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.
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.
Most of the very wealthy have used the government to get where they are. Special laws. Refusal to enforce existing laws. Connections. Government contracts – whatever , the list is very long. There are some , but VERY few who got where they are simply by their own exertions. I support removing any and all government assistance for wealth accumulation – thru laws that can be manipulated by the already connected for their own benefit. The fact that people completely ignore all of the politicians who are worth in the double digit millions – when all they have ever done… Read more »
I agree. But its not just they’re the enemy – for some reason Conservatives can’t tell the difference between Sam who owns a small factory or Gas Station, and George Soros or the Koch Brothers. Yes, its nice that Bezos started Amazon but does he deserve to have $85 Billion and pay little tax? After a certain point wealth doesn’t mean anything other than you’re smart enough to fool everyone else. It adds little to society and more importantly, gives the Billionaire an insane amount of power over the rest of us. But some Right-wingers are natural born Peasants –… Read more »
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 »
One big problem however, if Fed funds rates went back to its historical average of 5-6%, still not high, it would bankrupt the government and break the bond market due to the $22 trillion+ in national debt.
This is the problem. We’re near the tail end of a decades-long Ponzi scheme and there’s no way out from under that anvil that’s hanging over our head, which was hoisted by our forefathers of the Greatest, Silent and Boomer generations.
Ok, but is that the problem, or the solution?
Well, it’s an inevitable step on the way to a solution, so tomato-tomahto, I suppose. 🙂
James;
The historical solution for excess sovereign indebtedness from time immemorial has been repudiation. There are a number of time-tested methods including debasing the currency (if the debt is held by commoners), declaring a debt holiday/jubilee (if the debt is held by your partisans), issuing a new currency, alleging odious debt as the basis of outright repudiation as Venezuela is likely to do if the coup succeeds (if the debt is held by foreigners). etc.
The only questions now are how and when.
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.
Exactly. The hour is getting late for Middle America, and we don’t have another decade to sit around debating the finer points of these issues.
The wealthy, and their muppets like Ben Shapiro, are not our friends.
Frankly, Trump should invite AOC and her socialist firebrand Rep buddies to the White House and make them an offer: Trump, Pence, McConnell and Trump caucus like Blackburn throw their support behind a 50% wealth and income tax rates, on the globalist rich pukes and full DACA legalization in return for: 1. Full wall ($25 billion) funding 2. End to chain migration and reduction of the green card quota from 1.1 million to 200,000 per year. 3. End of diversity visa lottery and refugee visa bullshit 4. End of family reunification as well 5. Full mandatory nationwide E-verify and doubling… Read more »
Yeah, sure, Trump will get right on that. Did you all forget he and his children are multi-billionaires? You really think he’ll shoot himself, his kids, and his legacy in the foot? C’mon.
If Warren were to win, it would be with the tacit support of the people you just named. Do you really think they would allow her to institute such a tax? Only a full blown leftist revolution will get you to where you want to go…”strip mine the globalist rich pukes dry.” Perhaps it would be more effective to get a fascist regime to do this. That would be my hope, anyway. And they would have to be pursued to the ends of the earth. Otherwise they will simply set up shop and resume operations.
Are you really Naive enough to believe that the likes of Bloomy Steyer and Zuckerpuke are gonna get Asset stripped? You must already be a democrat. Even if they do it, please don’t tell us you’re actually stupid enough to think any of it is gonna wind up in your pocket. Why not just admit up front that you can’t stand that they’re richer than you? I can’t stand them either, but remember; if they can grab what those guys have, they can grab yours too.
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 »
Trump was committing seppuku by prolonging the shutdown. All it would have taken is a incident or a near-miss in the air due to the ATC union skipping work and Trump would be finished. Even Trump’s base recognizes that and understands that he fought and still fighting the good fight. It is very difficult to paint the Rats as the cause of an open border when no wall got funded for the past 2 years when the Repukes controlled both houses and the White House.
Give Trump some credit, he has done amazingly well for a total political neophyte.
UpYours: On that analysis, Trump was an idiot to begin the shutdown. Once started he had to see it to the bitter end or be a loser. He’s now a certified loser.
MBlanc46, if he saw it to the “bitter end” he would be a loser for sure. You would be saying Madam President Harris in 2021. The 3 week ploy was to capture the soccer hag and moderate cuck vote. His base is solidly with him but not numerous enough to win him a second term. He is hanging tough but also acting “Presidential”, (I hate that retarded term, BTW)
UpYours. I don’t see that his base is solidly with him. Quite the opposite. Many who have supported him believe that he’s cucked again and again. Many believe that this was his last chance to make good on “Build the Wall!” and now he’s let Nancy Pelosi urinate on his shoes and laugh in his face. Read other comments here on Zman’s blog, or Chateau Heartiste or Steve Sailer. I really hope that I’m wrong, but I fear that he’s now fatally wounded.
“Many who have supported him believe that he’s cucked again and again. Many believe that this was his last chance to make good on “Build the Wall!” and now he’s let Nancy Pelosi urinate on his shoes and laugh in his face. …”
So what are erstwhile Trump supporters gonna do? Vote Democrat?
Yep that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Not vote .
President Trump won by very small margin and if his people feel betrayed, they’ll stay home.
If the Democrats get smart and run sane candidates they’ll get voted in.
If they run crazies, people may vote them into to encourage things to get worse. We may get the civil war we probably must have a little ahead of time
Trump was the easy way out and if that can’t work? So be it.
Some will. Many will just stay home. A few thousand votes different in Michigan and Wisconsin and you have Pres. Harris. And Trump may well not get the Repub nomination if he seeks it. The corporate Repubs hate him at least as much as the Leftists do.
Buchanan’s proposal from the 1990s was a 15% tariff used to reduce taxes on the middle class. Trump sort of ran on something similar to that, but botched it when he got into office, giving most of the tax cuts to the rich, while his trade policy remains in disarray. And not stopping immigration means continued downward pressure on wages. A wasted opportunity, probably the last one.
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.
The worst are the ones who have inherited enormous fortunes. They think they’re aristocrats. They would make excellent fertilizer
Epaminondas, I would take the DuPonts any day over Buffet, Gates or Bezos. I understand some members of the great Lee family have managed to hang onto remnants of their fortune. I certainly would not want to touch them.
“My old conservative instincts bristle at this..”
I’m with you on that. I like Z’s stuff because it challenges my thinking. It is always good and healthy to challenge one’s beliefs.
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.
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 »
Exactly. Deporting all the illegals will help some as will getting of of all the green card labor and imported labor bit its not a solution Automation is eating into every category and this includes well paid White Collar jobs like accounting, law and everywhere else The problem isn’t automation takes all the jobs, we won’t be Eloi any time soon. The problem is that it takes enough jobs to greatly lower wages Homogenizing the US or whatever states come after is mandatory but we will still have to change the way we do business. I don’t think out culture… Read more »
Why do you suppose that the remaining white population will be mostly agrarian?
