Original post by Spinoza Your first sentence. "We obviously need a progressive system of some sort" Why?
People in poverty should not send 20% of their income to the federal government. It becomes unfair when income taxes are punitive simply because the targeted group "can afford it". I don't have an exact boundary for where that line is. The current tax system might be flirting with it except for capital gains taxes, but the 90% tax rate definitely crosses it. The reasons that sort of tax worked for WW2 are not applicable today.
Why not instead of what is a fair amount of tax to pay, figure what is an excessive amount of resources / wealth to consume? One person can unreasonably eat X amount of food, wear out Y amount of clothing, and occupy Z amount of shelter; if they want to be utterly ridiculously unreasonable, possibly symptomatic of a medical condition such as wealth addiction, money addiction, morbid gluttony, sociopathology or whatever, they might by some herculean and probably unhealthy effort manage to eat, wear and occupy how many times that quantity, and anything beyond that is a serious problem...
In other words, a wealth cap, at some insanely/unhealthily high value, and an income cap, at some fraction of that value...
(Motivate them to do even more? Why? Don't they ever get bored and/or just do something without necessarily feeding their addiction by means of it?)
Original post by markm Why not instead of what is a fair amount of tax to pay, figure what is an excessive amount of resources / wealth to consume? One person can unreasonably eat X amount of food, wear out Y amount of clothing, and occupy Z amount of shelter; if they want to be utterly ridiculously unreasonable, possibly symptomatic of a medical condition such as wealth addiction, money addiction, morbid gluttony, sociopathology or whatever, they might by some herculean and probably unhealthy effort manage to eat, wear and occupy how many times that quantity, and anything beyond that is a serious problem...
Really the base of the issue is who do you think will better invest rich people's money; rich people or the government?
Looking introspectively I think the reason I think more pro-rich people than others probably stems from distaste towards the government's ability to do anything useful in a reasonable amount of time.
Original post by markm Why not instead of what is a fair amount of tax to pay, figure what is an excessive amount of resources / wealth to consume? One person can unreasonably eat X amount of food, wear out Y amount of clothing, and occupy Z amount of shelter; if they want to be utterly ridiculously unreasonable, possibly symptomatic of a medical condition such as wealth addiction, money addiction, morbid gluttony, sociopathology or whatever, they might by some herculean and probably unhealthy effort manage to eat, wear and occupy how many times that quantity, and anything beyond that is a serious problem...
In other words, a wealth cap, at some insanely/unhealthily high value, and an income cap, at some fraction of that value...
(Motivate them to do even more? Why? Don't they ever get bored and/or just do something without necessarily feeding their addiction by means of it?)
If you implement those sort of caps, the very rich are simply going to leave your country and you're going to lose money.
Quote: "If you implement those sort of caps, the very rich are simply going to leave your country and you're going to lose money."
I have an impression from childhood that "nationalisation" might have been a buzzword somehow relating to keeping the assets even if you lose their current "owners". But its a word/topic I realise I am almost totally ignorant on so now have a fun wikipedia exploration to look forward to.
Thanks.
P.S. let the gov't decide what to do with the purloined money? But... but... I already have ideas on how to spend it! ;) :)
