Increase tax rates on the uber-wealthy for poisoning our society for decades with their greed.

[kpete]

https://liberalsarecool.com/

[Hortensis]

1. Hypocrisy-grievance tax? How about we just tax that kind of wealth

out of existence because it's harmful and incompatible with democracy?

And absolutely skip the playing to the worst traits of reactionaries.

Demand drives production. Hundreds of millions of consumers, billions, demanded and busily and unconcernedly "poisoned" the world, me among them. No to pretending it's not us.

[secondwind]

2. I think the problem is that we are a capitalist country, with democracy. They go hand in hand.

[Hortensis]

5. Yes, and 250 million Americans are BOTH producers of profit and citizens.

I don't understand why some people imagine that socialism would eliminate using harmful materials and production techniques; only development of better technology and products will do that. And without the profit motive, it'd be up to government functionaries to do that.

Meanwhile, the same feckless citizens who don't insist private industry and government do better now won't be insisting socialist government do better either; they will have the exact same need for heat in winter, abundant consumer goods, and demands for always-lower gas prices.

To the point, though, we should always have positive reasons for what we want to happen. BUILD better for good reasons.

Decisions motivated by hostility and resentment are virtually always bad decisions, which is why they're so often promoted by bad people with bad intentions, or at very least resentful incompetents and troublemakers.
That way lies populist mobs with their, "Suffering victims arise and GET THEM!"

Just no.

[GoodRaisin]

3. Yeah. It's more than 4 people, but

yeah. That is pretty much it.

The greed chain drove the bus. The tax is a start, I guess. I wouldn’t mind if we were to just go and take all of their ill gotten gains. All of it, and use it to start repairing all the damage they have done to everybody and everything with their insatiable greed.

[Chainfire]

4. There will never be a fair tax on the ultrawealthy

because they own the people who make the laws.

We need a flat rate tax based upon all sources of income or any other increase in wealth, and with no deductions or breaks of any kind. What could be more fair? If it takes 5 or 50% of the income of people to run the government on a given year, then that would be the tax rate.

The tax code could go from 1400 pages to a single sentence. If caught cheating on taxes, you tax rate doubles for five years.

[dutch777]

6. Symbollically this may have value to the Dem party. Practically, it's not much of a "fix".

I have often thought that some wealth transfer tax could reap large $$$ for the Treasury at little impact to the average citizen. If we tax real estate, businesses or many other things, that eventually gets passed along to the masses. But what if we taxed substantial stock, bond and other investment transactions with maybe a .1% transfer tax? Not looking to hit the folks putting $200 a month into their stock 401k or selling their $2 million "starter" house in a hot CA market, but someone dumping 100,000 shares of Tesla or speculating big in Bitcoin. I know folks would try and game the rules by breaking up that 100,000 share transaction into 100 transactions of 1,000 shares spread over multiple brokers but I really think this has more potential in both $$$ payback and minimal voter resistance. While I applaud stimulus and COVID relief spending that has helped the average people, I do also worry about the level of US debt and think if we don't get an improved tax revenue stream somewhere, we will be in bigger economic troubles than we have seen in decades.