Not that I’m particularly against that - quite the opposite, in fact. But I’m wondering if anyone sees, or had seen a path to social and climate recovery/progress that could occur without first eradicating the class of people who most enjoy the present status quo.
Raise taxes on people making billions of dollars a year. Redo the tax code to make it impossible for them to avoid paying a fair share.
Also while were at it, I’d be in favor of a maximum allowed compensation (for hot shots) based off the salary of rank and file employees.
I believe higher taxation on the wealthy is necessary, but how do we actually implement that?
Our tax code is base upon “realized gains”. Most of these billionaires aren’t actually getting deposits into their checking accounts for a billion dollars a year. Most their wealth and their gains come in the value of their assets increasing (stock is one example of an asset). The tax code does tax them when they sell the stock to get money to deposit in their checking accounts, and the billionaires do that, but just not with very much money. Certainly nothing even close to a billion dollars in a single year.
So how do you tax them? Do you tax them on the value of their assets? If the value of their assets goes down, do you give the tax money back? All of these questions and more would need to be answered for a coherent tax code that could be enforced. I don’t have the answers, but I’m very open to those that do.
When I get stock from work, I have to pay tax on the value at the time as if it was just regular cash coming in (even if i don’t immediately sell). It gets added into my W2. It’s really annoying since it leads to a bigger tax bill come tax season … why doesn’t that happen for them?
While I know this is silly and would never work, I can’t help but fantasize about giving anyone that makes a billion dollars a beautiful fancy trophy…
And then forbid them from making a dollar more until they spend it all.