Taxing income is perverse and disincentivizes work. Taxing capital makes a lot more sense IMO.
Income you get by working.
Capital you get by inheriting, saving or by having capital, which earns you more.
To be clear I think capital is good and necessary but I see no reason why work should be taxed more.
Wealth is created by work, not capital.
No, it isn't.
OTOH, taxing labor income at higher rates than generic income (because payroll taxes) which in turn is taxed at higher rates than long-term capital gains (because preferential rates for the latter) and non-earned income through inheritances and gifts up through very large amounts (because of the large exemptions amounts in the inheritance and gift tax system) is, OTOH, perverse and disincentivizes offering employment (not work so much, because in either case people who need to work do if they can and people who can afford not to are less likely to; but by driving up the cost of employment at any given post-tax wage it reduces the quantity of work that it is profitable for employers to purchase in the market and thereby depresses employment.)
Fairer and simpler to tax income as income (and thus, make all of it qualifying for the kind of programs currently funded by payroll taxes, too), with perhaps much smaller inheritance and gift exemptions and the ability to freely recognize income for tax purposes in advance of realization and also to defer tax recognition of windfall income over a period of years to deal with irregular, norepeatable income like the long term gains for most of the working and middle class (but also certain patterns of other income like income from creative works that take an extended period of time but then payoff disproportionately shortly after completion.)
"Starve the beast" has failed. Time to leave it behind.
That's not a helpful argument because it is so general that we can bring it up against anything. I'm very certain you don't follow this principle in real life either.
> I'm very certain you don't follow
Don't say what I think for me. It's condescending, makes you look like you're more interested in cheap points, and suggests that you can't actually come up with an intellectual response.
I don't think it's a good thing; I think it's better to address the root of the problem rather than the symptom; and it's worth noting when a course of action isn't going to work. Otherwise you fall prey to the classic mockery: "we need to do something! This is something. We should do it."
All taxes are avoided to some extent but assets are actually easier to tax in many ways than income. If you want to have money and things it’s hard to hide that, whereas if you have capital you don’t even need income and can easily avoid taxes on it.
It reminds me of the new proposed tax in CA, where anyone over $N net worth has to pay M% of it per year. It'll be interesting to see if it'll help CA stay afloat, or if it contributes to the state's decline.
Isn't the whole idea behind making money to build a 'nest egg'? Seems like that counts as the small-scale version of exactly what you're describing.
Re the specific tax you mention the devil is in the details but it doesn’t sound great.
Taxing wealth isn't some kind of rigid principle, where if you want to be able to tax Jeff Bezos you also have to tax Jane Millennial the same percent. We can, and should, and at least the vast majority of people talking about it want to, ignore regular people trying to save, and tax mega-wealth higher than moderate wealth.