(2010-08-10) Tax Super Rich

Stowe Boyd points to James Surowiecki's suggestion that we increase the Income Tax to the Super Rich (Income Inequality). An annual income of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars puts you in the top three per cent of American households, and is more than four times the national median... This means that someone making two hundred thousand dollars a year and someone making two hundred million dollars a year pay at similar tax rates. Le Bron James and Le Bron James’s dentist: same difference. This makes no sense—there’s a yawning chasm between the professional and the plutocratic classes, and the tax system should reflect that. A better tax system would have more brackets, so that the super-rich pay higher rates.

• I'm not sure that's true. They pay the same rate, but certainly not the same amount.

  • Of course, there's the Loop Hole problem, but more brackets/complexity tends to result in more loopholes. Which is a key argument in favor of the Flat Tax.

• Perhaps we should focus on the sources of Income Inequality. See 2010-07-23-CarsonMakeRealFreeEnterprise.