“F*ck You, Pay Me” — ...said the U.S government to the 700 wealthiest Americans. If you hadn’t noticed, wealth inequality in the U.S. and globally has grown immensely since the pandemic began. Now, the Senate Finance Committee is proposing a quasi-wealth tax aimed at reducing this disparity...at least a little bit.
In addition to reducing the wealth gap, big dawg Joey B needs some cash to get going with his infrastructure and social spending plans. This proposed tax plan sure would help with that. Roughly 700 Americans would be affected by the new tax plan, as the levy applies to those who have assets worth >$1bn and have made >$100mm three years in a row. Based on the intricacies of the plan, the new tax would generate an expected $700bn in tax revenue, roughly $1bn from each member of the exclusive list.
The bulk of the tax bill would be aimed at unrealized gains within the portfolios of the ultrawealthy - a somewhat unprecedented method of engaging in a kind of wealth tax. The intricacies of the plan are, naturally, intricate, so we don’t have time to go over all of them here. The important thing is, if there ever was a bad time to be a person with a superyacht, the time is now.
Confidence is Key — You wouldn’t know it by their recent spending trends, but judging by confidence measures, consumers have been a bit timid lately. That trend finally changed in October.
Consumer spending tends to be roughly 60% of the U.S. GDP, so timid consumers spell bad news. Over the last three months, as Delta variant fears ramped up, confidence in the state of the economy has declined. Luckily, there is so much money going around (thanks JPow) that spending has kept up. Now, this past month’s measure of consumer confidence creeped up for the first time since June, indicating that Main Street is laughing in the face of the inflation fears plaguing Wall Street and could be an indication of even further increased spending. Confidence levels rose from 144.3 in September to 147.4 in October, defying economists expectations, but hey, what else is new.
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