Or go a step further do what nobody has the balls to do: tax wealth
That's what all these schemes are really trying to do, albeit in roundabout and inefficient ways. Taxing wealth has it's own complexities (unrealized gains and non-cash assets are the big ones) but it'd be saner than a negative tax (i.e. entitlement) calculated off GDP.
From the perspective of the tax code as an incentive system, taxing wealth is a strange thing—it makes people feel less interest in becoming wealthy, and thereby causes fewer GDP-building things to happen! (This is also, for a similar reason, why economists don't like corporate taxes or trade tariffs: they disincentivize exactly the things that help the economy the most.)
Economists are usually more in favor of a land-value tax, because it punishes people for something that doesn't build GDP (investing their wealth into property and then sitting on it as it appreciates), and encourages them to instead do things that do build GDP (like investing their wealth into companies.) A land-value tax is still essentially a luxury tax, but it doesn't have the same problem of unilaterally discouraging GDP creation that taxing wealth does.
It's the same with work. If hard work is less likely to pay off, or if you'll have to work harder, or both, you'll be less likely to work harder. Some people will work harder anyways, and many will be discouraged.
Marginal effects matter. This is why dynamic analysis is important.
I don't think it has disincentivated anybody from becoming less wealthy and/or working less. It just incentivizes tax evasion, but even that is not significant.
On the other hand, a large number of social programs have been built around this new tax. Anybody in the country could get cancer and would get free decent healthcare.
If we're talking about how people feel about their tax system, I think we need to talk about how a huge portion of the US misunderstands "tax brackets", and seems to think that paying more taxes when they're "bumped to a higher tax bracket" is a thing, and that there's some strategy in avoiding getting paid marginally more than some threshold. (Since tax brackets apply to marginal income, this is incorrect; you're still taxed at the lower rate for your income up to the threshold.)
This is almost certainly causing people to behave in ways that are economically irrational for themselves far more than any tax on large wealth (let's say, for the purpose of argument, $100M or more) would be. Yet there is no campaign to fix people's understanding of tax brackets so that more people feel incentivized to make more money.
If we're talking about an actual rational response to the tax system, I would much rather have $102M in the bank and get taxed on half my savings over $100M than have $99M in the bank and get taxed on half my savings over $100M.
> and thereby causes fewer GDP-building things to happen!
Why does a tax on wealth cause fewer GDP-building things to happen? The rational thing to do given a tax on wealth is to spend your extra wealth on services you're interested in, donate it to charities you support, etc., all of which seems like it increases GDP more than investing it for yourself would: it produces additional revenue for organizations, which produces jobs, which grows the economy.
I'd believe this argument for a tax on income, since it disincentivizes people from making more money, which means they're not spending that money because they didn't make it, and also they're voluntarily refusing to do profitable work they otherwise would have done. (I don't think I agree with the argument, but at least I understand how it works.)
This is the best distillation of how marginal tax rates works I have ever read.
There still are taxes that don't work like this (usually in the form of benefits that cut off at a certain income range) so unfortunately we still have messed up stuff. The feeling isn't completely unfounded
Another rational thing to do is to create vehicles that store but temporarily impair the market value of that wealth as computed for wealth tax purposes. Put it into a private company and offer minority, non-controlling stakes in that private company to all comers and act surprised when only family members take you up on the offer. It's a minority stake without control rights; it's going to be worth less than the net asset value. Store the wealth there until you're ready to use it, then have the company directors make a distribution, or leave the transfer in place to your heirs, who will receive a controlling interest when their shares (that maybe they bought) are reunited with the shares that you will them upon death. Or invest in something illiquid and very hard to accurately value.
Technically, all of those things create GDP activity for lawyers and accountants as well, but it's hardly good public policy, IMO. (I'm not opposed to a reasonable wealth tax, say 0.25% annually on sums 10M-50M USD and 0.5% annually on sums above that. I don't think it's a tax without lossy consequences though.)
I know engineers that are guilty of the misunderstanding you describe. How does anyone graduate from a university in the United States without at some point having been exposed to the idea of marginal taxation?
I think this is false in practice, especially with a progressive wealth tax.
Most people don't want money, they want the things money can buy... long, healthy, and generally happier lives. People that keep striving past that point are people that seek to change the world, folks like Gates or Musk. A progressive wealth tax starting at $10M wouldn't really change the incentives at play.
Citation? I know it feels correct, but is it actually correct in practice? Is there any evidence that the rare person who generates enormous wealth was motivated substantially by wealth (and not a drive to build something substantial or change the world)?
At least in the case of Gates, I suspect he would have built Microsoft even with slightly more onerous (to the wealthy) tax policy.
Also land is hard to hide, and relatively easy to value. So it's really hard to evade the tax. If you are going to tax wealth, and want that to include assets like equity in private companies, you are going to have to value those assets.
Multiple incentives to be wealthy -- or worse, feedback loops to ensure the children of the wealthy maintain their advantage -- are just redundant.
Why? As a total layman, wouldn't it be incredibly inefficient? If we tax the wealth of, say, the top 100 richest Americans, wouldn't that cause some pretty terrible downsides? If we force them to sell their holdings, wouldn't that ripple through the economy?
Take Jeff Bezos--if you forced him to sell a significant portion of his stock, wouldn't that depress the Amazon stock price, which affects a significant number of other individuals and businesses?
It's not taxing wealth so much as taxing the mechanisms that create undue inequality that would work: yes, I'm talking about taxing rental income. The number one driver preventing people from building savings is draining their income through rent.
The solution is sort of obvious, but hated by people who love the AirBnB model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14493769
Income is already taxable, including rental income. On top of that there are various taxes for owning/occupying a property. It varies with what state/country you live in.
Generally speaking, a property is a poor investment if you already have the money, they have poor returns and they don't grow in value outside of a few bubbles.
