Re:Sweeping Reform Would Tax Capital Gains Like Ordinary Income
by danaris on Sunday April 07, 2019 @12:06PM
(#19597668)
The rich can afford to give up a much higher percent of their wealth or income in taxes than can the not-rich.
Living expenses do not simply increase as a linear function of income or wealth. They increase, sure, but there's an effective upper bound. Jeff Bezos does not need to buy 10,000 times more food (or food 10,000 times more expensive) than someone making minimum wage.
Thus, the statement that "in a flat system, the rich contribute more," while trivially true, serves only to obscure the horribly damaging nature of flat tax schemes—or, indeed, even schemes that are only as progressive as the one we have now, which has allowed the very wealthy to accumulate the vast majority of all gains in the economy for decades.
That's...not a good thing. It's something we need to be working against, and increasing the progressiveness of our tax scheme (however "aggressive" some may feel that makes it) is one good way of doing so.
Living expenses do not simply increase as a linear function of income or wealth. They increase, sure, but there's an effective upper bound. Jeff Bezos does not need to buy 10,000 times more food (or food 10,000 times more expensive) than someone making minimum wage.
Thus, the statement that "in a flat system, the rich contribute more," while trivially true, serves only to obscure the horribly damaging nature of flat tax schemes—or, indeed, even schemes that are only as progressive as the one we have now, which has allowed the very wealthy to accumulate the vast majority of all gains in the economy for decades.
That's...not a good thing. It's something we need to be working against, and increasing the progressiveness of our tax scheme (however "aggressive" some may feel that makes it) is one good way of doing so.