The 2020 Presidential Election - Convention & General Election

[BigRedBuster]

Just now, BlitzFirst said:

 

I said company stock isn't taxed.  Income from a stock IS.   That's personal income.  For a private business, stock doesn't generate income until they go public.  Thus, stock that makes no money is not part of wealth calculations.

WTF????

 

So, I am part owner in a C-Corp. you’re telling me that stock is not part of my net worth. 

 

And we aren’t talking about income tax here so the income off of the stock is meaningless here. 

 

Psssst....my stock in a private company is still a financial security. 

[BigRedBuster]

Nobody has ever talked once in this thread about taxing the company so you can stop implying that I am. 

 

And you're still confused thinking this is an income tax. It’s not. 

[Landlord]

this is f#&%ing boring

[BigRedBuster]

15 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

I'm really not.  Personal liquidity is not part of any business.  Here's an example where I'm trying to make you understand what I'm talking about and how you think business = person.

 

 

Ok....let’s start simple. 

 

Do you understand what stockholder equity is in a business?

[BigRedBuster]

3 minutes ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

I'm kind of bored here too.  You can think what you want, I've linked and stated from numerous articles written about Sanders wealth tax.  If you don't want to accept it, fine, don't.   We can agree to disagree.  I encourage you to investigate it a bit more though because what you're saying does not equal what the sources I'm reading are saying.

 

I'm not posting further on this individual topic we've been discussing in this thread.

What’s funny is that your links say the same thing I am. 

 

Have a a good day. 

[Apsu]

On 9/25/2019 at 10:04 AM, BlitzFirst said:

I just hope that Warren hits it out of the park by choosing Sanders as her running mate.  That would be too much for Trump to handle.

 

I do not believe that you will see two northeast progressives on the ticket at the same time.

Neither one would add much to voter appeal as VP, that the head of the ticket doesn't already have.

[Apsu]

On 9/26/2019 at 12:30 PM, Landlord said:

 

 

Is the idea of hoarding unreal amounts of excess wealth wrong? 

 

It worked well during the dark ages and the time of monarchies.

[Apsu]

On 9/26/2019 at 1:00 PM, BigRedBuster said:

Let's say I built a company up to be worth 1 billion dollars.  That's my net worth.  SO.......the government is going to force me to sell half of my company because of that?

I have a real problem with that.  

 

Well if you were as smart as Jeff Bezos, then without this wealth tax you would be paying no taxes at all.

[Apsu]

On 9/26/2019 at 2:16 PM, DevoHusker said:

 

I haven't made up my mind on the redistribution issue...but one question that no one seems to answer: who decides how much is "too much"?

 

The purpose of taxation is to fund the budget.

The president proposes a budget and a tax plan, and congress approves it.

If you don't like it, you get to choose between two equally terrible choices in the next election.

[RedDenver]

EDIT: Rereading this it comes off more attacking of BRB than I intended. I'm trying to attack BRB's post and stance on this issue and not the poster.

 

@BigRedBuster you keep saying that you don't support taxation that would decrease net wealth, but there's two sides of the coin. So what I hear you saying is that taking a tiny percentage of wealth from billionaires is a bigger affront than that those billions could be used for helping those in need. You'd rather not tax 4 cents of every dollar of wealth above $32 million for Bernie's plan (or 1 cent of every dollar above $50 million for Warren's plan) because it's unfair or unjust in some way, but letting those billionaires have many, many times more wealth than they could ever spend and letting fellow citizens starve, be homeless, unable to afford healthcare, unable to provide sufficient services to our veterans, etc. is more fair and just.

 

In your own example of a billionaire losing half their wealth, you're literally saying having "only" $500,000,000 in net worth is not enough. If you look at Bezos, then you're saying him having to come down from $106,000,000,000 to "only" $53,000,000,000 is not enough. In what possible way could any of those numbers not be enough?

 

In a perfect world, there could be tons of billionaires and nobody would suffer economically or financially, but reality is that those with excess means there's many, many more without enough. And that's without even considering that the wealth often make their wealth by exploiting others (Amazon warehouse employees speak out about the 'brutal' reality of working during the holidays, when 60-hour weeks are mandatory and ambulance calls are common). That's why I support a wealth tax.

[funhusker]

1 hour ago, RedDenver said:

EDIT: Rereading this it comes off more attacking of BRB than I intended. I'm trying to attack BRB's post and stance on this issue and not the poster.

