Taxing the rich fallacy.

Author: Greyparrot
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#1
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When progressives say they are taxing the rich, they are really not taxing the rich when looking at income tax. They are taxing production. A person could make a lot in a single year and yet, not have a lot of accumulated wealth or assets. 

In order to truly tax the rich, all income taxes, including capital gains, would have to be abolished and replaced with wealth taxes.
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@Greyparrot
"The rich" are rich for a reason and an essential part of a healthy and productive social system.

Just as the not so well of are not so well off for a reason, and are also an essential part of a healthy and productive social system.

Over taxing the rich and redistributing wealth would cause the system to stagnate.

Wealth envy is what it is, and an inevitable consequence of a healthy and productive social system.
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#3
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@zedvictor4
The rich" are rich for a reason 
This is an extremely lazy way to address this serious topic and the reason why people like the founder of BLM and Joe Biden will never be taxed while basketball players who work their entire lives to provide a high entertainment value are punished from the very first paycheck regardless of the fact that they started with nothing.

Let's discuss the difference between wealth and productivity, because there are plenty of rich people who produced NOTHING of value for society and are rewarded by not paying taxes for it under the current system.
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@Greyparrot
The reason why rich people are rich and poor people are poor, is a much more complex sociological issue than just who does what and who pays what tax.

I could write a dissertation on the subject, but I don't have either the time or the inclination to do so.
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@Greyparrot
In order to truly tax the rich, all income taxes, including capital gains, would have to be abolished and replaced with wealth taxes.
it makes more sense to tax property than to tax income
#6
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The United States may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world.
The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top 5% in income is just 1%, according to “Understanding Mobility in America,” a study by economist Tom Hertz of American University in Washington. By contrast, a child born rich had a 22% chance of being rich as an adult, he said.
“In other words, the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if you are born rich than if you are born in a low-income family,” Hertz told an audience at the Center for American Progress.
He also found that the U.S. had one of the lowest levels of intergenerational mobility in the wealthy world, way behind most of Europe.
“Consider a rich and poor family in the United States and a similar pair of families in Denmark, and ask how much of the difference in the parents’ incomes would be transmitted, on average, to their grandchildren,” Hertz said. “In the United States this would be 22%; in Denmark it would be 2%.”

Do you think that Trump would be anything other than an Amazon driver if he wasn't born into a rich family?
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#7
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@FLRW
Do you think that Trump would be anything other than an Amazon driver if he wasn't born into a rich family?
Not likely, he would probably have been Joe Biden if his dad was a Used Auto Sales expert. Almost as rich with much less effort.
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@Greyparrot
Wealth taxes encourage rich people move their wealth out of the country and hide it. Also, European countries with wealth taxes had a hard time enforcing it.

Unfortunately, a wealth tax would become another tool for the government to levy more taxes if it had it. The income tax would need to be abolished for it work for the average person. However, rich people would think it was highly unfair and hide their assets in everything that couldn't be taxed. 

A graduated income tax is also less likely to be considered as envy towards the rich, whereas a wealth tax would be.
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@CoolApe
A consumption tax would be more feasible in capturing assets from the wealthy without unfairly punishing income earners and producers who may not have much accumulated wealth.
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A consumption tax would be either a sales tax or Value added tax (VAT).  A consumption tax would be disproportionate to the low and middle income households since they consume more and save less as percentage of their income.

Corporate income tax and capital gains tax is more progressive because it places the burden on investors.

The benefit of a VAT tax is that it encourages investment when it replaces a corporate income tax, however its a consumption tax which fronts the cost onto consumers instead of stakeholders.

A capital gains tax is probably the most progressive tax there is.
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@zedvictor4
"The rich" are rich for a reason and an essential part of a healthy and productive social system.
Extremely rich people EXIST within most healthy and productive systems, but they are not in any way necesary or even beneficial to such a society. Go to the middle ages or ancient rome and you will find plenty of RICH people who are keeping the masses down using their wealth and influence. The rich have been there "for a reason" in almost every society ever, so there is NO CORRELATION there being between rich people and a healthy productive society.

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I don't know why poor people (worth less than $300 million) even want to live.
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@CoolApe
Wealth taxes encourage rich people move their wealth out of the country and hide it.
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@Benjamin
Go to the middle ages or ancient rome and you will find plenty of RICH people who are keeping the masses down using their wealth and influence.
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@Benjamin
but they are not in any way necessary or even beneficial to such a society.
So we would be better off without Iphones, cars, internet, next day shipping shopping, and thousands of other things because the people that produced them made too much in a given year. I disagree.  Society desperately needs those people, but they do not need people that accumulate wealth without producing anything.

Production taxes are a tax on the progression of society.
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@3RU7AL
Imagine in the middle ages if the King taxed only his blacksmiths, then complained because he couldn't arm his knights.

Maybe even blamed Putin or the Plague.
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If you earned $180,000 a day from when Jesus was born to the present day, you would still not be as rich as Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
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@FLRW
The power of inflation is mighty indeed.
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@Greyparrot
So we would be better off without Iphones, cars, internet,

When was the first touchscreen phone invented? The first touchscreen phone was launched in 1992 by IBM. The IBM Simon is also referred as the first smartphone. Simon is the first smartphone to be incorporated with the features of a PDA.

Karl Benz patented the three-wheeled Motor Car, known as the "Motorwagen," in 1886. It was the first true, modern automobile,

But not the Internet itself, which began as Arpanet, an effort of the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the late 1960s, under the supervision of visionaries like Bob Taylor.

NASA is also credited with inventing,


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#20
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Musk invented more things  than Nasa with less money and in a faster time frame. 

NASA is an embarrassment of government incompetency.
#21
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@Greyparrot
Musk invented more things  than Nasa with less money and in a faster time frame. 
we stand on the shoulders of giants
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@Greyparrot
Steve Jobs was a sales and marketing genius, but he never invented anything. In fact, he knew almost nothing about computers.

Steve Wozniak

Born: August 11, 1950 (age 71), San Jose, California, United States
Net worth: $10 million (celebritynetworth.com)
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#23
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No, we don't. we destroy giants to get the Golden eggs.
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#24
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@3RU7AL
Most people that make neat stuff have no clue how to distribute it.

World hunger is also a distribution problem. All hail the distributors.
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@Greyparrot
we don't seem to need billionaires to invent stuff
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#26
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It depends. If they provide you with something useful, then you need them.

Billionaire producers most often exist in heavily regulated markets where you have to be exceptional in a world of regulated competition.

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@Greyparrot
Billionaire producers most often exist in heavily regulated markets where you have to be exceptional in a world of regulated competition.
China is producing new billionaires, especially female billionaires, at a much faster rate than any other country in the world - though America's upper class still controls more wealth than its Chinese counterparts. As of 2022, China has more billionaires, with 1,133, while the US has just 716.
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#28
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And there is no more heavily regulated market as the Chinese market.
#29
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@Greyparrot

Musk invented more things  than Nasa with less money and in a faster time frame. 
Just to be clear, Musk isn’t Ironman. 

I don’t deny his companies have expanded upon already existing technologies and created a few new materials. 
But when it comes to distinct technologies, do you have a list?

NASA is an embarrassment of government incompetency.
How so? Do you think NASA would have done better if it went private and got subsidised?
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