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Wealth taxes are legitimately terrible. The only thing they will really hurt is the upper middle class. Most billionaires have their wealth tied up in unrealized gains for exactly this reason, to avoid taxes. Wealth taxes that target the upper middle class only really serve to reduce the class of the common people. It hurts people in high cost of living areas more.
A better system is,
Get rid of fiat currencies, and state currencies in general. Have metal coins with fixed weights. This will fix the economy and Improve it after an initial economic collapse as the bubbles pop. It will force the state to balance the budget and get rid of economic instability and Inflation so long as we export the same value as we import.
Create a public healthcare system to provide basic coverage alongside the private system. Don’t make it too expensive but provide basic care, and also pain treatment to people at the end of life. Subsidize competition in domestic drug markets to achieve low costs on drugs and use eminent domain to buy some patents.
With the hard currency you can have self funded unemployment insurance and pensions, and disability can be a separate program funded by income taxes.
Make business sales, and income tax the same, so if people vote to raise or lower taxes, it affects everyone equally. A better system would be to automatically generate the tax rate based on what voters vote for and get rid of state debt period. People have no right to be putting their children in debt to pay for their excessive lifestyles anyways.
Without fiat currencies, there wouldn’t really be billionaires in the first place. There would be plenty of rich people, just not 10,000x richer than the average person.
Unfortunately voters vote for terrible things, for the past 20 years in America, voters have consistently voted for mass surveillance, expanding executive power, expanding the police state, adding more laws to the books, inflation, corporate loopholes, and unlimited private anonymous money to fund political campaigns. It really starts with the voters first. They will have to learn to stop voting for trash politicians.
Lots to unpack here and I’m not looking to tackle all of it, but going back to any metal standard is a terrible idea. The value of a Fiat currency is based on the shared belief in it’s value, whereas a metal standard currency has its value in the shared belief in the value of the metal. No gain, but pushing the problem one step down the chain.
The substantial downside of metal standard currency is that it causes a scarcity in the metal compared to the amount needed for currency, leading to deflation. Suddenly you have a currency which encourages people not to spend as the currency is expected to be worth more in the future; the currency fails at it’s only job: facilitating trade.
tldr but unrealised gains is still wealth. It’s up to the tax law to define that.
I am crazy but the only help I need is the abolition of all forms of domination and hierarchy
the abolition of all forms of [nonconsenting] domination and hierarchy
Fixed your (probably accidental) kink shaming 😉
Including those in the background image of the post
Tbh a UBI would help pretty hard right now too.
Has to be combined with price controls, though.
Without that, the profiteers would just take the opportunity to raise prices for everything even further and then everyone else is back to square one or worse.
And price controls have a pretty terrible track record of providing a net benefit.
[Citation needed]
