Higher marginal income taxes discourage investment and productivity and high capital gains causes high distortion/is difficult to implement/also discourage investment. Affordable housing shouldn't be tried to be solved by throwing money at it (subsidizing demand), the real way is to cause the supply to go up by laxer zoning and less restrictions. Inheritance taxes could also be used to 'level' the playing without causing huge distortion. Another good tax would be land value tax which would end up taxing those with more wealth the most as well as causing less speculation and more investment in actual companies which would fuel economic growth.
Better unions will never work in the US these days because of deindustrialization and globalization, can't really have leverage when your sector is getting smaller. There's also just no more 'union culture'.
> Higher marginal income taxes discourage investment
I'm not persuaded that this is true. They discourage investment in the stock market, and inhibit a venture capital model, but I think they encourage internal investment. I don't think it's a coincident that places like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC thrived during the high marginal tax regime, nor that back then companies were more apt to train and retain skilled labor: when C-class and stock-holders are taxed at a high rate there are more-useful things to do with profits than eye-watering compensation packages and stock buybacks.
how are high capital gains difficult to implement? we have clear 15/20% federal rules on them now. we can just change those numbers to whatever we want, like many states already have (NY, CA)
Better unions will never work in the US these days because of deindustrialization and globalization, can't really have leverage when your sector is getting smaller. There's also just no more 'union culture'.