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income inequality debate

Shooshmoo said:
Jesus. The ego on you.
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Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black.

This article has a bunch of economics academics. Their knowledge regarding the complexities of enacting tax policy is about the same as yours, which is none. I am sure the clowns Guzman and Saez are on this panel. What a joke like your opinion on this subject.
 
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ProfessorDeac said:
To be clear I’m not arguing against the idea of a wealth tax, just a vague one. Whether it’s possible to come up with objective, measurable criteria that could roughly but fairly estimate a person’s wealth, I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like anyone has suggested such criteria yet.
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Especially generational wealth. Old wealth may have gotten paintings for almost nothing or don't display their most valuable pieces.

With a wealth tax, I would imagine insurance would be created overseas to hide values.
 
ChrisL68 said:
Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black.

This article has a bunch of economics academics. Their knowledge regarding the complexities of enacting tax policy is about the same as yours, which is none. I am sure the clowns Guzman and Saez are on this panel. What a joke like your opinion on this subject.
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Ok Boomer.
 
PhDeac said:
None of you have explained why we need to know wealth down to the cent at a given point in time as opposed to an estimate of wealth agreed upon by the IRS and the individual.
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Lol when you frame it that way then we sure seem like unreasonable nit pickers!

But it’s more like you (and grouchy shoo for some reason) have not explained why either the IRS or an individual would ever accept some sort of random arbitrary wealth figure at which to be taxed, which was generated from imagination with no real basis in accuracy. You contend the IRS will accept it because hey, at least we got something even if it wasn’t all we could’ve gotten from a more precise estimate. And the rich guy will accept it because then they can use that number to show their rich guy friends how rich they are.

Both of these are huge stretches that I know you know are stretches.
 
Paintings are great hedges against inflation for the super-wealthy. Paintings can cost $10-100+M. Auction results can vary wildly. Their values are very hard to pin down. Thus, insured values are often the best way to peg worth for tax considerations.

A wealth tax could create a huge bubble in the art market as ownership and location are harder to specify versus stock and real estate holdings.

Another way to skirt the wealth tax is precious gems. They are easily transportable and their value is often a wide range.

The best way to get consistent revenue is to get rid of junk ways to defer income and to have a progressive scale for capital gains that reaches the top level of general income with only similar losses to offset the income.
 
Shooshmoo said:
Who is not acknowledging the challenges? But you're not talking about a lot of people. As I said. You'd have to create regulations and beef up the IRS. You're not saying anything other people haven't already said, and it's not compelling at all. And the idea that people hide income but not wealth is asinine.

This started with a comment that a wealth tax is impossible. It's clearly not.
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This reads like you didn’t really get my post or acknowledge the challenges. Yeah I didn’t generally say anything new but was just giving examples of specifically what might need to happen and what would result administratively. You say it’s not a lot of people to be taxed. Who cares? If one of those persons owns a small stake in a thousand private businesses then that’s a thousand new audits to determine their net worth. That involves a ton of people on the accounting, valuation and employees of those businesses. You ok with exploding the demand for accounting folks? Chris, Palma, and the accounting folks here would probably would be ok with that, for all you guys try to claim they’re preserving status quo. And who says it’s not many people to be taxed? How would you know? Like you said, people may try to hide wealth. By the way I didn’t say that people try to hide income but not wealth. No shit man.

Simply saying “create regulations and beef up the IRS” is a magic wand, not a real solution or acknowledgement of the challenges. Some could call it asinine.

Of course it’s not impossible to tax wealth. Then approach it realistically to make sure it’s doable.
 
ProfessorDeac said:
To be clear I’m not arguing against the idea of a wealth tax, just a vague one. Whether it’s possible to come up with objective, measurable criteria that could roughly but fairly estimate a person’s wealth, I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like anyone has suggested such criteria yet.
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I sort of suggested that criteria, which would be based on the way businesses are currently valued. You generate a personal balance sheet, based on current fair values of the assets of the individual less their debts. It would be an enormous pain in the ass. The administrative burden to value the business holdings on a timely basis would be crushing. Get the antiques roadshow guys in their to value the art. Real estate guys. Oil appraisers. Whoever can provide a value of all their shit as of a certain date.
 
