I am well-paid, and live in MA.
I would be in favor of taxing my bracket higher if it meant more public assistance programs.
it even benefits the economy, because the poor people would have more money to consume, therefore companies would sell more and that would stimulate the economy, including creating jobs.
because the poor people would have more money to consume, therefore companies would sell more
How long until these surpluses end up in the pockets of the billionaires who would then use them to remove these tax laws?
Today.
Same.
“Yeah. But I might become a millionaire one day and have to pay those taxes. No excuse me, I have to drive my 1987 Chevy s-10 to my factory job where I make $19 an hour.” -MAGAcuck
How about we introduce wealth taxes everywhere and see where the billionaires flee then?
The current DNC chair has been saying for months that not only did Mamdani run a campaign that should be emulated, but that his policy positions are what voters want nationally too.
So yeah…
The next Dem presidential candidate will likely want to do it nationally. And without a corrupt DNC working against progressives in the primary, a progressive is gonna win the primary.
There’s lots to be optimistic about, but billionaires aren’t going to let it be said in the media they own.
The next Dem presidential candidate will likely want to do it nationally. And without a corrupt DNC working against progressives in the primary, a progressive is gonna win the primary.
I’ll believe results. Democrats’ words aren’t worth the tepid air they’re excreted on. The new chair presided over the ouster of David Hogg and the shameful attempted ratfucking of Mamdani. If the party improves, it will be in spite of leadership’s efforts.
I know this is sincere and justified jadedness, but your wording was so eloquent it made me chuckle.
There’s lots to be optimistic about, but billionaires aren’t going to let it be said in the media they own.
wealth tax and universal basic income benefit the owning class too, because people can spend more money on buying products which means companies make more revenue, and let’s face it, an economy is primarily measured by how much revenues the companies make.
The easiest system to replace is one you control…
No one said we have to go 0% to 100% fixed in one term, just that the glacial pace of neoliberlism clearly wasn’t keeping up.
Look at France, they’ll riot at the drop of a hat to maintain an inch of ground. Full stomachs and housing stability doesn’t mean people turn into brainwashed cows, they can still work towards more.
Planning long term and moving up a ladder one rung at a time is better than spending your short life trying to jump over a 20 foot wall.
🎶 Taxes to the right of me, guill’tines to the left 🎵
It’s catchy…
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.
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…
And they could still afford to lobby to get their taxes lowered and deregulate their industries, so clearly 90% wasn’t enough!
Well, it’s been 70 years now, so it’s not as if the rich haven’t been playing the long game.
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.
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.
Wow! Didn’t know there was that much at stake in one election. When is it?
Early voting has already started. The final day to vote is Nov 4th.
You think this is big?
Wait till you see what they put behind Newsom/Pritzker if neither of them win the next Dem presidential primary…
They’re 100% going to pull a Cuomo if a progressive wins. I expect they’ll even get Kamala to run in the primary, just as a sacrificial lamb so Newsom/Pritzker won’t be the the least progressive on stage.
Really the reason they’re so scared of Mamdani, is there’s enough time to show it works before the presidential primary. And the current DNC chair is a huge fan of Mamdani:
One is, he campaigned for something. And this is a critical piece. We can’t just be in a perpetual state of resisting Donald Trump. Of course, we have to resist Donald Trump. There’s no doubt about it for all the reasons we just talked about. But we also have to give people a sense of what we’re for, what the Democratic Party is fighting for, and what we would do if they put us back in power.
And that’s really critical. And I think that’s one of the lessons from Mamdani’s campaign, is that he focused on affordability. He focused on a message that was resonant with voters, and he campaigned for something, not against other people or against other things. He campaigned on a vision of how he was going to make New York City a better place to live.
Billionaires are shitting themselves, they’ll just never let the media they own report on it.
I think the larger Democratic party is terrified of the idea that it’s possible to win a national election without being backed by a single billionaire.
Source on that? There have to be quite a few billionaires in NYC, how much are they spending on that anti-Zohran campaign?
how much are they spending on that anti-Zohran campaign?
