It fell, like much of the post COVID world. But somehow, I don't think that 600m tax opportunity cost contributed to 112 billion dollar drop in GDP. And then after that it basically stayed flat (rose by 1 billion, or.2% rise)
So, not too convinced this is a net loss for society. Studies in New York (pre Mamdmi) show that more people will come in than leave if the area is desired enough.
I didn’t say the tax gap caused the drop in GDP. I did say the capital flight caused the tax to wildly underperform revenue estimates, which is objectively true.
I love how this goes from “there’s no evidence wealthy move” to, when presented with evidence wealthy move, “well, ok, I’m not convinced this is a net loss for society”
Everyone loves deciding what their "fair share" of other people's net worth (not even income!) is.
Sorry, but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness, and rightfully opens up questions about slippery slope, how "temporary" they claim this to be, and so on.
It's not surprising they are leaving the state or using their resources to try to stop it.
Your statement is ignoring the systematic growing inequality in the US between the ultra wealthy and everyone else. And the use of those funds to influence politics (because of Citizens United, etc) to create polices that benefit themselves - it is for the ultra wealthy a virtuous circle:
You could confiscate 100% of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t fund the government for an entire year. It is and always will be a government spending issue, the government can’t help itself but to just steal more from the taxpayers to support their bloat.
You are conflating the tax revenue from a wealth tax with "funding the government for a year" which is precisely a balance vs cash flow mistake like you rightfully pointed out to someone else in the thread.
So given the government will still collect taxes for every foreseeable year, I ask you, what impact would it have if we used it not to fund the government but to pay down some of the debt?
Confiscating all of the assets of the nation’s billionaires wealth would yield 6-8T, depending on what kind creative accounting is done in anticipation of a wealth tax.
So yeah it would help reduce the debt slightly but doesn’t address the bigger culprit - spending and government inefficiency and bloat
>You could confiscate 100% of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t fund the government for an entire year.
1. I see that being 14 trillion. That would in fact fund the government for a year. even for 2 years.
2. taxes aren't about achieving perfect equality. But it's in part to incentivize people to not hoard wealth and spend it in the company. Few of the busnesses in the 50's/60's paid close to the tax brackets they had back then (Which would give modern billionaires a heart attack, despite that being "the times to return to).
Except is not 14 trillion (in the US) It is closer to 8 trillion.
Even if it WAS 14 trillion, the fact that such an insane measure wouldn’t even fully fund the entire government for two years shows you can’t just confiscate your way out of things. It is spending.
I mean when you just make up a number, you should expect to be called out for it, lol.
And I did engage with the real point. Even if it WAS 14 trillion dollars, that wouldn't fund the government for 2 years. And then what? Why is the solution for government bloat and inefficiency always just taking more?
You did not and still are not. This isnt about making billionaires cover the entire country's budget. Its about making sure power doesn't consolidate in any one person.
Do I really need to repost the other 80% of my comment (the entire 2.point?) Which part of "high corporate taxes mean business owners invest in business" needs clarification? Are we suggesting that the tax codes in which the baby boomers boomed under did not in fact make America Great?
You’re discussing raising corporate or individual income tax rates.
I’m discussing a proposed broad wealth tax on unrealized gains and assets.
The tax rates of the 50s were high, but were filled with loopholes and deductions in that the effective tax rate that was actually paid was much lower.
There are arguments to be made how much those policies contributed to the boom of that decade, but those are separate to arguments about the practical, legal, or efficiency concerns with just imposing a 5% levy across all assets and net worth
>but were filled with loopholes and deductions in that the effective tax rate that was actually paid was much lower.
Yes, thanks for reiterating my main point.
Now if we use that same mindset and apply it to a wealth tax...
Hence my main point. Taxes aren't all about extraction of money, they also help to nudge people to do things they normally wouldn't do. So nudging them to actually help the area they are in is really powerful.
Or they can leave. If so: good. Make room for those who do want to innovate and not extract money from the people (and more beach space).
