Their tax rate isn’t the real issue. The fact that they extract that much wealth out of the labor and production of others is the real problem.
No human being should have a billion dollars. The workers who got you to your level of privilege and status should be paid based on their worth.
A boss that pays fairly would never become a billionaire, and their workers would live good lives being paid the actual value of their labor. Increased demand from increased household discretionary income would create a boom on the supply side.
But it will never happen, because billionaires own everything and will always manufacture consent. Democracy will die to thunderous applause.
Us poors (the dumb ones, because education will be forever castrated) will clap for the billionaires and lay our thrift store hand-me-down jackets over the curb so they can cross a puddle in the street lest they get a drop of water on their 100k elephant skin boots. It’s coming to a head
Although this is true, I’d like this graph on a billboard outside every polling location in November:
That there are even billionaires, let alone multi-billionaires. It’s an immoral, unethical system that fundamentally exploited labor that allowed for this.
That productivity has gone up but wages have remained stagnant should boil everyone’s blood. All the wealth stolen and sent upwards into fewer and fewer hands. Legalized theft by way of capitalism.
Tax the rich, the banks, and the churches. Then see if you still need anything from the normies.
Removed by mod
Not even our closest cousins would tolerate a member that hoarded bananas so. No, it would be fangs, and ripping and all sorts of face-eating, and a whole bunch of other stuff we should be taking inspiration from.
Taxing billionaires will just get rolled back, the problem is Capitalism itself.
Collectivize the Means of Production.
For the FIRST time? Yeah, no. How about ALL the time?
Did you see a flaw in the analysis? Not sure what you mean
This is something Warren Buffet has been complaining about for years. It’s not exactly a new development.
He’s talked about not paying his fair share. I don’t recall him ever saying “billionaires literally pay a lower effective tax rate”.
From 2012:
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/01/warren-buffett-and-his-secretary-talk-taxes
"Buffett’s secretary since 1993, Debbie Bosanek, sat next to her boss just hours after being invited by the president to the State of the Union address, where the president made her the face of tax inequality in America.
Bosanek pays a tax rate of 35.8 percent of income, while Buffett pays a rate at 17.4 percent."
Idk, I’m not seeing anything there that he acknowledged he paid a lower rate than the average American. He was just contrasting himself with one person. He didn’t say “rich people have a lower effective tax rate than everyone else”. He just says “I have a lower tax rate than this one other person”.
It means that methodologically collected data is less accurate than popular sentiment.
What the MSM considers normal regular American I consider upperclass. What they consider poor I consider normal. What they consider homeless is actually the new poor.
Yeah, a whole lot of working folks are one missed paycheck from homelessness. I’m old enough to remember that it wasn’t always like this, if you were working you didn’t have nearly so much anxiety and exhaustion, you could afford to look after a kid or have the occasional holiday, maybe own a home. Not anymore. The rich are getting richer though.
I’ve watched some of my friends struggle with homelessness. They are amazing people with brilliant minds, but just got unlucky while working a dead end job. It’s fucking terrible.
Yeah, it’s really messed up. And getting worse. I’m just not sure how we change it without violence though. Voting doesn’t fucking help. And, like me, most of the people who are hurting don’t want violent change. Rightly, because like capitalism, revolution hurts a lot of people. But it feels like society is a balloon and the rich are squeezing it and wondering when it’ll pop. It’s hard to predict what’s gonna happen but based on the way things have been I’d say worse.
A general, mass strike would probably never happen. But it should. More strikes in general. I feel like there are still things to try before going full Joker
for the first time
Nobody ask about the long-term capital gains rate going back to Ronald Reagan’s '83 reform.
Not 100% sure but I imagine they’d count capital gains in the analysis. The full read in The NY Times was interesting but behind a paywall
I imagine they’d count capital gains in the analysis
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8544719
The NYTimes analysis is just about income taxes
Aren’t you contradicting yourself here?
Great article. Nice to see an economist doing such important work. I don’t really understand finances. I snipped the parts of the article that helped me understand the finding/headling. There’s a great chart in the article of taxation differences since the 1960s too - staggering! Plutocracy in action!
Published in The New York Times with the headline “It’s Time to Tax the Billionaires,” Zucman’s analysis notes that billionaires pay so little in taxes relative to their vast fortunes because they “live off their wealth”—mostly in the form of stock holdings—rather than wages and salaries.
Stock gains aren’t currently taxed in the U.S. until the underlying asset is sold, leaving billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—a pair frequently competing to be the single richest man on the planet—with very little taxable income.
