Except the uber wealthy who can afford to lose money to pay taxes for the infrastructure that has enabled their explosive asset growth.
I agree that you and me, and even my paper-millionaire neighbors and friends cannot afford to be taxed on their assets, but a billionaire can, even a paper billionaire can drum up the cash or debt when needed to pay taxes. They do it every day for their large purchases.
The problem really isn't people not paying tax. Americans have similar expenditures to Europeans on a per capita basis ($20,674 US vs $17,202 UK or $20,960 in France the highest taxed nation in terms of % of GDP) they just get considerably less for their money.
> Except the uber wealthy who can afford to lose money to pay taxes for the infrastructure that has enabled their explosive asset growth.
Federal income tax almost never gets used for infrastructure. Infrastructure is mostly built by state and local governments, which receive most of their income from sales tax and property tax, and other taxes, which are already almost entirely paid by businesses. So, they are already paying for the infrastructure that enabled their growth.
A great many state projects are 50-90% funded by federal grants. Interstate highway projects and airport projects in particular are often 90% federal (and are self-evidently infrastructure).
Various levels of local governments provide many services and benefits for my physical property located in their jurisdictions, so I do not oppose a reasonable property tax. But the federal government provides no services or benefits to the securities in my vault, so a general federal wealth tax on them is altogether different, and I oppose it.
The government very clearly provides for support for the equities in many ways (which I’m sure you’re aware of) How do the following not count as benefits to the equities in your vault?:
1. Maintaining a navy that reduces piracy enough to have global JIT delivery networks that reduce costs for corps
2. Protects corp interests abroad allowing a larger market and higher profits
3. Enforces regulations that attract a larger than otherwise likely share of people to put their money in the stock market, increasing the value of your equities.
The federal government has spent several trillion dollars fighting several disastrously stupid wars over the last several decades. Please don't try to pretend all that death and destruction wasn't good for the securities in your vault.
Or if that’s too abstract for you, think about how the securities in your vault would fair in the absence of government maintaining basic law and order; honouring and enforcing otherwise fictional property such as copyright, trademarks and patents; some degree of redress in a court system; and some degree of stability of regulation of markets.
So much of the wealth on this planet relies on Governments for it to exist and to persist.
I disagree that you can compartmentalise Government in that way. To the extent that there's aspects of Government which don't directly prop up the value of assets, many of them still play an important role in maintaining the social license required for Government to govern—and thus provide whatever it is you imagine is in your "1%" bucket.
The fact that a lot of unrelated money transits through Government to pay for social services is completely irrelevant to the point.
Military spending is 54% of the federal discretionary budget, though (the discretionary budget is about 1/3rd of the total budget). That all contributes to its security, if not all directly.
According to the 2020 figures, national defense was 11% of federal spending. Discretionary vs. mandatory seems irrelevant here. We might as well say military spending is 100% of military spending. It's just dividing it by something to make it sound higher, usually for propaganda purposes.
Nevertheless I totally agree some part of that 11% will benefit business and commerce. But it is still a terrible deal. In any other context no one would ever buy something with a 90% "commission".
I overlooked that I was looking at the chart from 2015 sorry about that. I was reporting the number on the chart I was seeing, which is why I specified discretionary and also said that discretionary was about a third of total spending, so it was clear. I just didn't have the exact number.
So I did look up actual numbers and the numbers I saw were different to yours. In 2020 the percentage was 15% (721.5 billion for military of 4.79 trillion budget).
But the exact percentage isn't that important. I still don't get the 'not a great deal' part. It's not some good you could either buy from retailer X or brand Y. If no money is spent on military than the country is ripe for invasion, so it's either secure or it isn't. And it's not like we want the percent to be higher. Like we don't want to spend MORE than the Department of Defense thinks we need to secure the country. That's an even worse deal.
Even if you choose to move your assets/business to a country that spends a lot less on military, you're likely benefitting indirectly from how much the US spends on military (assuming it's an ally and the world is stable, that might not stay true in the next couple of decades).
Unless you're arguing to pay for a private security firm to secure your assets, then maybe you can pray we get to a Mad Max style future where it makes sense to do that.
Or you're suggesting it can be bypassed by buying cryptocurrency, which is secured by other means than government might. If that's the case then I'm on board with that thinking.
If your main argument is 'I want all of the money I spend in taxes to solely be spent on securing my assets, so reduce my taxes!' then that's ignoring the other government services those taxes provide.
I agree that you and me, and even my paper-millionaire neighbors and friends cannot afford to be taxed on their assets, but a billionaire can, even a paper billionaire can drum up the cash or debt when needed to pay taxes. They do it every day for their large purchases.