In the long term? We are going to run too low on resources sustain a heavily industrial or post civilization even with shale and are too stupid to go to fusion or the like Also the fastest growing group are the Amish and they have high retention. Even the LDS who typically had many kids aren’t having many and neither they nor the Evangelicals have high retention Since we can’t maintain our societies inputs, we’ll end up like Detroit, Without welfare or jobs, people end up not living in cities and end up farming to make ends meet Rome went… Read more »
The only way the population goes back to being mostly agrarian – is if the entire technological and power infrastructure completely goes away and/or collapses. I don’t remember what the exact percentage was (I want to say 60-70%) of the US population that was agrarian before the mechanization revolution – but it was mostly due to farming involving a LOT of hand labor. The mechanization AND the power revolution both contributed to remove the need for all those human hands doing the work. Unless the ability to form steel and assemble equipment is lost – I still can’t see us… Read more »
It requires a lot of energy inputs in terms of fertilizer to grow bio fuels. We are actually dangerously short on those complements as well . This doesn’t mean there will be no tractors but a lot of modern tractors are GPS locked too. No one is going to be running automated tractors if they have tractors at all. Its certainly possible to have lower tech automation, we might again have cotton gins in the South or even areas with hydro-power and electricity What we won’t have is a high energy use industrial civilization , an interstate highway system or… Read more »
It’s only the very largest tractors that are locked up with electronics. And that stuff is not used by small to medium sized farms. The electronics crap can also be removed and you’ll still have a running tractor. I’m already seeing articles about this in some of the tractor/farming sites. All that “lower tech” stuff you’re talking about has been feeding the world for going on 100 years now. The high tech stuff just brings higher levels of efficiency – going “low tech” doesn’t stop you from running a farm. Quite frankly I think all of this ” OMG –… Read more »
The rate of change is the bitch here. One still must eat while changing and have in mind – the learning curve, the human interactions, land redistribution, housing, services etc. as time consuming factors.
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 »
I see that over at the main conservative blogs all the time. So many boomers still fighting the War on Socialism, don’t even realize they’re being useful idiots.
My problem with taxation is that I don’t think the government needs ANY more. When they stop shipping billions of dollars overseas, stop funding importion of “refugees” , stop sending welfare to *immigrant* led families, stop building a massive war machine we simply do not need, stop funding massive armies of government employees doing shit that nobody wants done……….. etc. – then maybe we can start talking about what level of funding they need to steal from my pocket. Until that time – my answer is always going to be “you don’t need any more” – and I’ll do whatever… Read more »
Taxes are immoral? If they got people to believe that BS, that’s some great intellectual voodoo.
The big issue is though the US is collapsing economically to the point where our birth rate is mid European level and some theorists think it could go to German or Polish low, i.e demographic doomsday for all groups .
Man, you just can’t let go of the idea that mass-production babies are the magic weapon and too much room in the womb is “demographic doomsday.”
I think you’d be happier in sub-Saharan Africa or India. Birth rates there would bring you no end of joy.
Minus immigration the US population has been in decline since 1973. Nearly 50 years now. That is not the sign of a healthy culture. It wasn’t doing well in the 30’s wither hitting 1.8 TFR if I got my numbers right and if you want to tell me this was a moral issue that is horse dung. There was no pill, no abortion, no easy divorce, and none of the moral scapegoats I agree that we could do with less people over time but an economy in which people stop having kids because they can’t afford them is not worth… Read more »
A.B., For a reply, you’ve tossed a word salad of stuff into the hopper, but none of it has anything clearly relevant to your idealization of weaponized baby systems. It seems you are living in an ideological world divorced from concrete reality, and think population growth is the key to prosperity and all good things. But a culture that depends on endless growth, including in numbers of people, for its supposed well-being is decadent. Try thinking quality of life sometime instead of quantity. Or, as I said, move to India or Africa where you can wallow in all the population… Read more »
I’m not arguing for perpetual population growth. I’ve argued against it for a long time here and elsewhere. Over the long term, as I’ve noted population decline would be a good thing . I personally think the US would be at its best between 150-200 million the later number we could get with deportations and a few years decline. What I am saying is when people are too demoralized or lack the work to have children at all, your culture isn’t healthy and a healthy culture is required for a healthy future with quality people in it Suddenly taking today’s… Read more »
“On top of that our infrastructure is utterly substandard in most areas, schools failing and worse”
There are more salient causes of “failing schools” you don’t acknowledge.
You must be a Democrat.
I won’t argue the schools issue its mostly a social one.
I’ll add a caveat, making a more educated populace is largely useless for our problems. We can’t think or innovate our way out of problems we have. New innovations that don’t create well paying jobs for middle and lower skilled workers help no one.
More tech, less babies..
I would argue that a more “educated” populace has CREATED a lot of the problems we have. The problem is what they have been “educated” into. Look at the current trend – with women making up the majority of college students. What has that REALLY gotten us as a society over the last few decades? The wife and I were just talking about this tonite. We talked about women we know who have kids and women we know who have not. Go to sites like Chateau Heartiste and they dig into the nasty underside of ‘feminism’ – and what it… Read more »
That’s not a bad conclusion
In order for that to pencil out so we do’t turn into a 3rd world sewer, we had better have a lot of jobs that pay well at all IQ and skill levels.
We don’t have that and as such is natural for our leaders, the ones who give a crap but have no real solutions to peddle education
That you can sell unlike say women back into the kitchen, increased pay and a 30 hour work week
Was the US a “third world sewer” – in the 1700’s and into the 1800’s ? Point is: I think the problem is larger than just “good jobs”. It’s the type of people that live here. Which from what I have seen – is going down in quality over the course of my lifetime. I see a lot of talk about automation – well automation is driven by cost saving. If people didn’t cost so much to employ – and the ones you employ weren’t so damned bad at doing their jobs – then automation wouldn’t even be considered in… Read more »
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.
For hard assets of that sort, still pretty easy. Financial assets not so much.
A deep enough hole with some yellow stuff on the bottom will do. Why bother going to Switzerland; why the hustle?
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.
Read a headline about 1500 private jet planes headed to Davos. What a great idea for a thriller. Someone has a nuke set to blow there and the secret agents race against time blah blah blah. But I would have the bomb go off halfway through with the rest of the story being the aftermath.
I’ve had ideas about a story where Muslims nuke D.C., NYC, LA, SF, and a couple other deep blue places, people in the midwest (I ignore fallout) dance in the streets and the USA does actually become great again.
Z man. I don’t understand what an asset tax is.
Maybe I’m not he only one who doesn’t know.
Please give us an asset tax faq.
