Bob78164 wrote:Spock wrote:Bob78164 wrote:Here's what Paul Krugman has to say about her proposals re top marginal rates.
To summarize, when US tax policy was in line with her proposals, we enjoyed the greatest and most widespread economic expansion in our history. We have evidence (in the form of the historical record) that tax rates along the lines of what Ocasio-Cortez is proposing do not in fact induce the rich to stop earning money. They continue to earn money, but since more of their gains are paid in taxes and since there's a lot the government could be doing to improve our collective lives (free pre-school, for example), those extra revenues improve us as a whole.
And since the extra money the very rich are paying doesn't really affect their lifestyles very much (perhaps they can no longer afford that third yacht), we gain this improvement at very little cost in human terms. --Bob
While I have little interest in doing the tax rate thing. It has been done to death here and start your own thread if you want. I have been thinking about your "3rd Yacht" comment.
Thomas Sowell has a quote " “I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
Given the vast, ostentatious wealth where you live, you must be living your life green with envy most of the time at the fancy mansions and the "3rd Yachts" and so forth and you want to take it away from them.
No. If you remember my first
Jeopardy! interview, you'll know that I'm not particularly materialistic, and I'm certainly not one to envy what others have. What I want is a government that would rather spend $5 billion on child care than on a useless wall.
I don't mind paying more taxes to achieve my goals for the government. But I mind a lot paying more taxes in order to cut the taxes of billionaires. --Bob
As of yesterday, Soybean price was $8.14 and it has been going up the last few weeks as harvest ended. This is probably within the range they would have been without the tariffs. There is no way they were going to stay at $9.50 as it was last spring given the big crop we had.
I assume that Bob#'s understands the difference between wealth and income, but you never can quite tell for sure, can you? It is obvious that any income tax, no matter how progressive, would catch very little of the "3rd Yacht" type of stuff. For that you would need a wealth tax.
It is a waste of time to talk about billionaires and "3rd Yachts" and so forth in the context of an income tax. You want to go after that money, fine. But you have to do it with a wealth tax.
Be that as it may, obviously Bob has set himself up as the "Commissar of Stuff" in that he gets to decide what people can own. We have established that they can't own 3 yachts.
Obviously, he has to define "Yacht" and "Yacht Equivalents."
Can somebody own 2 yachts, 2 top of the line speedboats and a decked-out deepwater fishing boat?
What is the upper limit on art collections? There has to be one. Does anybody really need more than 2 expensive paintings? All you can do is look at them anyway.
At least with yachts, there are jobs building, maintaining and running them. Artwork just sits there, so maybe people really only should have one nice piece of artwork.