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I mean you could even take the bottom number and leave them with the top number and they could still live in unimaginable luxury forever. Or just take the lot because fuck em lol.
I couldn’t imagine spending $1 billion in my entire life, let alone 3-4.
The difference between someone with $1000 and a million dollars is the same between a millionaire and billionaire.
A million seconds is about 12 days. A billion seconds is about 32 years.
The proportional difference is the same, i.e. the same number of orders of magnitude separate them, but in absolute terms, someone with $10B is closer in wealth to your or I than to Bezos (which, to be clear, does not mean we shouldn’t take it, merely that the height Bezos is at is unfathomable)
and these people are even 100× richer than other billionaires
Most of their billions is ownership in companies they grew into what they are today. It’s not like they have billions to spend, it’s that their ownership is worth billions according to the market.
They could go to any bank and leverage that asset for a loan for more than everyone who posts on this platform will make in their lifetimes no problem. That is a nonsense talking point
What’s your point? So because they can leverage their ownership of their own company we need to take away that ownership?
Yes, if you can control more wealth than a mid size city earns in ten lifetimes, you should not be allowed to do that
I don’t think the stock market should be determining if we take away companies from their owners, no matter how much it’s worth. Why does having more wealth than a certain size city matter? Especially if your company has more employees and customers than even a large city?
Especially if your company has more employees and customers than even a large city?
Why do those employees get the bare minimum? Why are the working majority excluded from ownership and decision-making in the companies they run?
Why would you expect a different opinion from a bunch of communists?
i’d expect a debate between taking away ownership from them, and taking away ownership from their estate.
True, but that ownership gives them access to very low interest loans that they then use as spending money and don’t have to pay taxes on it
So what? We should take away that ownership because they can leverage it? Also the same people suggesting we tax wealth like this want to also close those “loopholes” of low interest loans on shares.
Yes.
Yes to taking away wealth or the way to leverage it?
Taking away (extreme) wealth. There’s no reason one person should have that much. There’s countless better ways to use that money/wealth than for one persons extravagant lifestyle. And even if they don’t have an extravagant lifestyle, what are they gonna do with it? Doubt they will build infrastructure out of good will with it.
No, they can keep them, but those loopholes need to be closed. Maybe don’t allow using ownership of a company as collateral for a loan? If you want to use your massive stored wealth as money you need to sell it. You want to get it back buy it. I’m not a finance or policy person, but there has to be a way to make these people pay the propert tax on their wealth.
So they can keep their ownership, but we are going to remove their way to loan money against it, and still expect them to pay billions in taxes without giving away any ownership? How do you expect them to pay billions in taxes when the only billions they have in value is company ownership? You are forcing them to sell company ownership to pay this ridiculous tax.
To be fair, if billionaires could no longer use their stocks as collateral to borrow insane amounts, maybe they’d have to give themselves taxable salaries.
While that may be technically true, is running defense for these people who would happily see you and everone you care about die if it would make them another buck really something you want to be doing?
also assets count as wealth if you tried to explain to king Solomon that he wasn’t actually rich because his money was tied up in land and cattle he would call you and idiot and explain that land and cattle are his wealth
I don’t mind defending what I see as theft, even if it’s from people I don’t like. Is it crazy to defend something you see as wrong even if you don’t like the person? I don’t think right and wrong changes based on if the act is being done to someone I like vs don’t like
If you were actually against theft you would be against Bezos Musk and Gates stealing billions in profits from the people who are working for them.
You have no idea what you are talking about… profits aren’t theft, paying people less than the money you make from their work also isn’t theft. Being worth billions because the stock market values your ownership in a big company as worth billions also isn’t theft.
paying people less than the money you make from their work also isn’t theft
Why would someone agree to sell their labor for less than it’s worth
The fact that you willingly debase yourself like this says everything that is needed to know about the system we live under.
You are better than this.
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Why is theft inhereintly wrong? Would you see Robin Hood as the villain of his story? It’s not a matter of whether you like them or not, their exorbitant wealth is a bad thing in of itself. Why should they sit on so much wealth when most have so little?
Do you mind if I steal your property? Would that be wrong? Or is it fine as long as I’m poorer than you?
The difference is between private property and personal property. Private property is the means of production that produce wealth by extracting a profit margin from the labor of the workers that operate that means. Seizing private property is just democratizing the ownership of it between all the workers that use it, because you can’t really steal a corporation or a factory, just change ownership. Seizing personal property is taking someone’s toothbrush or car or books.
