Comment on Poignant post on the state of things
jimbolauski@lemm.ee 9 months agoGet rid of an income tax and move to a federal sales tax on everything. Provide cost of living stipends for everyone. It could provide a safety net and stop tax avoidance schemes.
okamiueru@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sales tax on everything… isn’t a tax on wealth. Why not just do some of the things Scandinavian countries do?
Why is it so all-or-nothing on any one idea? There is a lot of nuance in how you tax income, and the teeth and regulation in order to effectively tax corporations. Anything over 400k, taxed at 90%.
Doesn’t help that politics are very corrupt, politicians can do insider trading, media is owned by private interests, unions are demonised and unsurprisingly workers rights are almost non-existent, and you have a two party system that’s deeply flawed.
The US had a real shot at moving in the right direction, but the DNC saw it fit to sabotage it’s own candidate. I’d imagine treason charges for so something like that… but, not even an apology.
Anyways…
jimbolauski@lemm.ee 9 months ago
You don’t need to tax wealth. Amased wealth will be taxed when the wealth is spent.
okamiueru@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I understood your argument. It’s just not how it works. Even if amassed wealth was used to buy stuff as a exchange of goods, it wouldn’t be anything significant, and it would be less significant the more wealth we’re talking about. That in itself should clue you in on why this doesn’t work.
jimbolauski@lemm.ee 9 months ago
The thing a consumption tax fixes is eliminating all the tax avoidance schemes. People living off their wealth don’t pay high taxes, they take out loans against their wealth and pay the loan back at 5% instead of the 20% capital gains tax. Carl Icahn, an investor was able to pay no income tax using this scheme. He had an adjusted gross income of $544 million but deducted it all from paying his 1.2 billion dollar loan.