We already have property taxes. It would be simple to make an argument for or against expanding it.
Or it could make an argument for marginal sales taxes (what I would prefer), to capture the rich people that borrow against their assets for their spending needs.
Sort of? They're a patchwork state system and they're heavily kneecapped because in many states property tax is not really proportional to the market value.
In California, effectively the longer you've owned the property the less you tend to pay as a fraction of the value, which in a sense is regressive because younger, less affluent homeowners pay more tax.
> In California, effectively the longer you've owned the property the less you tend to pay as a fraction of the value, which in a sense is regressive because younger, less affluent homeowners pay more tax.
For sure, it is remarkable how many ways US society screws young people (fewer voters) in favor of the old (more voters) once you start looking. And in California, it is remarkable how explicitly they screwed young people with poorer ancestors versus young people with richer ancestors.
Not at the federal level, and the methodology used for computing effective tax rates in this article (both for typical households and the centibillionaires) is explicitly federal-only, so that's not really true.
I agree with you broadly but the Constitution does not permit a federal wealth tax. The 16th Amendment authorizes only income tax.
In any event I think ProPublica laying out the data in this fashion is necessary groundwork if that's going to become a part of the political consciousness. The intellectual argument for a wealth tax to control inequality has been pretty compelling ever since Capital in the Twenty-First Century, but advocating for a constitutional amendment is obviously premature.
My wealth tax in texas is ~2% :( I've got say for example 100k house with 50k equity and 50k cash and stock assets. I pay 2k in property taxes on 100k in property but 2k/(50k+50k)=2%. not real #s but real percent.
There's also some bifurcation; older people with no money just seem to disappear and die especially after exiting the workforce, compared to younger people who are more visible and have more possibilities. In light of those recent news articles highlighting the disproportionate rise of homelessness in the Boomer generation, etc