Attention Economy


Friday, February 1, 2019

Wealth and Politics

How Market Power Worsens Income Inequality
https://promarket.org/how-market-power-worsens-income-inequality/

Reducing Wealth Inequality Through Wealth Taxes Without Compromising Economic Growth

Taxing Capital/Wealth

Republicans support higher taxes on the super-rich, according to a Fox News survey

Taxing the Wealthy Sounds Easy. It’s Not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/your-money/tax-wealthy.html

Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax on the Super-Rich Is the Wrong Solution to the Right Problem
http://time.com/5516903/elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax-income-assets/

John Cassidy evaluates Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax proposal:
“Part of the problem is that other countries have shown that wealth taxes create incentives for rich people to evade them by sheltering or hiding assets, or, in extremis, by emigrating. France and Denmark both got rid of wealth taxes on investments and other non-property assets, partly because they didn’t raise as much money as was hoped. Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, two Berkeley economists who provided a detailed assessment of the Warren tax plan, estimate it would raise $2.75 trillion over ten years, which is a very large sum. But Wojciech Kopczuk, an economist at Columbia University who has studied the estate tax extensively, told me that the $2.75 trillion figure is “wildly optimistic.” If Warren’s tax were enacted, Kopczuk said, many wealthy families would divide their wealth among themselves to stay under the fifty-million-dollar threshold, and they would also start shifting their wealth into assets that are hard to value, such as collectibles and privately held businesses.”