A reform of the tax code to include every foundation, trust, endowment and NGO would sure spread the responsibility. Concurrent with an equalization of wage income and capital gains and the elimination of carried interest's favored treatment and you have a tax plan that would get everyone's attention.
And interest.
From New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer column:
The world’s richest university just got a little richer. On Monday, Harvard announced that it has received its largest-ever gift of $350 million and it will rename its school of public health after its benefactor’s father.
Public health is a wonderful and worthy cause, of course, and Harvard has a stellar program dedicated to it. But this gift — like so many other megagifts to megaendowments — has a hint of the ludicrous about it.
There's an old line about how the United States government is an insurance conglomerate protected by an army. Harvard is a real-estate and hedge-fund concern that happens to have a college attached. It has a $32 billion endowment. It charges its rich students — and they are mostly from rich families, with many destined to be rich themselves — hundreds of millions of dollars in tuition and fees. It recently embarked on a $6.5 billion capital campaign. It is devoted to its own richness. And, as such, it is swimming in cash.HT: MoneyBeat
“But, wait!” you might say. “That $350 million is going to support an educational institution with tremendous public spillover! Harvard does basic scientific research! It teaches doctors! It studies cells and stars and history and it educates underprivileged youths!”
True, true, all of it. Still, from a purely utilitarian perspective, there are causes that need that $350 million more. Groups like GiveWell are devoted to figuring out where a dollar does the most good. It recommends initiatives like deworming in very low-income countries. Harvard, at the same time, is spending a billion dollars upgrading its coeds’ convenient, riverfront housing. If it wanted to maximize its $32 billion worth of utility, it could, say, admit more students, especially poor ones, reduce its focus on property development, and double down on its focus on research, which currently makes up $800 million of its $4.2 billion in annual operating expenses....MORE
See also 2012's:
"TAXES, CAPITAL AND JOBS"
Over the last few years I've come to believe that all income, earned and unearned, should be taxed at the same rate, that preferential taxation of capital no longer leads to the intended policy effects of job creation and increasing capital investment in plant. property and equipment but rather is a bought-and-paid-for scam perpetrated by the financier class.
On a related point, it's time to get rid of the carried interest loophole which taxes income at cap gains rates for private equity and hedge funds.
That carried interest should not be treated as a capital gain can be proven quite easily.
Show me one tax return where a carried interest capital loss was allowed.
[you won't be invited to any of the meetings ever again -ed]
At the lower end of the income scale there should be some minimum tax....MORE