Not all billionaires are "job creators", especially given the actions taken the last few years. That's why some of the legitimate "millionaire flights" that do happen don't necessarily impact the way that's predicted on paper.
If they leave (and some already have) they take their tax base with them. Not just for this one time levy, but for future tax years too.
Then where will the state go to make up the revenue shortfall? Either raising taxes on other groups or cutting services.
I’m finished discussing this matter, let’s revisit this if and when this actually gets passed so we can see how much revenue was actually generated (or if it even survived legal challenges)
I do agree it is a spending issue, for far too long corporate welfare has flourished in America. None of these rich people would exist with out the federal teat they suckle from, truly pathetic. Remove their bloat, take their money, and fund programs that will enable REAL economic value like medicare for all, universal childcare, free school lunches, public jobs programs, and universal education.
And where will we get the money to fund this fantasy land in 8 months after the government runs out of money and we’ve already stolen all the billionaires assets?
Should we move on to anyone with a net worth over $1M and start stealing their assets too?
Probably the same way that the republicans are able to generate funds out of thin air to pay for tax cuts. If MMT is good enough for them, it's good enough for everything else.
> And where will we get the money to fund this fantasy land ...
What are you talking about? Current administration is doing exactly that. Cutting taxes for the wealthy and adding all those loses to national debt at record level increments. No fiscal responsibility at all.
Total fantasy and essentially poor and middle-class funds the rich through their taxes (and government money printer), not to mention how mega companies like Walmart constantly underpays workers that those workers then need to survive on government subsidies, yet another funding for the rich.
This is happening with every USA government (AFAIK especially/only republican ones) since Reagan.
EDIT: also as sibling comment said - poor people spend money instantly, returning it back to economy. America was already taxing wealthy through the teeth years ago - that helped fund incredible amounts of infrastructure and let built strongest middle class (probably in history) for decades. Now all that wealth is just accumulating in someones back accounts. Trickling any day now...
> America was already taxing wealthy through the teeth years ago
Except they weren’t. Those lovely 90% tax rates from the 1950s everyone on Reddit loves to bring up weren’t really paid by anyone. The effective tax rate paid after the loopholes and deductions was much lower, closer to 40%
>but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness
why? The federal government is taking around 22% from me this year and I'm in a low bracket. If I had the money from my last full time job in tech it'd be 24%. You're saying billionaires shouldn't pay the state they reside in 5% more?
Tanentially, that's only one bracket despite it being triple the salary. gotta love that part time minimum wage work in CA still pushes me that close to my financial peaks.
The government is taking 22% of your INCOME. Not your entire net worth. This is vastly different.
HNW don’t have their net worth sitting in a pool of cash like Donald Duck as much as Reddit would like to believe. Its property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.
to have to go through the administrative burden of valuing all that, and then attempting to liquidate at some reasonable market value just to pay one time levy (allegedly lol) is insane, and will rightfully be challenged in court
> property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.
it is only “unrealized” when they have to pay taxes. but walk into a bank and ask for a loan (which is of course what they do) and all of a sudden that shit is all “realized” and here’s millions of dollars to ya…
it is not separate, it is exactly the same discussion. if you currently can use “unrealized” shit to borrow against than it is perfectly fair for you to pay the taxes on that shit. it is absolutely not a “separate discussion”
I support some sort of disincentive to prevent HNW individuals from borrowing against assets for income.
I do not support wealth taxes or taxing unrealized gains (unless you get rebates for unrealized losses lol)
There SHOULD be some mechanism (idk what) to close the loophole of HNW individuals borrowing against an asset you have not sold to minimize actual income, but that doesn't mean its right, effective, or even legal to just mass tax all unrealized gains, just because this specific loophole exists currently.
it is not a separate discussion because - at present - there is no such thing as “unrealized gains”
- they are all realized and have always been. now we just want to tax it.
I literally said there should be some sort of final penalty or taxable event associated with borrowing against illiquid assets and unrealized gains for very HNW individuals.
