The 2020 Presidential Election Primary Thread

[Omaha 680]

This is the 'bridge' I'm talking about. 'Bleeding', 'naive', and 'dangerous' are all inflammatory terms. A wealth tax is a tax proposal, nothing more. There may be an undercurrent of people who believe that Wall Street is characterized like you say. But if there is a bridge, it is the progressive tax scheme. We've already crossed it. As a society we believe wealthy people can and should pay more tax. It's already baked in. If the somewhat wealthy can and should afford to pay more, it's not much of a reach to think that the supremely wealthy can also pay more.

Do you believe the 16th ammendment was necessary in order to enact progressive income taxation? If not then we are coming from fundamentally different places and probably wont agree on anything concerning the wealth tax proposal. If you do believe the ammendment was necessary, what gives Warren and the Democrats the power to tax wealth at the federal level?

I agree with JL that how we characterize wall street and tech billionaires is naive and dangerous. Using those characterizations to trample rights and create government powers that dont exist is downright frightening to me.

This is to say nothing about the questionable assumption accepted by the vast majority of americans that massive expansion of the federal government's share of the economy is always a good thing as long as your team is the one behind it. I return to my original summary: we are so screwed.

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[swampfrog]

That "undercurrent" is pretty much all the D candidates right now.

The narrative is that we can have all this free stuff they are promising and there is a faceless, nameless rich uncle that is going going to pay for it. Apparently you have bought in to this thinking.

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[Northwestcoug]

That "undercurrent" is pretty much all the D candidates right now.

The narrative is that we can have all this free stuff they are promising and there is a faceless, nameless rich uncle that is going going to pay for it. Apparently you have bought in to this thinking.

Yes, apparently. Because there's only two political opinions out there: one is fiscal sanity that taxes the bare minimum of citizens, and the other is soaking all the rich and irresponsibly promising that they are going to provide everything for free

[Northwestcoug]

Do you believe the 16th ammendment was necessary in order to enact progressive income taxation? If not then we are coming from fundamentally different places and probably wont agree on anything concerning the wealth tax proposal. If you do believe the ammendment was necessary, what gives Warren and the Democrats the power to tax wealth at the federal level?

I agree with JL that how we characterize wall street and tech billionaires is naive and dangerous. Using those characterizations to trample rights and create government powers that dont exist is downright frightening to me.

This is to say nothing about the questionable assumption accepted by the vast majority of americans that massive expansion of the federal government's share of the economy is always a good thing as long as your team is the one behind it. I return to my original summary: we are so screwed.

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I'm....going to have to get back to you on that one, right after I read the 16th amendment

But again, who is the 'we', and how are we characterizing wall street and tech billionaires? Who's rights are we trampling, when a 2% wealth tax on anything after 50 million dollars and a 3% tax on after a billion is proposed? And considering changing estate tax from it's current 5 million exemption?

Again with the naive, dangerous, trampling, frightening qualifiers. These are relatively modest tax proposals that would be viewed as 'meh' pretty much elsewhere in the world. You can disagree with them. And if enacted they could lead to a more general expectation that all we need is more taxation to fix our ills. This could be difficult to contain. But c'mon. Every tax proposal is not an irreversible step towards socialism, requiring the might of all fiscally conservative warriors to vanquish lest one inch of our current tax policy is ceded to the enemy.

[LVAllen]

Article I, Section 2:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers. . .

Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Amendment 16:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

That's it. That's all the Constitution says about the power of the federal government to tax the citizens of the several states. The government can impose excise taxes, duties, etc. It can tax income.

Nothing there that says it can tax wealth. The estate tax is a tax on the transfer of wealth, not on wealth itself. Now, if she wants to float an constitutional amendment that provides the federal government can tax citizens based on the assets they own, from whatever source derived, then let's have that conversation.

States may impose property taxes, sure. And the argument for a wealth tax is that it's really nothing more than a larger-scale property tax. But the federal government has not been given the general authority to tax.

[Northwestcoug]

Hey, thanks LVA!

Sounds like a federal wealth tax would need a clever argument about property tax to pass constitutional muster. I don't know the chances of that. Still, it's a pretty modest proposal Omaha!

[Flystripper]

yes Wall Street is greedy and amoral. Greed is simply focused self self interest in a particular outcome and self interest is the fuel of all economic output. Being amoral is merely lacking of concern about the rightness or wrongness of something. Amoral self interest leads to transactions to the benefit of self, which results in negative externalities for some. The difference between both political parties is agreement in what negative externalities are acceptable and how severe do they need to be before self interest needs to be regulated. Regulation does help check self interest, but the problem with regulation is that self interest can become the driving force of legislators thereby resulting in different set of negative externalities, and who or what will be the be check on regulation when it becomes amoral through its own collective self interest?

