feelingbluepolitics:

Gabriel Zucman Explains How the Rich Get Richer

A French economist finds that America’s tax structure lies at the heart of inequality.

The American Prospect

“Let’s focus on the ideology part of this for a moment because that deals with a society’s and a people’s belief systems. It seems like you are arguing that the media, think tanks, conservative politicians have convinced people who don’t have wealth that the people who do have it deserve it, should keep it and if you tax them bad things will happen.”

“Yes, that is exactly what has happened. And what we are trying to do in the book is ask, what’s the merit of this ideology? Do we see that when we tax capital less do we have more growth and more income for the rest of the population? And what we find is that there is no evidence. When you tax capital less and less, what you get is that the wealthy have lower tax rates, and there is no evidence that it benefits the rest of the population in any measurable way. The main effect is that it boosts inequality because the wealthy can just save and reinvest a higher portion of their income and you have a snowballing effect where wealth is taxed at a low rate and is saved again adding up to more wealth and so on.

…”[T]he proper way to tax the super-wealthy is through a wealth tax. The wealth tax is not going to replace the income tax, but it has a role to play in the overall tax system along with more progressive income taxation, along with better corporate taxation and estate taxation.

…“[There are] two traditions in U.S. history—a sharply progressive fiscal tradition and also an anti-tax, anti-government and anti-democracy in the Southern states and in many ways associated with slavery. We contrast in the book states like Massachusetts, which taxed wealth as far back as the 17th century, and states like Virginia, where taxes where kept low because slaver owners were afraid that taxes would be used to abolish slavery.

…"Some countries choose not to collect taxes with zero tax rates, but the U.S. should act as the tax collector of last resort. If these profits are booked in Bermuda and taxed at zero percent, the U.S. could say, ‘Okay, we are going to tax those profits at, let’s say a U.S. rate of 30 percent.’ And if these taxes are booked in and taxed in Ireland at the rate of five percent, then the U.S. is going to tax these profits at 25 percent, so if these companies choose to move their profits to places where they are taxed at low rates we can always say, 'Okay, don’t pay taxes abroad, but you have to pay the difference in the U.S.’ Nothing prevents the U.S. from doing that. Sometimes people have the view that there is nothing you can do to make the corporations pay in a globalized world because they will always move to low tax places but that’s wrong.

..."How much tax revenue are we losing with all of the tax havens, shell companies and other schemes that the wealthy and corporations have set up?”

“It’s hundreds of billions of dollars.”

...“It seems that a good deal of the anti-tax sentiment is based on the fear or assertion that higher taxes means more money is directed towards 'foreigners, immigrants and 'darker people'—in other words, the 'unworthy’ poor or 'lazy.'  It splits working class people apart." 

"It’s how the Republicon Party has been able to be successful electorally with a low tax on the rich with anti-civil rights and now with their anti-immigration platform.”