The problem with Warren's wealth tax is that it's a tax.

Exactly. Do the ordinary people who support this nonsense really believe Liz is going to divide up the loot among them? Do they not understand that much of it will be handed to the likes of Lockheed Martin and Humana? But wait: I get to vote. Yay democracy!

It's more than a tax. It's a violation of the right to privacy.

In order to impose a Wealth Tax, that means that absolutely everyone would then by law be compelled to list everything they own right down to your wedding rings so the state could then calculate your wealth to impose a tax.

You will have to prove you are under the $50 million limit to qualify for an exception. This type of tax would absolutely destroy the Right to Privacy. It does not matter if it starts at $50 million. How do they know you have less than $50 million unless you still report all your assets to say you are exempt.

The government will need to know everything you own. Which goes way beyond just a tax.

You've got an extra $49,244,923 in your couch cushions and jewelry box? Good for you. But cry me a river because .001% of the population has to pay a 2% tax on every dollar OVER $50M...

Late reply. Just wanted to share a stat from a yearly study done on inequality. Results from 2015 (from Oxfam)- 62 people ( yes, 62 individuals) - the richest 62 folks in the world together have more wealth than the bottom half of the population of this planet.

Taxes on the rich are exactly what we need. Why do you think economic inequality started to increase when Reagan passed his first tax cut? While the wealth of the middle and working classes has stayed flat since 1980, the wealth of those who "made good" increased dramatically over the same time period. A high marginal income tax rate is essential in a capitalist economy, or you automatically end up with a new aristocracy and hordes of the impoverished like we have now. Why? Because the rich have savings and those savings are used to make more money. No brainer.

No one is talking about confiscatory levels of taxation: the very wealthy would still be very wealthy even with high marginal income tax rates on very high incomes, high estate taxes on estates worth $1 billion or more, and financial transaction taxes. The other reason high taxes on wealth are necessary is to preserve democracy. The rich cannot be allowed to buy the government.

I know you people have fabricated an elaborate narrative architecture based on pseudo economics to obfuscate your true goals of unfettered greed and power, but people are finally beginning to see through all your lies, so save your comments. I've heard them all.

No taxes at all are exactly what we need. Why do you think economic inequality started to increase when Woodrow Wilson passed his first tax hike? While the wealth of the middle and working classes hasn't gone up as much, the wealth of those who "made good" increased dramatically over the same time period. No income taxes is essential in a capitalist economy, or you automatically end up with a new aristocracy and hordes of the impoverished like we have now. Why? Because the government spends our taxes, and that spending is used as an excuse to tax us more. No brainer.

Confiscatory levels of taxation changes the wealthy from honest businessmen who produce products for us to crooked government bureaucrats and they remain very wealthy, even with high marginal tax rates on very high incomes, high estate taxes on estates worth $1 billion or more, and financial transaction taxes. The other reason why no taxes on wealth are necessary is to preserve democracy. The government cannot be allowed to own the rich.

I know you people have fabricated an elaborate narrative architecture based on pseudo economics to obfuscate your true goals of unfettered greed and power, but people are finally beginning to see through all your lies, so save your comments. I've heard them all.

You need to use quotation marks around the paragraphs you copied, otherwise your post makes no sense;

No I just stole your words and used them for my own purposes just like how you advocate stealing other people's money for your own purposes.

Taxation isn't theft - it's redistribution for legitimate government purposes, as long as it's not confiscatory. Your legitimate income (based on work, intelligence, and luck) is ALSO derived from the investment of society in your opportunities. The U.S. government is a partner in the economy in multiple ways. But you reduce that to theft, which shows you to be interested only in plunder for yourself. If you think low or no taxes work, move to Kansas.

Billionaires don't bury their wealth in the back yard. Wealth is invested where it creates jobs, produces goods and services. Those investments do far more to fight poverty and lift people up than any get even Tax the democrats foist on them. Billionaires don't get rich on bad investments and they have good reason to see that the money is properly used. No one can say any such thing about Americas Welfare system, and politicians don't care if it works or if its corrupt as long as they get the credit for (Helping the poor).

The wealth tax is more about satiating resentment than it is even about funding social programs, but according to the figures in the article, to confiscate the wealth of all the billionaires in the US would provide only a one-time payment of less than $775 per citizen. We are not funding any social program for $775 per person. That is $.80 a month for a person who lives to age 80. Plus, we could never convert that wealth to that same amount of cash.

A few months ago, I ran some numbers - confiscating the wealth of the top 20% would finance the government(s) of the USA for almost... almost! two years.

As noted in the article, the problem is not income, it's spending.

That's one of the very same arguments for not drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - that it would only power the US economy for 6 months - but guess what?! Trump and his merry band of smashers and grabbers don't care!

Isn't one of the points about Marx's manifesto that the rich have their stuff confiscated so that they, in essence, don't get murdered by the mob?

The $50 million and $1 billion thresholds make even the quite-well-off think they'll never be touched by this, so yeah, go ahead and stick it to the ultra-rich. But isn't that exactly the way the income tax was sold long ago? Nothing to see here, average citizen, so move along.

