re: Trump backs tax hike on rich but says GOP probably shouldn't do it

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You think that 70mm you have left after paying your fair share of taxes should have a 3% asset tax on it?

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I think the 20 million above the 50 million dollar threshold could, and likely should be taxed, if the US government wants to find additional ways to raise meaningful revenues in a way that would have minimal impact on the demographic being taxed.

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Why are we punishing people who have been more successful than others, most likely through hard work? Shouldn’t tax rates just be the same across the board?

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It's not punishing. It's paying back into the system that gave them the opportunity to become so wealthy, that they, and their children, and their children's chidren would likely never need to work again a day in their life again. I mean in many cases we're literally talking about situations where it allowed the individual in questions parents or grandparents to become so wealthy that the individual with the $50m plus in wealth has never actually worked a day in their life.

Virtually anyone that gets to the level of wealth we described, did not just do so on the basis of them being a "harder worker" then everyone else that isn't as wealthy as them. They took advantage (rightly) of the system that's been set up through the work of 100's millions of others and trillions in tax revenue.

If they started their company in the US they had access to a highly educated workforce in large part funded by public dollars, as well as sources of cheaper labor that would have been in part subsidized by public dollars in the form of Medicare/Medicaid, SNAP benefits, social security, etc. They had access to sophsticated logistics pipelines who utilize public infrastructure to move goods. They had access to the best capital markets in the world to raise funding, and find partners for expansion and growth. Markets that are in large part so robust due to the federal governments willingness to use taxpayers dollars to back them in the event of emergency and to provide small business loans, grants, etc. to help subsidize industries and the growth of companies.

There's a million other cascading effects you can point to where taxpayer dollars in some way (directly or indirectly) subsidized their business or their upbringing or gave them an edge they otherwise wouldn't have had in another country.

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Shouldn’t tax rates just be the same across the board? You pay a certain percentage of your income and if we are making more money that percentage results in a higher amount of taxes paid. Why does the doctor have to give up a higher percentage of the money he made than the car salesman? If I make 100k a year, I pay 20k at a 20% rate. If I make 1mm a year, I pay 200k a year at a 20% rate.

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We're talking about wealth that is so beyond your numbers it's not even really comparible. Your example is essentially two W-2 employees working everyday and paying taxes on earned income that is directly correlated to the amount of hours they worked and time spent. Then implying they shouldn't be treated dramatically differently, just because the pay rate is higher for one. I can appreciate where you're coming from here, but even then I would make the argument that a progressive tax system here is still better due to diminshing marginal utility, and having access to markets that allows for excess income to compound with no extra hours or work put in. The doctor is still in a much more advantageous place with much less loss of "satisfaction" even at a higher effective tax rate.

However, the money we're talking about even considering a wealth tax on is not even remotely comparable to your examples. This is past anyone needing to work or spend time to generate this wealth. They already have it. The lowest threshold I threw out of $50 million can sit in a savings account or money market fund at today's rates and accrue ~$2 million dollars a year. So no work at all is done and it earns what your car salesman would earn in 20 years.

I think you, like many others, get stuck in a place where you don't even really appreciate how much money that level of wealth is or how it's completely decoupled from "work" or "effort". Even the high end of your example (which is a profession that has potentially the most expensive up front costs in the world, requires arguable the most schooling, is indispensible, in demand, and provides potentially the most objective sociatal benefit of any job) would make half (and most doctors make much less then $1m a year) of what the lowest threshold of wealth I put out there earns if for some reason all their wealth was just in a money market account (spoiler it would likely be earning much more). With zero effort expended on the part of the individual who is wealthy. That doesn't seem particularly "fair". I clarified this at the beginning, but again I'm also only saying tax them based on the wealth above that $50m mark.

As that other poster said, it doesn't even really mean anything at that point. It's numbers on a screen. Whether they have $50,000,000 or $1,000,000,000 they don't have to ever do anything again and they'll make more then 99% of the country every year. We're not doing these individuals some great injustice by levying a 3% tax. It's silly.

