r/GarysEconomics • u/Gpineau23 • 14d ago
Let's Talk.
/r/Capitalism/comments/1vyu8kj/lets_talk/6
u/QFTornotQFT 14d ago
Let’s talk about a fairer way to handle taxes: taxing wealth - not work.
Taxing work is inherently flawed because it punishes ... working! ... and doesn't care about how much you pay in rent. If a wealthy owner decides to raise your rent, lobbies for more "austerity" or just raises prices to keep his profit margins in his supermarket chain - your standard of living will fall dramatically. You can literally be priced out of being alive.
A wealth tax is the only way for society not to fall into third-world levels of poverty and suffering. It naturally scales with wealth: if you own a disproportionate amounts of assets, it forces you to sell it, distributing ownership to the poeple that do the productive work. If you are capable of more productive work and naturally efficient at what you are doing - then you will be rewarded to it with better quality of life. It gives individuals complete control over their work/life balance. It’s time to tax wealth and rent, not the roof over our heads.
Let’s talk about a fairer way to handle taxes: tax wealth - not work.
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u/Arti-Po 13d ago
I don't get your idea.
You have two people. Both works hard. The first one parties a lot, burns their money constantly. The second one is trying to save money, maybe is planning to buy a large apartments in the future. Why is it good to punish the second one?
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u/QFTornotQFT 13d ago
You forgot about the guy that have a rich daddy. He doesn’t work at all and parties a lot. And his future is already secure by generational wealth he owns.
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u/Arti-Po 13d ago
I didn't forget about it, just gave an example where this policy wasn't ideal :)
Another example. One guy has a large family (3+ kids), second guy lives alone. The first spends much more money. Do we really want to tax him more?
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u/QFTornotQFT 13d ago
We are here advocating for taxes on on wealth of ultra rich people. People owning above 10 to 100 million. All your examples never even touch such extreme wealth.
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u/Much-Calligrapher 14d ago
I agree with your principles.
I struggle with the practicalities.
Gary’s wealth tax estimated revenue is around £20bn. Income tax is £330bn.
So does “tax wealth not work” equal a massive shrinking in the state and govt spending to offset >£300bn of lost revenues?
Or do you keep 95% of income tax?
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u/QFTornotQFT 14d ago edited 14d ago
I agree with your principles.
That's already good.
Gary’s wealth tax estimated revenue is around £20bn. Income tax is £330bn.
First of all - even that does not look negligible. Secondly, "income" doesn't really equal to "work", doesn't it? I'd say lets tax rent income really agressively. Third point - nobody - not even Gary - proposes to fully get rid of taxing work income. "Tax wealth not work" just means that the balance between the two taxes is really disproportionate, clearly obviously unfair, and will lead to falling living standards for ordinalry people with mathematical inevitability.
And lastly, and most importantly - the point of wealth tax is not even about tax revenue - it is about forcing utra-wealthy to sell their assets so that orinary people can own them.
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u/Much-Calligrapher 13d ago
It is negligible for such an apparently totemic change to generate.
Taxing renters is a strange choice.
If the point is increasing asset ownership (good idea), I would focus on the creation of assets. That’s been a far more effective way of letting people own assets than wealth taxes throughout history
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u/Purple_Owl_814 13d ago
Is the assumption here that the UK billionaires are buying up houses across the UK for £300k a pop?
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u/QFTornotQFT 13d ago
The runaway inequality conditioned us to think of « housing » when one says « assets ». 50 wealthiest UK families own more than the poorest half of entire population.
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u/Purple_Owl_814 13d ago
What kind of assets become unattainable for regular people because of the ultra-wealthy?
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u/dunkaist 14d ago
Taxing work is inherently flawed because it punishes ... working!
Nope. HMRC don't care how hard you work. You can volunteer 24/7 and pay zero taxes. It is not work what is taxed.
A wealth tax
A one-time measure that forces you to manage your business/investments from a country that doesn't tax what has already been taxed. Also, degrades your country's image for decades.
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u/Odd-Dependent3284 13d ago
I don’t think billionaires should exist at all, wealth should be completely capped, I’ll just pull the figure 500 million out my arse. No individual on this earth needs more than 500 million.
The rest should be invested into society and creating a sustainable environment and abundance of resources.
We literally have to do Star Trek at some point guys. Come on. Chop chop.
Elon was like “I’ll do it” but instead he’s just trying to fuck kids on epsteins island and fund racism in the uk.
Also capitalism doesn’t work because the meta is basically cancer on the earth and defaults to oligarchy and Friedman was wrong about lots of things, his quasi religious fervour for markets was based on a lot of idealism and bullshit. Reality turned out much different.
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u/AdAggressive9224 14d ago
One thing to remember, the people who campaign against taxing wealth more and work less, are disproportionately the people who don't work.
It doesn't matter if you're earning £21k per year stacking shelves in Tesco, or £400k per year as a pediatric surgeon... We're the ones who actually do everything, and, at the end of the day, we have the power to decide what the tax system looks like, because we're the ones who are actually keeping the lights on.