Biden has proposed a 25% tax on wealth of more than $100m, calculating that it would raise $500bn over 10 years to help fund benefits such as childcare and paid parental leave.
No, he hasn;t. a 25% tax on wealth is something that you’d get to do once and once only. His actual suggestion is that *increases* in wealth, even if uncrystalised, should be taxed like income.
That is, it taxes, very heavily, the successful entrepreneur while leaving the Scrooge McDuck piles of the already wealthy unscathed. Exactly, precisely and totally the opposite of what we’d want any tax system to do.
But then Joe is senile – whats’ everyone else’s excuse?
Except:
Sixteenth Amendment
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.
But since when do constitutional restrictions matter to Democrats?
I don’t suppose this numpty realised that this would include the Biden family, as well as the Pelosis, Clintons, Obamas, Blinkens, Gores, et al. Sounds like turkeys voting for Christmas.
It’s not only that. Where does he think the wealth is in the sense of the value created in commerce underlies money? It can only be in goods or services. Because that’s all there is. There isn’t anything else. And both of those can only exist in the present.
All he can achieve is to take them away from one person to give to another. And he certainly won’t be taking them from the wealthy. They haven’t got them. Because they couldn’t possibly consume all those goods & services. Remember they can only exist & have to be consumed in the present.
“I don’t suppose this numpty realised that this would include the Biden family, as well as the Pelosis, Clintons, Obamas, Blinkens, Gores, et al. Sounds like turkeys voting for Christmas.”
I think the threshold for inclusion in such a tax would magically be set at a level that managed to exempt all the above……. and for any who happened to fall foul of it a suitable loophole such as ‘all assets held by political foundations are exempt’ would be in place. One assumes that the posited £100m level can safely be taken as excluding most of the Democrat political establishment.
It isn’t Biden, who likely occasionally forgets his name these days.
So, who is actually pushing this?
Two errors: you must refrain from typing before you’ve had enough coffee, comrade.
@SaTP: “Sixteenth Amendment”
For years I’ve laughed at those Americans who claim that income tax is unconstitutional. Then I read about some bloke who has a rational argument. He says that the Amendment is bogus because the votes of the States were demonstrably misreported to Congress. Yup, it’s a misinformation scandal!
@Apostrophe chekist
It’s been a while, but I’ve read about alleged discrepancies in the ratification of the 16th amendment. I don’t remember the details, though. I’d imagine states would have balked if it was reported to Congress that they ratified it when they hadn’t.
Taxes the entrepreneur while leaving the the already wealthy unscathed? In other words, it helps the kind of crony capitalists who donate money to the Democrats by killing off their smaller, nimbler competitors. It’s cynical, sleazy, and against the public interest, but there is an obvious purpose to it.
It’s unconstitutional as it fails the apportionment test. If say CA has 12* the population of AR, then a wealth tax must be designed to collect 1/12th as much from AR as from CA. But our kansas has almost no multi billionnaires so the tax charge would have to kick in at a much lower threshold to raise a proportionate amount.
This is a cunning plot by the Democrats to make the Supreme Court look bad for upholding the American Constitution. And to appeal to envy voters.
“ and for any who happened to fall foul of it a suitable loophole such as ‘all assets held by political foundations are exempt’ would be in place.”
I’m sure a lot of the worldwide ruling elites are jealous over Starmer having a specific law exempting him from pension rules
@BniC
I doubt it. For Putin and his friends in China, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam,Cambodia, Laos, North Korea, Zimbabwe. Angola, Sudan, Yemen etc. Starmer’s pension would like like petty cash; for the petrostate plutocrats, the UK budget looks like petty cash.
The only people who should be jealous are UK guys with DC pensions.
Jim @ 10.41, a bit higher than that I think:
“According to the previously mentioned Center for Responsive Politics (now OpenSecrets), a non-profit organization that tracks the wealth of U.S. politicians, Nancy Pelosi’s estimated net worth in 2018 was $114.7 million”.
“Since Bill and Hillary Clinton left the White House in 2001, they have turned political fame into a personal fortune, raking in more than $240 million, according to a FORBES analysis of 15 years of their tax returns”.
Addolff
It would be interesting to see how much Pelosi’s wealth has increased since 2018. She is an awfully astute stock investor.
It’s disappointing but not remotely surprising that Opensecrets hasn’t updated any of the net worth figures since 2018. However it shows the late Alcee Hastings (D) Florida with a net worth at that time of minus seven million dollars – nearly all relating to legal fees. His wiki page makes fascinating reading including allegations of sexual harassment, bribery, perjury and refusing to acknowledge the results of two presidential elections. He’s probably still voting democrat.