thebartermyth [he/him]

iirc it’s from ubuntu-advantage-tools - you can remove it, but it’s set as a dependent for something important (ubuntu-minimal?) which makes it really annoying. I don’t use ubuntu anymore so hopefully someone who knows more will stop by.

I really think you should re-address your idea on a theoretical framework. It’s difficult to imagine that a new set of income tax rates would address extreme wealth or address the crises of capitalism regardless of the numbers you have in your spreadsheet. For example, OP suggests using total wealth as a tax base to alleviate inequality which would be a new way of approaching the issue.

If you’d still like to use income tax rates to approach inequality, I would suggest starting with high negative percentages and increasing them through your table. Kinda like this:

base * { -99%, -98%, ....., 99%}

Sorry if this comes off as harsh, I appreciate that you’re looking to for a way to address these issues.

Specific example: I think you may want to check your rates, the rate differential between highest and lowest in your example seems much lower than the current system. General idea: Couldn’t the rates just be adjusted to the base or unlinked later? Changes would have to be legislative anyway.

That sounds like a sales tax, no? Which would be regressive unless you charged sales tax on purchase of debt / equity. Doesn’t matter if it’s only a sales tax on yachts or whatever because they would have to buy like every single yacht to come close to comparing with their spending on further means of production as expressed by ownership / debt.

Edit: Honestly, I’m not sure if it would stop being regressive even if there was sales tax on buying stock or whatever. Mostly going off vibes with that one.

I think taxes are supposed to be in cash, but it’s not as though that couldn’t just be changed (I think lol). Probably easier to implement on the corporate tax side, like “20% of shares go to gov per year” and it would dwindle down until the companies are public. I think this would get weird with rich ppl having a bunch of debt instead of shares though(?).

I may be dumb here, but how a real version of this tax would work? This example is basically pocket change and they’d pay cash (numbers on a computer} through some form of credit (against equity, etc}.

But if the tax left them with 1 million remaining for example, I assume that it’d basically be impossible to pay without changing the underlying ownership / means of production, no? The boring liquidity thing people say would actually apply because there wouldn’t be enough cash (even as computer numbers) to pay the tax. So the gov would have to “print” the money for it. And then the rich would get a loan from the fed to pay the tax,(?) which seems circuitous, but also it seems circuitous even if they got a loan from a normal bank. The super-rich would essentially then just be constantly building this really large debt that would exceed the total amount of money. Because no underlying ownership or production would change, it would basically be the same as now, right? literally just numbers on a computer? Taking debt forever with unlimited credit to pay the people who gave you the money?

I’m sorta falling into a weird spot where:

1. Taxes seem to not really be about funding government in the sense that the gov controls the money supply (unless that’s not true actually?), so, uh, are taxes a very dull game that everyone has to play? Is this what people are talking about when they say “providing base demand for the currency”?
2. All of these numbers seem much larger than they need to be…? In that you could only really buy ‘investments’ with them. Mostly being further means of production or scams. I get that there are markets for really expensive things (yachts come to mind), but honestly comparatively those don’t really seem expensive. Is there some other use for money that I’m too poor to understand?
3. Money does seem kinda fake as well tbh.

So am I being uncharitable and there is a way for a tax to actually un-rich billionaires? Would they have to sell shares/debt to the state eventually building state ownership? It all seems a bit difficult and roundabout, but maybe that’s just my lack of understanding. Also please don’t respond with something from an econ class.