Most common one for individuals is in those states where car registration fees are determined by the value of the car.
David;
Couple of historical examples: Byzantium and the Persian Empire had ‘land taxes’ where the land-owners were taxed at a flat rate per acre. Kinda makes you want to get the max value production out of your acreage. Don’t pay and the Governor gets to take your land and pass it on to his family. That plus you might get tortured and sent to the mines.
System repeatedly broke down under enemy pillage. After the second time through you might as well join the goths/huns/mongols.
Easy peasy.
You’re taxed on what you own, not on what you earn.
Common examples: property tax on your home, or car registration fee based on the cars value.
Another example: I once paid a “personal property tax” where one enumerated the mutual fund and stock shares and bonds you owned, sent in the list, the government evaluated it as of a certain date then sent you a bill for a percentage of the valuation.
If you want to yank the rich off their pedestals, I’d rather go the route of the pogrom. That way you just target the rich asshole bullies and busybodies while leaving the rest alone. There’s also the problem of what to do with all those trusts and endowments that are equally as destructive. No point in lopping off Rockefeller’s head if you’re going to leave his trusts and endowments in place. It seems to me this would be an all or nothing process.
Saml Adams,
I’ve always assumed the rise of modern art is due to this. Or outright money laundering.
Both. Holds for all sorts of collectibles. Believe it or not the most portable form of wealth in the world is very high grade rare stamps.
That’s why I collect them!
Agreed. But the most verifiable wealth was, is, and will be – gold.
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.
When the state has confiscated all the rich people’s wealth… who will pay the wages of the common folk?? I don’t see any po’folks hiring their fellows…
Excellent.
Rich people like to live in New York, but the corporations that generate their wealth are often not incorporated in New York.
New York also doesn’t have a separate long term capital gains tax. The federal capital gains tax dwarfs the state tax rate.
The richer you are, the less income tax matters to you, and the less the location of your personal residence matters to how your money is taxed.
Also, dividend income and passive income are exempt from FICA, which saves a huge chunk, no matter what state you’re in.
Well certainly. Rich people are able to buy the best knowledge to hide wealth. A good start is the charitable foundation. Bill and Hill may have put theirs together from a kit they bought at “Forms-R-Us”.
“They also have all the rich people.”
Careful there, Zman. CA has people with high incomes which are completely offset by the higher cost of living.
The truly rich (I’d say >$20 million, which these days is almost peanuts among the upper echelons) care little what the income tax rate might be in a particular locale. The rich have little if any salary income, and realize other income where and when it’s convenient.
The American Left seems to believe they can support the bloated Welfare-Warfare State by soaking small business owners and orthodontists. Good luck with that.
Soking, not soaking. It means to loot for tribute.
Nina-Pinta-Santa-Maria-Cortez’s target moron demographic does not understand this. Just try explaining income tax vs. wealth tax to someone who actually expected Obama to give them a yacht. They’ll vote for stuff that solidifies the wealth and power of the elite while strip-mining the laundromat owners and then riot when the laundromats close.
Yeah, but in there is low capital spend per capita in Liberia while there is high capital spend per capita in California and New York.
The return to capital is the source of wages. Where there is high capital spend per capita (e.g., Norway), wages are high. Where there is low capital spend per capita (e.g., China, India), wages are low. Where there is no capital spend per capita (e.g., much of Africa) there are no wages.
So your comment suggesting that high taxes creates rich people is absurd with no basis in observable reality.
You seem to have a reading disability. I never said anywhere that high taxes creates rich people.
Zman… Anyway we could get your take on Trump opening the gov. with no wall?
correlation is not causation
Right, is Liberia sort of a vapid case? Do they even have the infrastructure or any kind of stable currency?
Dividends are taxed at a maximum of 15%. Most of the Rich don’t get a paycheck so they can afford to live in places like California and New York as they are “special”.
And after establishing the taxes to go after the wealth, they collect the initial low fruit before the rich moves the cash offshore. Suddenly, the need to bring in the cash they were starting to get used to must now “unfortunately” have to come from said middle class…which WAS THE INTENTION ALL ALONG. For it’s not just about the MONEY, it’s about the CONTROL. Evil, pure and simple.
But income taxation is a tax wealth tax. Income tax on wages is an ongoing sales tax on the product of capital of any wage earner. Said another way, income tax is a series of sales tax levies on wealth traded between wage earner and employer.
Why don’t you see workers fleeing to the Caymans or any no income tax havens?
Because the Caymans don’t have any jobs for our middle class;
They also have stricter immigration laws.
I’ve always found income tax a moronic expediency. Is it not a disincentive to work? I know in my case, where there is also some liability involved with work, that income tax has actually discouraged me from being more productive.
If only the art world was still only doing that.
We now have artists who are talentless,
Whose works are praised in the academy and in the art world,
Who are given prominence by curators and dealers,
Who are underwritten and insured by investors,
Whose works are then purchased by the well heeled,
Who in turn get to avoid taxation,
Whose investment keeps this wheel turning.
Many of whom, uhmmm, share a different sort of group interest…
One behavioral, the other too obvious to need defining.
For every buyer there is a seller. So what will the seller of said paintings do with this USD funny money.
Dual-citizen tax.
Indeed, eliminate tax treaties, if you are a dual citizen pay taxes to both countries for the privilege
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.
Thanks for that clarification. Reagan battled the leftie mind set demonstrating (again) that lowering punishing tax rates increases revenue. Which it did dramatically. We were so distracted with being right in a wrong world that we didn’t ask what happens when you open that revenue valve wide like magic. Government went from being starved to being engorged. Maximizing tax revenue is not your friend.
“The first step in whites embracing the new politics of the future is for them to let go of the old politics.” Got it! Push through the epiphany veil.
Our old world and how it was defined and what defined it…..is gone with the wind!
Now is time to think out of the box and not reproduce Kevin Williamson. And that is what we are attempting to do here. Thank you Z.
“We need concrete plans for an insurgency and how to devastate our oligarchs and cultural enemies. ”
Please tell us about some plans.
Let the radical ‘Rats and the Republican eunuchs finish off the country(rich, poor, whatever)using “tax policy.” Or any other “comprehensive reform policy” they choose to ram down the throats of the servile sheep known as the “American People.”
I no longer give a good goddam.
A senile, insane old crone rules with an iron fist by acclamation of the cynical Deep State and the shit-for-brains Media/Entertainment/Educational Complex. The rusted, broken-down American Republic is in the scrapyard awaiting the crusher. It’s over. There’s no “probably” about it.
BLOAT.
I look forward to the Democratic primaries, it’s going a race to the bottom in second annual Virtue Signaling-Intertsectional-Diversity Olympics.
