I will end with a story from a book I read a few years ago.
Talk is cheap.
Rather than end on a touch-and-feely note, I'd much prefer that he get back to the core question:
Instead of merely stating that he is a "fan" of things like Basic Income and (truly) universal education (not to mention at least having a hope of dealing in some reasonable way with climate change) --
The question to ask is: which progressive taxation measures, specifically, is he willing to publicly endorse as a means (almost certainly the only viable means) of attaining these goals?
Hard numbers, please. If it isn't AOC's particular step function -- "75 percent on all income above 10 million" -- then which progressive taxation schemes would he be in favor of -- and be willing to publicly and state as much?
The question of whether we "allow" billionaires or not is, to some extent, a semantic dodge. What matters is that, at the end of the day, in order to achieve any of these goals -- we pretty much have to "soak the rich" (in addition to ending corporate tax evasion and related measures). It follows from Occam's Razor and any level-headed assessment of all the ethical and economic factors involved.
The only questions are when (to which we already know the answer: as soon as humanly possible) and how exactly.
So again, it all comes down to hard numbers: Which progressive taxations is he willing to support? And what's the best way to get them implemented in time to avert further carnage and social disintegration -- that is, as soon as humanly possible?
he said in the article that he doesn't think higher taxes are the solution - that the government itself needs to be improved if additional programs are to be introduced.
Without any arguments or evidence that this would either (1) be attainable or (2) actually free up enough cash to fund all the good stuff he (claims to) support.
2) applies to progressive taxation as well. There's no reason to believe that raising taxes on the wealthy is just a free wellspring of enough money to fund huge, nation-wide social programs. There are myriad things that can go wrong: loss of investment pools harming the economy, disincentivising entrepreneurialism, the wealthy moving abroad, the actual collectable amount being less than you'd expect (because "wealth" is a very fuzzy concept in modern economies), the actual cost of these social programs being higher than you'd expect, etc etc.
Not that I want to shit all over the idea, it could equally work really well (I have no idea what the outcome would be), but a lot of the time these ideas don't receive the clear-headed analysis they deserve because they're ideological rather than logical in nature (taxation from the left, government efficiency from the right). I'd love it if we could pool all the ideas for ways to raise the minimum living standard, experiment with them and compare the results in a scientific way rather than just having two sides shouting at each other that their way is better.
There's no reason to believe that raising taxes on the wealthy is just a free wellspring of enough money to fund huge, nation-wide social programs.
Actually there's a lot of historical evidence to the effect that, when taxes are more progressive -- income inequality is less severe, affordable housing gets built and infrastructure is better maintained.
And not only that: because we're "all in this together", society tends to work more cohesively and deal better with external threats, like say, WW2 (compared to the nosedive into nativism and paranoia we're experience right now, in the face of comparatively lesser threats).
Source: U.S. history since the beginning of the corporate era (1880s or so).
That making taxes more progressive within certain limits has certain effects does not imply that these effects will progress linearly as tax progressiveness increases. After all, if you had a 100% income tax for some segment of population, they would all just move their money abroad.
In the 50’s and 60’s it was far harder to move one’s money abroad or operate as an ‘international citizen’ simply because we didn’t have the infrastructure. Not only that, the advantage of not having had world war 2 on the mainland meant that there were not a lot of attractive and functional alternative economies to move to, where now there are.
The argument that it worked fine in the 50’s and 60s and so it would be fine now is based on the assumption that those decades were representative, when in fact they were a historical anomaly.
My point is, if that's true then great - implement higher tax brackets. But you should understand the effects of a drastic change before implementing it. That would ideally involve researching the economic and societal effects that are attributable to tax increases, because simply noting that eras with higher taxes tended to be better isn't a strong case.
That's to say nothing of the huge budget the US already has. I mean, there's no reason why you can't both increase taxes and streamline the existing government (e.g. defense for a start) in order to drum up funds for a healthcare system.
New business creation has fallen along with the highest marginal tax rate.[1]
==because "wealth" is a very fuzzy concept in modern economies==
But income really isn't and that is what we tax.
==I'd love it if we could pool all the ideas for ways to raise the minimum living standard, experiment with them and compare the results in a scientific way rather than just having two sides shouting at each other that their way is better.==
We could always look at the 33 other OECD countries and see where they have found successes.[2] Spoiler alert: universal healthcare, early childhood education, improved infrastructure (specifically: transportation, water, high-speed internet) and parental leave are specific improvements that could directly improve quality of life.
my point wasn't to highlight definitive issues but to point out that it's not always as simple as "we'll just tax more". You're talking about a pretty big impact to the share of the population that generates the most (economic) value per-person - it's unlikely to have no negative effects beyond complaining.
Your first response doesn't establish a causal relationship between new business creation and marginal tax rate so I'm not sure what it adds here.
Consider this: I'm from the UK, and the US government seemingly spends more per capita than here ($22,726 federal + state [1] vs £12,757 total [2]) and we have a much more comprehensive welfare system. I don't think the problem in the US is a lack of budget - we have our own problems with wasteful spending but the US takes the cake there. I mean, the military industrial complex (aka defense budget) alone is a huge cash sink.
And my point is that we already have examples of plenty of policies from similar countries. Maybe we should look at what those places have done and see where we could adopt policies. In a way, the experiments you want to run already exist. The problem is much more about bias and ideology rather than data and experiments. We are talking about the only advanced country in the world where the controlling party denies climate change (a field with plenty of experiments and data).
You mentioned that a higher tax rate might lower entrepreneurship and I provided data that shows it has already trended down while we’ve been moving the top marginal tax rate lower. I never claimed it was causal. It shows that the thing you are worried about happening if we implement a specific policy already happened after we implemented the exact opposite policy. In that context, maybe we should review other assumptions or worries related to tax rates.
Talk is cheap.
Rather than end on a touch-and-feely note, I'd much prefer that he get back to the core question:
Instead of merely stating that he is a "fan" of things like Basic Income and (truly) universal education (not to mention at least having a hope of dealing in some reasonable way with climate change) --
The question to ask is: which progressive taxation measures, specifically, is he willing to publicly endorse as a means (almost certainly the only viable means) of attaining these goals?
Hard numbers, please. If it isn't AOC's particular step function -- "75 percent on all income above 10 million" -- then which progressive taxation schemes would he be in favor of -- and be willing to publicly and state as much?
The question of whether we "allow" billionaires or not is, to some extent, a semantic dodge. What matters is that, at the end of the day, in order to achieve any of these goals -- we pretty much have to "soak the rich" (in addition to ending corporate tax evasion and related measures). It follows from Occam's Razor and any level-headed assessment of all the ethical and economic factors involved.
The only questions are when (to which we already know the answer: as soon as humanly possible) and how exactly.
So again, it all comes down to hard numbers: Which progressive taxations is he willing to support? And what's the best way to get them implemented in time to avert further carnage and social disintegration -- that is, as soon as humanly possible?
(AOC = Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)