[quote=TheBreeze][quote=davelj]I’m not happy with the taxpayers bailing out the “uber-capitalists” either. I would have no problem with the govt. trying to recapture past payments to execs but for one slippery issue: the rule of law. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to take a couple of hundred million dollars from each and every one of these banking clowns, but the laws are fairly unambiguous where these things are concerned and I don’t know how you get around them (or change them) without creating a lot of havok.[/quote]
A couple things:
(1) It may be that folks like John Thain, etc committed fraud by talking up their companies when they knew otherwise. That’s one way to go after them.
(2) The laws can be changed. It’s time for a wealth tax in this country. There’s no way that 1% of the population should hold 90% of the wealth. Especially when a large portion of that 1% has now been bailed out by taxpayers.
The wealth tax should only target the top 1% and maybe have it expire in 8 years. Something like 5% a year for 8 years ought to start evening things out.
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First off, again, I have no problem, in theory, with essentially recovering wealth from anyone who took large amounts of money out of any financial institution (or auto company) that took public funds and was responsible for losing a bunch of taxpayer dollars. No problem at all. How it would be done, I have no idea. But in theory…
Personally, I’m not in favor of your “top 1% wealth tax” idea. The top 1% of wage earners paid 39.9% of all federal taxes collected in 2006, so they’re shouldering a huge part of the federal tax burden. Now, I’d like to see the source that says that the wealthiest 1% in the US control 90% of the country’s wealth, because the biggest number I can find is 41%. So, if we’re going to have a rational discussion about this, let’s at least get the numbers straight. (So, again, where are you getting this 90% number?) But I digress.
Any capitalist system is going to result in extremes in income inequality. Freedom results in a wide variance of economic outcomes which compound over time. That’s the nature of the beast. Personally, it doesn’t bother me at all that there are folks out there earning billions of dollars. I could care less as long as it doesn’t impinge on my ability to do my own thing. Another few billion for Bill Gates? I could care less. Now if that money is ultimately found to have been ill-gotten at the expense of the taxpayer, then we should try to recover it. But that’s a different issue.
But the fact is that there are a lot of folks like you, Breeze, who don’t like the idea that some folks make a lot of money – or, more specifically, a lot more money than other folks (re: you). So, in my view, the goal of tax policy is to placate the Breeze And His Ilk (“BAHI,” for short). I pay taxes because I like the foundation of the system we have here in the US and I want to keep it humming along. It ain’t perfect, but it serves me, and most folks, pretty well. So, I want to avoid revolution at the hands of BAHI. So I view the taxes I pay as ransom paid to BAHI to keep the system humming along. I know a lot of it gets wasted in the bureaucracy, but that’s not my business.
So, if the Officialdom were to decide that only a wealth tax could keep BAHI from revolting, then so be it. Anything to save the system. But do I personally really want any portion of the wealthiest’s wealth? No. Other than these financial freaks, for the most part they earned or inherited it. In either case, it’s not mine and none of my business.
I guess I’m not bitter enough about other peoples billions. But that’s just me.
