https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...
It is possible that some European countries have over corrected though.
Well, the US has become a bastion of neo-feudalism, so there's that.
We don't even have to pick the extreme outliers where affluenca officially plays a role. Someone that can spend a million on lawyers in the US will get a better outcome.
What does taxing _income_ of upper-middle class high-earners (who are probably coming somewhere from Eastern Europe and are not related to Habsburgs or something) have to do we dealing with _generational_ wealth of old-money families? In fact, descendants of well-off parents seem to do just fine. If anything they basically becoming landed gentry considering how unattainable housing has become.
also wealth generates income.
plus taxing income is easier, less transaction costs. (no need to sell the house to pay wealth tax.)
of course non of these invalidate your observation about landed gentry, absurd housing prices, etc.
So tax income types that tend to come from wealth instead. Compared with regular salary income that is heavily taxed in Europe those usually incur significantly lower tax rates (long-term capital gains tax, dividend tax, etc.).
> plus taxing income is easier, less transaction costs. (no need to sell the house to pay wealth tax.)
You are confused about how wealth taxes usually work. They are something you pay every year based on your total assets, not when you sell the assets (these are capital gains or property gains taxes).
> of course non of these invalidate your observation about landed gentry
Becoming a landed gentry is intentional end game of current asset owning classes in Europe. Let's take Sweden as a worst offender - locals sit on top of their multimillion+ property (that they either inherited with 0 inheritance tax or got with tax-deductible mortgage when prices were saner), don't pay any wealth taxes and would like immigrants to pay for their welfare state with crazy income taxes while simultaneously extracting exuberant rents from them indefinitely by making housing basically unobtainable through regular income. Mind you this isn't European-specific problem (prop 13 landed gentry says hello), but Europeans tend to have this annoying holier-then-thou attitude towards the US paired with complete lack of self-awareness.
No, I'm not completely, that's what I meant. That wealth tax can force people to sell.
Yep, sounds similar. Inheritance tax was also terminated in Hungary, and you can give unlimited value to your parents/kids tax free.
What you call "cut down tall poppies" others call "correcting thousands of years of aristocracy-fuelled unfairness". European wealth has much older roots. In a few centuries, Americans will likely reach a similar political point.