this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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I am not opposed to inreasing taxes necessarily, but people need to understand that the income of wealthy individuals is not used purely for the fulfilment of their needs and wishes. Rich people play a rather important role in allocating and managing resourses(capital) in society, and increasing the taxes will decrease the capability of rich people to invest, which is not ideal.
Also, if the tax increase is percieved to be unfair, rich people can just leave and go to Monaco or Switzerland or any other "rich friendly" country. They are pretty much free to do so and they do it all the time. So increasing taxes will not necessarily lead to more tax revenue if they are increased above what is reasonable.
I am so happy karma is not a thing here btw. I would be in an unenviable position otherwise.
Dude that line of reasoning went out with Reagan, and the last time it worked was in the 1920s. You might want that to be how the rich behave, but mostly they just lock capital away and watch the numbers grow.
We don’t need an economy based on pandering to rich assholes in the hopes they give us money. We need an economy where everyone pays their fucking taxes. It’s that easy. If the very wealthy stopped hiding their money and coming up with impenetrable tax evasion schemes and just paid their taxes like everyone else, we wouldn’t have to raise them on anyone.
Even if they do mostly "lock capital away", as you said, this changes very little in my opinion. The market incentives are still present, and it is the expectation of the return on investment that keeps the economy running.
"We don’t need an economy based on pandering to rich assholes in the hopes they give us money." - but you do have to discriminate on who gets money. Rich people fulfil this regulatory function. What is the alternative?
I should say that rich people, especially those that find themselves in precarious positions, are motivated to minimise their tax obligations by our economic system. This behaviour is not surprising by any means, and the responsibility is on the government to manage taxation in a proper way, not on the rich.
But the problem is the rich have managed their own taxation for 50 years. They've decided through exercising power on the government that they will pay less and less. As they do so, working class conditions worsen. This has been accelerated through multiple bills and decisions implemented by the rich. The most destructive one recently was the citizens United decision.
Tell me, if it's so easy to just take all your money to Monaco, why would the wealthiest in our country spend so much money and effort to war against the working class for the past 50 years?
Why not just go to Monaco instead of cutting the taxes on rich and corporations again (to still be higher than Monaco)
The taxes are not high enough for a significant part of captialists to leave, but some people do. Of course it is not quite as easy to move, but it is done trivially.