Round and round we go

[swampfrog]

yes Wall Street is greedy and amoral. Greed is simply focused self self interest in a particular outcome and self interest is the fuel of all economic output. Being amoral is merely lacking of concern about the rightness or wrongness of something. Amoral self interest leads to transactions to the benefit of self, which results in negative externalities for some. The difference between both political parties is agreement in what negative externalities are acceptable and how severe do they need to be before self interest needs to be regulated. Regulation does help check self interest, but the problem with regulation is that self interest can become the driving force of legislators thereby resulting in different set of negative externalities, and who or what will be the be check on regulation when it becomes amoral through its own collective self interest?

Round and round we go

Exactly this. What is worse, greedy capitalists seeking power and profit for their business, or greedy politicians seeking power, status, and influence (and sometimes personal profit also)? Which one is most likely to abuse the power? When power abuse occurs, what balances or resists that power? Which one is most likely to try (and possibly succeed) to consolidate power for their tribe and lock out others? What does the historical record show?

Many differences between political strategies aren't about what problems exist, but whether or not government can be trusted to solve them and relinquish control once the exit criteria of the project have been achieved. Often the exit criteria are just redefined.

[old_gregg]

wall street = these dumb fucks’ 401ks and teachers’ pension plans.

[myboynoah]

U.S. professors are just laying low in this debate.

Bernie Sanders and other Democrats are embracing free college. Europe shows there’s a cost.

And it manages to power a tuition-free university system without breaking the bank.

But Decker’s university, RWTH Aachen, has no grand athletic center. Ask its students about sports and they might mention intramural Ultimate Frisbee. Professors’ salaries cannot compete with those at top American universities, although they may carry double the teaching load, making it difficult to hire U.S. stars. Its dormitories are modest brick affairs. Some lecture halls are dingy and don’t seem to have been updated much since the 1950s, when they were built from Germany’s post-World War II rubble. Some of its lectures top 1,000 students.

“Usually professors don’t even have time for their doctoral students,” Decker said.

The same straitened approach is evident across German campuses. Critics blame it for Germany’s perennially lackluster showing in international university rankings: Just three German universities placed in the top 100 world institutions in rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a British education consultancy. (RWTH Aachen ranked at 144.)

That means German schools are decent but not fantastic.

Everbody now: "We're decent but not fantastic! We're decent but not fantastic! We're decent but not fantastic!"

[Jeff Lebowski]

wall street = these dumb fucks’ 401ks and teachers’ pension plans.

Bingo.

[falafel]

U.S. professors are just laying low in this debate.

Bernie Sanders and other Democrats are embracing free college. Europe shows there’s a cost.



Everbody now: "We're decent but not fantastic! We're decent but not fantastic! We're decent but not fantastic!"

Socialized medicine applied to universities. Good is good enough.

[frank ryan]

wall street = these dumb fucks’ 401ks and teachers’ pension plans.

Yeah, people are not saying that.

[Omaha 680]

yes Wall Street is greedy and amoral. Greed is simply focused self self interest in a particular outcome and self interest is the fuel of all economic output. Being amoral is merely lacking of concern about the rightness or wrongness of something. Amoral self interest leads to transactions to the benefit of self, which results in negative externalities for some. The difference between both political parties is agreement in what negative externalities are acceptable and how severe do they need to be before self interest needs to be regulated. Regulation does help check self interest, but the problem with regulation is that self interest can become the driving force of legislators thereby resulting in different set of negative externalities, and who or what will be the be check on regulation when it becomes amoral through its own collective self interest?

Round and round we go

Exactly. As Friedman said: what makes political self interest more noble than economic self interest? And if we will allow political self interest to permanently supersede economic self interest, where are the angels we will need to trust to organize our society?

[Moliere]

For obvious reasons, the wealth tax would be very difficult to implement and onerous to apply. It assumes that the Uber wealthy have their wealth in liquid assets that can easily converted to cash and paid to the government. Take for instance Jeff Bezos, I assume the majority of his wealth is in Amazon stock. It is what makes him wealthy, but holding that stock allows him certain rights as a large shareholder and also is part of why amazon is worth so much. If he has to start selling off 2% every year to pay this tax, his ownership percentage diminished and his influence on the company also diminishes, which could hurt the company as a whole. Also, large landowners aren’t sitting around on piles of cash. They have illiquid assets that they’d prefer not to divest to pay a tax. That’s why I think the estate tax is much better as it happens at the end of life instead of forcing divestitures during life.

Also, I love the Friedman quote on the morality between capitalism and politics. Pocahontas is no more moral than your average Wall Street banker. In fact, her desire for power is probably less moral than a bankers desire for money. I work with Wall Street bankers and I think it would shock some people as to how moral they really are.