Inflate the currency, enslave more people

Enslave all except those who index and surpass for inflation. Only the few have this privilege.

Loudmouth leeches like Warren depend on an endless supply of stupid people coming out of the government schools to keep their scam going. People whose heads are filled with fantasies of rich people frolicking in swimming pools filled with $100 bills. They have no clue that our standard of living would not be possible without the capital that the wealthy provide.
It is the poor who don't pay their fair share – in terms of saving, investment and risk-taking. Instead of "Capitalism without rules is theft," it ought to be "Consumption without investment is the end of life as we know it."

I recently heard an interview with an aging rock star who estimated that he, his band and his various other business interests have generated nearly $1B in tax revenue in addition to the wealth created for hundred of employees and partners over the previous fifty years or so. Yet at least tens of millions of US citizens would look him square in the eye and tell him that he has not contributed his fair share.

I think it bothers me less that the cult of envy doesn't think the rich pay enough in taxes than it does that they are so clueless about the role played by the rich as far as capital is concerned, and how their wealth benefits others. They might concede that the rich do pay some taxes and create some jobs, but aside from that, their view of wealth is cartoonish. They imagine fat guys with hot wives hoarding big bags of cash and only getting some out when they need another yacht or something to light a cigar with. If a poor person comes begging, they yell, "No! My money!" and slam the door in his face.
If someone has a job but doesn't make enough to owe income tax, he still "contributes" through payroll tax and sales tax, so there is some validity to his claim that he is paying his share to the government. But if he is saving nothing, investing nothing, and taking no risk, he is not paying his fair share in the formation of capital, which of course is what creates prosperity for the masses. He has never experienced the high of starting a business and making his first sale, or the terror of losing his biggest customer the day before payroll is due. His tiny, state-manipulated brain can't think beyond zero-sum, which is exactly how Warren, Sanders and AOC want it.

You are correct. It is not feasible for many reasons, but I almost think it should be requirement that any person running for state office or higher should have legitimate experience as an entrepreneur so that they learn that these assets do not just spring up out of the ground.

On the other hand, the progressive sh!thole state I live in just elected a multi-billionaire democrat as governor and he is poised to sign a bill within his first 30 days to nearly double the minimum wage over the next six years. So real world experience did not help him much.

There was no point going beyond your first sentence to which I want to reply once and for all that no one, NO ONE, envies the rich, except for other rich people who gage their relative worth solely by how much money they have.

But you can't recall the aging rock star's name?

Just what we need, more resources being funneled away from the productive economy into the pillage economy.
I'm so tired of public schools, it is the fact that young people are herded in these camps and not given any education that keeps this sheeeite rolling.

I agree with your first sentence, except that you have the classes reversed. The productive classes are those that pick your tomatoes, serve your coffee, and build your homes. The pillage economy is the one of the FIRE economy, neoliberalism, and kleptocrats. There. Fixed it for you.

There already are wealth taxes in the US -- they are called "property taxes" levied by local governments. Elizabeth Warren is just catching up the federal government with the local school board and a myriad of local government taxing authorities which levy a wealth tax on property owners whether they use these local services or not.

Property is wealth. Therefore any tax on that property is a form of wealth tax.

It's just a matter of tax incidence. Your landlord passes his wealth tax (paid in the form of property taxes) on to you to pay as his renter. It's still a tax on wealth, it's just not your wealth even though you end up paying it. Some argue that property taxes are a more "efficient" tax for government revenues because they are harder to avoid than income taxes. But, that's only true in a limited sense since property owners can and do reduce their property tax liability by not improving or upgrading their property. Or, wealthy individuals simply flee to lower tax jurisdictions.

Warren's wealth tax would likely just drive wealth and investment off shore.

94 and 91% marginal tax did not drive wealth and investments offshore as you promise or likely you want to scare others against checking the facts.
From 1937 till 1963 marginal tax was above 90% and there was the investment and wealth spurs in USA. You are lieing or spouting mythology created by wealthy for you to serve them.

My but you're ignorant. The wealthy never paid those marginal rates; they hired armies of tax accountants and attorneys to structure their investments and income to avoid those rates. So instead of investment to maximize profits by maximizing the social utility of capital, investment was made to minimize taxable income.
Government incentivizing lower social prosperity. Sheer genius, #amirite?

That is exactly my point what you described. Those taxes prevented rich to take out money and buy some islands in exotic lands as they do now or park the money in Swiss banks. They resorted to tricks to avoid such tax to invest that money back, not to take them out of firms. High taxes are the reason that investment soared when marginal tax is high.
That was the whole point of implementing such taxes, not to raise revenue for the state but to prevent rich taking money out of firms and buying up politicians and lands in foreign countries or yachts made in Europe.
DO you understand now. Those taxes are not for revenue but to make rich invest that money back into their own country.
If you think that taxes are only for the state revenue then you will never get it.

How silly. Lets pretend taxes dont exist. Then the greedy rich will invest to make as much money as possible by producing as much as possible and on and on. Society wins.

Objecting to the owners of property disposing of that property as they care to reveals a profound envy on your part, as well as on the part of the statists who would tax them into doing as they say...