>to have to go through the administrative burden of valuing all that, and then attempting to liquidate at some reasonable market value just to pay one time levy (allegedly lol) is insane, and will rightfully be challenged in court
Cool, let's do it. We know the IRS, especially when auditing the rich tend to be one of the highest value employees of government they will sue no matter how cut and clear the tax code is anyway.
Its really weird we're on HN and we're using an excuse of "but it's hard, so let's not do it". I didn't choose tech because it was easy. Why should the government we fund be just as defeatist?
Of course its easy for you to say - its simple to just point the finger and claim you're entitled to your "fair share" of someone else's property simply because they have more than you. And my main point isn't even that "its hard" (which it is), its that governments cannot simply just tax and confiscate their way to a utopia.
Fortunately for sanity and common sense, this proposal, if it even passes, will surely be challenged on Federal and State constitutional grounds.
>if it even passes, will surely be challenged on Federal and State constitutional grounds.
Will it be sanity if they lose and the tax is upheld?
I already said that they will file lawsuits no matter how they legislate, so nothing in my comment was actually addressed.
Insteas you're just trying to make me emphathize with a billionaire for some reason. Meanwhile, I'm almost 3 years out of my last W-2 job that I was laid off of because of these billionaires. My sympathy is gone. Tax the rich.
But we already have open borders in the EU. If you're referring to allowing in migrants freely, that's deeply unpopular in Romania and no candidate is in support of it.
Say you live with your family in Juarez right now - what do you think statistically your chance of legal immigrating to the United States is (and lets up the ante, say you have legit proof that every mafia boss in Mexico is hunting you and every member of your family)...?
I'll give you a ballpark - your chance of legal immigrating is similar to me marrying Gisele... there is a chance, I am very good looking but you know...
Majority of people arguing "illegal" vs. "legal" immigration simply fail to look at statistic to see that "legal" immigration is vaporware - just a term to use to try to prove some point which cannot be proven with that argument...
> Open borders means open to illegal immigration.
No, open borders mean that the immigrants are legal by default. It doesn't mean the borders aren't secure enough for your paranoid xenophobic liking.
> No, open borders mean that the immigrants are legal by default.
I suppose that's one definition of it, a more extreme version. No country on Earth has this kind of immigration policy. It would be unsustainable.
> It doesn't mean the borders aren't secure enough for your paranoid xenophobic liking.
Ad-hominem attacks are not necessary. My wife is second generation immigrant. Her father is first generation, they do not support illegal immigration either. He came here legally and the people that come here illegally take away resources from those who want to come here legally the right way.
I don't know a lot about this specific situation, but this seems to set a dangerous precedent where governments can just claim "election interference" or "misinformation" any time their candidate loses to get a do-over.
Agreed. You do your best to counter and mitigate this type of foreign influence, but once people have voted, they have voted. Once you start to rationalize "but they only voted this way because X", it will be tempting to expand X in a way that disenfranchises and disempowers citizens.
Funny enough, the EU is currently calling the election results in Georgia illegitimate because they passed a similar sort of law (https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/what-georgias-foreign-agent-law...). This is not doing a good job of dispelling the accusation that the media now uses "democracy" as code for outcomes that are desirable for US globalists and their allies.
The Russian foreign agent law is used to attack the public personalities and NGOs, and have nothing in common with the Romanian Electoral Laws. Georgians are absolutely right to be scared.
Have you seen the proof, or are you repeating what was written by someone else? There is a big difference. I bet this is the usual "credible information from anonymous government sources".
They had to make a quick call, in my book they acted boldly, the risks of the alternative were greater. Everyone has time to cool down and think about it, and the candidate can win if he is good. In the last few days all new information has pointed in the opposite direction.
They sat on this info for almost three weeks. Doing it now discards so much money and effort invested by people working the election stations, the people in other countries that already voted, etc. Not to mention that it communicates to the everyone that their vote doesn't count if it's not for the right candidate. A vote made under wrong assumptions is still a vote cast democratically. In my opinion this late decision makes a mocking of a real democratic process.
