Rivalarrival

My mistake. Have a nice day.

They become billionaires not by receiving income directly, but by holding assets that appreciate in value. A progressive income tax isn't going to do it. We will need some variety of wealth tax. The major criticism against a wealth tax is that their wealth is in stocks, and a tax would require them to liquidate their shares in order to pay the tax. That would crash the market.

Which is why we should just tax the shares directly. Take the shares. Send them to an IRS liquidator, who can sell them off slowly, such that liquidated shares never comprise more than 1% of total traded shares. The sale of those shares won't have a significant effect on market value.

It might take years or decades to liquidate what they collect, but over time, such a tax will drive stock ownership away from the ultra rich and toward the working class.

Studies found that charcoal and gastric lavage (stomach pumping) was just as effective at preventing poisoning. The complications of ipecac include aspirating vomit into the trachea. Digestive fluids cause some pretty severe injuries in the lungs.

What?

No, it's because we have something called "Civil Asset Forfeiture" which basically means that American cops can just stop you for no reason, file a lawsuit against your cash and just take it out of your wallet. If you want it back, you have to declare yourself to be a criminal defendant, and then be found not guilty of the criminal charges against you. If you don't, they get to keep your money to put in their pension fund.

That's not from math. That's from lack of practice. Nobody has used cash in 10 years.

I don't think that would actually do anything at all. Banks would just loosen their lending requirements, and all those securities-backed loans would just become personal loans to high-net-worth individuals. The investment portfolios of the ultra-rich need to be directly targeted.

I'd take 1% per year. This tax is only on the obscenely-wealthy. Every natural person can exempt $1 million of their total portfolio. No exemptions for artificial persons. The IRS is limited to liquidating no more than 1% of total traded volume of any issue on any given day: >99% of trades will be market trades, so the IRS shares will have minimal effect on value.

I don't think I've heard a definition of "security" that would refer to either of those examples. Perhaps "registered securities" is closer to my intended meaning?

I would not intend for this tax to apply to personal assets or the owner's primary residence, but it is not particularly difficult to divide ownership of real property among multiple entities. Applied to investment properties, the government would basically be a lienholder.

We desperately need a tax on securities. I don't particularly care about taxing luxury products, because those products are produced by workers, who pay taxes and buy things. But securities are the "means of production".

Don't tax the dollar value of the security. Don't force them to liquidate their shares before they can pay a tax. Just go ahead and transfer a percentage of their shares of each security to the IRS, who can liquidate it on the open market, slowly over time.

In the 1950s and into the 1960s, we had a 91% tax rate on the top tier tax bracket. By the late 1960s and to the 80s, that was reduced to about 70%. By the end of the 80s, it was under 30%.

In the 1950s, when a businessman realized they were $10,000 into that top tier, they had two options: Cut a check to the IRS for $9100, or increase their business spending by $10,000. Keep $900 for themselves, or keep $10,000 worth of products and services for their business. Nobody chose the former. Nobody paid the 91% tax rate. They all spent it. Even if they falsely claimed personal expenses as business, they spent it. They were using it to buy sports cars and airplanes and other things produced by workers. They weren't spending it on stock portfolios.

In spending that $10,000, they paid workers, whose income was taxed. Those workers spent their extra earnings, paying sales tax and more workers. Those workers spent their extra earnings, paying sales tax and more workers. The avoidance of the high tax rate kept the money from stagnating in a portfolio. It drove the economy, which increased tax revenue.

Her $2 billion wouldn't pay off the deficit, no. But, circulating that same $2 billion through the economy, increasing the "velocity of money" would increase total tax revenue far beyond that $2 billion.

Think bigger.

I was a soldier.

Biden was able to run on a "lesser evil" platform. He won because he wasn't Trump. Hillary or Harris could have won in 2020.