That being said, I agree that the pressure of rent is unbearable and growing for most of the population. The rebalance historically happened with wars. Properties ain't worth much when people die and buildings are bombed.
Just to clarify, nobody in the US is doing this, but it's not unheard of elsewhere. For example, Norway has a wealth tax of about 0.85% and there are some other examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples .
EDIT: Can't comment ("You're posting too fast, blah blah blah"). Here are some replies to the comments bellow:
> It's encouraging people to make their money be productive instead of stashing it under a mattress.
When you have money in the bank, you're effectively lending most of it to other people. Your money is "productive", which is encouraged by the interest.
> Everything distorts markets. The question is how to distort markets into providing the best outcome.
Neutral tax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_tax) doesn't. But of course, market distortion is not the only or primary factor in policy decision-making.
Everything distorts markets. The question is how to distort markets into providing the best outcome.
And we know now that the ultra-rich folks tend to take the money,windfall from lower tax, and hide it in Virgin-Island, Panama,Cayman Island and other offshore tax havens.
Much better to tax consumption.
If you can build wealth around being active rather than just reaping the benefit of interest of interests then that should be encouraged rather than just grabbing and keeping.
If the central bank wants banks to have more reserves for loans, it buys assets from banks in exchange for newly created reserves. Money markets are a command economy.
Taxing wealth encourages investment because you have to turn a yearly return in excess of the wealth tax to not have your wealth shrink.
The incentives to be wealthy will never disappear. Taxing wealth just makes it harder and makes sure that those who are wealthy work for it.
IOW you should explain why “market distortions” are inherently a bad thing.
Even our current methods of evaluating quantities and distribution of wealth are vague estimates, and that's without people incentivized by taxation to hide or minimize it.
A wealth tax that turns into anything but a buildings-and-cars tax is a fantasy from an enforcement perspective, and significant property taxes have issues of their own.
>Knock Knock Its the United States
With huge boats, with guns, gunboats.
>Open your banks' records, stop having them be closed
and theres not much they can do about.
So they sign a treaty making sure their banks' records are not closed.
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Inspired by this, both historically and in delivery https://youtu.be/Mh5LY4Mz15o?t=4m46s
Is it not a thing for startups to be based out of Delaware for a tax advantage? Would the ships even have to leave the harbor to do this?
The problem with many "wealth" taxes is that they end up missing the top 1% and hurting the people who are building a business.
Eg inheritance tax does a fantastic job of just screwing over family businesses that on paper are worth say $7mm+ because on paper the kids who inherit the business now owe taxes on maybe $2mm (I think the first $5mm is tax free w/ inheritance), but selling any of the business to pay the taxes would often destroy the business.
And I'm not talking about massive businesses like Walmart - I mean businesses like a large-ish family farm where just the land, equipment, animals, etc are all worth $7mm+ on paper, even if the farm doesn't produce massive profits.
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-bo...
Investments in real estate, equities, commodities etc all increase in notional value to factor in the devalued currency.
Edit: Thinking about it a bit more. Inflation would also tend to drive up the numerical profits of companies, which will tend to buffer a stock price for example. So I'm not sure how this inflation independently contributes much of a specific tax on the wealth.
Massive rent-seeking, enclosures, network effects, and benefiting by public infrastructure and institutions, without paying back full costs, or by imposing dislocations on other economic sectors, as well.
Aviation accounts for 6% of transportation fuel use. For a small portion of passenger and minuscule fraction of cargo movement.
Obliterate the tax shelters, obliterate the tax havens, bring the money back home under threat of criminal law.
I'm not saying you can't be a fat cat. But at a certain point (fluid and blurry, but distinctly present), it's just morbid obesity that is squishing other citizens.
Assuming (perhaps incorrectly) you are in the US, you are also reading Hacker News, so you are probably the top 1% of the worlds wealthiest. Again, just a thought experiment, but would you be fine with your government saying that as a 1 percenter in world wealth you can no longer earn anymore, you have hit that certain point, are a fat cat and can grow no more wealth, under threat of criminal law?
Media has done a good job of raising awareness of the problems of wealth disparity, and a lot of people nod along.
But no matter how wealthy someone is, they can always point to the more-rich and say those people are the problem and should be taxed, not themselves.
Elections matter.
The details will be difficult: how do you assess wealth with any semblance of accuracy, especially in the face of an increased incentive to hide it? I'd love to hear anybody's clever ideas to tax wealth in a way that catches cheaters. The biggest issue is what you do with wealth held overseas.
But even if the cost of catching cheaters is many billions of dollars of enforcement apparatus, it seems worth it. Of course, you create a new problem: avoiding corruption in a large enforcement apparatus chasing after people with the resources to easily bribe them. (But this problem is not unique to wealth taxes, and I don't think bribing the IRS is actually much of a problem—people just bribe Congress.)
There's another problem: wealth taxes would probably need a constitutional amendment in the U.S. From Article I, Section 2:
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers..."
There's already an amendment to clarify that federal income taxes are OK. But wealth taxes will need their own amendment.
Conceptually, though, I totally agree: if the problem is unequal wealth, just redistribute the wealth directly to move toward a less catastrophe-prone distribution.
Heard of this before. Have there been any attempts of that before and how did it fare?
It would seem to be as soon as wealth is taxed, wealth will morph or change shape to avoid being taxed. We'd end up with some new arcane tax scheme where wealth is held in a tropical island nation and the owner of the wealth gets a stipend or I don't know, rents all their possessions from that entity.
Edit: sorry, wasn't aware of the exact definition of this. Having everyone pass this sort of thing is a great idea imo.
"Nobody?" Other countries manage it.
Hmm just checked the Wikipedia and it says that Donald Trump proposed it for the US as well.