Depends on if you accept that the Cuomo campaign and the “anti-Zohran campaign” describe the same thing…
And how much did they spend on that? It’s kind of difficult to find current numbers through a quick web search, especially if you aren’t super familiar with US election systems.
especially
I’d say anyone even slightly familiar with US politics would know billionaires have lots of ways to obfuscate campaign donations…
Like, it’s not exactly a secret, and US politics are kind of unavoidable.
Sure, but this is a rather specific claim that seems a little hard to believe. You’re telling me they’re spending billions on a mayor campaign (assuming Mamdani’s plans are similar to what Massachusetts did)?
You’re telling me they’re spending billions
No…
I think you’re confused
If they aren’t spending billions, the claim that billionaires are spending more money on the anti-Mamdani/pro-Cuomo campaigns than Mamdani’s policies would cost them is flat-out wrong.
But how much ARE they spending then? And why? I’m not from the US either and I’m baffled at the media attention this mayoral election is getting.
I guess they’re afraid of a wider movement.
Yes! And, taxes are abhorrent to their sense of justice. It’s disgusting.
Taxation is theft but wage theft is good business, I guess they’d say
When you boil it down the philosophy of the rich is “GIMME GIMME GIMME, MINE MINE MINE” and everything beyond that is blather.
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.
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.
I looked up the tax in question and I struggle to believe anyone was seriously pretending it would cause capital flight. It’s an extra 4% on income over a million. That’s just adding a modest tax bracket. At first glance I assumed this was a state level wealth tax.
I was ready to play devil’s advocate because right now petit bourgeois consumer spending is the only thing propping up the US economy and you really don’t want to fuck with that. But come on man. ‘Millionaire’ normally refers to total wealth not annual income. This income bracket wont even notice this.
Mamdani in NYC is enraging the wealthy, and he’s looking for less of an income tax. ~2% increase on income over $1 million.
…he has proposed creating an additional tax bracket for New York City residents with income over $1 million, which would be taxed at 5.9%.
In addition to increasing income taxes, Mamdani has proposed raising the state’s highest corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5%.
The purpose of shrieking about capital flight is not to legitimately warn the public of an actual danger. It’s to scare them into inaction. They declare that any incursion into their wealth, no matter how slight will bring about the end of the world because it’s possible to build momentum from there and the rich might actually have to contribute something other than their existence.
and I struggle to believe anyone was seriously pretending it would cause capital flight.
I can instantly believe it with near zero reservations.
Some rich dude said this yesterday on Instagram, but the whole point of being rich is that you don’t have to worry about those taxes. You can live anywhere you want, you have the money for it. Because you’re rich.
It’s poor people who get driven out by cost, not those rich bastards.
when you’re rich you pay an accountant to worry about that shit for you
Claiming the rich will flee is such a dumbass take, just on the face of it. They’re rich. And they want to live in NYC, which (*checks notes*) ain’t exactly cheap to begin with. They can afford to live wherever the fuck they want, money is no object. So if it costs a bit more to live in NYC, what difference does it make? Allegedly the whole point of even being rich is to be able to afford the things you want.
But if it makes folks feel better, maybe call it New York Platinum Edition™?
Yeah NYC is one of the few places in the world that can definitely call millionaires’ bluff on this one. Where the fuck else are they going to live?
Some rich assholes want to go live in whatever the city from BioShock was called so they can do evil to vulnerable people. Many of them want to live somewhere with culture
Kinda like how California’s aka “Commie-fornia” crazy outlandish socialist policies have condemned the state to being like the 5th largest economy in the world. It’s being ran into the ground!
The idea that California is more than lukewarm liberal has always been one of the biggest lies of American politics. The state has barely budged from its Reagan Era in terms of real public policy. The Silicon Valley sector all just put on “We love Bill Clinton” merch back in the 90s, because he was nice enough not to bust up the telecom and OS monopolies when he had the chance.