Just to compare, what’s your moral read on all the people we deny housing to, who regularly die of exposure while empty housing units outnumber them?
I’m not against giving people a chance, and helping them get that chance, but that doesn’t include taking away houses from rightful owners and giving them away to homeless people. It’s no coincidence that the homeless tend to destroy wherever they set up, so they need to set up in government run shelters that can handle it.
So in the moral system you’re proposing, it would be an offense to use those buildings without their owner’s permission. The fact that people denied access to those buildings will die as a result, though, is just a part of nature
So, why would you expect a perspective which values property more than people to stir anyone’s moral feeling? If you don’t expect that, then why are you bothering to frame it in terms of right and wrong?
theft
the theft was them getting that rich in the first place you blinkered clown.
Maybe check a dictionary before you talk more nonsense.
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yes this is true but they have so much money available to spend that it makes amounts practically meaningless
If they are self-made millionaires/billionaires as they claim, take everything they have/own and tell them to start the quest again, no glitches, DLC, or saved progress.
the garfield wealth tax
You all realize they don’t have that money laying around to pay the IRS right? They own companies, those companies are worth that much. To pay that you would have to liquidate those companies. So no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc…
no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc…
Oh no! Anyway, so how can we make this happen, like, yesterday?
If only there were some way to change the ownership of assets without converting the asset into currency
Don’t be a bootlicker or bot or idiot.
When they sell their shares to buy twitter or pay the tax man, those companies still exist. It just means that other people get to buy those shares and that’s a good thing, because that way those companies get owned by the public.
Tesla and SpaceX still exist even after Elon overpaid by some $30B for his Twitter adventure.
Brings a tear to my eye, I tells ya
You don’t have to liquidate. Giving governments around the world more of a direct say in these international companies would be good.
Don’t threaten me with a good time
I would be happy to take taxes in the form of ownership of the company
here the tax genius of Henry the 8th comes into play “pay me my money or else”
when noblemen didn’t pay william the conqueror the taxes he felt were due on time he would boil them. The principle being that if the rich face consequences for breaking the law they obey.
Well they are public companies bar space x so. Just redistribute those shares.
I highly recommend you to read the paper billionare argument. The market can stand the liquidation of most of those companies without making them go bankrupt, we don’t want them to stop existing, just to make them smaller and not a threat to democracy.
For the whole scale of wealth I also recommend going through wealth shown to scale
Can billionaires liquidate their assets? Yes, it is theoretically possible
The real question is, who is going to buy the assets?
Let’s say we have a billionaire that owns a billion dollar company.
Could that billionaire sell all their shares, get a billion dollars in cash, and then give it away. Yes, it is possible.
But that billion dollars in cash has to come from somewhere. Either the citizens have to come with a billion dollars in cash or the government.
If the citizens spend a billion to buy the shares, then the government takes the billion in cash from the billionaire, then the government gives a billion back to the citizens. You just basically printed an extra billion dollars for the economy, which causes inflation. Because the citizens now have two billion in stocks and cash, compared to just one billion in cash.
Our fiat money system has flaws, one day it is going to crash.
But Besos’ 100+ billion in Amazon stock is money tied up outside of the economy until he sells.
Forcing him to sell and introduce that money into the economy has repercussions.
You don’t need to make him dump all of his money all at once. Make an investment plan so that sum of money doesn’t disturb the market, extend the dump for two-three years and you can put 100 million without destroying the system
I didn’t say you needed to make them dump it all at once, but no matter how you do it, you’re introducing more money into the economy.
Make an investment plan so that sum of money doesn’t disturb the market
Again, great the market isn’t disturbed and stocks are still worth a billion total. You’re still going to introduce another billion into the economy in “two-three” years by giving it to the poor.
The whole point of taking money from billionaires is to affect the economy. There’s no point in doing it if it’s not going to affect anything.
The money is already in the economy, it is just not moving hands. When talking about disturbing the economy I was alluding to inflation, lots of poor families will gladly welcome that money. Also if we allowed us to take a little bit more, the social services will be allowed to improve substantially
Say I invented the cure for cancer today and started the business Cancer Cure Inc. tomorrow.
I own 100% of the shares of the company. Say there are 100 shares.
Each share of Cancer Cure Inc. would be valued at X/100 amount of money because Cancer Cure Inc. would be valued at X.
If Cancer Cure Inc. company was valued at a billion dollars. Each share would be worth 10 million dollars.
I would be seen as a billionaire because I own the 100 shares. Yet I haven’t sold a single share. No money has exchanged hands for the shares.