For 5000 years of documented human history, governments survived on excise taxes, tariffs and other duties. Only in “democracy” can 51% will a portion of the population to give up 70+% of their income with a wealth tax to boot, since “democracy” contains moral authority within itself. So many of the crazy things outlined in the last podcast can only come about with grant money sloshing around. Where did this grant money come from? If government kept to its role of keeping people from stealing from each other and killing each other, while paving roads, it wouldn’t have time to… Read more »
JR Wirth: Grant money is where the action is, these days. It’s where real money goes to hide. Every darn doctor’s office has become an “institute.” Every two-bit charity is a “foundation.” Every nickle-and-dime donor has a “charitable trust.” It’s all BS, created by lawyers and milked by accountants to pump-up the billings. The banks get to charge fees on a whole bunch of new accounts and the government pretends to look the other way, because the government is, in fact, the biggest “charitable giver” of them all.
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. Does it, really? Most of history is the story of kingdoms, empires and dynasties with radical levels of inequality that were often stable for centuries. Millennia, even. The inequality experienced by the slave, serf or peasant vs. the king, emperor or other member of the ruling class in ancient Egypt, China, Rome, Greece or any of the European kingdoms or empires… Read more »
You say that, assuming you would have been at the top in prior ages. In reality, you would have died from the runs at the age of 30 or maybe died in a skirmish as a conscript.
Life in times of great inequality sucked for almost everyone.
It did. But inequality was not a harbinger of societal instability. Now we have less inequality by far, so complaining about inequality in the current age is a bit myopic, as is the idea that the current level of inequality is a driver of societal change. Did things suck for almost everyone because things were primitive for everyone? When the most powerful man in America can watch his son die due to a blister on his heel (Calvin Coolidge’s son) — and that in an era of profoundly better well-being for all — I don’t think it’s “inequality” that was… Read more »
Actually, inequality is the highest its been in America. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the measure itself is not without problems and the case is often overstated. Even adjusting for that, we have a situation in America that is new to us.
As far as history, it’s pretty much a given that inequality and instability are linked. The reason is it magnifies the divisions in society.
The measure has a lot of problems. At the very top, you have a tiny number of people who are just cartoonishly, ridiculously wealthy, and that throws off the mean a ton. The fact that Bezos has $160 billion doesn’t make my life worse. None of his wealth came at my expense — any money he got from me came from mutually-beneficial transactions. Then you have a handful of people with assets over $2 billion. Forbes 400 lists most of them. Me, I’m a solid 5%-er — the top 5% of wealth in the country, but believe me, I’m not… Read more »
True, but not the point of the post. The interest of the super wealthy, the globalists and their wannabees (the current ruling class) no longer coincide with national interests.
Not sure you can change their mindset with tax policy. You would have to induce them to invest here rather than abroad.
“The reason is it magnifies the divisions in society.” Indeed. There are published “wealth” graphs for the last century or so and the amount of the nation’s wealth owned by the 1% has shot up exponentially, while the rest of us (the 99%) has remained pretty flat. Problem is (for me anyway—I’m not too educated here) is why would it be a solution to confiscate the 1%’s wealth only to have the government give it to the other 99%? How would it benefit anyone in the long run. OK, we weaken the Plutocrats (assumes that’s even possible), but how does… Read more »
Given that the lesser plutocrats plan to go all out with automation and want to be rid of 40% of all jobs if possible I’m past caring what happens to them. Business will have to serve the national interest or else. If they can’t because we can’t come up with a functional model to make sure people have what they need than we’ll go socialist and redistribute wealth The GDP will be smaller for everyone but oh well, so long as people feel stable enough to have kids than it works well enough. Half a smaller loaf or a bowl… Read more »
Well, if you feel socialism (as recently experienced in the USSR) produces a stability that encourages child bearing…but it doesn’t. The population stat’s I’ve seen show they were in trouble before the collapse. We also see today that there are no welfare (read socialist) states such as the touted Scandinavian union that has a respectable birth rate. But I’m not against taking the plutocrats down a peg or two (or three or four), just that the Government confiscating wealth to give to the non-producers seems like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
You know why so many are living on the dole? Because the wealthy created the situation when they off-shored entire industries to Asia to benefit from the wage differential. Millions of jobs vanished never to return and with them the communities that they once supported. What jobs are available don’t pay well and are often part time. For many people it’s better to stay on the dole than to work. Worse, illegals and workers on work visas are suppressing wages across the board and taking our jobs But the wealthy benefit from this and this is all that matters. And… Read more »
Rod, that’s fine. But there will need to be a replacement of the “parasites” or those people who produce in order to accumulate profit or benefit. Yes, profit motive and greed. What we’ve allowed is for such people to buy the government. Crony capitalism that has allowed the parasite the power to kill the host. I simply don’t want to toss the baby out with the bath water.
I think maybe it’s not that the super-wealthy own so much; it’s that they use what they own to subvert and tear down the basic institutions that we normies care about. Who among us would care so much if Jeff Bezos and Tom Steyer were American patriots instead of belonging to the TWANLOC cohort?
Money hording and wage arbitrage is unpatriotic and you don’t get to Steyer or Bezos rich without screwing the entire nation over
In any case neither the business model of Amazon or hedge funds like made Steyer rich serve the national interests
Economic Nationalism requires controls on Capital
Nationalization in the 19th century and we got the Gilded Age. Progressivism was the consequence. Globalization in the late 20th and early 21st century and we get another Gilded Age. What’s next?
The past didn’t have computers or literacy. Almost everyone was a farmer with no social mobility and may have lived in one spot for centuries among people he knew since birth. And as for Feudalism, this also required the elite to have skin in the game . They led wars from the front and were often obligated to give certain things to their people in many societies Our elite would gladly kill us all if they could benefit from it. They have no skin in the game h/t Taleb The US was founded on entirely different ideas , that of… Read more »
The inequality today has a different effect on people now. There is no Great Chain of Being anymore. Also, modern media show the poor what they are missing. Envy is a powerful motivator. People now know they can vote themselves other people’s stuff, and they will.
Private property rights aren’t sacred and envy is not a religious crime no matter what the old testament taught you. Its a natural response from a species that evolved to live in societies where you knew everyone and =whatever benefits you got you earned. Our rich don’t deserve a fraction of what they have and anyone with any sense would know this. Oligarchical Capitalism is a bad as Communism. And before anyone blows a gasket, the cost of modernity is economic inequality. I get that. Its a worthwhile trade off to a certain point but when it begins to destroy… Read more »
Prosper—very well said.
“…envy is not a religious crime no matter what the old testament taught you.”
Actually, that makes it exactly a religious crime, by definition, to anyone whose religion adheres to the Old Testament.
