If it is possible to make more wealth by giving up some, why not let people choose whether or not they will share? If you theory holds true, then people who share will get richer and the people who don't share will get poorer and the problem will solve itself.
When all wealthy people get together and divide their wealth, this enables education, housing, preventative health care, etc for poorer people in society. This will in turn lead to reduced crime, reduced homelessness, reduced illness and a much more productive society as a whole. This will then in turn generate more money for them.
This is a global optimum that will make everybody better off, including the rich, but it is not easy to achieve. It requires long-term vision, which is difficult in a world driven by quarterly reports and four year election cycles.
If you want as more accurate model, you can make one, e.g. mock markets. You can even evaluate then using various programmed strategies.
The problem is if your assumptions are completely invalid. Macroeconomy tends to use a few of those, especially based on workings of debt cycle. An almost correct descriptive model which when used as proscriptive causes ruin. Likewise pure supply-demand models fail when applied in the real world.
Of course taxing the wealthiest to share with everyone results in the wealthiest having less than they would otherwise, which is why they tend not do do so voluntarily.
However, if it makes most people better off, and makes society as a whole better off, then maybe it's worth it for the government to force their most-successful citizens away from their selfish instincts to the betterment of the nation?
So basically it's ok to sacrifice the minority, as long as it benefits the majority, huh?
I'm aware libertarians believe it's the principle of the thing, dammit, but I'm truly weary of arguments which boil down to "Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax is philosophically indistinguishable from a call for nationalizing all industry."
First, while some wealthy people remain wealthy, I'd guess there's a much larger impact on people who are becoming wealthy than those who are already super-rich.
Second, as you said, it's the principle. I've got an objection to seizing people's stuff to then give away to others. There is no reason government should supply anything that is not a pure public good, and it should supply precious few of those, too. Remember that every act the federal government takes is backed up with the threat of death. If you don't comply, a bunch of agents will bust down your door at 3 AM and haul you away (see the disturbing number of paramilitary groups many federal agencies now possess). If you resist, you get killed.
This applies to income tax too, by the way. I couldn't care less how much good you think you can do with it, no one gets to take someone else's stuff because he wants to give it to someone he deems more deserving.
Given that her proposed tax is for wealth over $50M, I'd guess there is not much impact at all on people who are "becoming" wealthy.
> If you don't comply, a bunch of agents will bust down your door at 3 AM and haul you away (see the disturbing number of paramilitary groups many federal agencies now possess). If you resist, you get killed.
The number of first-world multimillionaires brutally gunned down by federal agents because they underpaid their tax is indeed countless. I hear this is a real problem in Denmark.
> This applies to income tax too, by the way. I couldn't care less how much good you think you can do with it, no one gets to take someone else's stuff because he wants to give it to someone he deems more deserving.
Living in a society is quite a tragedy.
It's the corporate taxes that hurt the most because in a globalist society those taxes are taxes their competition does not have to pay and therefore can undercut them in price in world markets.
The government absolutely can, and does, pass laws to legally take anyone's stuff for any reason it likes.
If that is your bottom line, then almost every government in almost every country I know of overran it almost immediately.
What we are discussing right now is....given that they ca, and do....under what circumstances we want them to do it.
Think of it as a reality based discussion.
It (arguably) removes the government as a threat, but replaces the threat with other citizens.
It seems to me that history teaches that in the absence of a strong government, people are taxed by whoever is capable of becoming a strong local warlord.
Somalia or South Sudan would be current examples.
Im not sure how that is better?
Calling something "radical" is a tried-and-true technique to attempt to discredit it without arguing the point. What I described isn't that far from the federal government in early America.
> The point of government is to organize society, to provide a framework for doing things which we all collectively agree need to be done, but is in nobody's selfish interest to do.
Why? How do you justify using force to coerce others toward your vision of what you believe correct?
> There is a lot of stuff that fits this category.
Such as what? Please tell me why each of these must be done by the government.
> the government doesn't just set rules and boss you around.
Well, that is mostly what it does. There were over 50 volumes of federal law by the 80s: http://www.kowal.com/?q=How-Many-Federal-Laws-Are-There%3F
Some of the services you mentioned are there for good reason. I'm okay with weather and maps - the military does need to have that information (even if the military should be smaller), and once the information is collected, it's a public good and can be made available to citizens. I'd prefer stuff like forests were managed on a local level. As for emergencies, private disaster relief often does a better job: https://capitalresearch.org/article/private-sector-disaster-...
> Do you think society should be organized or not?
Talk about a false dichotomy. There are absolutely more- and less-organized societies. I've made it pretty clear that the government should keep the peace, uphold property rights, and enforce contracts.
> The notion that everything will all magically self-organize into a nice society is manifestly a myth.
Why? The above provide plenty of structure for a "nice society", for some definitions of nice. What's yours?
> I would rather live in the former Soviet Union in all its totalitarian dysfunctionality than in what libertarians imagine utopia to be like.
That's your choice, except your choice messes with my life. Mine only messes with yours to the extent that you no longer get to steal my stuff.
> If you want an example of that, try Somalia.
The Somalian government does not keep the peace. It does not uphold property rights. It does not enforce contracts.
> tl;dr libertarianism is anarchy in a business suit.
That statement is a willfully ignorant attempt to create a straw man. Democrats are communists in business suits, republicans are fascists in business suits, both of those statements are just as important. There are some anarchists, but not very many.
No taxing the wealthiest results in the wealthiest moving their capital investments elsewhere.
The reason this isn't done isn't because it's hard, it's because the foxes are running the chicken coop.
Another way to think of it is, that by benefiting from public goods (roads, law enforcement, health regulations) already in existence you and your family have already entered into a social contract with the government, which acts as a representative of the collective will of all people towards a more perfect union, and in which payment is due for the benefits you have obtained.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
Translation: People are stupid and need to be forced to do the right thing. (Where the "right thing" is defined by the current people in charge.)
By the way, "people who share will get richer and the people who don't share will get poorer" is a misstatement of the theory.
If exercise leads to greater health, then why is it necessary to try to encourage people exercise? Why don't people willingly exercise so that they can be healthy?
Should we force people to exercise?
If you have $100, tomorrow you will have $101. Then $102.01. And so on and so forth. At the end of the year, you'll have $3778.34
Now let's say that if you give $50 to someone else, you can both increase your wealth by 1.1% each day. At the end, both of you will have $2711.08. Individually less, but collectively more.
That's the issue: individually less.
While you may get some benefit from the collective betterment of society, it still requires sacrificing some portion of your potential maximum wealth.
It's $146,998.73 for each person. No matter how you slice it, 1.1% is greater than 1%. We're still working with $100 initially.
And if you're talking about one person's unrealized gain, we've already addressed that.
Individually, we may make less, but collectively, we make more.
The idea is that since fortune is largely based on luck and then exploiting that luck, we could be leaving a lot of progress on the table. A landlord who makes their wealth simply by charging rent isn't really doing anything to advance anything. He just happened to own the right bit of land at the right time.
So if we tax him and then use those taxes to provide for those who did not have the same breaks, we may be enabling someone to actually create something that advances technology or science or medicine.
I mean, "individually less, collectively more" also explains why the individual doesn't want to voluntarily give up anything.
Personal insults are against site rules, and that comment comes mighty close.