A billion dollars doesn’t just magically enter the economy because Cancer Cure Inc. exists. It would take an existing billion dollars to buy my shares.
Now, if people wanted to give me a billion dollars in cash for my 100 shares, and I sold them. I’d have a billion dollars in cash, and the people would have a billion dollars in Cancer Cure Inc. stock.
Now, if the government takes my billion dollars in cash and hand that to the people, they now have a billion dollars in stock and a billion dollars in cash.
It doesn’t matter if I own 100 stocks of Cancer Cure Inc. or if 100 different wealthy people own 1 stock each. What changed is that there is now 1 billion more cash floating in the economy.
That’s what causes inflation
I’m not saying it’s right. Capitalism has winners and losers, rich and poor. It’s just how the capitalism system has to work.
No, they’d just need to liquidate their share in those companies. Those shares would then get bought up by other people or by pension funds.
Or picked apart by private equity vultures at the expense of pension funds.
Just redistribute ownership to the workers. There’s no need for liquidation here.
All they’d need to liquidate is part of their ownership in said companies. Companies themselves will be ok, don’t you worry your bleeding heart.
That’s not true at all. Loss of controlling ownership makes a company vulnerable to a hostile takeover. The new owners will pick it apart like the vultures they are.
RIP grannies pension plan
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That’s the thing people don’t get. The ultra wealthy are wealthy on paper.
On an average years. All of us make more than Elon in wages.
You’re making it sound like the wealthy are rich in technicality only. Maybe the majority of their assets aren’t liquid but they’re still damn wealthy more than “on paper.”
And singling out wages as the only source of income to prove Elon isn’t “actually” wealthy is disingenuous at best.
He’s wealthy but he doesn’t have a high income.
We tax income in America. That’s why Elon pays little and same with bezos. They just don’t have much income.
It personally doesn’t bother me they have billions. They pay their fair share of their taxes just like I pay mine.
You’re not poor because they’re rich. Once you stop focusing on others and focus on yourself; life becomes much easier.
It’s interesting you assume I’m poor just because I’m not licking those boots.
You are. It’s easy to figure out. When people confuse wealth with income, it’s easy to figure out.
People here think there is some finite wealth pie, and if you cut a big piece somehow that leaves more for everyone else
What does that matter? He doesn’t take wages intentionally. He has a large stock portfolio that he can borrow against and thereby pay no taxes on that “income”.
What did Elon get paid, excluding stock options at companies he works for?
I bet he still makes more than me.
Most years under 30k. Often a dollar or free.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/02/20/investing/elon-musk-pay/index.html
That actually almost seems worse. He is not paying into Social Security or his local community. He is being generously compensated on stock, which is taxed differently.
Edit: I do want to thank you for providing that link. I was only finding a Forbes article about him being the highest compensated CEO of that year.
He’s paying in the local community through property taxes.
He’s highly compensated through stock and when he bought twitter. We got some huge amount of money in Taxes.
You’re correct. He rarely pays into social but that’s a problem for Congress to solve.
There are many ways to solve this bullshit and one is not allow them to borrow against their stock. That’s how they live for so cheap. I’m not opposed to stopping that at all.
Borrowing against stock needs to stop yesterday, especially if it’s not specifically for the interests of the company whose stock is being used.
Tax billionaires until there are no more billionaires
It’s really insane that we legally treat the tenth billion dollars at the same level as a working persons house or car.
Everything is legally just “property”.
No, fuck that.
The law should protect the first million of every citizen with ferver. (and when we tackle wealth inequality, most people will have this level of wealth at the end of their working life. The fact that most currently don’t is due to inequality. )
Up until 100 million, it should be taxed at a reasonable level. Because at some level, it’s fair that people prefer watching Taylor Swift instead of me sing on a stage.
Above that it should be taxed heavily.
And above a billion, it should be just confiscated. As in, oopsie, our system malfunctioned, you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a whole lifetime of work, so we are taking it back.
you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a while lifetime of work
I actively try to cheat at every single-player game that I play. I still don’t think I’ve accumulated a billion anything other than self-criticisms. Even that’s questionable.
At a billion you get a small plaque that says ‘yay you won capitalism’, they name a park bench after you and you replay from scratch.
The problem is that this wealth is ownership in companies they made. If you start a company and it becomes too successful, Is it right that we really just forcefully take that ownership away from you? Who wants to start or keep a company in a country that takes away your company from you if it’s too successful?
“I won’t start a company because it may be worth over a billion one day and that would only leave me with hundreds of millions of dollars. That doesn’t seem worthwhile,” thought no one ever in your hypothetical.
