'Let's Go!' Top Economist Applauds as Harris Signals Support for Billionaires Tax
'Let's Go!' Top Economist Applauds as Harris Signals Support for Billionaires Tax
An economist at the forefront of the growing global push for a billionaire wealth tax is welcoming news that U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is embracing calls for a minimum levy on the United States' richest individuals.
Gotta say, as someone who identifies as a progressive, she's really been beating my expectations compared to what she was saying and doing back in the 2020 primaries.
She needs to get tougher on Israel, otherwise everything I see is good.
I'm hoping she's mostly just playing soft on Israel for now is to avoid more criticism of being antisemitic. When Israel started their attempted genocide, most of the Biden administration was silent on it, and we didn't hear or see anything from Harris, when she did eventually have a public appearance about a month later, she was pretty much the first person in the administration to say anything remotely pro-peace.
I'm probably just huffing copium but I hope she's just taking AIPAC's money (not sure if they are giving her any, but better in her hands than theirs) and getting through the election, and then going to go full prosecutor on Israel/Netanyahu.
I think she has to toe the line because she is still the acting VP. Going against the president in that position is not a good look. That said it makes knowing her actual position there really tough.
The fact that she didn't have to face a primary this year is a political gift. She didn't have to go.on record while jockeying to differentiate herself and the instant unanimous support from the entire Democratic party means she can just be herself
In the 2020 primaries the race was between the moderates and Bernie, why wouldn't she have felt comfortable being more progressive when Bernie was doing so well?
She started out the 2020 primaries pretty progressive, but would usually roll-back her positions a day later, presumably after some adviser told her it wouldn't play in Peoria or would anger a megadonor. Maybe that's where her heart actually lies and her trainwreck of a campaign made her realize those advisors were bad people to listen to.
If Zucman is a fan, this is great news indeed. A 25% minimum tax on billionaire wealth sounds great, and with broad support, as the article notes (even 51% of Republicans).
Much better news, too, for those of us who only saw this part reported on til now:
The campaign spokesperson called the move—which would still leave the corporate tax rate lower than it was when Trump first took office in 2017—a "fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share." (emphasis mine)
IIRC, the corporate tax rate was slashed by Trump from 30-something percent, maybe 35%, to something like 18%, so to see that Harris was not interested in reversing this Trump tax cut fully (only to 25%) felt til now like yet another depressing instance of the ratchet effect, where the right does what they do, and neoliberals only undo part of it when they are in power.
I'm just a millionaire. I'm worth diddly squat "on paper" because I intend to stay a millionaire. This isn't a difficult fiscal apparatus to create. Billionaires have much more effective methods at their disposal.
It doesn't matter what the tax rates are so long as the loopholes remain wide open and there's very little enforcement.
Loopholes are a consequence of tax law and enforcement. In theory, you can raise a lot of money for popular programs by aggressively pursuing tax cheats. In practice, we've built a society that hates the idea of taxation and yields social and financial rewards to people who open and defend new loopholes in the system.
At what point does the neighborhood PTA put two and two together, to conclude a big cut to property taxes must necessitate a big cut to school budgets? Idk. Seems like redder and poorer states have been forced to square up with this reality sooner. But these states also tend to be captured by the corporate interests that dominate their political systems.
But the real methods that the billionaire class have to stay free of taxation and regulation are in mass media and corporate lobbying. You can only do so much to hide your assets without rendering them valueless. Apple can bury its trillions in cash in a big hole in the ground, but then they can't spend it on anything for the business. The real way to free up that cash is to convince voters that a big tax cut for repatriating all that money will benefit the country more than a higher tax rate on the Jobs Family Trust.
"Neolib" is Republicans. Democrats are just "libs". Confusing, I know. But it's like the difference between anarchists and anarcho-capitalists.
There is some debate about the current usage, but many, if not most, Democratic politicians are arguably neoliberals. The model was promoted in the US by Bill Clinton, who championed a centrist, Third Way approach for the party.
Tax them out of existence.
Tax those mother fuckers.
In the 1950s the top marginal tax rate for couples filing jointly making over $400,000/year was 91%. Adjusting for inflation, that’s $5,200,000. Just to put our current tax structure in context.
Should be over 50% to start. Simply to
alinealign with current tax brackets.In 1945 the top tax rate in the USA was 94%. This should be a goal.
But please based on wealth rather than income.
Rich people don't become rich from income.
In 1945, we operated under what was functionally a command economy at the tail end of a globe-spanning total war.
I mean, we can debate the efficacy of that economic model (re: The People's Republic of Walmart), but I'd rather the US be funding and fighting fewer wars, not more of them. FFS, if you give any number of shits about climate change, a global mobilization of killing machines is not going to point us in the right direction.
The threat and urgency of climate change is all the more reason to take that money and apply it to those problems. Not only does that help tackle the issue directly, it takes resources away from the biggest contributors to the problem. You have asshole rich fucks commuting to the office by private jet.
Why do you assume the taxes have to go hand in hand with investing in war?
Believe it or not, Taxation is a field of study on its own, with countless people spending their whole life studying it. I wonder how this is going to actually work out legally.
