• ceenote@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It’s wild how much more billionaires are spending to defeat Zohran than what his tax proposal would cost them. I guess they’re afraid of a wider movement.

    • foodandart@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      That is exactly it.

      I have much fun remindng people today that the time when “America was Great” aka the 1950’s also saw the median tax rate on the ultra-wealthy at over 90%. It’s a rough third of that now since most are earning wealth through non-taxable investment vehicles and not taxable income-based earnings.

      Lotsa paper tigers out there…

      • alekwithak@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        And they could still afford to lobby to get their taxes lowered and deregulate their industries, so clearly 90% wasn’t enough!

        • foodandart@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          Well, it’s been 70 years now, so it’s not as if the rich haven’t been playing the long game.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        91% was the top-tier tax rate, not the median. Nobody paid that rate: Those who would find themselves in that top tax bracket increased their spending on “business expenses” rather than cut punitively large checks to the IRS. Those “business expenses” were for products and services produced by workers; those “business expenses” paid worker salaries. The high marginal tax rates drove money out of the hands of the ultra-rich and straight into the pockets of the working class. Turns out that paying workers for their labor is more valuable to the ultra-rich than giving away their excess earnings to the IRS.

        We need to restore the punitively high top-tier tax rates we had from the 1950s to the early 1970s, to drive more cash back into the working class.

        But more importantly, we need to institute an annual, 1% tax on all registered securities. To keep the rich from playing fuck-fuck games, that tax should be paid in shares of the securities held, not the dollar value of those securities.

        Natural persons may exempt up to $10 million worth of securities from this tax. Corporate “persons” may not exempt their portfolios. If you’ve got $20 million in your portfolio, you need to find another natural person, or start paying.

        The SEC transfers non-exempt shares directly to the IRS; the IRS liquidates those shares on the open market, slowly over time. These liquidated shares will never comprise more than 1% of total traded volume.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s wild how much more billionaires are spending to defeat Zohran than what his tax proposal would cost them.

      It’s not about beating Zohran once for a single term. It’s about beating the idea of a socialist mayor out of the voting public for another generation. Gotta get back to the idea that DeBlaiso was too radical and Eric Adams is what New Yorkers should expect.

      And a win for Zohran isn’t just a single seat in a single city. There’s a municipal offices at play, including the NYPD chief. There’s half a dozen House Reps at play (chief among them Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s seat). There’s state House and Senate seats. There’s the very real possibility of an insurgent campaign to unseat Kathy Hochul or threaten the increasingly unpopular Senator Gilibrand.

      He’s a crack in the dam. And at the size and scale of NYC, its a fucking big one.

        • Sundray@lemmus.org
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          2 months ago

          When you boil it down the philosophy of the rich is “GIMME GIMME GIMME, MINE MINE MINE” and everything beyond that is blather.

    • AlexLost@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      One time fee vs forever more. These guys think in terms of the long game, not the 4 year cycles your government is concerned with.

      • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        For their personal finance, yes. Running a company? Line go up this quarter, nothing else matters. Slowly destroying the planet and poisoning the population? Irrelevant, line must go up.