Travis, there’s Lots to like in the Egalitarianishness, and intrinsic Democracy of your view, & I share your diagnosis.
But we are SO far down the road of oligarchy that there are a 2 big practical issues:
a) the whale/billionaire class you and I would like to entirely disenfranchise already owns the government we want to tax them with. In current 1$=1vote America, the “Nays” own your plan.
b) but IF you could even reach the flat tax if 17% that Forbes(?) once proposed (arguably much tougher than what we actually get from the wealthy), much less impose the meaningfully progressive tax laws you and I favor, which would better reflect founding American (and most religious!) ideals, then the wealthy would demonstrate their virtual/effective super-national statehood, and like ‘sanctioned’ Russian oligarchs, obfuscate or move their assets off-shore.
Don’t have to see our well meaning, nice old man Biden problem to realize it is the exceptional wealthy person or powerful person who ever meaningfully self-divests, when given any choice.
The Thesis of the book “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century”, by Walter Scheidel, 2017), which I do suggest, is that a peaceful healthy stable society NEVER moves toward egalitarianism or away from concentration of power.
So how much ya willing t’pay? Your comfort? Your home? Your health? Your children’s lives? All that and more?
It takes a real revolution, a Great War, a deadly pestilence (>10x deadlier than Covid (my guess, I’m an epidemiologist)), ... basically, it takes what he calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse. (I’ll leave the 4th leveler as an exercise for the reader.)
Mere law, or religion, or politico-economic theory, or good intentions, or even angry riots/populism, or ANYTHING short of massive destruction of assets and most levers of power/civilization (which ironically MAGAts may be effectively leading us toward), has NOT sufficed to re-level the playing field, per the author’s reading of history.
Get a new law that allows FinCen to track assets if the rich offshore funds to avoid paying taxes and make them subject to arrest and prison time for doing so. We have the resources to do stuff like this, just not the will power. If we can map out the entire funding logistics for international terror groups we can certainly map out where the rich are hiding their money overseas. We just need laws in place that make that illegal and policy in place that allows FinCen to do that work of finding and tracing those funds to wealthy tax-dodgers.
That’d be my solution to that particular problem anyway.
Travis, there’s Lots to like in the Egalitarianishness, and intrinsic Democracy of your view, & I share your diagnosis.
But we are SO far down the road of oligarchy that there are a 2 big practical issues:
a) the whale/billionaire class you and I would like to entirely disenfranchise already owns the government we want to tax them with. In current 1$=1vote America, the “Nays” own your plan.
b) but IF you could even reach the flat tax if 17% that Forbes(?) once proposed (arguably much tougher than what we actually get from the wealthy), much less impose the meaningfully progressive tax laws you and I favor, which would better reflect founding American (and most religious!) ideals, then the wealthy would demonstrate their virtual/effective super-national statehood, and like ‘sanctioned’ Russian oligarchs, obfuscate or move their assets off-shore.
Don’t have to see our well meaning, nice old man Biden problem to realize it is the exceptional wealthy person or powerful person who ever meaningfully self-divests, when given any choice.
The Thesis of the book “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century”, by Walter Scheidel, 2017), which I do suggest, is that a peaceful healthy stable society NEVER moves toward egalitarianism or away from concentration of power.
So how much ya willing t’pay? Your comfort? Your home? Your health? Your children’s lives? All that and more?
It takes a real revolution, a Great War, a deadly pestilence (>10x deadlier than Covid (my guess, I’m an epidemiologist)), ... basically, it takes what he calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse. (I’ll leave the 4th leveler as an exercise for the reader.)
Mere law, or religion, or politico-economic theory, or good intentions, or even angry riots/populism, or ANYTHING short of massive destruction of assets and most levers of power/civilization (which ironically MAGAts may be effectively leading us toward), has NOT sufficed to re-level the playing field, per the author’s reading of history.
Need a Plan C.
Get a new law that allows FinCen to track assets if the rich offshore funds to avoid paying taxes and make them subject to arrest and prison time for doing so. We have the resources to do stuff like this, just not the will power. If we can map out the entire funding logistics for international terror groups we can certainly map out where the rich are hiding their money overseas. We just need laws in place that make that illegal and policy in place that allows FinCen to do that work of finding and tracing those funds to wealthy tax-dodgers.
That’d be my solution to that particular problem anyway.