True if a bit pedantic. A lot of people do not adhere to Old Testament or hell New Testament values. including many people who are supposed to be Christians Frankly the rich have been freeloading on Christianity for all together too long. They clearly don’t believe in it or they wouldn’t be muzzling the proverbial oxen, a passage that appears more times than injunctions against theft or murder I might add. Its time to make sure that they cooperate for the greater good. I’d strongly rather keep the atheist state as religion ideology of Communism out of it but getting… Read more »
The devil is in the details and you know it Wages for the working class in the last 30 years have been flat or even regressed in many cases. The middle-class is dying, lower class white are suiciding and ceasing to marry and have children. This is all a result of globalization and off-shoring of industry to slave labor countries Now it made a lot of upper class whites richer than god. Bezos and Wal-Mart make billions selling slave labor goods to poor Americans. Americans who at one time would have made such goods and gotten paid a good wage… Read more »
Very good points! Would you rather have the 1950s, with high taxes on rich people and low taxes on everyone else, or today? 90% of us would go retro.
The taxes were lower in the 1950s because government expenditures were smaller and more limited..
NYC had less than 100 thousand people on the payroll back then, now there are over 300 thousand.
Government has expanded so much, and wormed its way into every corner of our lives, that the taxes must be much higher to support it. That’s a large part of why taxes are so high.
Wages have decline year on year since 1973 or so and when wages are arbitraged down, the government always expands. Its supposed to do this since this serves the people.
If I am unemployed or can get a better deal I’ll gladly go to work for leviathan or take welfare,. I have to eat
You don’t like this? Get people to pay more in wages ,
Since it seems we can’t. lobbyists don’t ya know, well the State can always hire more people and mint more money.
I really like “box wine aunties” as a label, but I think one of Lizzie’s bigger constituencies, in relative terms, will be Bernie bros who are so far along the “male feminist” spectrum that they sort of got a dull ache in the mangina voting for an old white man, no matter how commie he might be.
‘ That’s what countries are in the global age. They are a pirate’s cove for global capital.’
I usually call it a global commons, but I like this better. I’m going to steal it.
‘Global capital is just a renter, always looking for the cheapest rate, with no stake in the port where they find shelter.’
‘Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.’
-T Jefferson
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I wrote just the other day that things would get interesting when AOC proposed a wealth tax. It looks like Warren beat her to the punch. I expect the entire block of new Democrats will adopt a wealth tax like this.
Kamala Harris has already proposed a middle-class tax cut. If she couples middle class tax relief with a wealth tax she’ll be President Harris in 2021.
We have already seen this play out in France. Macron took office as a middle class friendly “reformer” and as a former Rothschild banker cut taxes on the rich while raising stealth taxes on the middle and working classes via traffic fees which are centralized and paid to the National government. Those were raised to confiscatory levels by decree. Hence the Yellow Vests it is literally a matter of survival. The reason? France is dead flat broke paying out all the Gibs to Muslims and Africans to avoid the declaration of an Islamic Republic and vast amounts of France being… Read more »
Well if we can’t fix the system there is always burn it down. This will deal with the issues of choking complexity and and its a historically common reaction. France seems to be going down the route albeit reluctantly and good on them. The Right is weak on organization but they can change fast and once there is enough momentum if only “I’ve had enough” than we’ll get change and than some. Lead is a harsh remedy but often a good one for many ills My cynical side says this is a righteous outcome for a nation founded by immigration… 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)
Breaking the stranglehold of the elite megarich requires breaking the pattern of tax deferral imbedded in unrealized capital gains and “carried” income that is not explicitly taxed. The wealthy use all sorts of tax deferral methods to their advantage. The middle and lower classes are much more wage income and consumption oriented, all of which is immediately taxed at every turn.
Many comments on this zThread perfectly illustrate the capture by the LOLbertarian/Koch/CoC/GOPe wrecking crew of so much of Conservativism with their Globalist “Taxes Bad!” “Government Bad!” Propaganda. If we want a Nation we need a Government. If we want a Government we need Taxes. The question as Z correctly states is “What sort of Taxes?” Tax Policy is Social Policy and the social aspect is at least as important as the revenue (remember what’s upstream from Economics?). I doubt anyone here would seriously object to Tax Policy designed to foster social stability and family formation. That can look a lot… Read more »
We have a multi-volume income tax code that creates social policy. Do we really need one more volume that slaps on a wealth tax? This assumes that these ultra wealthy people are stupid. I’m not a libertarian, they’re wrong on a lot. But every so often blind squirrels get the nut, and on monetary and tax policy they do much better. The problem is a central banking cartel crediting capital that has no basis to be created, that gets invested in assets that these people already own, and thus inflating them further, allowing, more asset acquisition. This talk of wealth… Read more »
Sorry, but (1) obviously a wealth tax just slapped on to everything else is not the plan. It’s a step in the right direction but of course there is much more to be done to move the tax code in the right direction, for example drastically higher marginal rates on higher incomes, and (2) an effective wealth tax is easy to implement and hard to evade. We already have total transparency on financial assets denominated in western currencies, even in the historic tax avoidance jurisdictions such as Swiss, Cayman, Channel Islands etc. The U.S. jihad against terrorist financing saw to… Read more »
Income tax Rube Goldberg Machine has failed. Let’s create second Rube Goldberg Machine. That’ll do the trick. As a side note, most tax attorneys are named Rube Goldberg. The history of the income tax alone teaches us a lesson. A bunch of rural slack jawed imbeciles got whipped up by people like William Jennings Bryan. Slack jawed idiots gave license to their congressmen to socially engineer a tax to reign in those awful robber barons (some were awful). But the thing about billionaires is that they LOVE social engineering. They thrive on it, and it took them 2.3 seconds to… Read more »
Income tax sales tax property tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax and more tax. It never ends. Government is a giant tick that sucks the lifeblood out of the producing populace. Unless the Federal government is relegated to its enumerated powers only those in the ruling class will expand infinitum. The States do it too. At least we have that going for us. Which is nice.
No kidding! Taxes everywhere on everything. I loathe the idea and practice of property taxes and asset taxes. It amounts to “rent” owed to .Gov and no property rights. Say you have $100M. If the asset tax is 10%, now I have 90% or $90M. Well next year I lose 9M. Now I own $81M. On it goes until I have nothing. Continual confiscation without remuneration. That’s why we tried income tax to protect private property. If the .Gov comes to take my property if I don’t pay tax on it year after year, I do NOT own it, I… Read more »
Most people in the US make around $15 an hour now and our largest employer is Walmart If you want to destroy your own people’s future the national sales tax is the way to go I’m in favor of a national wealth cap at this point tying it minimum wage, say 30x-50x that . Any income, any source over that is taxed at 95% . This includes benefits, perks and the rest. You get stocks, its value at time of receipt is income, any gains over the year, revenue. Basic stuff is excluded but luxury goods are are taxed as… Read more »
We already have an asset tax. It is called property tax. The middle class holds a much higher percentage of their assets in real estate than do the rich or the poor.
