If there were a 100% tax on everything above a certain amount, the rich would have to find different ways to compete with each other rather than increasing their takings.
If there were a 100% tax on everything above a certain amount, the rich would have to find different ways to compete with each other rather than increasing their takings.
Not sure about 100% tax, but we have (I think) mostly forgotten that only a "short" time ago (1950s) the top tax rate was 95% (I believe after $5,000,000 earned per year). People extol the expansion of the middle class in the 50s which indeed happened, partially because of the post-WWII boom but also because of the top marginal tax rate which discouraged significant capital hoarding as it didn't make all that much sense. Once this was dropped over the next 30 years, first to 90%, then 75% then 50% and finally into the 30s in the 1990s, the benefits to hoarding capital became much greater. And thus the number of billionaires (which was very low until then) started to grow astronomically. With the concurrent reduction in inheritance taxes, large amounts of capital became centered in a very small number of hands, compared to the 1950s.
Even a return to a top tax rate of 75% would dramatically reduce the amount of accumulated capital the richest part of society would be able to keep, and a much larger part of those earnings would make their way into (wait for it!) the federal and state budgets! The rich would actually pay more while the poor would be able to pay less.
If there were a 100% tax on everything above a certain amount, the rich would have to find different ways to compete with each other rather than increasing their takings.
Not sure about 100% tax, but we have (I think) mostly forgotten that only a "short" time ago (1950s) the top tax rate was 95% (I believe after $5,000,000 earned per year). People extol the expansion of the middle class in the 50s which indeed happened, partially because of the post-WWII boom but also because of the top marginal tax rate which discouraged significant capital hoarding as it didn't make all that much sense. Once this was dropped over the next 30 years, first to 90%, then 75% then 50% and finally into the 30s in the 1990s, the benefits to hoarding capital became much greater. And thus the number of billionaires (which was very low until then) started to grow astronomically. With the concurrent reduction in inheritance taxes, large amounts of capital became centered in a very small number of hands, compared to the 1950s.
Even a return to a top tax rate of 75% would dramatically reduce the amount of accumulated capital the richest part of society would be able to keep, and a much larger part of those earnings would make their way into (wait for it!) the federal and state budgets! The rich would actually pay more while the poor would be able to pay less.
What a concept!
Sad that 1950s history isn’t better known. Sad, too, that many people see their taxes as “theft” rather than payment for services they use.