Francis Macomber said:shack009 said:Francis Macomber said:rgag12 said:
Ok, raise taxes broadly across the spectrum then. See if that gets you a "win" with the electorate.
I do not want to raise them across the spectrum, i just want to raise them across those making $100 million or more a year.
Bro, almost nobody makes that in a year. There are less than 30,000 people in the world who have a net worth of $100,000,000.
So? Tax the **** out of the ones that do. In case you've not noticed, we have concentrated wealth more than just about anytime in our country's history.
Obviously you are catching a lot of heat for your comments but I won't insult you, let me try to educate you instead. This is a topic I have studied extensively for decades.
Tax increases often have minimal impact on income except short term. Long term they have a negative impact. Lower taxes create economic activity and lower the incentive to avoid taxes through finding deductions and otherwise and that increased activity more than makes up for the revenue. That's why the massive Reagan tax cuts in the '80s resulted in a doubling of revenue in 8 years. Another example where it worked short term was when they lowered capital gains taxes under Clinton and we had a massive surge of revenue as people cashed in investments and reinvested them paying the lower tax rate but that is the primary reason we went from deficits to surpluses much faster than expected at that time. Thus "taxing the rich" has nothing to do with raising income, it actually works against it. The only reason for progressive taxation is social justice.
Income tax rates are also irrelevant to people like Musk, Zuck, etc because they don't make their money on regular income. They own stock. When they want money they simply take out a loan at a very low rate with their stock as collateral and then they take out another loan to pay off the first loan, essentially recylcling the money and paying a very small amount of interest and no tax. That's just one of many methods the truly wealthy can use to avoid taxes because they have enough wealth and equity to do things normal people can't think or or have the ability to do.
You also don't really want to "tax the ****" out of them because inevitably that means they have to sell stock or equities to get it. So that lowers the value of the stock for one which hurts other investors. More importantly it means that companies have less money to invest or worst case they actually sell assets and a new owner ends up cutting costs for more profit and laying off workers. Or the company simply ends up dying. Realize that this is also taking money that could be invested by the most successful businesspeople on the planet who would otherwise be reinvesting virtually all of it and creating more jobs and economic activity. When you are talking about Musk he doesn't even have much in the way of material possessions outside of a plane to get him around, he has a modest house he lives in with his kids when he's home in South Texas. He puts everything into his businesses. So that means for instance maybe Neuralink doesn't have the money to invest in bringing Blindsight to market next year which has the potential to literally cure blindness for people. Or maybe Space X doesn't go to Mars.
Worst off the tax revenue and spending are disconnected almost entirely. We don't have balanced budgets. If we need money the Fed just presses a button and creates it out of thin air (they don't even have to print it anymore). It's all a mirage. The real taxation is inflation by currency created out of nowhere that devalues your money. BTW, that doesn't hurt the wealthy either because they have equities and property that have inherent value.
So stop trying to figure out how you can get money from the truly wealthy. It won't solve the problems you think it will and it won't work anyway. Focus on growth and reducing government spending. If you want you can give more of your own money to charity to help those in need (that's also something the truly wealthy do in a big way).
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
