Will 80% Income Taxes and a New 10% Wealth Tax Fix Our Economy? (Only in liberal logic)

Townhall.com ^ | May 4, 2014 | Hunter Lewis

[darkangel82]

This guy’s a nut-job.

[familyop]

Freedom for low-techs to build houses and start small manufacturing shops would fix it, but no political constituency will allow that.

[nascarnation]

Something tells me the “wealth tax” would be efficient at capturing 401k/IRA assets and poor at finding hedge fund/private equity gains.

[RetiredTexasVet]

I think the current communist president of France is trying his theory ..... seems to be working out well for neighboring countries but disastrous for France. You don’t have to be born stupid .... you can achieve it by attending elite colleges.

[Political Junkie Too]

I have an idea.

Let's pay everyone $1,000,000 (actors, athletes, and burger flippers), and then make everything cost only $1.

Think of all the money people will have.

-PJ

[dfwgator]

Start with ending all tax breaks for Hollywood.

[Lazamataz]

I am ready. Itching, even. I want to GO.

[DeFault User]

Perhaps the most astonishing claim in Piketty’s book is that government bureaucracies need to be reformed so that they can make most efficient use of all the new income and wealth taxes that are recommended. The assumption is that almost complete government control of the economy would be best, but that the machinery needs some fine tuning.

Yep, with a little "fine tuning" it will work this time. Similar sentiments were expressed in Japan some years ago, paraphrasing, "The economy is just too important to leave in the hands of business, it needs 'expert' government control. " The result turned Japan's post-war economic boom into a stagnant mess.

[catnipman]

I stopped reading the second I came to “French economist”.

[palmer]

The more money you make, the easier it becomes to make more money still. We need a more progressive income tax because we are losing our freedom to a kind of economic feudalism.

Non-sequiturs. You start with a semi-truism, certainly an experienced successful investor is going to be presented with better investment opportunities both from their experience and others who are banking on them succeeding again. Next you state a conclusion: "we need a more progressive income tax" that does not follow from the truism unless you merely want to punish success. But then you come up with new rationale "we are losing our freedom".

Loss of what freedom? And how does that justify a more progressive income tax. Finally you explain that freedom is being lost due a kind of economic feudalism. Now finally after the socialist blather there is a germ of original thought in your writing. Better late than never I suppose.

Yes there is a kind of economic feudalism. It is created by politicians and realized mainly through the Fed. The Fed prints up money and hands it to the politicians who hand it out to the politically connected: construction firms to build new spy agency buildings filled with fancy equipment and good-looking contractors. They hand it out to politically connected scams like "green" energy or anything else green related. Mostly the Fed props up large banks which props up the market but mainly for short term momentum plays that contribute little to economic growth. The politicians also control the economy with the highest corporate tax rate in the world combined with politically motivated cuts to that rate for favored industries.

The answer to that kind of economic feudalism is to slash the corporate income tax and generally reduce politicians ability to rig the markets. Getting rid of the Fed would be difficult and may result in more politically generated monetary problems. But certainly the Fed should not be allowed to print money and hand it to politicians to give mainly to the already wealthy.

[grumpygresh]

What we need is confiscatory taxes for productive individuals and exemptions for our rightful masters. That pretty much sums up Leftist neo-feudalist economics.

[Age of Reason]

How do you think feudalism got its start?

In the beginning, the more land you ruled, the stronger you became.

The stronger you became, the more land you could acquire.

The people living on the land you acquired, became your serfs.

And today, the more money you acquire, the stronger you become.

And the stronger you become, the more money you can acquire.

Until you and the other fraction of the 1% own the country, while the rest of us depend on the crumbs from your table.

[Age of Reason]

Once the banksters, movie stars, rock musicians, sports stars, and the like, have their income reduced to be more in line with the much lower proportion they got in the 1950s and 1940s . . .

Then like the in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they have to acquire their status some way other than by flaunting wealth.

Like by helping other people and making sacrifices for their country.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Instead of always starting from the premise “Government Knows Best”, why not start from the more accurate view that “Government Knows Nothing?” :)

[palmer]

And the stronger you become, the more money you can acquire.

That certainly works in places like Haiti, is somewhat applicable in Mexico and is one of strongman Obama's goals. The difference between your generalisms and reality here in the US is people have a somewhat predetermined and non-capricious amount of money that will be taken from them at the end of the barrel of the gun.

But along comes "Age of Reason" to suggest that the government doesn't take enough from the "rich". Full of righteous socialist rhetoric about crumbs but without a freaking clue as to the cause of widening income disparities.