[quote=SK in CV]No. Everyone was not destroyed across the board. And I never claimed that there was no damage done at the top end of the economy during the recent crash.
Families whose fortunes went from $500 million to $300 million were not destroyed in the same way as those families who lost their upper middle class jobs, and had their homes foreclosed were. Nor the same as the lower income group that lost their jobs and didn’t get new ones for 2 to 3 years. The former group was angry they lost a lot of money. The latter two had their entire lives turned on its head. They are not the same.
A crash is not the only proven way to reduce the wealth gap, though I’ll admit that economic models are sketchy at best for taxes doing the trick. Calling those models proof could be an exaggeration. However there are some reasonably strong economic models that tie the ever increasing wealth gap to the tax preferences shown to capital over the last 35 years. It’s not unreasonable to argue that reversing that policy will also reverse the wealth gap. It’s surely preferable to a crash that is sure to put millions out of work and cause significantly more suffering than the wealth gap does. Killing the patient with the cure isn’t the answer.[/quote]
Yes, I agree those in the $300M+ weren’t affected like the rest of us. But that’s the 0.1%-er. I feel like those people will continue to grow their wealth at much faster rate than the rest of us. Which is why I say your proposal won’t change that either. As I stated, the power of compound interest will guarantee that their wealth will grow at a much faster rate, which mean the wealth gap will only continue to widen.
The wealth gap between the upper middle class (the top 10%) and the bottom 90% as well. So, your tax proposal might slow down the wealth gap speed between the top 10% and the 90%, but I don’t think it would affect the 0.1%. But again, I think it would only slow down the wealth gap speed, but I don’t think it would decrease the wealth gap.
I wasn’t talking about model. I was talking about what happened in the past. If your goal is to reduce the wealth gap, then bad economic condition is the best way to achieve that. When you have good economic time, those who are already well off will be the group that will benefit the most of the booming economy. Talking about data vs model, has there ever been a time in the past where wealth gap decrease while there’s an economic boom? We can however, point to decreasing wealth gap during economic collapse though. So, if you can point to a time where there’s an economic boom and a decrease in wealth gap, then we can analyze the tax policies and various economic policies at the time to see what we can do today to achieve both economic boom and closing of a wealth gap. I actually would love to have both economic boom and decrease wealth gap. That means everyone would be well off. I just don’t think changing some minor tax policy would achieve it.
