Elizabeth Warren is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, so she is out making the rounds, boasting of what she would do as president. She’s planning to run as the weepy champion of the middle-class, so you can expect her to say the “middle class is getting hammered” six million times over the next year. She can’t be a culture warrior, now that her fake Indian cover is blown, so she is going for the bourgeois populism that used to be a thing on the Left, before they discovered anti-whiteness.
Warren’s first salvo is a wealth tax, which will be some sort of levy on those with assets over $50 million. This will be in addition to the regular income tax and she says it will raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years. That’s like saying the plan will allow Big Foot to finally get the unicorn he always wanted. Politicians love making ten year projections, despite the fact no one believes them. It’s just a way for the actors, our rich people hire to run for office, to sound like they are something other than actors. It’s part of the role.
Portly polemicist Kevin Williams was ready to lead the charge against this new communist assault on the rich people who pay him to sing their praises. That post is a madhouse of nonsense, but it is also like reading National Review from 1985. That old crowd is still lighting candles, hoping the Left will get back to talking like socialists, so they can get back to pretending to be conservatives. Comparing what Warren is proposing to the Soviet collectivization programs is dumb even by the standards of Kevin Williamson.
It’s also completely backwards. Historically, the radical position on taxes is all about restructuring society and making it more egalitarian. The Right took the position that the state was primarily in service to the rich, so the rich should pay for it. Sure, the rich tax the poor, that’s why they are rich, but they pay for the state, because it serves their ends. The Warren plan is hardly radical. Every state in America has property taxes. Some have inventory taxes on business and asset taxes on individuals. Asset taxes are common.
Of course, Warren’s game here is to pitch herself as the champion of middle-class white women. Kamala Harris will get the black vote. The question is whether she is black enough to get enough of it. Warren is betting she can scoop up the Sanders vote and the box wine auntie vote, in order to counter the black vote. That’s why she is pitching this idea, which she knows will never happen. It’s a form of virtue signaling in order to shape the narrative of the 2019 election season, heading into the primaries next January.
Still, it is an idea that should be discussed. America has many problems and is probably headed for a very bad end, but if reform is possible, it starts with reigning in the out of control plutocrats. Everyone talks about the racial and ethnic hostility, but one big problem is the degree of inequality. You can make all the libertarian arguments you like to explain why this is not a bad thing, but history says otherwise. Throw in the outright hostility of the rich toward their duties to the nation and it is a dangerous brew.
A debate about an asset tax also does something else that is needed. It raises the issue of why taxing income is acceptable, but taxing other things is taboo. Why do we treat investment earnings as sacred, while the working man’s paycheck is fair game? Take this further, why are we using an industrial age tax philosophy in the technological age? The world is a very different place economically, compared to a century ago when income taxes were invented. It’s time to think about modernizing taxes.
Another thing worth debating is how tax policy changes the behavior of office holders in a neoliberal democracy. Every shabby economics expert in Conservative Inc. can lecture on tax policy and market incentives, but no one thinks about how tax policy changes the behavior of public officials. Income taxes encourage government to attract earners, not builders. Countries become flop houses for stateless economic pirates. That’s what countries are in the global age. They are a pirate’s cove for global capital.
Asset taxes could motivate politicians to attract investment that creates wealth in the nation. After all, if the money available to the politicians is pegged to the asset value of the nation, nationalism makes a lot of sense. That’s why the flunkies and coat holders for the globalist class will be howling in agony at any attempt to debate this idea. Income taxes serve the interest of the post-nation future. Global capital is just a renter, always looking for the cheapest rate, with no stake in the port where they find shelter.
Make no mistake, Elizabeth Warren is as dumb as a goldfish. She’s proposing this because the script writers hired for her told her it will get applause from the demographic she is courting. On this side of the great divide, it offers a chance to talk about bigger issues in practical terms that disgruntled whites can follow. It also offers another chance to be the thoughtful, intellectually serious alternative to the sad clown show that in conservatism. The politics of the future, will need a tax policy to match it.
Start going after wealth and the wealth finds a way to disappear. Buy expensive paintings and move them to your house in the Caymans. Poof. Millions transfered overseas and no bank transactions. Andrew Mellon was an expert in hiding wealth and when he was made treasury Secretary by Harding he used his expertise to develop the tax policy that would replace the high rates Woodrow Wilson had put in place. Many of the paintings he had bought to hide assets he eventually gave to the US govt and these formed the basis for the National Gallery.
