It's not just about QoL, income inequality corrupts political systems, which unravels everything else.
It's also worth saying that a very easy way of increasing the QoL of those at the bottom is to take a tiny fraction from those at the top.
And generally, people aren't talking about the average small business owner who makes $200k/yr profit. We're talking about people who have more than $50m in a big money vault. It's a straw man to replace people like pg with like, the people who run email octopus or your local credit union.
> We're talking about people who have more than $50m in a big money vault.
"Those at the top" don't generally have that much cash. They have shares in companies, often ones they started themselves, which happen to be worth a large amount on paper. If you wanted to distribute that in a form people could actually spend (not just moving shares around) you would have to liquidate the companies those shares represent. In the process you would destroy far more wealth than you distributed and eliminate services and production capacity which were previously working for the benefit of the very people you're claiming to help.
People like to complain about public companies and their alleged focus on short-term gains, but that's exactly what this proposal represents: a short-lived and highly diffuse gain in short-term consumption for the masses at the expense of long-term capital investment and productivity.
> And generally, people aren't talking about the average small business owner who makes $200k/yr profit. We're talking about people who have more than $50m in a big money vault. It's a straw man to replace people like pg with like, the people who run email octopus or your local credit union.
If you have a "small business" in your assets worth $49m, no worries! If you have one worth $50m, that'll be 2% please. This affects something like the richest 100,000 Americans, and they're not going to have to like, sell bricks out of the family's car wash business in order to pay it. They may spitefully lay people off or raise prices rather than pay out of their personal/business assets, but that's capitalism for you. I wouldn't blame taxes, I would blame jerks.
The amount of catastrophizing and backseat economizing around a wealth tax is super strange. Income and wealth inequality in the US is by all measures extremely high. 66% of Americans support a wealth tax, including 55% of Republicans. Does anyone really think it's better to have billionaires than universal health care?
It's also worth saying that a very easy way of increasing the QoL of those at the bottom is to take a tiny fraction from those at the top.
And generally, people aren't talking about the average small business owner who makes $200k/yr profit. We're talking about people who have more than $50m in a big money vault. It's a straw man to replace people like pg with like, the people who run email octopus or your local credit union.