Go one level deeper – Only (net) taxpayers get to vote, and in proportion to the taxes they pay (including overpaying).
The Middle Class, especially when owning guns, even when lightly taxes, was independent of government. The Rich Crony and Bain Capitalists, and the welfare, Section 8, and medicaid recipients are dependent on Goverment.
Until it goes Venezuela.
Eat the rich? The rich are drinking the blood of the poor – literally.
Spot on. The rich have been openly looting the U.S. for the last 40 years. First via LBO’s, then later through off-shoring industry to take advantage of labor arbitrage and then the importation of foreign workers to replace American workers at the higher end while illegals take the service sector jobs. And now we’re being leeched by Big Med, Big Ed and Big Tech all draining us. The middle-class is now dying as a result, white birthrate is dropping precipitously, marriage among the lower classes is gone. We send our kids to college to become a indentured tax serf for… Read more »
We are not going to get out of the mess we’re in by talking about anything (taxes or otherwise). There isn’t going to be some national epiphany that cures all because someone spoke the magic words. The dissident right isn’t going to miraculously mushroom into a dominant movement because some super salesman persuades all the whites to join hands. All of that is a distraction because talking is easier than the hard work of preparing for the real fight, which will be physical and existential. You don’t prepare for that with transient atmospheric vibrations.
Tom, I understand where you’re coming from. But in a 24 hour day, I have spent more than enough prepping to get my ass shot off when the “balloon goes up”. These readings and postings are of importance as well.
Agree. The time for debating was a decade ago.
The alt-right isn’t even a movement or political party. It’s basically nothing.
Now with Trump committing seppuku in front of the nation and looking like a surrender monkey. Dems are a shoe-in in 2020. That means civil war shortly thereafter. If anyone thinks Harris won’t go mad dog on us, they are mistaken. Better look who is backing her – Hillary and her team.
She’s a walking nightmare. Warren is just a follower.
The FBI mustered 20 heavily armed jackboots to take down one 69 year old senior citizen accused of lying to Congress. That was a pure Gestapo move. Everyone in Congress lies all the time, but never a raid on their home in the middle of the night. If that isn’t incipient tyranny, I don’t know what it.
TomA: Are what you are saying is that it’s not about taxes, it’s about race?
IMO the unseen elephant in the room is the dollar’s reserve currency status. That status allows the US to create money out of nothing – it’s literally as if the federal government had stumbled onto a giant gold mine and controls its production. This has allowed the federal government to engage in all kinds of wasteful and destructive activity (worlds policeman, insane pseudo-religious domestic policies). All of the problems that you describe are second and third order effects of that issue (look into “the Dutch disease”). The worldwide demand for dollars causes the swelling of the financial sector over others.… Read more »
Now that Trump has suicided, I suppose we ought to start thinking about which of these horsemen will be coming for us.
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.
That’s what revolutions are: gambling. Or perhaps they’re like that proverbial box of chocolates. You just never know what you’re going to get.
I’ll take my chances of getting something better even it is only just a chance when i know I am going to get something worse if I don’t don’t.
Its pretty obvious what we have is not working at all and as such we have less and less to lose each year As the song says “Freedom is just another word for having nothing to lose”
Z, not intending to do a Cathy Newman on you, but are you saying you’re OK with confiscatory tax levels? From the POV of inducing the “needed change” sooner rather than later?
(We agree completely about the uselessness of libertarians and Williamson in particular BTW.)
All taxes levels are confiscatory. The state is taking the property of citizens. there’s no transcendent moral component to tax policy. It’s like any other public policy. it is what we think makes sense for us.
Z, what do you think about the APT Tax, or automated payment transaction tax. It takes flows of money in the economy, at a very low level (like 1%), with the receiver splitting the tax evenly with the sender. Anytime money moves in the economy, the sender and the receiver each owe .5%. It makes up for the small load level with the massive volume of transactions. Critics argue that would grind the stock and bond trading to a halt and kill the economy. It would certainly reign in the vulture capitalists and hedge funders, and robo-trading who are adding… Read more »
We have already been consumed, and displaced, in case you hadn’t noticed.
Time to shift gears in a more radical direction because the path we’re on leads to total erasure.
I’m more inclined toward counter-revolution. I really don’t care about the arcane details of taxes and government. But I’m vitally interested in making sure our side is in control of those. It’s well past time that whites should have rebelled against the current liberal-minority regime.
I do care about economics.
Any successful revolutionaries understand they have to rule afterwords and do a better job or there will be a counter evolution toot sweet
Unless people have money in modernity they don’t have children. I’d like more White people to have stable families and more White babies
This means that wages have to go up, housing and debts down and its going to require the State to make this happen
Nonsense. The US has had income tax rates in the 70% range at times and Sweden higher than that.
There was a conspicuous lack of camps full of dissidents in both nations.
Historical income & Capital gains tax rates here.
http://forbestadvice.com/Money/Taxes/Federal-Tax-Rates/Historical_Federal_Capital_Gains_Tax_Rates_History.html
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.
Phrases like “capital does not respect national borders” is little more than foolery expressed. Capital is not alive. It can’t decide. You would be right to claim that adventurers do not respect borders or investors do not respect borders. And of course you would be right. The ancient Romans did not, nor did the ancient Greeks. Even before Modern Civilization, there was the spice trade. So for others to claim that people did not put property to production (capital) in pursuit of profits over borders for much of history is merely foolery. In the USA alone, by the 1880, 20.647… Read more »
I see. Instead of admitting you lied, you change the subject. Your choices right now are to admit you lied or go away.
Worse than “lied”. (I can’t be the judge of such things). He used the word “foolery” with a straight face.
Go directly to Oubliette. Do not transverse Proceed. Do not be in receipt of two hundreds of your American “dollars”.
Mah /word/.
Oh, and by the way (Danger Will Robinson! Language Nazi Alert!)…
It’s not “merely foolery,” it’s “mere foolery.”
I do declare, the good Lawd did indeed create coal mines for a reason…
I think the greatest store of capital in the world is the human mind. Unless you want each country to be an East Germany with the death penalty for leaving, your capital can walk. If you had a time machine you could greatly improve the lives and productivity of millions of people by sending a small group of people back to the middle ages – like the Connecticut Yankee – sending a ton of gold or stacks of greenbacks would not.
Don’t mean to be critical the reason I comment is because you are a provocative thinker.
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/
A wealth tax is an accountant’s wet dream, as armies of them will be employed tallying up the value of people’s assets, which by the way, can fluctuate significantly from year to year.
And once the Feds realize there aren’t enough Jeff Bezoses around to tax, you and I will be paying wealth taxes on our $500K houses.
Bad idea.
