The XYZelensky Affair and the Whole Impeachment Shebang

[Montmorency]

I do applaud Sanders for actually putting out a tax idea that seeks to specifically redistribute wealth from the wealthy to those less wealthy. At least he has the courage to actually propose something in honest terms. Credit where it is due.


I have argued numerous times on this forum that income taxes, especially as loop-holed and special-interest written as they are, do nothing aside from punish the middle class and discourage wealth accumulation among the working and middle class while doing nothing to tax the wealthy (whose putative incomes are gamed away in accounting slight of hand games unavailable to those without significant wealth).

I am a flat taxer/'fair' taxer by inclination, which I know many of you are not, but the extant system is a cocking shock-up.

How is it that throughout the 20th century (well, since FDR) effective tax rates on the "1%" were much higher than they are now? Low effective tax rates, due to loopholes or whatever identifiable cause, are a choice, not an inevitability. One corporate tax solution, for example, would be to require issuance of non-voting shares to the government and calculate tax liability as the same common dividends due to typical shareholders. 20% corporate tax rate? Give the government 20% of the stock. No evading that one without simultaneously welching on the Friedman-approved ownership class. Sound good?

It is not the government’s obligation to structure its tax law around corporate practices. It is the obligation of corporations to structure their practices around the law.

Before Sanders' wealth tax Warren proposed a smaller 2/3% one, btw.