Amazon founder Jeff Bezos faces backlash for arguing against higher taxes, claiming it won't benefit society. Critics call out his low tax rate and extravagant spending.
My solution is that everyone pays the same rate and let the billionaires set that rate. They’re good with the 30% or whatever it is we pay? Let them pay it too. I wonder what rate they’d set it at. 10? 5? That would be nice for us.
Nah, it should absolutely scale upwards. If they lose the incentive to hoard more money because all the excess gets taken away, they’ll have fewer opportunities to harm people.
Of course, we should also remind them that the alternative would be guillotine.
What you’re talking about is called a flat tax. It actually can’t ever work, because there are always edge cases, ways of shifting around the money so that the rich person still gets it but it doesn’t count as income so they don’t get taxed on it… So you wish you could have a simple solution but it’s impossible.
We could move towards that, if we combined passive income with active income, and also if we taxed loans to multi-millionaires as income.
But it will never be simple because people will always try to find ways to game the system, both legally and illegally.
In specific, answer to your question, though, rich people would say to eliminate all income tax of all kinds and replace it with sales tax. Then the poor, the children, the elderly, all those people without jobs get screwed. And millions of people die as a result.
My solution is that everyone pays the same rate and let the billionaires set that rate. They’re good with the 30% or whatever it is we pay? Let them pay it too. I wonder what rate they’d set it at. 10? 5? That would be nice for us.
Nah, it should absolutely scale upwards. If they lose the incentive to hoard more money because all the excess gets taken away, they’ll have fewer opportunities to harm people.
Of course, we should also remind them that the alternative would be guillotine.
I don’t disagree, but it shouldn’t scale downwards. A billionaire should not be paying a lower percentage than someone who works for a living.
Teaching the rich is the moderate alternative!
What you’re talking about is called a flat tax. It actually can’t ever work, because there are always edge cases, ways of shifting around the money so that the rich person still gets it but it doesn’t count as income so they don’t get taxed on it… So you wish you could have a simple solution but it’s impossible.
We could move towards that, if we combined passive income with active income, and also if we taxed loans to multi-millionaires as income.
But it will never be simple because people will always try to find ways to game the system, both legally and illegally.
In specific, answer to your question, though, rich people would say to eliminate all income tax of all kinds and replace it with sales tax. Then the poor, the children, the elderly, all those people without jobs get screwed. And millions of people die as a result.
They would set it at zero and continue looting until there is nothing left.