No, it’s more like
" why start a company when if it becomes too successful it will literally be taken away from me for being too successful". I don’t believe we should be taking away businesses from business owners, do you?
Or maybe you’re the successful owner and you reward the people that made you successful with a larger portion of that success?
Sure, give the owner that option, just don’t steal ownership from them.
If you’ve gone public with the company yes, you’ve set up the situation where paying your due means giving up some control of the company. That was a you decision. But congratulations you’re worth hundreds of millions. If you find yourself thinking that’s not enough you’re deeply broken and one of the most selfish people in human history, a true 0.01%er.
And again, this is a billion dollar baseline people are talking about. This is the same as people upset about the possibility of inheritance taxes because then they’d only get $10,000,000 tax free. No one is not starting a business because of that, which was your original argument.
It’s one thing to willfully sell some company shares to investors, it’s another to be forced to give up more shares just to pay taxes on wealth because of those shares.
This brings up an interesting point though, let’s say it’s a private company worth billions, where one person owns 100% of the shares, do you force them to sell also?
People may not start a business with the intent to be a billionaire, but if we say that if you make it that far we will just tax you so much you will be forced to sell away your ownership, who would keep their company here when they get close to that? I think it’s telling that many of the most successful worldwide companies are US companies.
Yes, I’m sure if Jeff Bezos were worth 10 billion dollars less he would have just said forget it I’ll flip burgers instead. I don’t think you need to rip their company from them, you just need to tax them.
You are literally suggesting to rip the company away from them though. They are only worth billions because of that value, if you rant to tax them billions where do you think they are going to get that money? They only have one option, to sell their ownership in their own company. If that’s not ripping their company away from them I don’t know what is.
Are other people paying taxes described as “ripping” away their ownership in “x”? What a bizarre framing. Also, Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon, so he’s already given away ownership of the company. He has assets, and they should be taxed
How does Amazon exist? How do they continue to operate? They run on the Internet created by the US government, they deliver packages by flying through US airspace, and driving on roads paved by several levels of government. Their factories don’t burn down because of municipal fire departments, and aren’t burglarized because of municipal police departments. Why shouldn’t they pay for those things, which they make much more use of than you or I?
Others aren’t using taxes on wealth though. Should the middle class be taxed on the amount in their retirement funds also? Or the amount in their bank accounts?
10% of Amazon is still a lot, it’s still a lot of power.
You think Amazon doesn’t pay for any of that? They pay for their use of such things like we all do. They do get some discounts thanks to scale, but they are paying way more than you or me.
The problem is that they are all employing tax avoidance schemes. Corporations like Amazon will spin off their IP to a separate off-shore corporation. Then they’ll pay that corporation for the use of their IP. That reduces Amazon’s profit to near zero, meaning they’re not paying taxes. The off shore corporation doesn’t pay taxes either.
People like Bezos won’t take salaries, because they’re taxed. Instead they’ll take stock. Then they’ll take loans against that stock, so they don’t pay taxes. They just roll that loan into another loan and continue to live off of it, never paying taxes because they have no “income”.
So yes, their wealth should be taxed. Otherwise the richest among us pay next to nothing and yet benefit the most from what our taxes buy. If we weren’t adequately capturing taxes from the middle class, then sure, but that’s not the case.
True. But generally I think giant companies cause more systemic problems than they solve. So maybe we don’t really need them.
After we die back to a manageable level from climate change we should try to remember that and prohibit it happening again.
We don’t really need giant companies? Ok, sure… personally I like my high tech options these large companies offer, and their ability to offer lower prices thanks to the economics of scale. If you want to pay more for everything then feel free to go to small companies, personally I prefer to pay less for the same stuff from large companies.
Meanwhile the downsides are invasion of privacy, destruction of the environment, poor treatment of workers and on and on.
If employees are treated so poorly they would leave, it’s not like we force people to keep their job. If you prefer to pay more, it’s your choice to buy from smaller companies.
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If the company becomes too successful, maybe there’s not just my effort that went into achieving that.
Somehow “you got paid, fuck off” is acceptable, but “you reaped the benefits, fuck off” is not.
What do employees get for their efforts? Oh yeah, that’s right, they get a salary and maybe even bonuses. What are you suggesting we do the owners? Oh, punish them by removing their company from them? Yeah, they will surely keep the company in the US if that is their reward.
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How can you talk about improving society and in the same sentence day we should punish them for trying to leave? Is that what we should do, punish people for moving their business elsewhere? Maybe ban their business from the country so nobody benefits?