It's also very likely to have the side-effect of destroying Mrs. Lasconi's chances at the presidency. Who do you think that the Georgescu voters will vote for now? Not her for sure. I bet there will be a Simion vs. Ciolacu battle next time, and there we'll go again with choosing the "lesser of the two evils".
On the second point I completely agree with you. She appears to be collateral damage at this point. Perhaps that will raise sympathy and she can get into the second round again.
Theres been a lot of kurfuffle about it and apparently even the other politicians think this court decision was too much.
Im not sure why and how this works, just saying that having Russia create 10 million fake accounts (that we know of) in a country of 19 million is clearly foreign interference.
>He took aid from Russia which is against Romanian law.
Funny that you know this, but the actual court decision that should show proof of this has yet to be released. Either you are spewing hearsay, are in the intelligence community and are sharing secret information or... you are lying.
Please, do link the so-far unreleased information that the court based its decision on. I'll wait.
>Agreed. You do your best to counter and mitigate this type of foreign influence, but once people have voted, they have voted. Once you start to rationalize "but they only voted this way because X", it will be tempting to expand X in a way that disenfranchises and disempowers citizens.
And you ignore the laws? You discover that the candidate do illegal stuff?
No, I'm taking a step back and saying that if the law provides for nullifying the election, it's a bad law. It's an even worse law if no due process is involved (i.e. "nothing has been proven against this candidate in court as of yet, but we're going to go ahead and nullify the election because he benefited from foreign interference, as far as we can tell based on what our intelligence services are telling us").
For what it's worth, it sounds like the runner-up candidate agrees:
> Lasconi condemned the court's ruling as "illegal" and "immoral", saying "today is the moment when the Romanian state has trampled on democracy".
>No, I'm taking a step back and saying that if the law provides for nullifying the election, it's a bad law. It's an even worse law if no due process is involved (i.e. "nothing has been proven against this candidate in court as of yet, but we're going to go ahead and nullify the election because he benefited from foreign interference, as far as we can tell based on what our intelligence services are telling us").
Sorry, this is the constitution, it does not allow for years of appeals and dragging your feat. Are you really believing that the guy used zero funds and you need a court and 3 appeals to prove to you that he used more then ZERO funds ?
>The US constitution does not just "allow" for years of appeals, it guarantees your right to defend yourself through that process.
Don't worry, the pro Ruzzian traitor will have his appeals and lawyers to defend him from fraud and the other accusations, the elections were cancelled and will be repeated so we do not let Ruzzia influence them.
What does the US constitution say if it is discovered that there is credible evidence for :
1 a foreign power was involved in election and it affected the results (illegal in Romania)
2 the candidate that commuted fraud by not declaring the money he used (this is illegal in Romania)
3 the guy was unknown for the media and public before election so nobody checked him, now that Tic Tok made him popular it was also discovered a lot of bullshit he done, one of them is glorifying Iron Guard a fascist party in Romania's past (it is illegal to do that here)
In USA you let Ruzzia to chose your president because you are only 99% sure?
Then won't the president pardon himself? Create some civil war?
As I said the constitutional Court decided to repeat the election, they did not decided to jail the guy, or execute him, or even block him to run in Ruzzia.
No, you prosecute and send for trial the people that committed the illegal acts. If that means deposing the acting president, the you do that - but you do it when you have the proof and a legitimate trial. Not the Constitutional Court inventing a power for itself that it doesn't have, based on vague wording in the Constitution (specifically, they based this decision on an article of the Romanian Constitution that says that "[the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed, and confirms the results of the vote", with no further stipulations - article 146, paragraph f).
> Not the Constitutional Court inventing a power for itself that it doesn't have, based on vague wording in the Constitution (specifically, they based this decision on an article of the Romanian Constitution that says that "[the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed, and confirms the results of the vote", with no further stipulations - article 146, paragraph f).
What powers do you believe this grants, that would make logical sense in a situation like this?
