Gerontocracy versus Western Civilization

richardhanania.substack.com

16 points·jseliger··9 comments

We should tax the rich instead of deciding how many old people should be cut off of medicare.

Not taxing the rich is the same as handing them an entitlement, and it's much larger than anyone's SSI will ever be.

Aging of the population is a problem even in societies whose tax burden is much higher than the American one and which do not have that many rich people.

If anything, it is remarkable how the same problem affects very culturally diverse countries in a very similar way (Japan, Italy, Serbia etc.)

What would you say is a fair amount to tax the rich?

Say the top 10% have 50% of the income. How much of a percent of the total tax burden should they be responsible for?

50%?

60%?

70%?

90% of every dollar after the first $10 million/year seems like a fair and rational starting point.

And what about the top 1%?

Say they have 20% of the income, how much of the total tax burden should they bear?

20%?

25%?

30%?

Why so low, let's go back to the 70s and 80s of taxing 50+% on income over 200k and tax capital gains the same as income while we are at it.

https://taxfoundation.org/historical-income-tax-rates-bracke...

I'm not asking about tax brackets, I'm asking about percentage of tax burden.

Ie: out of all the income taxes paid, which proportion should be paid by the top 1% of people who make 20% of the income.

100%

Those fortunes were built on the backs of our labor and creativity. And they have way, way more than 20% of the wealth.

100% is the only answer.

So your stance is that 20% of the income should bear 100% of the taxes?

So that 80% of the income should pay 0% of the taxes?

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