And what would happen if we did?
No. If someone’s rich they can lobby if they can lobby they will act within theyre best interest.
go lookup the tax rates in the 60s/70s. we used to
eyup
The highest bracket was taxed at 70% until Reagan’s first plan in 1981 lowered it to 50%.
It’s currently at 37% under Trump’s 2018 tax plan.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/historical-income-tax-rates-brackets/
peaked during ww2 at 94% on high incomes (over what would be about 2.5m today). stayed at 70% or above until reagan… the entire 50s, 60s, and 70s.
And what was the capital gains tax rate at that time? Why do wealthy people get to call their income something else and get taxed less on it?
You have to go even further back, for a time when both sources of income were taxed the same
Keep in mind that’s Income Tax. Most rich people don’t actually have income, they have capital gains.
Right, that’s the real problem. We’re over hear bickering about income tax rates, while the wealthy are sitting there playing a shell game with : income? Find the income. Which cup is it under? If you tax the right one, you win a prize. Just like any shell game, the only way to win is to not play.
I doubt it, at least in the US. The rich have a lot of influence over how laws are made, and I don’t really see any appetite to pay a greater share.
they would threaten to move all operations to somewhere like the Cayman Islands which makes no fucking sense
They can threaten all they want, it’s simply not possible. If it actually was possible, they’d have done that a long time ago.
Like it or not they have assets here. If they move their operations overseas and evade taxes they can enjoy having their assets seized and their IP confiscated.
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Yes.
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They would fight back, buy all our media sources, and buy our governments to make sure 1 didn’t happen.
Sounds familiar… oh wait…
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I say we tax them 9x19 times.
Every country would have to do it. A party here in Switzerland wanted to drastically increase inheritance tax for certain large inheritances, and the rich people threatened so hard to leave the country that everyone believed them and now nobody supports it anymore. (They said their children would not be able to pay the tax because most of their wealth is supposedly in company shares, so if they died their children would have to sell off the companies to Cineese companies which nobody in Switzerland liked to hear)
Why not pay in shares?
Yeah, then the corporations would gradually become public too, which would be beneficial.
Of course that’s not true. We have data from around the world showing it’s not true. It’s not even true within the United States if you look at state taxes.
Yes.
Has that been tried since 1790 when the french decided to behead all the rich people?
Certainly. Most of the 20th century, the top tier tax rate was set at a level that can only be described as “punitive”. It was higher than 90% to kill off the robber barons.
While I am not morally opposed to beheading rich people, we really need to go back to the tax rates we had in the 50’s. And add a securities tax, payable in shares of that security, that the IRS can liquidate slowly over time.
most effective tax reform
Yeah they only wanted the top 10% of the top 10%
In Finland fines are based on percentage of yearly income.
We’re still waiting for Bezos to come here and get a massive speeding ticket to fix our budget for the next decade
Hahaha that’s great. I love Finland, thanks for the sauna’s!
They write the tax laws and buy the politicians to pass those tax laws. So no, we cannot tax the rich.
The newly elected government is actually quite cost efficient in this regard. Since they already are all crooked business men, they don’t need to pay anyone to get those tax laws passed.
It’s probably not possible at this point. If there was some kind of revolution, poor people could have access to healthcare, education, shelter, and food. You know, basic dignity and hope for a better future. But the problem is that hopeless wage slaves are better for capitalism.
Theoretically, sure. Pragmatically, we just elected a fascist insurrectionist, and it’s not going to happen in the near future.
We?
Yeah, that’s fair. US mindset, I’m just still processing our shitshow.
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