Sunday, June 8, 2014
An Olive Branch to the Progressives
One of the strategies that Piketty and others have put forth for reducing wealth inequality (R - G) is a wealth tax (ideally they would like a global one but even they know that that's totally a pipe-dream) - a tax on a person's net worth, in other words. The problem of course is that (as is the case with almost every tax) there's a downside; in this instance, a deadweight cost that could potentially slow economic growth in general........................................................................................How 'bout this for a nice little compromise; instead of a wealth tax we institute a national property tax of say .5% on all assets over a million dollars? That way, some dude who has $10 million in property would have to fork over $45,000 a year. a) (and, yes, I would strongly prefer that the money go to reducing the deficit - real naive, huh?) we would be reducing the inequality and b) we wouldn't be exacting all that much of a toll on possible investment....I'm not entirely certain that I love the idea, but as part of an overall grand bargain or something.......
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8 comments:
Willing to explore this, because you aren't doing this with the aim of cutting down your betters over imaginary perceived slights.
I'm not married to it but as part of a package, I'm saying.......And I would definitely want it for debt reduction as opposed to more Obamaesque moving of the lawn chairs on the Titanic.
I welcome debt reduction as well, but would rather see it come from a sales/consumption tax as opposed to an added property tax.
This of course, ONLY after a through audit of federal spending to eliminate redundancies and waste/fraud/abuse.
Const. said: "This of course, ONLY after a through audit of federal spending to eliminate redundancies and waste/fraud/abuse."
How about also eliminating massive, unneeded expenses? (government-funded NPR, PBS, etc news), SCHIP free healthcare for rich adults. Congressional pensions, etc etc etc etc?
On this I second CI's views. Although it is increasingly unlikely there will ever be a thorough and honest accounting of federal spending. Regardless of which party is in power as they all have their wants and special interests to serve.
There are a lot of advantages to a sales tax as opposed to an income tax; the fact that it penalizes consumption as opposed to savings and investment, the fact that it would probably eliminate the IRS, etc. but (and this is probably some of my residual liberalism talking) I do have a problem with the regressive nature of it and would probably go instead with a mildly graduated income tax (kind of like what Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center advocates) with zero deductions and a one page tax form.......As for cutting, how 'bout eliminating the Departments of Energy and Defense (better know as the Departments of Crony Capitalism 1 and 2)? That would be a pretty good start, I think.
Lots of sanity here overall.
Will what would you replace the DOD with?
I would just do a real serious audit on it. Maybe cut out some of the bureaucrats along the way.......I would also cut foreign aid by at least 20%.
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