Not only that, but the super wealthy will hire experts to figure out how to shield their assets, and will pay next to nothing. This is just human nature at work. Once the government sees how little revenue it raises from the Zukerbegs et al, they will turn to the middle class, who can’t afford to hire experts. The normal people will end paying more than they do now.
I run a business in which very large fixed assets are used to generate income over time. Too much tax on my annual wealth would bankrupt me, because you can’t just cut slivers off my fixed assets and send them in — I’d need to charge more to compensate and that would hit low-income people the hardest.
Even wealth taxes aren’t paid by the wealthy.
Warren’s proposal is to tax assets over $50MM. Everything you have posted in this thread indicates that you would not be affected by this tax. IMO, from the perspective of the alt-right, a tax like this is about politics, not economics. The global business elite has uniformly sided with the left in matters of culture and politics, while relying on support from the right to protect them from the type of confiscatory taxation that would be required to implement the political agenda of the left. No more–you lie down with dogs you wake up with fleas. If the left wants… Read more »
Right. It wouldn’t affect me — at least initially: eat the rich schemes tend to start expanding on who is considered rich. But the effects on people with $50 million in assets are just my situation writ large. The bottom line of my post remains the same: Even wealth taxes aren’t paid by the wealthy.
Show me a country where the rich are kept “in their place” that is a place you’d like to live.
Spud Boy: Or our 200K—300K houses. But your principle is correct. The rich will lawyer and accountant their way around the taxes. Wage earners will take the hit.
Some states already have personal property tax, where you’re supposed to tally up and pay a tax on the value of everything you own (including individual livestock), tho it is seldom enforced. Frex, my state has a personal property tax on chickens of five cents apiece. (Yes, really.) I don’t know of anyone with noncommercial livestock who pays the tax, or even knows about it. California attempted to float a wealth tax (only reason it failed to get on the ballot was a clerical error) which would have confiscated 50% of both cash and assets for anyone worth over some… Read more »
This is why, if the Visegrad countries (viz, Hungary Poland Czechia) were smart, they would a) harden their anti-immigrant pro-white fertility stance into solid titanium, with walls to match; b) firmly ally with Salvini in Italy and the Yellow Vests in France to deepen and enhance their theoretical posture, and work to bring White France and Northern Italy onside; c) work like mad to bring Austria into their orbit, for glamor and respectability value; d) having secured Austria, bring in the Baltic states, Finland, and Croatia (these should be easy), with an eye to peeling off Bavaria, East Germany, and… Read more »
Damn, bro that is some strong crack you be smokin.
Ah, the lightning-quick ripostes of the rakish, downright Wildean feuilletonist known to the world as the glittering “Up Yours”!!
Positively makes my heart go pit-a-pat. Or would, if I had one.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be out on the veranda with a Bombay martini and a copy of Lester Bangs.
The controlled media has done a superb propaganda job on US citizens for decades with its annual parading of stories around April 15th — “there is no sure thing but death and taxes.” It is foolery to claim there are different kinds of income, which need to be handled differently, some taxed and some not. If there is to be taxing on income, taxing all income ought to be the same, whether from capital gains or from selling labor. See my work: KILLING THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE “WE WANT YOU TO BELIEVE CAPITAL GAINS INCOME IS DIFFERENT” TRICK |… Read more »
Really enjoying the blog you have there.
I live in SoCal. There’s Asian owned massage places in almost every plaza. Both legitimate and illicit types. Usually, Chinese operated. The rest Vietnamese. They give you bad looks when you pay with credit card, and say, “no cash?” One lady manager from the nicest legitimate place in town actually stuck her finger in my wallet. I’d said I’m paying with card. She said “you have cash, see?” and stuck her finger into the bills. I said “don’t do that again” and gave her the Eastwood. Chinese must get sick at the thought of handing over their money to the… Read more »
When the government starts talking about negative interest rates, you’ll be right with them.
(Actually, our current rates are negative, factoring in inflation).
Chinese people can do math.
How much for Happy Ending?
asking for a friend.
Mme B and I happen to be visiting Riverside County. I’m amazed by the number of massage parlors. While I am generally in favor of tax avoidance, I’d prefer that the Chinese avoid Chinese taxes.
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.
Yeah I suspect some law of relativity at play here; the more black gets 80% of the black vote, more or less. She’s more black than most whites lol
Kamala is whiter than the half-Kenyan.
I agree with Whitney. On TV Kamala looks as white, maybe whiter, than the buck-toothed Puerto Rican female.
Kamala Harris is not married to a white man, she’s married to a Jew. So, Hindu-Reggae-Canadian Space Alien married to Very Special Space Alien. Won’t hurt her at the polls, though. America is now majority non-American, and that’s the deciding factor. Kamala is not only the least retarded of plausible Dems (which doesn’t mean she’s NOT retarded), she’s also the least American, thus, Bingo. Hillary was a screeching charmless hate-filled shrewish harpy, and Harris is one better — she’s a screeching charmless hate-filled shrewish harpy OF COLOR. I look forward to her campaign stops… HARRIS: my fellow non-Americans, vote for… Read more »
“Kamala Harris is not married to a white man, she’s married to a Jew.” After wondering about this recently and googling, apparently Kamala’s husband, lawyer Douglas Emhoff, is actually a Christian. His first wife, Kerstin (who went on to co-found an L.A. production company with a man of color) is white. Douglas and Kerstin had a son and a daughter together. Kamala’s ancestor, Hamilton Brown, was a white Irish land- and slave-holder in Jamaica, who mated with a Jamaican-African woman. Kamala’s Jamaican relatives were/are Christians. Her Jamaican father, Donald, is still an economics professor at Stanford. And Kamala’s mother is… Read more »
‘ to recognize Emhoff’s faith, the two honored a time-tested Jewish tradition and broke a glass.’
Learn to Google
My mistake. Thank you for your kind correction. Southern gentility, eh? From the article I linked: “There isn’t much information on Douglas’ background, but we have it from a reliable source that he was born in 1964 in New York and was brought up alongside his sister. He is a practicing Christian, belongs to white ethnicity and is of American nationality.”
Well, I was surprised when I read he was Christian, figuring she’d marry into the Jewish power network, so it does make sense that he’s Jewish.
Whatever discussion we have on taxes won’t matter. The true rulers of the country will make sure they are not too negatively impacted and those lower on the totem pole (e.g., higher income wage earners) will bear the brunt. Any tax enacted will be designed to transfer money from white males to everyone else. Even if people start discussing issues like the role of the elite and government in general, it will only be through using approved narratives that are created by the elite they are critiquing. That is why you get Bernie Bros denouncing the elite while waging war… Read more »
I suppose most of the Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc. wealth resides in the market valuation of their stock holdings. If a high, i.e., 70% asset tax were suddenly to materialize in the president goldfish administration, wouldn’t that force a massive stock liquidation, like a huge margin call? Suddenly those greedily sought taxable assets would evaporate. Goodby pension funds and 401Ks.
