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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

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ChuckNorris89

One easy fix: wealth tax && unused property/land tax

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The truly wealthy are impossible to tax. They will just move their wealth elsewhere or exploit all kinds of loopholes.

Best you can do is tax income a lot and capital gains at 30%. Which is exactly what we do in Europe.

Good luck moving property.

This argument is so lazy. Simply levy a tax on them each year that is their net worth multiplied by the risk-free rate. That takes care of most people with money in publicly traded companies. If people with more "diversified" portfolios try to move their money elsewhere, penalize them for it. Revoke their citizenship, make it harder for them to do business without a majority percentage of their wealth in the US. It's not "hard" to do, we just lack the political will.

Just read this: https://nomoretax.eu/ikeas-founder-paid-tax-for-the-first-ti...

These are Swedes. Basically border-line commies from a US viewpoint, they can't even tax the owners of their most famous company.

This is the problem of a globalized free world. Where there are loops, people abuse them. But this is worked on, it just takes time. And saying that because the loops exist at the moment, it's impossible to fix them at all, is indeed a lazy argument. This is the toxic mindset which brings down all efforts.

If you'd read what I said, you'd understand why this doesn't apply.

In your system, are regular people allowed to save up enough so they no longer have to work? Or must their savings erode continually so that they're forced to work forever?

This is not "my system" just poking holes in the argument I was responding to. Let's say you don't get taxed in this manner until after $1B net worth.

> Revoke their citizenship

Literally unconstitutional in the US.

The US gov does a lot of unconstitutional things. I am just saying it's a lack of political will.

I've never seen any wealth tax proposal that would raise any significant amount of money. That's ignoring the glaring issues of most wealth being illiquid, the capital flight/brain drain that's happened every time it's been tried, and the complete lack of faith anyone has that these taxes would be put to any better use.

Unused property and land is already taxed through property taxes. Regardless, unused property is an easy scapegoat but not a significant problem (similar to the foreign investor bogeyman) when the real problems are loose monetary policy, speculation, NIMBY zoning, and real supply/demand imbalances.

The new capital gains tax in Washington state seems to be doing better than expected: https://crosscut.com/politics/2023/06/was-new-capital-gains-...

>the capital flight/brain drain that's happened every time it's been tried

Where has this been tried and caused brain drain?

Absolutely, the restrictions on dense housing development combined with the global hunt for yield caused by low/zero interest rates are the root cause for most of these issues. Policymakers were trying to keep the long term debt cycle alive a bit longer, but that's created its own massive issues.

Not if the tax revenue just gets handed over to BigCo via subsidies & bailouts or squandered on war.

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