A few people paying $x million more per year in taxes is insignificant but tens of thousands of people paying $x million more per year in taxes is significant. For example I advocate for raising taxes in my locality to better fund the schools. It’s bad policy to say, “Well why don’t you just voluntarily pay more?”
Whether or not you still think people should just volunteer to pay more if they think taxes are too low you have not addressed the essence of the situation. Namely, “Are taxes too low and should they be raised?” Why or why not?
Where's the list of the super rich that wants to be taxed more? Wouldn't this online form be filled mostly by average Joes? The "Yes, I am signing as a person of wealth" checkbox doesn't inspire much confidence
The reason why the super rich shouldn't give more money to the government is the same reason lottery winners lose it all within a very short period of time.
Honestly, I think we need an entirely different way of looking at "taxes". We need to find a way to calculate the externalities of a company and charge that as taxes.
I don't have a magic way to do that, nor am I convinced it is possible.
But I think that is the bare minimum we can agree government and regulations are for, to prevent and compensate for us hurting each other. Especially in ways that are hard for individuals to handle.
Or we can stop trying to have the government solve every problem there is and stop taxing people at every instance of money transfer. If you’re an average person your income is taxed, your spending is taxed and any investments you make are then taxed. If you give someone a gift it’s taxed ffs. The end result is a government that spends more than it makes so think tanks can push the idea we need to find more ways and people to tax.
Anyone who stops for a second and thinks about it knows that if we taxed the “super rich” to the gills the end result would be an increase in government spending, not a reduction of our deficit.
> Or we can stop trying to have the government solve every problem there is and stop taxing people at every instance of money transfer. If you’re an average person your income is taxed, your spending is taxed and any investments you make are then taxed. If you give someone a gift it’s taxed ffs. The end result is a government that spends more than it makes so think tanks can push the idea we need to find more ways and people to tax.
That literally is what I am proposing. Things like pollution, global warming, and resource extraction should have the costs on the commons paid back to the commons. If that cost is too high for profitability, the business shouldn't exist.
No it isn’t, you’re proposing adding tons of new taxes on to businesses and it’s some cognitive dissonance that you think this means reducing taxes and spending.
Proposals like this are the reason the right is able to claim climate change politics is nothing more than an excuse to enact leftist policy.
This was an example of one of the untold number of taxes our current system requires to extract wealth from literally every transfer of money it can get its hands on. Funny you pick that one and ignore the entire point.
But it doesn't exist as a means of extracting wealth. It exists because otherwise you could avoid the entire taxation system by just "giving gifts" for every transaction. Many seemingly odd taxes exist for the same reason.
the problem with tax is that it goes to government
billionaires may well recognize that they are the beneficiaries of a rather unfair system, but they may also balk at giving back their gifts, if it means handing them on to a quite inefficient, often opaque, and quite self-interested institution
maybe a solution is to sell government positions for taxes; the wealthy buy seats in government with increased taxes.
on the surface this seem like a terrible idea, but any self-serving decisions while in government would just lead to more taxes, etc.
in any case we should move away from a system where the ultimate bragging right is how much money you accumulate.
for example, i believe the status of rich ancient romans was tied to the public works that they enabled
Even if I were a super trillionaire I would be hesitant to contribute anything to the public debt until congress can balance its budget. We have to bring the spending down. Yes, Republican policies tend to cost more but they aren’t completely wrong about many social programs.
Easy to say when you have a foundation that holds all your wealth and you only pay marginal income taxes. That's pure marketing. Anarcho-capitalism is a better idea.
If you want to pay more, the fucking pay more, you are free to give the IRS more. I don’t understand why anyone, ever, would be in favor of more or higher compulsory taxes.