Just a funny little observation on wealth taxes. My old firm had a very large practice insuring very high end art and collectibles. Highly profitable. But the business never really thrived in the parts of Europe that had asset taxes. It was common to use these items to hide wealth, they would change hands in private sales and be vaulted somewhere, often Switzerland to avoid the tax authorities. Hence the items were never reported for scheduling purposes since the tax authorities had on demand access to our records.
“Hide it in Switzerland” still a thing? Back in the 80s I used to bodyguard for rich folks that did this regularly (no secret what was going on) and I heard towards the oughts that was getting less and less reliable.
Tax avoidance is a constant, which is why I don’t think much about it when talking about tax policy. There’s always going to be some of it. The question is can we fashion tax policy so that the rich regain their allegiance to their native lands again? I don’t know if it is possible and I’m skeptical of it being done peacefully, but it is part of a process of awakening on our side of the great divide. Nowhere is the brainwashing so intense than in the area of taxation.
New York and California have some of the highest taxes on rich people in the country. They also have all the rich people. Liberia has very low taxes, but no rich people are moving to Liberia.
Elizabeth Warren is the secular 21st century version of the finger wagging Methodist busy body of over a hundred years ago. Only back then she would have been talking about “demon rum” and kids in factories. I understand the appeal of the wealth tax, after all what about the people who already made their money? Income tax matters less and less once your assets are more than $40 million or so. However, that money would for the most part, not be captured by the government. It would be placed in irrevocable trusts, it would be moved overseas, it would greatly… Read more »
Not really, Trust and other loopholes can be eliminated and when not if the US goes Socialist , well baring a civil war anyway there are innumerable ways to deal with the wealthy ranging from changing the currency to outright murder FDR was Socialism Light. The actual Commie President and Congress won’t be as nice and the courts won’t be able to do a damned thing. And note the military won’t intervene either From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs might as well be the military motto Once the Commies get in charge , they… Read more »
There is a bit of applicable economic theory called Hauser’s Law , its a function of the Laffer Curve which more or less states that no matter what policies are enacted the Federal government will not be able to get more than 19.5% of GDP in revenue. Thus far this observation seems to be true within a small margin of error. All we can do therefore is shift who pays the taxes from one group to another. We can go to that 19.5% and tax the rich but that will just barely make ends meet and the huge gap between… Read more »
Spot on. Though I would call it unrestrained capitalism or capitalism as religion as Tucker Carlson put it. The Conservatives promoted this model for 50 damn years and it put us in our current predicament. This includes the illegal immigrant problem as well, given industry’s insatiable appetite for cheap labor. By all rights Communism shouldn’t be making a comeback, but thanks to the massive wage and income disparities and the destruction of middle-class. Not to mention wage stagnation. Our system is now providing fertile ground for the Marxists. By all rights Wal-Mart should not be our biggest employer nor should… Read more »
The thing to notice about any debate over taxes is this. As soon as the issue is raised, an army of dullards like Kevin Williamson, come out chanting the same dreary platitudes. The goal is first to drown out the debate in a wall of libertarian noise or shift the conversation from practical considerations that should be debated to theoretical topics that are pointless. What matters with taxes is who gets taxes, how they are taxed and why they are taxed. You’ll note that we never have this debate and a big reason is Conservative Inc has brainwashed people into… Read more »
There’s always the year of the Jubilee. All US Debt- cancelled! Merely announcing that in Davos would have a few of them leaping out of buildings in short order.
Patriotic Millionaires offers a more practical suggestion: harmonise tax on capital gains with that on income:
https://patrioticmillionaires.org/2019/01/22/raising-the-top-marginal-tax-rate-isnt-the-answer-to-wealth-inequality-we-need-to-think-bigger/
I support a wealth tax on the very wealthy although I don’t support Warren.
I used to believe that business men were national treasures and that any wealthy person must have learned right wing lessons. Today most very wealthy people are enemies of my people and the jobs that they create are for immigrants and foreigners.
