Topic: Facebook CoFounder Wants $3 Trillion Tax On Rich To Fund Universal Basic Income - page 2. (Read 290 times)

There are many in middle class america who pay 50% or higher taxes. Years ago, Warren Buffett's tax rate was 17%. That was without him utilizing tax loopholes or making a real effort @ tax evasion. Many wealthy pay less than 17% income taxes. Recently it came to light that 1% of the worlds population owns 40% of the wealth in the entire world. Some wealthy individuals complain that they pay the majority of taxes. Then again if they own 40% of all the wealth in the world isn't it difficult to imagine a scenario where they do not pay higher taxes than the poor or middle class whose global holdings of wealth are significantly less?

If the middle class is willing to part with 50% of its earnings, then I think the wealthy should expect to pay at least 20%. The way things are now, there are wealthy businessmen in america who pay around 2% income taxes, without factoring in the AMT(alternative minimum tax). There are many large corporations like google who utilize tax loopholes then have the cost of constructing their server farms funded by government tax subsidies. Then they receive tax cuts which give it an unfair advantage over its competition. Its like a form of rich peoples welfare.

Its easy to think the rich are being treated unfairly, I'm certain those are the only stories people hear about in the media. But once fundamental details about how things are implemented in the real world become available a very different portrait of things can emerge.


There are corporations like apple and intel who sit on $80 billion dollars in stockpiled funds that they don't use for creating jobs nor anything. The myth about large corporations being the largest creator of new jobs doesn't pan out. Its small businesses who are the biggest source of new jobs in the country. Not big established names. If anything large corporations repress new and emerging technologies, they also centralize markets and create monopolies, all of which kills jobs.


I agree high taxes and economic prosperity post WWII is a terrible example.

Post WWII a good portion of the developed and civilized world was bombed back to the stone age except for russia and the united states. America had a prosperous WWII as they were in the business of helping other nations rebuild--at a profit. They made reconstruction loans to foreign nations--with interest.

Its not evidence high taxes are a good or even sustainable policy.

What good points are you referring to? Are you referring to the ones I quoted here:
They might not experience poverty, but society itself will suffer from abundance of negligent people if ever Chris Hughes' desire comes into fruition. Wouldn't it also be unfair for rich people who worked hard for that money?
I agree that resources should come from people who got the most benefit out of the economy's structure but I think they shouldn't provide it for free. With their money, they can open more business to help give jobs to others who needs it.
Rulers of that era and now are different. Economic growth and prosperity by that time came from spoils of war, not mainly from taxes.
Cash would not simply eradicate poverty and stabilize the middle class, it would just make them more negligent and slothful.

Hehe,this is ridiculous,even if we share all the money in the world equally for all people in the world there will still be poor people in no time.Sometimes the way some people behave makes me tempted to say that some people are destined to be poor.Yes  some people will never be rich because of the way they behave when they earn a small income.Besides tax is not even the way to deal with poverty.Tax rather increase poverty and retards development.It is not corrupt politicians who embezzle our taxes and live in affluence? Even if we increase taxes to this said amount, corrupt official will only grow richer that is all.

I'm no millionaire by any stretch of the imagination but I don't see the point of sharing my income to enable freeloaders. I'm sorry. I'd much rather share my torrents rather than my income. The idea of giving away free stuff and in this case money is idiotic.
Off course the idea of receiving free money is very alluring so there would be many who'd want this. Even if they don't want it.

  "The arrangement that recommends itself on purely mechanical grounds is a negative income tax. […] The advantages of this arrangement are clear. It is directed specifically at the problem of poverty. It gives help in the form most useful to the individual, namely, cash. It is general and could be substituted for the host of special measures now in effect. It makes explicit the cost borne by society. It operates outside the market. Like any other measures to alleviate poverty, it reduces the incentives of those helped to help themselves, but it does not eliminate that incentive entirely, as a system of supplementing incomes up to some fixed minimum would. An extra dollar earned always means more money available for expenditure. "                                                                                                                                                                                                     
  Smart Contracts could be really awesome to work with something like this. Today, all Basic income models use banks as a middleman. So, a business or people pay tax, the money goes to a bank account, then go to another for the program, them go to someone else account. It is too expensive and inefficient. With a smart contract, the money could go from A to B and the government will only need to verify the public ledger.

There are a few good points made here.

This is one potential scenario under which universal basic income might have a hope of succeeding and balancing out global economies.

It could easily turn into a disaster like social security where excess collected taxes are consistently spent on things which have absolutely nothing to do with social security. Many taxes like road taxes, which are supposed to be utilized towards maintaining roads. And telecom taxes which in theory, are supposed to be spent on maintaining or upgrading internet or telecom infrastructure are often spent on war in the middle east / programs which are 100% unrelated to those things.

The potential for disaster or misuse of funds is very high. But there is a slim chance the program could be successful and achieve its intended end goal of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, like robin hood, in an effort to stabilize economies and prevent societies and civilization from ultimately collapsing. And things like that. Whatever the worst case, scorched earth, scenario is here in regard to things like UBI.