Progressives Unveil OLIGARCH Act to Combat 'Existential Threat' of Extreme Wealth

By temporarily embarrassed millionaires, no less.

Pretty sure thats the point.

Showing that the billionaires will react to practically nothing like it will destroy them. And hopefully maybe a few more people will realize they're full of shit

Keep in mind it's a wealth tax, not an income tax, so these numbers hit way harder than the income tax ones you're used to.

Yes, percent should be about 10x what has been recommended.

Just getting something like this out of committee and on the floor for debate would be huge. Unfortunately it stands no chance with the current congress

In other news, renting a house has never been more popular! On secondary news, rent has raised across america by 8% unilaterally

I really love the floating design of the tax pegged to household income, but I'd probably oppose it due to exactly what you say: it opens the door to wealth taxes, which are by and large a bad idea.

We've proven time and time again that congress can't properly tax the wealthy, and will always eventually default to squeezing revenue out of the middle class. 50 million as a minimum sounds nice and high until they add a bracket at 25 million, then 10, then before you know it there's a non-inflation adjusted tax at 1 million or 500k. All that serves to do is hurt savers and the elderly (who will naturally have higher nest eggs being closer to retirement). This will 100% eventually come to pass, because taxing wealth is a further nudge towards a consumption (and therefore growth) based economy that publicly traded companies need to continue extracting wealth from consumers, so it will be lobbied for by all monied interests, both the rich and industry.

There are tons of other issues with a wealth tax like creating a new bureaucracy to measure wealth (not impossible, as some people say, just expensive), the fact that people are taxed for gains they may not have realized or just for leaving money in the bank or stock market, something that is actually good for the economy, and other complaints. It's also just inferior to a better income tax, and expanding income taxes to eliminate the loopholes the megarich use, chief among them borrowing against collateralized debt. If someone gets a loan but puts up stock or properties as collateral, that loan should count as income. There are tons of other loopholes, and the fact that we're ignoring low-hanging fruit and talking about wealth taxes shows me this is about scoring political points, not actually trying to reform how our government gets money.

Yeah, we have a better chance of pigs flying, getting struck by lightning, and winning the lottery all at the same time on the same day simultaneously than this has of actually passing both chambers and getting signed into an actual law. This type of thing will never pass when the very oligarchs it seeks to tax own the very government responsible for making it a law.

You're almost certainly confusing wealth taxes with income taxes. Bernie Sanders had a wealth tax plan, it ranged from 1%-8% depending on wealth. From $1B to $2.5B the rate was 5%.

It literally says "all wealth" and doesn't talk about income at all.

This is exactly the kind of tax we need. I think its a very interesting idea to tie it to median wealth, though using household as opposed to individual wealth I'm not sold on.

The legislation would also require at least a 30% IRS audit rate on households affected by the new wealth tax, according to the summary.

$100k aint that much and those people already have a heafty tax burden. Plus luxury taxes are easily avoided when yachts and planes are purchased in the Bahamas. What we need are 50% taxes on the money they borrow against their assets. Want to buy another mansion? Cool 50% tax on the money Goldman Sachs lends you against your Amazon stock. If I have to pay a tax to borrow against my 401k so should these assholes.

But income tax on paper is already higher for the $100k tax bracket than what the ultra rich pay. The ultra rich do everything in their power to not have an "income". Hence why there's this effort of taxing wealth instead.

"Veto" isn't the correct term, but you are otherwise entirely correct.

Supreme court ruled income taxes unconstitutional a couple times too, they still eventually happened...

But yeah wealth taxes are a bad idea. Just close income tax loopholes for crying out loud.

It's based on wealth, and hence illegal - it would take an amendment to tax wealth, but this isn't an amendment. So even if it could pass, it would be an entirely empty gesture.

The 10k isn't what they make. It is how many times the median wealth they have. So the poorest affected will have a thousand times more wealth than the median household.