>Bottom line is that the rich will not finance
>socialism, social-democracy, or even national
>health insurance. Not even close.
I think you should be a little more careful. We may not be able to finance social democracy from corporate profits, but what if we combine corporate taxes with income and wealth taxes instead?
Say we raid the corporate coffers for another $25 billion or so - a significant increase, but not outrageous.
According to Doug:
>Between 1977 and 1985, the richest 1% (1998 average pretax income:
$644,043) >enjoyed a $97,250 tax cut (i.e., almost three times the average
household's >pretax income!) - partly offset by a $60,540 increase between
1985 and 1998, >for a net cut of $36,710, or 14% of tax liabilities.
An extra $35,000 times 1% of 2.5 million (about 1% of the population) yields another $85 billion or so.
Using numbers on wealth and income from the LBO site, another $5k increase in the tax burden (about a 4% increase in the tax burden) on the other 9% of the top 10% yields $5,000 times 22 million folks, for another $110 billion.
Now, if you could implement a 0.5% wealth tax on the richest 1%, you get 0.005 times 6 million (roughly the avg. net worth of the top 1%) times 2.5 million for another $85 billion.
That's about $300 billion from the rich. Over half the way to a social democracy. Sure, the rest of us would have to pony up some cash too, but there is quite a bit of money at the top. Now, getting the rich to pay up is a separate issue...
Speaking of which, an old friend of mine had a clever (albeit somewhat perverse) idea. If you want to get serious about leveling the wealth distribution, all you have to do is pass a law which states that the wealthiest individual in the nation will be publicly executed every year. Perhaps close calls would be decided by executing all suspect parties. Just add the electric chair, and viola! Instant socialism.
Brett