Warning , ramblings from a low income peasant. Taxing the rich does not work. Does anybody remember the “luxury tax” ? In my humble opinion we need government reform. The wealthy and their friends in government have strip-mined the infrastructure of this country. Buying and selling, creating monopolies to the point now where we have large explosions of natural gas in residential neighborhoods due to non-existent maintenance. A union truck driver in 1985 made $15 an hour + benefits and a pension. Over 30 years later that same driver makes $22 an hour with no benefits or pension. Both sides… Read more »
“…creating monopolies…”–snowballing, getting larger and larger as the globohomo snowball rolls down the hill. How to roll it back up the hill?
One few good things that came out of Trump’s tax law was the removal of foreign retained earnings. http://premieroffshore.com/us-expats-retained-earnings-foreign-corporations-2018/ “While multinationals were converted to a territorial tax system, and no longer pay US tax on foreign-sourced profits of their international divisions, the small to medium sized expat entrepreneur got the shaft.” Naturally Big Business got their way because they own Congress. But it’s a start and sets a precedent that could enable better recovery of taxes in offshore tax havens. I wonder how many folks in the so-called “American Diaspora” are really ethnic Americans, or some form of Hyphenated-American. https://infogalactic.com/info/American_diaspora… Read more »
A wealth tax is a direct tax and thus would be precluded under the 16th Amendment, which only allows income to be taxed directly. Not that this matters. The Constitution hasn’t mattered since “Honest Abe” took the reigns. It’s been a “living document” ever since.
If that tax was passed and not struck down by the Court, then you can just retire the whole Constitution thing. All restaints would be off.
I know these horses have already left the barn, but I really wish folks could stop referring to this flouncing ignoramus as “AOC”. Gives her a flavor of gravitas and importance which is entirely unearned and inappropriate, and causes people to pay attention to her babblings (which now I think of it, might be a good thing). Though the moniker seems to have stuck, so I’m prolly out of luck. Roissy over at Chateau has taken to calling her “Alexandria Of-Color.” Prolly won’t stick, but I like it becuz being “of color” is literally her only qualification. In my dream… Read more »
Demmies do take her seriously, especially the POCs. She’s one of them. Not some tottering old white POS like Pelosi who is on her way out.
Use “obstructed Cortex” or “occasional cortex”
I use AOC because it sounds like the name of a wild animal.
Amygdala Overrides Cortex
She Guevara
Chiquita Khruschev
(From Heartiste)
I call her Alexandria Taco-Burrito. I know, it’s not Puerto Rican, but I don’t know Puerto Rican foods.
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.
Islam tithe is. 3% tax on assets, so it’s not a new idea.
End disruptive inequality near overnite. Forget the corrupt tax code. Force reality onto goverment’s subsidy of crooks and wierdos.
Bill Bonner: “Stop rigging interest rates. The free market can decide what rates should be. Most likely, it would discover rates that were much higher – probably over 5 percent. Then, in a flash, like champagne at Hiroshima, the post-2009 gains of the super-wealthy would evaporate.”
The concept of a wealth tax is reasonable given the risk and political instability that wealth disparity and a declining middle class create. It would of course end up consuming the not-so-wealthy too unless there is a constitutional amendment limiting it to the top (pick a number) percentage of the population. I think a better route is a consumption tax. All taxes can be gamed, but the rich will always pay a lot more with a consumption tax, especially if necessities are exempted. Consumption taxes have the added benefit of privacy when it comes to assets.
The lower classes use the entirety of their assets for consumption. The elites use a small portion of their assets for consumption. Sales taxes and consumption taxes are all regressive taxes that fall disproportionately on the lower classes.
The talk about which tax is better misses the entire point (IMO) and therefore is little better than the old academic question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”, which has been made fun of for years. The question(s) should be something along the line of, If the government removes wealth from this or that section of the economy/people, how does it use it to repair the middle class and return prosperity and hope to that segment of the population (50-60%) that made us the greatest and most prosperous nation in the world. Right now, we… Read more »
Who do you think runs America? Behind the scenes are Bezos, Buffett and Gates directing policy, deciding where to wage war, whispering the idea of a wealth tax into Warren’s ear? I suspect it is politicians (when they can triangulate enough positions to gather lots of votes), Ivy League professors, New York Times journalists and “experts” from the NGO-academic-governmant triad.
So much for sparking a debate about tax policy. I see a lot of angry fuck the rich tempered by self-interested recognition that if “rich” starts at Bezos/Zuckerberg/Soros/Kochs, it often ends up targeting small business owners with a few million. A wealth tax, if implemented poorly, can prevent the intergenerational transfer of a family business. It is not going to shutter Walmart or Amazon. But more importantly, I see nothing being said about what Uncle Sugar is going to do with all the revenue generated by this new tax policy. Will the debt be paid down or Medicare and Social… Read more »
Here’s an idea, pass a law or Constitutional Amendment for a budget freeze (of sorts) coupled with a wealth tax to pay off the National Debt. Otherwise, as so many have noted, the funds raised will not help except to make more of us beggars.
Screw moral hazard. Close the borders to trade and foreign ownership of anything , declare bankruptcy and declare a new currency only US citizens and selected American corporations can get , changing 10-1 ignoring coins if you like.
We’ll get excommunicated from global trade but we have had an economy well over 90% domestic in the past and can do it again.
Comeci: The Constitution has done such a good job of limiting the power of the federal government.
Simple answer, maybe too simple.
Eliminate ALL taxes and replace with a sales tax. Point of sale taxation is unavoidable and also voluntary.
People that earn more necessarily spend more and therefore will pay more in taxes.
This also encourages saving.
Thoughts?
A national sales tax is a fine idea in theory. The error is to assume that once it’s in place the ever hungry fed gov will follow through on stopping the taxes it was meant to replace.
You have to amend the Constitution.
I sort of like it, but it’s a great incentive for vertical monopolies. I really can’t say if that’s something to be concerned about, or not. The newspaper I worked for in the 80s and 90s owned enormous tracts of Canadian forest. Under a system where sales tax is the primary tax, this is even more beneficial. If you buy your paper from another company, you pay what I assume would be very high sales taxes. If you own the process from tree to printing press, you’re operating tax free for that commodity. Of course, you’re still paying a tax… Read more »
Exempt necessities.
Sweden had high sales taxes…
One reason Ikea grew so large is because the consumer assembled the furniture, thus there was no sales tax on what would have been factory-supplied labor. The factory labor that was avoided by home assembly, also meant that the prices were lower — therefore the sales tax was lower.
There is always some way to skirt any system.
Too simple. They would just bring back the other taxes later. And some states, like OR and NH, currently don’t have a sales tax. So it would be worse for them.