[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Re: Comments on last evening's Champaign mayoral debate

[C. G. Estabrook]

It shouldn’t be - that’s the major policy recommendation of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (2014).

But the Constitution (Article 1, Section 9) forbids federal wealth taxes: "No ... direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census..." 

The purpose of the Constitution (as James Madison says) was to "protect the minority of the opulent from the majority" - so everyone had to be taxed equally. 

It took a Constitutional amendment (16th - 1913) to permit income taxes, and another would be required for the federal government to tax wealth. 

But most local governments in the US impose a property tax as a principal source of revenue, and (as you say) that is a wealth tax.


> On Mar 19, 2015, at 8:26 PM, Astrid Berkson astridjb at comcast.net [sf-core] <sf-core-noreply at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> the middle class already pays a tax on its wealth-the property tax which is a tax on the only wealth most people accumulate. so why is the wealth of the rich sacrosanct?
>