None essentially. It just enables other specific laws that organize the functioning of the court in this area, and perhaps it enables the court to settle questions on whether electoral processes have been followed.
For example, there is a specific law that specifies how the CCR can verify the results of the election (that certain institutions send the vote counts to it, in some specific format, within X days etc). The same law also specified what happens if the CCR finds that the vote counts are suspect - who can raise such concerns, within what dates, and most importantly, what happens next, when the elections are re-done and by whose decisions. This is how the court is supposed to function.
In contrast, the court has trampled on its own jurisprudence, where it only yesterday night (local time) declared that it can't hear any new claims about the elections until the end of the next round.
> None essentially. It just enables other specific laws that organize the functioning of the court in this area
> [the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed
I have no context on this beyond what you're writing, so I'm taking everything you're saying at face value. But even when I do that... don't you feel "the legislature shall have the power to organize the functioning of the court regarding elections" is a manifestly different sentence from "the court ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed, and confirms the results of the vote"?
Our constitution [0] uses this verbiage a lot. For example, here is what it says about the President:
> (2) The President of Romania shall guard the observance of the Constitution and the proper functioning of the public authorities. To this effect, he shall act as a mediator between the Powers in the State, as well as between the State and society.
The official English wording of the role of the court is:
> f) to guard the observance of the procedure for the election of the President of Romania and to confirm the ballot returns;
Note the similarity of the verbiage. I don't think the first one can be read to mean that the president can interfere with any authority they think might not properly be respecting the Constitution. I don't believe this is the intended reading, and definitely no one recognizes such a power for the President of Romania. So, I don't think the equivalent verbiage in the article on the power of the CCR should be read to give them the power to decide anything they want on the electoral process.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, just a citizen of this country. But to me it doesn't seem proper that a Court can devise procedures that are not specified in any law.
My belief is that no one has the right, or the legal and constitutional power, to annul the elections based on campaign influence. The law only specifies a right to annul one election (a specific day, not the whole process as was done here), and then only if the voting process itself is corrupted (miscounting votes, stopping people from voting, physically coercing people to vote, etc).
The regular court system can pursue individuals who conspired with Russia (including, likely, Călin Georgescu himself!), prosecute and try them for treason.
Intelligence services and electoral authorities have the power to stop the interference while it is in progress, by forcing people and sites to take it down, banning entire domains if they don't comply, arresting people who are coordinating with foreign nationals, etc.
The election will be done again, and people can vote their favorite person again, this time with the full knowledge of who is behind them.
It sucks that authorities did nothing before the elections, but I suspect that disqualifying the fascist guy because of fraud and interference would have produced the exact same complains from his fans and the Ruzzian trolls.
Right? You would claim that he should be allowed to continue until the courts will decide it was fraud, and until the appeals are done and until the complains to the EU court are also complete.
Is there a law that calls for election annulment if a candidate does illegal stuff? I doubt. In fact, usually there are specifically no such laws to avoid initiatives for political prosecution.
Over in Japan, the newly re-elected Hyogo Prefecture Governor is being sued for violating electoral laws concerning his use of social media, with the penalties including voiding of the election and the stripping of his electoral rights.
Incidentally, the Governor was re-elected in an upset victory after being ousted by the Hyogo Prefecture Legislature over alleged power harrassment scandals. Yes, the Japanese establishment hates him and are doing anything possible to get rid of him.
> and are doing anything possible to get rid of him.
As long as it's legal, there is nothing very wrong with it. If he committed crimes that influenced the election, then the election is void and he should be banned from politics.
I have long since come to the conclusion that democracy as a power system is merely an excuse for the Powers That Be to obtain and maintain power, it just has better plausible deniability than other means like monarchies, dictatorships, etc. at the cost of not having fine-grained control.
Occasionally there are aberrations like Trump, which subsequently lead to the Powers That Be doing everything they can to make sure the vote is made "right".
They're all just different heads of the same hydra. "Uniparty" might be a term you're familiar with. All the political catfighting is just kabuki theatre to give the notion power is changing hands.
