I would suspect US culture has shifted a lot since those times.  Same with human behavior.  

Richest country with 4% of the population...  strikes me as though we are doing something right.

I just worry when people, could be my interpretation, want to make drastic changes, when clearly a lot is working.

And if it helps, I think capital gains should go away.  Income should be taxed as income, source shouldn't matter.  Investment should be taxed, for everyone as ordinary income.  

No, it is not your money, it is the total common wealth that you get to hold a slice of, as long as society agrees that it is reasonable.

That the entire World uses Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and that they are more valuable than individual countries, is good for those companies, it is not good for the West. The US debt is astronomical and the workers cannot pay their bills. China has coupled their innovation and growth with a rise in the living standard for the population, that is smart and a lot more sustainable.

Yeah, it is my money.  it is my account with my name.  I am the one who went to work, performed my duties that warranted my paycheck.  My duties are assigned based on my education, my knowledge and my experience. This push for people's things to be community owned is nonsense.    

The US's debt to GDP ratio isn't much different than places like Canada, France, Italy, etc.  So, no.  

Again, people in this thread want to paint a picture that simply isn't accurate. 

Because it is the community who decided that your money has any value, and the community build up the system that allowed you to have them, hence the community can take that away again if they so desire. You are merely borrowing them. I am not saying they should take it away from you, but they would have every right to if they decide to. Private property is not a natural law, but an idea.

I didn't say the US is the only place that is screwed, I said the whole West is screwed. Increasing debt (for many western countries), stagnating if not declining living standard for the poor and middle class, exploding inequality, plummeting birth-rate, and now in the US, immigration will also nose-dive, meaning the population will start to decline. How is your favorite 8 tech companies planning to keep it all together, and why should they care?

It's like you missed the whole point that you can't generalize.

I'm not making this claim that everyone who makes $200k has to own 2 houses or even that a lot of the people in the midwest do. The whole point is that people with more money are able to have grander/easier lifestyles - that should be obvious and uncontroversial. The point wasn't the exact numbers or anything like that. Billionaires are able to own yachts and private jets and huge car collections, all while frequently not even having to work. I don't believe it is unfair for them to pay an "oversized" share back to the society that has allowed them to get wealthy in the first place. The society that funded their educated workers, often paid them directly through subsidies, often pays for things that protect them like roads and military protecting the ships that import their goods, etc, prints the money in the first place.  I do not believe it is unfair at all for them to pay society back. 

You're selectively okay with your generalizations that fit your view, but the ones that don't are obviously wrong.  

The whole point of setting up these hypotheticals is to make them more relatable. Your 1st grade teacher wasn't trying to teach you that Sally is going to have 10 watermelons. The whole point is to get you to visualize a scenario, and make it easier to understand the logic.  

Saying "Ms teacher, it's not realistic for Sally to have 10 watermelons, that would cost like $50 and a lot of it would go to waste."

You're missing the whole point, and getting stuck on specifics because you don't like it. 

That's not what the argument is. Liberals are not arguing that people who struggle have absolutely no choices in life. 

There are lots of different aspects to the argument, but that isn't one of them.  

At the end of the day your view is based on generalizations that aren't true. 

I don't want everything to be equal, and even moreso I don't want the mediocrity that conservatives keep pushing with their anti science, anti-education bent. 

What I want is for people to be lifted up, not for anyone to be pushed down. 

Your view is extremely contingent on the idea that these things are a zero sum game - that everything that gets gained by someone else must have been lost by someone else, and that's generally not the case.  

A lot of these things benefit everyone in some way or another. It benefits everyone when we have an educated populace. 

That's not even remotely what socialism is.  

So a high GDP is good?

Yet the top 6 states with the highest GDP per capita are all blue states. Gee. I wonder why that doesn't matter to you. 

Nope.  I literally picked my major based on value.  It was a decision I made.  And I generate way more money for companies than I get paid.  It has tangible and literal value.  It is based on reality.  

What changed in terms of culture/human behavior that means we needed to have lower taxes in order to remain the richest country?

During the 40s-70s, the US was about 5-6% of the global population and the richest country so not sure how that supports that we are currently doing something right that we previously weren’t.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality

Pretty much lays out that from the mid 40s-mid 70s (post-war economic boom/golden age of capitalism), income grew at the same rate across the income spectrum. Inflation adjusted income went up about 100% for the median household along with the top 5% of households.

Since that point (Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts), inflation adjusted income has gone up just under 50% for the median household but a bit over 100% for the top 5% of households.

It also shows that since 1979 (Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts), income after taxes and transfers went up 73% for the middle 60% (middle class) while it went up 326% for the top 1% (the rich).

It’s not about people wanting to make drastic changes, it’s about people seeing that we had a system that was making life better for the average citizen and wanting to go back to that. We were the richest, strongest, most innovative country back then and we still are so I don’t see how slashing taxes over the last ~40 years has done anything but hurt the working/middle class while stuffing the pockets of the rich and causing the federal debt to skyrocket.

I consider myself a moderate, and the left-right designation doesn't even make sense in the US anymore.  The Republican party is currently the most toward the left that it has been in my lifetime, and the Democratic party is the most toward the right that it has been in my liftetime.  I just think of them as the Red side and the Blue side.

I'd like to add that I'm currently very disgusted and disappointed with the Blue side, but I plan to be even more disappointed with the Red side in the near future from the inevitable overcorrection that will occur due to people being fed up with the current Blue side.

Obviously, the implementation of a wealth tax must include measures to prevent tax evasion. Pretty much like every other tax.

Other than that, it's awfully convenient for the rich that raising the taxes on them is a bad thing because supposedly it will hurt everyone else much more.

But what do the facts say? We have an actual example in Norway:

So despite the existence of some tax refugees, the result is positive overall. Norway's wealth tax was increased from 0.85% to 1.1%. So a little change like that increased tax revenue by ~50%. The wealth tax revenue in 2023 converts to €2.4 billion which is quite a hefty sum for a country like Norway where only ~5.5 million people live in total. People who possess less than €150,000 do not pay this tax while rich people remain rich, and the country of Norway has one additional billion Euro to spend every year.

US has natural momentum from the 20th century that wasn't going to end overnight, but I think they are definitely losing their leadership position, other countries do not look to the US to lead anymore. At some point in this century I think we will shift towards China becoming more of a global leader for better or worse. 

They have a lot of great brands too, the US is so afraid of them they have to ban a lot of them like Huawei and BYD would do great business in the US and are massive brands in many countries and China's domestic market frankly is just going to grow to be bigger than the US in time. They just have way more population. 

Letting India cozy up to China because Trump's ego got hurt is going to be a massive, massive geopolitical blunder. They better fix that shit.