The talk is about how such tax will drive wealth and investment offshore. I just wanted to point out how such theory is a mythology that you Austrian believe in. In your last comment you switch to how such thing to create better economy is unfair and how it is my envy. But it is unfair that those with power to decide their own wage is taking unfair part that they can not ever earn nor spend. Taking 300x average of their employees is unfair. It is not about envy. it is that nobody's productivity can not be that high. It is that it is only by their power that they get themselves that much, not by fairness nor merit.
But this was about how such myths permiate this site where lies prosper and make you work for wealthy side for free by believing these myths about wealth and investment going offshore if tax go up. The biggest wealth and investment went offshore when taxes went down as in present time. Not when taxes go up. It is opposite of what you believe when you check the facts.

1) cite those facts then - should be easy, right?

2) When did the property of other people become the state's to command?

3) Your thinking is as dull as your "points"...

Wealth confiscation is certainly among the next things that the statists will push for.

"Calculating the overall value of the wealth of a household would cost an immense amount of time and effort."

No, it would actually be impossible. The REAL value of these assets is subjective and incalculable, and the NOMINAL dollar-value is subject to constant and drastic fluctuation under our absurd regime of purposeful asset-price inflation (that necessarily invites periodic "corrections" in asset prices as its corollary).

What Warren wants to do is akin to addressing rampant counterfeiting by way of charging those counterfeiters a fee for the continued privilege of printing money. Want to charge me a billion dollars extra? Okay, hang on a minute while I go down to the cellar to run that off for you.

Indeed, the "real value" of most businesses and other assets can only be determined by liquidating them...

Doing the impossible is not her problem. She deals the cards and someone else has to play them.

In this case, she will task "experts" to do the impossible wealth calculations.

It's interesting that Warren is bandying this proposal about while others are doing the same with this Green New Deal thing. That one has the same characteristics: "We'll set the environmental mandates and leave it to the experts to make sure that we (somehow) invent the technology to make it happen."

“Capitalism without rules is theft,” Warren says. This woman is just as dizzy as AOC. She lies about being an native American just to reap the benefits of affirmative action which I would call being a thief. She is a typical socialist that things she has a better plan than the other socialists. It is going to end bad for her and AOC and if it doesn't for them than this country was great while it lasted.

It'll be funnier in a few years (if AOC can stay in the high politics) - once she's gotten some backstage experience.

All taxes are wealth taxes because they would be unpayable without wealth.
If we want capitalism, we'll have to destroy the government regulation that has always collapsed it.

I am a French citizen, living in France..earning minium wages and yet I am against the wealthy tax (among other taxes of course). It is a cheap solution to complex problems: need more money for the state??sure!!let's steal money from rich people and keep the spending attitude!!

States should adopt policies more "minarchist-oriented" and stop always relying on spending. But for this to happen, a revolution should be made among the citizens for now too many expect the state to solve all problems. We (in France and elsewhere) have grown used to the state to part of our lifestyle and we fail to take our responsibilities.

It is NOT difficult to Enforce a WEALTH tax. FDR did it, we had it up until Reagan Cut the Taxes on the wealthy and Bush did not put it back where it belonged. All backed by Wall Street, The Investment Banks, Mises U.,Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, The Big biotechs, Arthur Laffer, Mr. Friedman, and of course Volcker and the Jewish Federation of Banking in the USA "the FED" all disagreed with a large tax on the rich, how amazed should the Poor working class be at this amazing revelation ?
Mises University is the Basic Foundation school that is here to represent the rich and POUND into the Ground poor working class.
What has not worked since 1985 ? This : Milton Friedman stated, "Reaganomics had four simple principles: Lower marginal tax rates, less regulation, restrained government spending, noninflationary monetary policy. Though Reagan did not achieve all of his goals, he made good progress."

Around every corner is a pundit to tell you why it does work, or trickle down will work, or, a cut tax for the rich will stimulate the economy. Of course, a one time temporary tax cut in the 80s stimulated the economy after 50 years of heavy tax on the rich AND WORKING class. It took money from the govt. put it in the peoples pockets and they spent it. Since this time we have gone down hill. Mises is part of that fall. They pay people to BACK their angle, to back the rich, to keep the money flowing up and to take from the working class.
The only problem we have now is, HOW long will it take the WBLPSA, etc, to catch on ? Either a revolution, or death, murder, assassinations, whatever it will be, how far will the Peter Schiff's, the Carl Icahn's, and the Bill Ackman's of the world be willing to push to squeeze every last penny out of every 401k, pension plan, medicare, medicaid, Social Security, etc. They want it all and the working class are just in the way. When it comes to money and Greed, some will do anything to have it all. They have no compassion for another human. In their eye's, money and power are the end game, if every other human on the planet is Broke, so be it, not their problem.
The FED right now is destroying our Country, 122T in underfunded liabilities. Yet people will still vote in career politicians like Clinton, or a Putz like Trump.

Just out of curiosity...how much revenue did FDR get w/ his wealth tax?

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”
“I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises.”
“I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!”
-The words are those of none other than Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.

That's some right intel right there.

Good job, rightintel.