The supreme court will call it unlawful theft of profits and strike it down. What else could possibly happen in a federalist controlled legal system?
We really need to stop calling the republican party republican. It's not at all what it once was. It's the Federalist Society party.
Correct if I'm wrong here, but is this article just "Economist comments on something it has been claimed the Harris campaign team said, but is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in writing or in speeches"?
If she planned on taxing billionaires, she'd be shouting it from the rooftops. That's a popular policy. It's not going to be something she keeps in her back pocket and then when she's president goes SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS. Not that she could do it by EO anyway, but honestly, this is so far from a reality it just barely qualifies as news.
If she planned on taxing billionaires, she’d be shouting it from the rooftops. That’s a popular policy.
Not among corporate mega-donors, it isn't! Keeping it in her back pocket -- not until she's president, but until shortly before the election and, crucially, after their checks clear -- is exactly what she should do.
The article cited the 2025 budget [PDF]. It's under the section "Proposes a Minimum Tax on Billionaires".
To finally address this glaring inequity, the Budget includes a 25 percent minimum tax on the wealthiest 0.01 percent, those with wealth of more than $100 million.
Though the Harris campaign is not directly mentioned, I think we may assume it's coming from both Harris and Biden.
This is actually really helpful clarification, I did just miss some of that. It's no wealth tax, but it's better than nothing.
Vice President Kamala Harris will push to increase the corporate tax rate to 28% from the current 21%, her campaign said Monday, the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Coming days after she unveiled a four-part economic package that would provide tax relief to working and middle-class Americans, the corporate tax proposal marks Harris’ first effort to detail how she would pay for her policy platform should she win the presidential election.
"As President, Kamala Harris will focus on creating an opportunity economy for the middle class that advances their economic security, stability, and dignity,” campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a statement. “Her plan is a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.”
Sounds like a solid plan! I would be surprised if the public opinion here would be any different. There are no billionaires on Lemmy.
Not now, no, but I need to make sure they have a favorable tax regime for when my scratch-offs inevitably raise me to my appropriate station.
Pro tip: Have other people do the scratching.
The only way to become a billionaire is to exploit the labor of others.
No, but there are still plenty of billionaire meat-riders here.
First stop Joe Rogan. Not a billionaire, but he is an ignorant little bitch.
All talk. I have yet to see a single politician actually give the people what they want. She had 4 years to do it, and crickets.
Idk what she's done, or even can do as VP, but Joe's helped get some good legislation passed, negotiated drug prices and I think he passed some gun control? Those seem like things some people want, although you might have a specific people in mind that I'm not aware of.
That’s just distraction legislation, not what people truly need. This has been happening since the early days of the election process, but none of these measures address the real needs of the public because it’s all political theater. The actual control lies elsewhere (i.e. global elite). I’ve been aware of this for decades, but only recently have others started to see it too.
for realsies this time? is anyone really expecting this to happen? is this really news?
i mean come fucking on.
No, we aren't. We're hoping. Which, much as you might dislike it, is a huge reason why we fight.
is anyone really expecting this to happen?
Something's got to give. The hard split with Russia and the increasing soft split with China is threatening the global dominance of the petro-dollar. At some point, the US is going to need to in-source large parts of its economy, and that's going to require public sector investment in a period of retreating dollar-dominance. That means either we gut spending on education, transportation, and health care (which would undermine re-industrialization at home) or we raise taxes.
Twelve years ago, you had Mitt Romney talking about putting more lower-class American "skin in the game" by imposing a higher taxes to cover the 47% of Americans who don't owe income taxes. That was a prelude to the modern moment, which we'd been kinda-sorta fortunate enough to forestall by deepening our trade relations with "enemy" nations and riding a new DotCom bubble out of the COVID crisis.
But now we've got serious revenue problems at the federal and state levels. We've cut too deeply on upper class taxes, and our political incentives are only to cut deeper. Gotta make that up from somewhere, or you're back to another inflationary spiral as the US floods with its own cheap money.
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Why are people downvoting the mediabias bot?
"Top Economist" is a funny phrase. Kinda like saying "leading soothsayer".
Don't think I don't have sympathy or respect for the economist. I just notice that it's the only academic discipline that pledges and is expected to predict the future.
Just like experts in criminal trials, economists can be selected to prove what you already know. And just like horoscopes, it's all very convincing until you measure the predictions against reality.
I have a PhD in economics. Saying that the field "pledges" to be able to predict the future is pretty disingenuous. You'd be hard pressed to find any serious researcher in the field with that level of delusion.
the only academic discipline that pledges and is expected to predict the future
Huh? Ever heard of climate science?
Or even just astronomy. They can predict a comet's position long before it gets to where they predict it will be. And they will be right.
Its a field where the actions and the effects are so separated from each other that its easy to pick and choose what effected what. This was not due to this but due to an earlier decision or not if someone wants it the other way. Leads to folks making conclusions based on their own personal economics. The purists will at least be lead by core philosophies. My personal one is that money has no actual resting value (value is based on issuing entity based on debt and revenue [taxation] and not in the substance excepting its physical makeup if any) and only has value in a transaction (at which point it has value in relation to the transaction and its actualized). A bit like potential and kinetic energy.
Her word means nothing.