> where did they think the money would come from?
There’s a growing misconception that everything can be paid for by simply taxing the wealthy a tiny bit more. Several prominent activist politicians have built their platforms on the idea that billionaires are an infinite source of consequence-free tax revenue.
These ideas are especially popular among the college students and new college grads I mentor. It usually falls apart when they pull out their calculators and realize that Jeff Bezos entire net worth wouldn’t come close to paying off everyone’s student loan debt or solving climate change.
Meanwhile, completely false Tweets about how Jeff Bezos is about to become a trillionaire or how he could simply solve the entire student loan crisis himself gain 100,000s of likes, some of them from prominent politicians or their campaign managers. People don’t care about the facts right now.
Frankly, many people don’t really care if this solves anything or if second-order consequences result in a net decrease in tax revenue due to people simply moving (as is the case with some wealth taxes in other countries). For many, this is more about punishing their bad guys than generating tax revenue to accomplish something.
There’s a growing misconception that everything can be paid for by simply taxing the wealthy a tiny bit more. Several prominent activist politicians have built their platforms on the idea that billionaires are an infinite source of consequence-free tax revenue.
These ideas are especially popular among the college students and new college grads I mentor. It usually falls apart when they pull out their calculators and realize that Jeff Bezos entire net worth wouldn’t come close to paying off everyone’s student loan debt or solving climate change.
Meanwhile, completely false Tweets about how Jeff Bezos is about to become a trillionaire or how he could simply solve the entire student loan crisis himself gain 100,000s of likes, some of them from prominent politicians or their campaign managers. People don’t care about the facts right now.
Frankly, many people don’t really care if this solves anything or if second-order consequences result in a net decrease in tax revenue due to people simply moving (as is the case with some wealth taxes in other countries). For many, this is more about punishing their bad guys than generating tax revenue to accomplish something.