I'm pretty sure that the Powers That Be didn't want the Fair Labor Act, or the Clean Air Act, or the Pure Food and Drug Act, or a number of other things. They may not care who is president, but on issues that they do care about, they still take some losses.
Large companies always fight against laws regulating them that didn't exist before; but once they exist they always fight for extending them so that new competitors can't arise.
"Democracy doesn't effect much" is not the same as "it does nothing at all".
Its not the government doing it. Its the constitutional court on the basis of some kind of evidence. That's how its supposed to work. It would be way more dangerous to let other states meddle in your elections. If the results was true the first time around it'll be the same next time. So in many ways there is no good reason to not have a redo if there is anykind of evidence of foul play.
> If the results was true the first time around it'll be the same next time.
Not necessarily. Given that the opposition party now knows what the people seem to want, they can do all sorts of things, especially given the knowledge that the court will strike it down should the election not go in their favor.
>Not necessarily. Given that the opposition party now knows what the people seem to want, they can do all sorts of things, especially given the knowledge that the court will strike it down should the election not go in their favor.
Like what? they will make the opponents praise Putin and make China and Ruzzia send them funds to cancel the election again?
The right wing party literally made TikTok’s that the governing part(ies?) didn’t like, but which apparently resonated with the people they labelled them as misinformation. Have you heard that one before?
What does the US constitution say about the court's role in elections? What does the Romanian constitution say?
(Though to be honest they could still make whatever ruling they want in the US. It's probably cause chaos as people try to figure out if they're bound by it.)
You can read about it, the decision just came out and it's public. Georgescu declared spending zero euros in funding while investigations found about 50m€ spent.
The Constitutional Court has determined election interference based on what they got, it's better to do a do-over rather than allow Russia interference in the democratic process.
You can claim the slippery slope fallacy but given the potential catastrophe of allowing Russian interference I'll side with the CCR on this case.
That would have been a good argument sometime while the campaign was still in progress. Once the votes were cast, any court would recognize this is a fait accompli. It's crazy to annull elections (a procedure which no law whatsoever, nor the Constitution, even mentions, it was invented wholesale by the CCR during their meeting today) based on campaign finance violations, even ones involving outside interference.
What would have happened if the interference were discovered only next year? Would you have been ok with annuling the elections after the new president was already in office? This is no different whatsoever, after the first round was finished.
I hated and feared CG as much as anyone, but this court decision is obviously crazy and undemocratic (as pointed out by the other candidate in the second round as well).
The supposed campaign on tiktok ran days before the election. It is remarkable for state organs to be able to act within a week or so. Annulling the election in this situation seems the right thing to do. A similar cancellation of results happened in Austria in 2016. A year later it indeed would have been too late.
No, the supposed campaign started one month before the elections. It ramped up maybe in the last few days before the election. But you don't convince 2 million people to vote for a crazed maniac like CG in two days of manipulation.
In fairness he can't declare funds that haven't passed directly through his campaign accounts. It's a transparent loop hole, but it needs to be patched, not used as post-factum evidence supporting wrong doing.
But we are wary of giving up fundamental democratic protections of our votes for the boogeyman of Russia. There will always be a Boogeyman. There won't always be free and fair elections.
Campaign finance violations are serious. Why is the vote allowed to continue if they happen? Why is this not probed well before the election?
A high paying, cushy job in tech / FAANG with great benefits and easy work/life balance can be as much of a crutch as it is a blessing.
With your own personal situation so good, it can be too easy to just stick to the default and not chase something that's more ambitious, but perhaps also more risky as well (whatever that is). The years go by fast and eventually you start wondering if its too late (it's not).
So, have gratitude and appreciate the good situation(s) you've found yourself in, but if there's some idea or action you can't seem to forget about, go do it.
Individuals with a net worth of $54B left the country, led to a $594M loss in tax revenue.
https://citizenx.com/insights/norway-wealth-exodus/
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