Re-distributing income to pursue unattainable equal outcomes
- Peter Lorenzi
- Mar 28, 2022
- 2 min read
March 2022. In this short YouTube clip, Jordan Peterson claims that equality of outcomes is "an unbelievably pathological wish."
Equity -- defined by woke culture as "equality of outcomes" -- is a pathological wish if only because the achievement and maintenance of an equal outcomes equilibrium is mathematically and practically impossible.
Much like demanding that the "rich" pay their "fair share," the specifics are elusive if not illusive. Such illusive logic leads to proposals such as today's new "wealth tax" idea from our hapless president, designed to tax assets.
Here is the gist of the bill, as reported by the Wall Street Journal (March 26, 2022):
The proposal would affect fewer than 20,000 households, and it would apply only to those who don’t pay at least 20% in tax on a combination of income as typically defined and their unrealized gains on unsold assets such as stocks and closely held businesses. The plan would generate roughly $360 billion in revenue over 10 years, according to a White House fact sheet released in advance of Monday’s full budget proposal. That is about twice as much money as raising the top individual income-tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, and it would affect a much smaller group of people.
One commentator cited my longstanding question about taxing appreciating assets: If they depreciate, does the person get a tax credit? Related to this is the perhaps intended consequence of destroying wealth -- the wealthy person selling stock -- is first the need to liquidate some of it to pay the tax, and then to see the wealth of every stockholder decline, the latter compounding the wealth destruction problem and effectively taxing every stockholder, regardless of income, while not generating any tax revenue from those so punished. Require a billionaire to sell $10 million of her stock to pay a tax will cause the price of the stock to decline.
Another axiom reaffirmed in my teaching us that taxation is punishment, by any scientific or behavioral definition of the term. As economists have long noted, tax something and you get less of it, subsidize something and you get more of it. If you place a 10% tax on $10 shirts now you can only get nine shirts for your $100, not ten, i.e., you get less.
Comments