I support this policy because it hurts my enemies. Don’t tell me that if we attack them then they will attack us. Their attack on us is already unrestrained. We’d be better off if they left our country.
Excellent post. Problem is the alt-right is not in a position to offer disgruntled whites anything. It is not a political party, it doesn’t even have a platform. Right now blue collar and middle-class whites are more likely to just walk away from politics after Trump’s seppuku on the national stage. He was their last hope and has been shown to be a bullshit artist like Schwarzenegger. That said, Warren, Harris and AOC are the future of the Democratic party and their ‘tax the rich’ platform is a big sell among their base and even among a lot of pissed… Read more »
“That’s like saying the plan will allow Big Foot to finally get the unicorn he always wanted.”
Who the hell is against Big Foot being happy?? Have some heart man
(agree w the rest about Ms Goldfish)
Capital does not recognize national borders. And folks don’t realize the extent to which the ossified, socialist member-nations of the European Union rely on America’s Democrat Party to levy Americans’ taxes in support of Europe’s top-heavy social policies. When American taxpayers get relief, as they are getting under Trump, then capital flows from Europe’s coffers into the booming American economy. This stresses Europe’s bloated fiscal policy, and it makes the EU’s grantors, Germany and France, uneasy about their five and ten-year financing plans. Suffice it to say, the bureaucracy in Brussels does not like to see tax cuts in America.… Read more »
Capital does not recognize national borders? It used to for most of human history. Cosmopolitan globalism is not the norm. In fact, it is an extreme outlier in human history. The last round of this ended with the Great War. History tells us the fences make good neighbors.
I look forward to the Democratic primaries, it’s going a race to the bottom in second annual Virtue Signaling-Intertsectional-Diversity Olympics.
Islam tithe is. 3% tax on assets, so it’s not a new idea.
Kamala Harris is married to a white man and she has good hair. I don’t know if she’s going to get all the black vote. Probably. But not definite.
Hey, they sold Obama as a black man, it will work.
Eliminating the step up in basis for assets transferred to trusts and for estate tax purposes would probably help reign in the plutocrats. But don’t apply 50% estate tax rates. Make it the capital gains rate. Which should be closer to the income tax rates.
What about passing a land value tax? I’m sure it couldn’t cover all government expenses like Henry George or the Physiocrats hoped, but it could bring in some dough.
My old conservative instincts bristle at this..but my newer radical instincts want to see this class of people crushed into rubble. After all, it is they who are funding, organising and backing our enemies.
Don´t overlook the the monetary policies for the last 3.decades have been a redistribution programme where asset classes has been inflated for a periode to bust and to inflate again with low interest rates and QE programmes. Those who have assets have been subsided by this policy. The states too has been a part of this policy. It will deflate at some point .Those inflated assets will return to the mean. The states will start to face insolvency too when rich inflated assets starts to deflate.
The biggest problem with eating the rich is keeping the beast from eating the rest of us once the rich have been consumed.
That’s a great example of the brainwashing at work. Our cultural overlords have convinced us that the wrong tax policy will open the gates of Hell. Therefore, no one can even think about changing our tax policy, beyond minor tweaking to help the sacred plutocrats. Otherwise, Lucifer will rise from the earth and enslave the middle class.
Meanwhile, the white middle-class shrinks every day.
I’m willing to roll the dice on Old Scratch.
Sorry Z, in this countries current state and direction , talking about tax policy is as useful as Trump offering a tax cut. I feel the need to elaborate but this week really cemented the fact to me that we are toast. We need concrete plans for an insurgency and how to devastate our oligarchs and cultural enemies. Then economics.
No, but these sorts of conversations are useful in illuminating underlying causes and why conventional thinking is useless. The first step in whites embracing the new politics of the future is for them to let go of the old politics.
A casual look at the cuck Right websites and the clueless cucksters still support low taxes for ‘muh jaaaab creators’ and ‘entrepreneurs’. Myself, I fully support AOC and Warren’s 70% tax on both wealth and income on the super rich pukes. If it means that Steyer, Bloomturd, the “Cock” Brothers, Paul Singer, Zuckerburg et.al. have less money to the destroy the U.S. I am all for it.
Heck, Trump should make AOC Treasury Secretary and watch her strip mine the globalist rich pukes dry.