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.
You're expecting things to never change, or if they do it'll be for the worst. I can't blame you for that. Thing is, there has already been change for the better. This is why we are still here and still fighting. Why we still have hope. If all those just like you joined us, imagine what we could do. All you'd have to do is expend some effort - the very same energy being used to express hate, dislike, and skepticism.
I am sorry you feel this way. It must really not feel great.
You know as well as we do that only one of two possible people will be elected, and that even if one party in power might have a measly 10% chance of having billionaires pay even half of their fair share, the other party being in charge has a -500% chance of doing so.
It’s an unnecessary dichotomy, but it is not a false one. At least one of the choices is willing to say it needs to be done, even if they are still by definition a politician who can’t really be trusted (and who won’t have the power to unilaterally make shit 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.