美国最富有的1%人群获得了经济总收入的五分之一，并缴纳了接近三分之一的联邦税，但新的加税方案仍在推进。提案包括对超过100万美元的收入征收2%的城市附加税，以及加州对亿万富豪财富征收一次性5%的税。

核心数字显示，仅靠富人难以填补财政缺口：加州这项一次性财富税预计仅能筹集约相当于州年产出的2%，而马姆达尼方案每年约为产出的0.25%。即使堵上最顶层资本利得“死亡重置成本基础”的漏洞，新增收入也可能不到每年GDP的0.1%。

经济代价的统计迹象同样明确：纽约最高综合税率已达52%，而所得税率每提高1个百分点，会使随后三年内提交专利的概率下降0.6个百分点。由于创新者按一项估计仅能获得其所创造价值的2%，这种创业活动损失对社会的伤害可能大于对富人的直接影响，同时英、法、日税后不平等已下降且美国自1990年以来也通过再分配抵消了相当部分税前不平等。

America’s top 1% receive one-fifth of total income and pay nearly one-third of federal taxes, yet new surtax plans are still advancing. Proposals include a 2% city levy on income above $1 million and California’s one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.

The key arithmetic suggests the rich alone cannot close fiscal gaps: California’s one-time wealth tax is estimated to raise only about 2% of state annual output, while the Mamdani plan is around 0.25% of output per year. Even closing the top-end capital-gains “step-up at death” loophole would likely add less than 0.1% of GDP annually.

The statistical signal on economic costs is similarly clear: New York’s combined top rate is already 52%, and each 1-percentage-point increase in income-tax rates reduces the probability of filing a patent over the next three years by 0.6 percentage points. Because innovators are estimated to capture only 2% of the value they create, the loss in entrepreneurial effort may harm society more than wealthy taxpayers directly, while post-tax inequality has already fallen in Britain, France, and Japan and the United States has offset much pre-tax inequality since 1990.

Source: Don’t go after the rich to fix broken budgets

Subtitle: It will not work, and is wrong in principle

Dateline: 2月 19, 2026 04:53 上午