Posted on 02/04/2019 12:53:56 PM PST by conservative98
Whether anyone believes this woman, or not, there is no evidence to support her claim.
I understand the difference between stocks and flows.
Do you consider human capital a part of personal wealth? It’s reasonable to do so, but how do you properly measure it? If you have income from a risky source (for example, dividends from high-beta equity shares), what interest rate would you use to capitalize it to a present value?
Most people can calculate their current annual income with the help of a few documents (pay stubs, bank statements, etc.) Very few, and certainly not the government, can calculate a comprehensive, reasonable accurate measure of their wealth.
I used to ask my students if they were wealthy. Most would reply something like, “No; I only have a part-time job, a ten-year-old car, and some junky furniture.” But they didn’t understand the distinction between temporary (current) and permanent (life-cycle) wealth. A sensible wealth tax would, at a minimum, recognize that distinction.
There is a large professional literature on wealth versus income taxation that deals with both the theoretical and practical difficulties of properly measuring the relevant base.
“First, we already have a tax on wealth;”
There is a federal inheritance tax on amounts above $11.4 million, but revenue from it is less than $20 billion per year (less than 1% of total federal tax revenue. Most of the super rich, to whose estates the tax would apply in principle, are able to shelter much of their assets from this tax.
I’m not defending a wealth tax; on the contrary, I think it would raise little revenue, and further distort individual saving and investment decisions.
>>>by telling her they had a “mutual friend”<<<
Well, he took her there to meet her new Mutual Friend, but close enough for Government work.
Willie Brown probably did the same with Kamala.
Let me introduce myself...
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