Massachusetts passed a wealth tax recently.

Not to be pedantic, but it's an income tax.

Yeah and if you look at tax rates since then you can see lowering them generally makes things worse and the few times they were raised even a little was followed by better times. Thing is we are so far in a tax deficit that it will take having high rates for awhile to get back to a decent level. EDITED per comment as the first one was supposed to be lowering.

Exactly, this is just a game of "our billionaires are better than your billionaires" and considering their billionaires are paying them off, that's not surprising.

I slightly disagree on one point: They should be lobbying the people directly, not the politicians.

It looks like they really want this; however, even they understand that people will circumvent the laws and move money to more "favorable" countries, if the world doesn't take a coordinated approach.

The politicians have been setting up the game to appease the rich for generations. It won't be undone that easily.

Abigail Disney absolutely does mean it. She gives away a ton of money and is highly critical of Disney. Sure, she could give it all away or she could use her money to influence politicians to actually help while also donating a ton.

Why do you think they are saying it then? Why not say nothing like the rest of them?

There's no way of knowing how many actually mean it. I'll sure some of them do and others don't.

Even if it were to happen, taxation is a game. And like ANY game, if you throw enough effort at it, it can be beaten. The 1% can afford to throw that effort at any tax rules you can devise. They are quite confident they can beat the game no matter what you do.

Back in the day, corporate taxes were like 25% of federal revenues. After Trump's tax cuts, it's down to 10%. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1edSi

High corporate tax rates encourages companies not to have profits - pay their revenues out as wages, research new technologies, build infrastructure. Do useful shit with their gains rather than just sit on big bags of cash.

90% wasn't going to the Taxman, only 90% of the top tax bracket. The effective rate was likely significantly lower.

Buffet avoided and skirted taxes (legally). Him saying he “should be taxed more” is just moral fronting. He could easily pay more taxes if he wants. He just has to stop using all the extremely expensive tax lawyers that move his money around dozens of companies in tax havens….

They aren't saying it because they really want to pay more taxes

They're saying a system should be put in place where the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes

It's a subtle but important distinction

You are asking them for their fish. This request seems to be an attempt to teach your politicians how to fish.

I'd much rather see them use it to lobby in favour of taxes on the wealthy, than seeing a handful of them give part of their money away.

I don't think there's a mechanism in place for transfer of money to the government like that beyond, say, buying bonds or something, which the government is required to repay. They aren't really set up to take large donations of that nature, taxes are already intended to handle that. And an individual isn't going to be able to legally build a highway, or a school district of their own accord without governmental assistance.

And I think it's good that this is the case. It prevents America from devolving into a hundred nations led by individual warlords, we would very easily slip into something resembling Japan's Sengoku period.

I would presume these folks are already pretty charitable, it must be how they were known as potential signatories to join.

This is a common statement type of thing. Especially for conservatives when responding to someone wealthy saying taxes should be raised. You see they are in relative competition with each other. If they give up their money they will lower their relative status but if money is removed equally across their level then the playing field is still level.