Dianne Feinstein raised the Confederate Flag over San Fransisco, practically before Harvey Milk’s body was cold. Gavin Newsom’s been at war with the homeless longer than George Bush has had us at war with Terror. From Duncan Hunter to Devin Nunes to Darrell Issa, the state’s put up some of the most naked fascists in Congress.
California’s political scene is slightly to the left of United Russia. They’re as Communist as a Pinkerton at a Picket Line.
I think what’s funny is like when Washington tried this a few years ago the tax only affected 14 people in the entire state.
So like, could I see 14 people fleeing? Sure.
But also, why do 14 people have that much fucking money.
But also, why do 14 people have that much fucking money.
That’s because their bootstraps were much more enormous then others around them. So they had to put in more work into pulling them up. So they deserve much more money than the other 99% of people. /s
Why for the love of God does anyone listen to a Republican or take anything they say as having any value. They do not govern, they lie and manipulate and steal all the money and children. Stop letting them be in the government.
When you have the memory of a goldfish, there’s no such thing as lying. Every statement is true, and therefore every expense is valid and all those children are illegal criminals.
The party that spent decades eliminating critical thinking skills in their supporters now thrives because of that undertaking. It would be impressive if it weren’t so disastrous.
“You can’t take it with you” is as true about death as it is about taxes.
If I’ve got a $5M home in Beacon Hill and I decide to flee to Texas because the taxes are cheaper, who the fuck am I going to sell it to? Another guy with $5M in his pocket? Or am I just going to eat a seven figure loss to save $10k/year on income taxes?
What if I’ve got a $50M tower block in Boston’s downtown? Or a $500M corporate HQ? How about a $5B warehousing district in Boston Harbor? You think I’m going to just pick that shit up and move it to Louisiana?
You discount the most important bit: laborer availability, service availability and quality of life. Also productivity. You cannot just move when you require a large amount of people and services.
There’s no shortage of people living in the American southwest. And quite a few of them are cheap to hire, even at a professional level.
But there’s also a bunch of competing American billionaires who have bought up all the real estate and political base of these remote locations. The CEO of Fidelity can’t just pick up from Boston and move to San Antonio, because her wealth and authority is predicated on her influence in Boston. Even if she were to transplant every one of her staffers down south (and Exxon hemorrhaged thousands of staffers when they tried this back in the 1980s), she still won’t have the office space or the political connections or the business relationships that make Fidelity an bedrock institution up north. FFS, half the reason Fidelity is up there is the proximity to Wall Street. Texas has been trying to lure stock brokerages down south for decades without success.
But it’s like trying to pick up a 3000 year old Redwood from California and drag it to Florida. You’ve got roots, bro. They don’t come free easily or without a price. And there’s a reason competing businesses aren’t already down there. The climate is all wrong.
they aren’t going to flee to texas over taxes because texas has a higher taxes (overall, not just income)
The rich don’t really care about money, it’s just a way to keep score with other rich people. They would only leave if they were being taxed enough to make leaving worth it, otherwise they’ll just grumble about the higher taxes, but stay and pay them.
Anybody who’s both rich and living in New York is seriously rich. They can afford it.
You know what is fucked? People have been saying the same shit for centuries. FDR even had a radio announcement where he responded to the claim that if you raise the taxes on the rich they will simply pack up and go. He said ‘well then… so long!’
And they never did btw. Where are they going to go anyway?
Its pretty bizarre to treat rich people like they’re some incredible credit to their communities simply for existing. Does the money rub off on people near them or something?
No no, it doesn’t rub, it trickles. 🙄
They really do believe that having a lot of money is divine providence and that it means they are blessed by God.
Just to say that MA has a pretty IMO idiotic flat state income tax rate of 5%, and having a income over 1m only increase the rate by 4%.
This increase is really negligible compare to the tax rate by the federal government and the cost of living difference between MA and other states.
If anything, I feel MA still don’t really have a “fair” income tax system yet, but one step at a time.
It’s not. They say people will move every time. New york has more incentive to stay than MA there is actually more shit there. They aren’t going anywhere
