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Travis's avatar

I don't want to eliminate rich people. I want them to be taxed down to much smaller economic sizes of themselves. *Nobody* needs a net worth over $3.5M as a family. Fucking NOBODY. Anyone with a family net worth over $3.5M is living in excess at the expense of raising the cost of living on everyone else and I'm tired of progressives ignoring that issue while claiming that fixing wealth inequality and runaway cost of living is important to them.

But hey, if you think that kind of economy is fair then I'm sure you'll find that kind of democracy (anocracy) fair too. Don't like it? Move to a more democratic country.

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Migs's avatar

Jesus man a 3 bedroom place in sf costs 3m dollars. What are you talking about?

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Travis's avatar

If you tax the folks who are worth more than $3.5M down to size, the cost of living comes down. If everyone is worth $3.5M max then condos/homes over that price simply do not sell in that market and the price comes down to meet the buyer's market. The 3-bedrooms won't be going for what they are going once you liquidate the assets of the rich.

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Migs's avatar

Dude this area is 7 miles by 7 miles. We have huge earthquakes. How many people do you want moving here into sky rises? You will have to demolish all the single family homes to make this happen. Literally the areas (Bay Area) will go from 15m to 45m

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Daniel Rabiner's avatar

$3.5M wealth is a pretty arbitrary number and makes no sense in today's world. Particularly when you can inherit tax-free 12M dollars without paying federal taxes on it.

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Travis's avatar

Inheritance taxes need to go way up too, but that's a whole other conversation. It deteriorates the "meritocracy" we used to have here and incentivizes wealth-hoarding instead of saving just what the family unit needs and then spending the rest on the economy. So much money is sucked out of the economy via families doing wealth-hoarding.

$3.5M is not that arbitrary when you consider what 2 properties go for in a normal market plus the ability to hoard enough stocks to pay for the kid's colleges and home down payments (plus cars, other assets like that). Anything more than that and a family unit is living in pretty large excess, especially if they're clearing over $100k/year.

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rlritt's avatar

And of Republicans like Trump always pay every cent in taxes they owe.

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Travis's avatar

Taxes are only as strong as they are enforced. Liberal mayors have enough muscle to enforce their tax policies on the rich. Look at what Tish James is doing as we speak. We can make this work, we just need liberal mayors who are serious about taking the gloves off on decadent wealth-hoarders who raise the cost of living on everyone else with their decadent bullshit.

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