How to fix our Taxation system

Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, probably would be deemed unconstitutional. It is also unnecessary. What is needed is a mix of reforms and restoring what worked before.

We had progressive taxation. It has never been perfect. But at one time people at least understood the basic principles.

Basic Principles

To get to just taxation a number of basic principles need to be properly defined, applied and traded off against one another:

• Tax unearned income more than earned income.
• Recognize that "wealth in the course of production" is capital.
• Define as capital, only wealth used to buy actual capital goods, stock, tools, machinery and buildings, and being used as intended.
• Recognize that wealth from renting wealth is not capital except to the people employing that wealth.
• Recognize that natural resources, and land itself, are a common property that needs to be used wisely and for the benefit of the whole people as well as for those doing the extraction.
• Recognize that the right to ownership is an inalienable right, but not an absolute one.
• Recognize that work is what conveys a stake in ownership, that labor – of all kinds – is prior to capital, and that it is sacred and deserves to be adequately rewarded.
• What a person earns, is theirs and deserves to be paid in treasury direct notes or coin.

Therefore we need to:

Bring back progressive taxation on net income calculations. Tax unearned income from owning property (rents). Don't tax business property that is in the course of production. Don't tax wage gross wage income

• Stop treating Wall Street Stocks, Bonds, real estate property, etc... as if they were capital, and focus tax exemptions and deductions on capital used as capital,
• Income from economic rent is not earned. Only the portion of economic rent that has been earned by the effort of the people owning the property (net income) being rented should be exempted.
• and on protecting wages from labor. A person owns what they earned and should be able to live off of it.
• Every person earning income, should be able to keep enough of what they earned (net) to live a complete life.
• Therefore we should set a universal exemption at the poverty level, and deduct basic food, transport, shelter and basic comfort (clothing, heating/cooling) from gross wages before applying net taxation.
• These rates need to be indexed for inflation. When wages and costs inflate, it isn't fair to tax them like they are rich when they aren't.
• Tax rates are indexed, which means that the net for each rate level should be taxed, not the whole amount.
• At the same time a net income greater than a million should be taxed at a millionaire rate (indexed for inflation), a 10 million net rate, a 100 million net rate and a billionaire top net income rate. That top rate should be something like 90%.

• The first tax bracket should start at the wage which is the average of all wages in the country (mean) after exemptions and deductions.
• Further tax brackets should attack unearned wealth with rates high enough to level out net incomes.
• I would suggest using standard deviation calculations from the mean net income.
• So called capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income on the net income taken out of capital. This encourages people to keep money wealth and resources in the market.
• Tax earnings from Gift or inheritance at point of transfer or death, as ordinary gross income.

Now payroll taxes may be needed to pay for social security and healthcare, because people are going to have to save for or pay for healthcare and their retirement anyway. But if we focused taxes on unearned income.