Bernie Sanders calls for income over $1B to be taxed at 100%

[DLA]

Or maybe the government could take a serious look at how insane their spending is and do something about it. And Bernie is an idiot who thinks more money in government hands will solve problems. Social security and medicare are in trouble. Billions of COVID money went unaccounted for. The Department of Defense routinely loses track of billions in spending and the State Department is a hot mess of spending without accountability.

[xprn]

Wouldn’t that incentivize more intricate methods for large corporations to pay larger income? I understand what he’s going for, but I personally think that such a tax law might cause unintended consequences and perverse incentives

[bediger4000]

And our current tax laws don't?

[kwere]

So the incumbent "nobility" dont have to fear challenges to the status quo from the business arena. Circle back a minute fraction of such taxes to the common folks to keep consensus

[toomuchtodo]

You have to start somewhere. Zeitgeist will change as the electorate turns over. 1.8M US voters 55+ die every year, 4M voters turn 18. Who has been more lucky financially? Rhetorical question of course.

This is less politics and more first principles really. If we can arrive at the thesis that super wealthy people are more lucky than skilled [1] [2] [3] [4], we should build systems around the idea that there should be limits around the shared delusion of what wealth is. This is a bit like copyright, where the incentives were well intentioned, but the system and outcome has come off the rails.

Failing that, a central bank can inflate away wealth, depending on the desired outcome, circumstances, etc. Wealthy equality printer go brrrr.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/03/all-billion...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/04/scott-...

[3] https://ustrustaem.fs.ml.com/content/dam/ust/articles/pdf/20...

[4] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...

https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the... (obligatory St Louis Fed Wealth Inequality citation)

[xenospn]

I don’t see how that’s practical when places like Monaco exist and are happy to welcome people who really don’t like paying taxes. It would have to be a worldwide effort.

[toomuchtodo]

US taxpayers must pay tax on global income. If we want to explore a wealth tax, securities ownership and transactions take place within the US jurisdiction. Your brokerage or the clearinghouse can send another form to the IRS for public equity, Carta or whomever manages the cap table can do so for private equity.

Unless you're only going to hold investment assets in Monaco while trying to relinquish US citizenship and not pay an exit tax? I suppose if you pull up stakes, don't pay US income tax, and don't step foot financially in the jurisdiction, you might be able to avoid this depending on your window of time between that decision and death.

[dragonwriter]

> I don’t see how that’s practical

It's not and its probably not intended to be; its staking an extreme position to spur and frame discussion.

[bdjsiqoocwk]

Im expecting someone here will argue that would remove the incentive to work hard.

[Arnt]

Someone else in the thread suggested that it was just a start. So the question you're looking for is: "Will that be extended to cover me?" What kinds of people would start asking themselves that question?

[rvz]

Let's also introduce taxation of unrealized capital gains of >$1M to 90% and 100% for gains of >$1B for everyone, which we will start with Bernie with the former. /s