the wealth tax is an idea, in spirit, that makes sense, given the wealth distribution. But in practice it would have massive implementation problems. There would be capital flight, wealthy people would renounce their citizenship. And the bigger problem isn’t even the money. It’s the annual inventorying of their assets. The truly wealthy in this country have zero interest in submitting to an annual audit of all of their assets. They barely know what all their assets are. And the last thing they’re going to do is report them every year and then pay a toll. So you would have massive compliance problems. And to me there are better ways to make this economy fair, though I understand the spirit of it and the intent of it. But I agree that it would be somewhere between problematic and a disaster in practice."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/02/andrew-yang-wealth-tax-plans...
marcinzm|5 years ago