The very wealthy don’t, as a rule, pay taxes. If they do, it’s at a rate far lower than the rest of us. And whenever the question of taxing the very wealthy comes up, they:
1. Claim it can’t be done
2. Spend tons of money influencing the political process so it isn’t done.
3. Argue that taxing them will tank the economy.
In the US, the “great again” years that MAGAtroids seem to want to return to — although they don’t think clearly enough to really specify this — is probably from around the end of WWII to about 1980 or so. Well guess what, the tax rate for the wealthiest in those years was 94% until 1965, and then it was 74% until 1980. Everybody prospered.
Anyway, Thomas Piketty just published an essay about how reason #1 is just more bafflegab. Bullshit, in less polite terms. https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2024/10/15/how-to-tax-billionaires/
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