“But they can still make eye-popping purchases by borrowing against their assets,” Zucman noted. “Mr. Musk, for example, used his shares in Tesla as collateral to rustle up around $13 billion in tax-free loans to put toward his acquisition of Twitter.”
We can tax registered securities. Stock holdings. We can take 5% or 50% of all outstanding shares, each and every year, and transfer them to IRS liquidators to be resold in small lots over time.
We can exempt the first $10 million held by a natural person, (which exempts about 99.5% of the populace from the securities tax) and establish a progressive tax schedule that causes the tax rate to exceed average gains when holding more than $100 million worth of securities.
Removed by mod
You are familiar with the concept of democracy, are you not?
Removed by mod
First Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Fat orange and his repuglican crew got it done
Yeah, Trump was standing on the shoulders of giants like Regan, Bush, and Bush to get us into mess. Thanks Republicans!
Do not forget Bill Clinton, he played a huge role. Essentially fulfilling republican dreams of deregulation by joining hands with them. It’s when the Democratic party embraced corporate interests and neoliberalism. Clinton deregulated banking (see Glass-Steagall) which led to the financial crisis and banking/finance today.
Biden didn’t fix 40 years of Republican corruption in 3 years therefore he’s just as guilty, and I’m voting Republican!!! - Average American
moronvotercommenter wasn’t even mentioning time frames involving Biden, but way to play the
victim cardaverage democrat playbook
But it isn’t for the first time. This has been happening for years
That analysis you linked isn’t about income taxes. The NYTimes analysis is just about income taxes. It is the first time, although the report is on data that’s a few years old
Sometimes I think we shouldn’t have photoshop.
Then I drink more 🖖🏻
Sisko is the best captain.
Hands down. He tko’d Q… and lived to tell about it.
I think torches, and pitchforks. We should go old school.
I wish people would say this and mean it. I’m waiting. I think we should actually eat one billionaire to make a point. I’m vegetarian but I’ll take a bite to prove my commitment.
It’s kind of a naive idea though. I used to think it was possible. They will literally just kill us or actively make us poor/homeless/antisocial and make some sort of loophole to make it legal and justified. I wish I didn’t think it was game over for the nation but I think it’s actually a lost cause. And any time I try to talk to someone in hopes they can influence me otherwise they just prove my point and make me want to give up more. It’s like they create a division on purpose, or the benefit of the doubt is that they are too naive or emotional to understand what they are actually doing which is creating more of the people they claim to oppose.
It’s like a natural force that keeps war in constant motion. Nobody is allowed to just “be”. Doesn’t matter if they contribute to society or not. People are disposable to groups and nations. It’s an industry. Probably the one that maintains the backbone or foundation of each group/nation/force.
This is easy to solve. Count the loans as ordinary income. Problem solved.
I had to take an insane amount of loans out to get my nursing license. I’ll be paying them off for over a decade. I don’t like this idea
There are numerous things to make this proposal reasonable.
Count as income depending on amount of loan, nature of collateral, and usage of the loaned money.
A loan taken out against primary residence used for purchase of same residence under a million dollars? Not applicable. Proceeds used for education, within reasonable limits? Not applicable.
When a loan is taxed as income, provide for tax credits upon repayment reconcile ultimate use of “real” income. That way you avoid the “double tax” compliant they keep whining about.
I find the tax loans approach ultimately the most workable approach to close the loopholes.
No, count unrealized asset value as income.
You gained 2 billion in stock value, but didn’t sell? You get taxed on that stock gain.
I can’t support that. I myself once had 20 million in stock options but couldn’t sell it. By the time I could sell it, it was worth zero. Yet you in your system I would have paid taxes on it. Stock fluctuates in value to much. We just need way to force them sell the stock and then tax the stock as ordinary income.
Once it went to zero, it would have been a loss and canceled out?
Well if I had to pay unrealized gains I’d have zero but have to pay taxes on 20 million.
It’s why we don’t do it. It would be overly complicated.
No, you would pay taxes on the unrealized gains of your assets. So if your assets are worth 0, then you pay 0. If they are worth 20mil, then you pay taxes on 20mil.
Just a quick reminder, one of the main principles of capitalism is risk vs reward.
That’s my point. They were worth 20 million. Due to legal restrictions I couldn’t sell. As such I would have to pay taxes on 20 million. When I could sell they were worth zero.
So I would have ended up negative.
Sounds like that stock wasn’t worth the risk then. That’s capitalism in a nutshell brahski, people lose money betting on the market every day.
