> According to an NDP news release, the tax increase would be 0.5 per cent if a CEO makes 50 to 100 times the median income of workers, and would rise to a five per cent increase if a CEO makes a salary 500 times or more higher than the median income of workers.
Doesn’t this seem kind of… tame to the point if nothing? Do it right!
I’d want to see something like +10% for the lowest ratio up to say +50% for someone making 1000x their workers. And of course it needs to be total (including deferred) comp so they can’t avoid it with obvious accounting shenanigans.
I’m past the point of wanting to make the rich pay their fair share. The wealth gap is too wide for that to help. I think it’s time to start talking about clawing back the wealth they’ve accumulated.
>’m past the point of wanting to make the rich pay their fair share
How much is "their fair share" then? They already pay more taxes than someone who's not rich; how's it even fair for them to be punished for their success like that? Are you sure you're not just motivated by ego and envy; you can't possibly imagine that someone else legitimately produced a lot more value than you, so the only way to protect your ego is to view any gains of anyone significantly richer than you as unearned?
Actually, the very wealthy pay significantly lower tax rates than the rest of us. This isn't just ego and envy, the very wealthy have undue influence over politics; democracy is fundamentally broken by the ability of billionaires to buy politicians and even supreme court justices. Billionaires have broken the social contract.
I would say their fair share is as much as it takes until resources get allocated in a way that meets the basic needs of society. If there's $1 for lobbying that $1 should be allocated to building affordable housing, infrastructure, etc.. To be clear, I don't think their "fair share" of future profits is enough to make that happen. They've already accumulated so much of the wealth that I think the flow of money is going to slow down and taxing the profits won't be enough to reverse the effect.
> the only way to protect your ego is to view any gains of anyone significantly richer than you as unearned
I don't know anyone that would say people like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates "earned" their extreme wealth. I think they earned the right to be wealthy to the point where they can live on a nice estate or travel the world and never think about money again. Aspiring to that point is important in terms of incentive.
However, I think the "extreme", multi-billion dollar, impossible to spend portion of their wealth is not earned. It's accumulated through exploitation and unfair competition that's only possible once you hit a certain point of wealth. That part should be clawed back.
So I would say a "fair share" of the wealth for successful people to have is enough that they don't ever have to think about money again, but not so much that they're able to influence global economics to the point we stop building real things like houses and hospitals and only build intangible, high margin products that no one truly needs.
How many schools is Jeff Bezos worth? Do you think his "innovation" of having others work so hard they can't take a bathroom break is worth society allocating him the resources equal to 4000-5000 schools? I think the retail side of Amazon is a net negative for the environment, product safety, product quality, etc. and I think we should send him the bill for it.
Um, you might want to look up effective tax rates. At least in the US, the highest earners pay absurdly low rates in reality. I would be delighted to pay double the rate the average billionaire does.
don’t start a sentence with um. its arrogant. and you are wrong. just go and look up what proportion of the population pays the most tax by income band. the rates are irrelevant
I am correct and there is a great deal of public information you could read to verify this if you so choose. Here's one example showing the effective tax rate of the wealthiest American's as 8.2%[0], which is consistent with other sources I have seen. Again, I would love to pay only double that rate for my taxes.
Please show your work. The top marginal rate in the US is 35% plus state taxes of up to 12.3% (California). If you can arrange to take your income as long term capital gains or qualified, you can get the federal rate down to 20% (but you're still on the hook for state taxes).
I'm talking about rates people actually pay. The listed tax rates are fairly meaningless once individuals pass a certain amount of wealth. Effective rates increase to a point and then drop precipitously once a person has enough wealth to game the system. The richest Americans pay a rate of less than 10%.
This is a huge flaw with the legal system in general. I wish we could somehow encode the spirit of the law instead of trying to use a shitty language (Legalese English) to fully specify it, since we all know it's futile.
Doesn’t this seem kind of… tame to the point if nothing? Do it right!
I’d want to see something like +10% for the lowest ratio up to say +50% for someone making 1000x their workers. And of course it needs to be total (including deferred) comp so they can’t avoid it with obvious accounting shenanigans.