 

@BigRedBuster you keep saying that you don't support taxation that would decrease net wealth, but there's two sides of the coin. So what I hear you saying is that taking a tiny percentage of wealth from billionaires is a bigger affront than that those billions could be used for helping those in need. You'd rather not tax 4 cents of every dollar of wealth above $32 million for Bernie's plan (or 1 cent of every dollar above $50 million for Warren's plan) because it's unfair or unjust in some way, but letting those billionaires have many, many times more wealth than they could ever spend and letting fellow citizens starve, be homeless, unable to afford healthcare, unable to provide sufficient services to our veterans, etc. is more fair and just.

 

In your own example of a billionaire losing half their wealth, you're literally saying having "only" $500,000,000 in net worth is not enough. If you look at Bezos, then you're saying him having to come down from $106,000,000,000 to "only" $53,000,000,000 is not enough. In what possible way could any of those numbers not be enough?

 

In a perfect world, there could be tons of billionaires and nobody would suffer economically or financially, but reality is that those with excess means there's many, many more without enough. And that's without even considering that the wealth often make their wealth by exploiting others (Amazon warehouse employees speak out about the 'brutal' reality of working during the holidays, when 60-hour weeks are mandatory and ambulance calls are common). That's why I support a wealth tax.

I think BRB is trying to explain that Bezos doesn’t have 53 Billion dollars in cash to pay a tax bill.  Should the US govt receive half of his stocks?

[teachercd]

If I was rich...I would not want a wealth tax...but I am poor so I am fine with it.

[RedDenver]

29 minutes ago, funhusker said:

I think BRB is trying to explain that Bezos doesn’t have 53 Billion dollars in cash to pay a tax bill.  Should the US govt receive half of his stocks?

Well, the government would be asking for 8% of Bezos's total wealth each year, not half. And that money isn't just going to the government never to be seen again, it's going to be used to fund our society for things such as infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. So the question should be, should our society receive 8% of his stocks?

 

Bernie's wealth tax plan uses progressive wealth brackets going from 1 to 8% and raises about $335 billion dollars per year. Here's an academic paper analyzing the plan:

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/saez-zucman-wealthtax-sanders-online.pdf

 

From the paper:

Quote

 

The tax rate would start at 1% of net worth from $32 to $50 million, increase to 2% on net worth from $50 to $250 million, 3% from $250 to $500 million, 4% from $500 million to $1 billion, 5% from $1 to $2.5 billion, 6% from $2.5 to $5 billion, 7% from $5 to $10 billion, and 8% on wealth over $10 billion (the brackets apply for married taxpayers and are halved for singles). The wealth tax would have a comprehensive tax base with no exemptions and would be vigorously enforced to keep tax evasion low.

We estimate that about 180,000 American households (about the top 0.1%) would be liable for the wealth tax and that the tax would raise around $4.35 trillion over the ten-year budget window 2019-2028. The wealth tax would raise approximately 1.6% of GDP per year ($335 billion relative to a $21.5 trillion GDP in 2019).

 

 

And this wouldn't actually eliminate billionaires even if it had been in place since 1982:

Quote

We estimate that if the Sanders wealth tax had been in place since 1982, the wealth owned by the Forbes 400 richest Americans would be only 40% of what it is today: Instead of having a wealth of $7.2 billion on average (in 2018), they would have a wealth of $3.0 billion on average. The share of wealth owned by the Forbes 400 would not have exploded and would only be slightly higher than it was in the early 1980s. The current top 15 wealthiest Americans would own $196 billion (instead of the $943 billion they own in 2018).

 

[funhusker]

38 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

Well, the government would be asking for 8% of Bezos's total wealth each year, not half. And that money isn't just going to the government never to be seen again, it's going to be used to fund our society for things such as infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. So the question should be, should our society receive 8% of his stocks?

 

Bernie's wealth tax plan uses progressive wealth brackets going from 1 to 8% and raises about $335 billion dollars per year. Here's an academic paper analyzing the plan:

http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/saez-zucman-wealthtax-sanders-online.pdf

 

From the paper:

 

And this wouldn't actually eliminate billionaires even if it had been in place since 1982:

 

I get that.  But how are people supposed to pay a bill with assets that aren’t liquid?

 

Do they sell 8% of stocks every year to pay.  Best case it would only take 7 years for a person to no longer be the majority shareholder...

[RedDenver]

2 hours ago, funhusker said:

I get that.  But how are people supposed to pay a bill with assets that aren’t liquid?

 

Do they sell 8% of stocks every year to pay.  Best case it would only take 7 years for a person to no longer be the majority shareholder...

And? Is letting them retain majority shareholder better for society in some way?

 

Nit pick, but it would take 9 years to lose more than 50% of the shares at 8% compounded annually. And that's assuming the value of the stock remained constant.