The 2016 epoch annotated in Figure 1 and language of Finding #1 are curious.
+/- 1 year circa that time, there was also the Swiss Leaks...and Panama Papers...and Bahamas Papers...and Paradise Papers.
Perhaps there's an argument in support of the prevailing steady state, but color me unconvinced that "the automatic exchange of bank information" was directly responsible for the transient response.
What are the chances that that ends with an additional wealth tax for pretty much everyone because far easier to go after "wealth" at the lower end (e.g., no worries about companies being affected, less mobile).
No, it does have implications for income as well! At these large volumes, cfr. Piketty they are making an income from their wealth at 5-7% over inflation. The <0.5% of wealth tax implies that they are paying <10% on the income from their wealth as taxes.
You see, the reason you pay so much money on your tax income, is _because_ we are not or only barely taxing wealth income. Cfr. Piketty, governments balance sheets would stay the same (on a global scale) if you would drop the income tax on labour by 10-20% and simultaneously tax income from wealth as income from labour. (Ignoring secondary effects on that balance sheet)
One tenth of the taxes you pay on your labour, is covering for someone not paying the tax on their wealth income. While it is not world-changing, that's not an insubstantial either. Unless you are currently making more by wealth income than labour income, you would see your total taxes decrease in this operation.
And all of what I write above is ignoring the idea that it might be more moral to tax wealth income higher than labour income! The above is purely asking for both to be taxed equally.
It is indeed saying that, you can't model secondary effects and they are ignored in this analysis.
If you believe trying to have the rich pay more of the government budget is only going to lead to them paying less, no other assumptions needed, there is no discussion.
I think assuming this contradiction is way too fatalistic.
>You see, the reason you pay so much money on your tax income...
Or is it because government spending has gotten so wasteful? It's interesting to think about how much government used to accomplish with less, or even no, income tax in the past.
Frankly, I don't see how discussing the expense side is useful in a discussion on how we distribute the income side of the government over the population.
You're right. You can leverage wealth into a luxurious, tax-free life style, while income gets taxed and garnished to pay for the security and freedom of the wealthy.
Wealth. Why exactly is this terrible? Seems like wealth should be untaxed. It’s highly volatile in value, subjective, based on taste, and often illiquid and non-divisible.
Also, is Stieglitz is not an American in values, only by paper citizenship. Rights here derive from God, and the government is ruled by the people. This inversion recognizes the appropriate state of socialist moralizers, like Joe, in the hierarchy of human creation and subsequent economic experience.
From what I've seen on HN your post will get flagged to death quite quickly, but not banned. So go ahead and write what you want to write, but a lot of people won't see it, and most the replies won't be constructive (think reddit level responses - there's a big crossover).
Capitalism wasn't designed for the high-end of the distribution. The rich get richer faster than everyone else, that's easy to show with any kind of simulation, hell even the most simple game economy soon hits this problem of rich-getting richer. Taxation is not even the right way to address it, it's a bad remedy in the age of corporate tourism. And States need to stop gobbling up so much taxes from the lower classes. Most of it goes to military spending and in the case of the EU in the large castes of paper-pushing voters.
I don't think we should cheer up and encourage what is effectively a one-world government to pass totalitarian laws.
You know, even if you're a socialist, deep inside you that they'll never ever be going to stop at confiscating 2% of the billionaires' wealth yearly. It shall quickly become: "confiscate 2% of everybody's wealth yearly".
Do you even realize the kind of totalitarian world we already are living in for such measures to even be thinkable? (btw it's the same kind of totalitarian world where the five eyes or nine eyes or whatever-eyed monster can team up to plan to ban E2EE).
The OECD passing a law so that companies, worldwide, do pay 15% tax and socialist economists writing "15%, far too low" is the worst of the worst nightmare.
That's basically a one-world, socialist (believe me, many didn't vote for that), government pulling the strings.
I fear the horrible future my kid is going to live on a planet with such minded people.
That 2% wealth tax is for literally 3,000 people (or less). To quote:
> A minimum tax on billionaires equal to 2% of their wealth would address this evasion and generate nearly $250 billion from less than 3,000 individuals.
That seems like a very reasonable and focused policy with pretty big upside for affecting a very tiny proportion of the population, which is generally "the point" of policy proposals such as this.
Income tax is specifically prohibited under the original US constitution. The modern federal income tax was enacted in 1913 at 1% for incomes over $3,000 (about $93,000 in today's money). By WWII, we had universal payroll withholding.
Thinking the government will be satisfied with taking only a little bit from the wealthy, is like thinking your drug addicted friend will be happy with only a small bump of heroin on weekends.
“very reasonable for other people” == zero skin-in-the-game, easily disregarded. If the proposal became “unfocused,” and you were personally subject to a severe punishment, would you support it?
We forbid global capture to prevent a dismal future of global conformity.
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[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 59.0 ms ] thread+/- 1 year circa that time, there was also the Swiss Leaks...and Panama Papers...and Bahamas Papers...and Paradise Papers.
Perhaps there's an argument in support of the prevailing steady state, but color me unconvinced that "the automatic exchange of bank information" was directly responsible for the transient response.
> Global billionaires have effective tax rates equivalent to 0% to 0.5% of their wealth
That's terrible
That is low in comparison to taxes on labour.
One tenth of the taxes you pay on your labour, is covering for someone not paying the tax on their wealth income. While it is not world-changing, that's not an insubstantial either. Unless you are currently making more by wealth income than labour income, you would see your total taxes decrease in this operation.
And all of what I write above is ignoring the idea that it might be more moral to tax wealth income higher than labour income! The above is purely asking for both to be taxed equally.
Rich will just hire really smart people to figure out how to dodge the taxes, as they have always done
If you believe trying to have the rich pay more of the government budget is only going to lead to them paying less, no other assumptions needed, there is no discussion.
I think assuming this contradiction is way too fatalistic.
Or is it because government spending has gotten so wasteful? It's interesting to think about how much government used to accomplish with less, or even no, income tax in the past.
Also, is Stieglitz is not an American in values, only by paper citizenship. Rights here derive from God, and the government is ruled by the people. This inversion recognizes the appropriate state of socialist moralizers, like Joe, in the hierarchy of human creation and subsequent economic experience.
but im not sure if HN bans people so just :) and nod
You know, even if you're a socialist, deep inside you that they'll never ever be going to stop at confiscating 2% of the billionaires' wealth yearly. It shall quickly become: "confiscate 2% of everybody's wealth yearly".
Do you even realize the kind of totalitarian world we already are living in for such measures to even be thinkable? (btw it's the same kind of totalitarian world where the five eyes or nine eyes or whatever-eyed monster can team up to plan to ban E2EE).
The OECD passing a law so that companies, worldwide, do pay 15% tax and socialist economists writing "15%, far too low" is the worst of the worst nightmare.
That's basically a one-world, socialist (believe me, many didn't vote for that), government pulling the strings.
I fear the horrible future my kid is going to live on a planet with such minded people.
> A minimum tax on billionaires equal to 2% of their wealth would address this evasion and generate nearly $250 billion from less than 3,000 individuals.
That seems like a very reasonable and focused policy with pretty big upside for affecting a very tiny proportion of the population, which is generally "the point" of policy proposals such as this.
Thinking the government will be satisfied with taking only a little bit from the wealthy, is like thinking your drug addicted friend will be happy with only a small bump of heroin on weekends.
We forbid global capture to prevent a dismal future of global conformity.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/22/eu-funded-r...
Authors
https://gabriel-zucman.eu/bio/
https://www.ipe-berlin.org/en/institute/associate-members/sa...