06deacon said:
This reads like you didn’t really get my post or acknowledge the challenges. Yeah I didn’t generally say anything new but was just giving examples of specifically what might need to happen and what would result administratively. You say it’s not a lot of people to be taxed. Who cares? If one of those persons owns a small stake in a thousand private businesses then that’s a thousand new audits to determine their net worth. That involves a ton of people on the accounting, valuation and employees of those businesses. You ok with exploding the demand for accounting folks? Chris, Palma, and the accounting folks here would probably would be ok with that, for all you guys try to claim they’re preserving status quo. And who says it’s not many people to be taxed? How would you know? Like you said, people may try to hide wealth. By the way I didn’t say that people try to hide income but not wealth. No shit man.

Simply saying “create regulations and beef up the IRS” is a magic wand, not a real solution or acknowledgement of the challenges. Some could call it asinine.

Of course it’s not impossible to tax wealth. Then approach it realistically to make sure it’s doable.
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Great family and other great wealth is very difficult to do. It would be virtually impossible to get it done accurately and likely be rife with corruption.

Further, it would likely take many years to collect which would create other issues like market fluctuations in any number of economic arenas.

Like many bumper sticker ideas, it sounds great until you actually have to implement it and collect the revenues.
 
During much of apartheid in South Africa, everyday people who were trying to escape turned their money into diamonds and other jewels to help them start a new life wherever they could get a visa to visit. If they could figure ways to move their money like this, what do you think people with vast wealth could do?

The concept that we could collect what is actually do is a pipe dream.
 
RJKarl said:
Paintings are great hedges against inflation for the super-wealthy. Paintings can cost $10-100+M. Auction results can vary wildly. Their values are very hard to pin down. Thus, insured values are often the best way to peg worth for tax considerations.

A wealth tax could create a huge bubble in the art market as ownership and location are harder to specify versus stock and real estate holdings.

Another way to skirt the wealth tax is precious gems. They are easily transportable and their value is often a wide range.

The best way to get consistent revenue is to get rid of junk ways to defer income and to have a progressive scale for capital gains that reaches the top level of general income with only similar losses to offset the income.
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Hell yeah. I’m inheriting some warhol’s. That’s my boy, RJ.
 
Shooshmoo said:
Sure, Boomer.
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Is that code for someone who actually knows what they are talking about? The fact that you thought a survey of economic academics was relevant to this argument is really telling. I am fb friends with an econ professor at uncg who tried to tell me that he wasn't subject to the new 199A deduction. Someone who is an economist is no more a tax expert than a tax guy is an economist. They have nothing more than an educated guess the complexities involved here.
 
06deacon said:
This reads like you didn’t really get my post or acknowledge the challenges.
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I've acknowledged challenges several times. Pretty sure everyone has acknowledged the challenges. But I am not sure why you think every aspect of the tax needs to be figured out by the candidates at this stage. That's not how any of this works.

Go read Warren's or Bernie's plan if you want to understand more details, how they've estimated number of people impacted and how they plan to stop the transfer of wealth and then wealthy outside the country. I'm sure they've out a lot more thought into this than you and Chris.

In any event, this is all purely hypothetical because it will not happen. Literally, nothing will happen.
 
Nothing will be done because it is very hard to implement and very inefficient. Not to mention it is likely unconstitutional. The idea that Bernie and Liz have put loads of thought into the implementation challenges at the ground level is really cute.
 
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ChrisL68 said:
Nothing will be done because it is very hard to implement and very inefficient. The idea that Bernie and Liz have put loads of thought into the implementation challenges at the ground level is really cute.
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Sorry, man, that has nothing to do with why nothing will be done and you know that. Again, yes, I am sure that well-known super accountant ChrisL68 from the Wake Forest message boards has thought through this more than the world's foremost economic and tax experts and Warren and Bernie. Keep the red phone nearby, Chris, you can expect a call from Republican strategists in how to combat the scary wealth tax and protect our nation's Uber rich.
 
Shooshmoo said:
Sorry, man, that has nothing to do with why nothing will be done and you know that. Again, yes, I am sure that well-known super accountant ChrisL68 from the Wake Forest message boards has thought through this more than the world's foremost economic and tax experts and Warren and Bernie. Keep the red phone nearby, Chris, you can expect a call from Republican strategists in how to combat the scary wealth tax and protect our nation's Uber rich.
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You continue to babble nonsense. Haven't you gotten your ass kicked rhetorically enough in this thread? Warrens main advisors are a group of socialist economists.
 
ChrisL68 said:
You continue to babble nonsense. Haven't you gotten your ass kicked rhetorically enough in this thread? Warrens main advisors are a group of socialist economists.
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Chris, you've never kicked anyone's ass in your life. And now you're playing the socialist card. Right out of the playbook.
 
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