Taxing Wealth Is the Answer for Boosting Long-Term Growth: Dan Altman


The Daily Ticker has the story and interview Taxing Wealth Is the Answer for Boosting Long-Term Growth: Dan Altman.


Economist Daniel Altman is proposing something completely different on the tax front — a system that taxes wealth rather than revenue. It’s not intended to raise more revenues but rather to reduce inequality which, he says, threatens growth.

“Wealth inequality is making the pie smaller for all of us,” Altman tells The Daily Ticker. It limits opportunities, which reduces productivity, and ultimately lowers “living standards for all of us in the long term.”

Altman, an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of four books, says wealth inequality in the U.S. has been rising steadily for the past 20 years.

“It’s at a crazy high level that you only see in very poor countries, and it’s starting to threaten growth,” he says.

I have two previous blog posts in July 2011 about the idea of a wealth tax We Really Need a Wealth Tax and Wealth and Tax Distribution.

The first link just above is a better explanation for why we need a wealth tax than the one provided by Dan Altman in the interview in this post.

The last link above really shows the difference between the distribution of taxes versus the distribution of wealth.

I should also mention my post Time For A Wealth Tax? of August 2010.

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