The complete insanity of Warren's Wealth Tax plan:
1) As a tax upon wealth rather than income under the 16th Amendment the plan would face immediate constitutional challenge as not be apportioned among the states as required by the Constitution.
1) As a tax upon wealth rather than income under the 16th Amendment the plan would face immediate constitutional challenge as not be apportioned among the states as required by the Constitution.
2) If, by some miracle, it survived that constitutional challenge, the tax being a tax upon wealth and not income would fall under the "takings clause" of the Constitution requiring them to be compensated for the property taken by the government.
2a) The market value of that money taken would naturally be exactly the amount of tax collected: e.g. if they taxed Bill Gates $100 billion, then they would be required by the Constitution to pay him $100 billion for the property taken, netting the government $0.
3) As a tax upon wealth of those billionaires, whose wealth is in the form of stock in those companies they started, there would immediately be an economic problem created by such confiscation even without the previous two points.
3a) If it were generated similar to an income tax, i.e. in dollar amounts assessed on the market value of the property. To pay this amount, they would have to sell off 90% of their stock.
3ai) Flooding the stock market with massive shares of stock would cause the stock price to plummet to a mere fraction of the market price at the time the wealth levy was assessed.
3ai cont.) It would be nigh on impossible to generate a sufficient amount of cash from the sale of said stock at those lower prices to ever pay the assessed taxes. Instead of having billions left over, they would have billions in unpaid taxes after they had sold everything.
3aii) It would become very difficult to get any American citizen to purchase these stocks in fear that they would face the same confiscatory tax assessment should the price subsequently increase. Thus all of these companies would become foreign owned at pennies on the dollar.
3b) The alternative would be for the government to permit the payment of such tax assessments by the direct transfer of the stock to the government, making the government the owner of those companies. That is a forced nationalization of the industries., i.e Gov't Google.
4) Confiscation/Nationalization of every major company in America would be American Fascism with the gov't controlling all of the means of production through the existing corporate structures, just like the National Socialists did in 1930's Germany.
5) This sledgehammer against the wealthy would stand as a stark warning against any other person who wanted to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial. Investments and economic growth would come to a screeching halt and the economy tank.
6) All of that would be before any of the disastrous effects of the nationalization of the health care industry itself, with government rationing and a complete stop on any and all research and development for new techniques and treatments.
End rant.
End rant.