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It’s not punishment. It’s paying your fair share.

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What is your fair share of what someone else has earned?

Friendly reminder that america has the most progressive income tax system in the western world

Marx folks like mmmbeeer never mention that

Probably because their union parents never mentioned it

Oh I agree that there would absolutely be a shock as the market digests decreased market growth expectations to account for future outflows as the only way to satisfy the tax liability for many would likely be annual divesture of assets in the market. Eventually expectations would normalize though and those tax revenues would cycle back into the economy and likely a large portion of it would find its way back into the market, just less concentrated in a handful of individuals. That being said I appreciate this would absolutely have to be done on a fairly global scale, or at least in concert with the rest of the developed world, to prevent major capital flight. So is more of a pipe dream.

That's why I threw out mutliple options in that same post to generate revenues from the ultra wealthy cohort. I'm sure there are other ideas that are floating out there from folks much smarter then me that are even more viable as well. Just practically/philsophically/etc., it feels like fiscal policy should be focusing on this cohort to reduce our deficit.

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I’d be surprised if there are more than 5-10 people in this country who actually have $1B in taxable income in any given year.

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That’s what these people just don’t understand, that European policy makers do.

There just isn’t remotely enough new revenue from “the rich” to address existing shortfalls let alone funding new goodies. Even seizing all $4.5 trillion in wealth owned by America’s billionaires—every home, car, investment, and business—could finance the federal government one time for just nine months.

It’s why Europe has the VAT

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Friendly reminder that america has the most progressive income tax system in the western world

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The rich already pay high tax rates. In some states it's over 50% when considering state and local, and making them higher won't fix any of our problems.

Capital gains is a form of double taxation already. Someone else being a billionaire isn't taking money out of your pockets

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Tax revenue from the rich as a % of gdp is the same as it was in the 1950s

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If anything that just illustrates the point that there’s a major issue haha.

The chart seems to be saying that reducing the top marginal rate drastically has had minimal impact on the revenues generated by that group. In fact revenues seem to be growing. Even flat revenues imply they must be increasingly earning more as a share of GDP than the other cohorts to be able to make up for the shortfall that would otherwise be caused by the decrease in the top marginal rates.

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what were the top marginal rates, Mr. Dumbest?

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Ooooh boy.

If you were an investor, oil company owner, cattle rancher, able to depreciate major assets, bond holder, etc. top margins were often lower than they are today. You didn't know that. Now you do.

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Capital gains is a form of double taxation already. Someone else being a billionaire isn't taking money out of your pockets

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The current admin is pushing consumption taxes in the form of tariffs and cuts to other services typically utilized by non-billionaires to help(in part) offset the costs of continuing a tax policy that disproportionally benefits the ultra wealthy. Based on the tweet in the OP, it also seems they’ve acknowledged they don’t seem to have much of an interest of instead offseting some of these costs by either allowing the policy to sunset for higher income individuals or potentially generate revenues from those folks in other ways.

So for a lot of folks on some level it probably does appear as though money is being taken out of their pockets to pay for a billionaire.

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Yes, it is called the laffer curve.

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You can speculate there’s some laffer curve adjacent element at play to some extent at the absolute highest rates of the past 70 years, and there’s likely some merit to that, but generally it seems most economists are fairly critical of the laffer curve, or at the very least are incredibly skeptical that we’re on the wrong side of the curve at our current tax rates or even particularly close.

I’ve never suggested the wealthiest aren’t responsible for a large portion of tax revenues, in fact given the wealth and income disparity mathematically they have to be.

As the wage gap increases and earnings as a % of GDP increases for that cohort their progressivity ratio in the chart you posted would have to go up. The additional income they earn as the wage gap increases is more likely to be taxed at the highest marginal rate resulting in increases to this ratio.

You just keep posting charts that seem to show that income disparity is increasing.