You are promoting a more hostile and authoritarian country under the guise of “better for everyone”, it’s insane.
Why do like sucking capitalist dick so much? The only way owners get so rich is because they are exploiting labor.
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I don’t suck any dick, I just think the alternative you are suggesting is so much dumber than what we have
lmao ok, bootlicker
All these people already sell the stock of their own companies to diversify their holdings or to buy a yacht, island or Twitter.
Selling stock on the market to pay the tax man is no different.
They still keep a billion dollars worth of stock, so its not like they end up poor.
And the government can “forcefully” take a third of a working mans income, which is way worse than taxing wealth. Go cry me a river.
They don’t actually sell stock in a lot of cases, they keep it and take out loans against it. That can only go so far though, if you are like the rest of the crazy people here and suggest we just tax billionaires until they are no longer billionaires, then that won’t work.
Why not take the income of these business owners? Just like we take the income of everyone else? Why special rules for taxing this specific group of people you don’t like?
If they can take out loans to buys islands, Yachts and overpriced tweet companies, then let them take out loans to pay tax.
They only have five figure incomes thanks to the loopholes, so that isn’t a fair level of taxation compared to their actual capital gains that they artificially keep as “unrealized” on paper. A trick unavailable to us mere mortals.
You’re a tool.
Or, crazy thought, make it so they can’t take out loans against their stock; especially if it’s not for private use! Maybe that way, people like Musk will be forced to give themselves salaries that can be taxed by the government.
It’s clear you don’t know how things work at all. You can’t expect to tax someone billions every year and not have to sell the thing causing such a huge tax burden. This isn’t an infinite money glitch, the loan thing can only go so far.
Also, unrealized gains are a real thing, stocks go up and down, and the change in value is unrealized until it’s sold. If a stock goes up $100 that isn’t $100 in my pocket, because tomorrow it could go down $200. If you want to tax these unrealized gains, then you should be paying out the unrealized losses as well. You would also be screwing up the middle class retirement funds, so thanks for that.
You have a big mouth for someone who has zero clue.
Obviously, taxes are levied on a yearly basis and not every day, so daily fluctuations in value are irrelevant.
And retirement funds are tax exempt, so they will not be screwed.
And yes, people who can’t afford to pay property taxes have to sell property. That is a reality we all have to deal with, so why not let the super rich also deal with it.
Dude, get some education.
There are loopholes that can be closed, but won’t because the majority of American politicians are also rich assholes. I do think most of the ideas that get bandied out are dumb as sin, however.
Do billionaires actually have billions in real money sitting around? I’ve always thought the billions were in stocks and couldn’t be taxed until they cashed it out and they could technically lose everything if the stock price falls. That’s really fucked up if true
Nobody keeps that amount of cash. Even below a million, most people have most of their wealth in either real estate (their own house) or financial securities (stocks, ETFs, bonds).
Yet, we all gotta pay property tax and capital gains.
The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds.
The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds. <
Isnt that then bigger problem than generally tax the rich?
Is there a difference?
Closing loopholes = taxing the rich
If the tax code lost all the loopholes, there probably would be no billionaires.
I meant that we should close the loopholes instead of just increasing tax rate for rich.
Closing the loopholes is the same thing as increasing the taxes on the rich.
Just try it and they will find a sad story of some business owner losing the family business because the loophole “serves a vital purpose” and then congress will rush to hell save those family farms.
That’s the reason no loopholes ever get closed.
This movie has been on repeat for decades.
The only way to really solve it is a smarter divide and conquer approach. Separate, stricter rules for the billionaire class that only apply to them.
That way the small business owners stay out of range and have no incentive to help change the narrative.
Sad day when “billionaires should pay taxes” is considered a far left position.
Well, when even the “moderate” right thinks everyone left of the Strasserites is a commie, this is what you get.
Billionaires should pay a wealth tax is considered a far left position. Billionaires should pay an income tax is a position supported by all except maybe some tea party folk.
That!.. That’s literally what I meant!!
The problem is that stocks aren’t income. Stocks don’t have a value until you sell them. How do you tax that? One day someone can be worth billions and the next nothing if the stocks they own drop in value or the company goes bankrupt. I don’t know the solution but it’s not as easy as most people make it out to be.
Take the inverse of that and you’re getting closer to what actually needs to happen.
Well-behaved oligarchs gets the Pu Yi treatment, the rest gets the Romanov treatment.
Wealth taxes are stupid. That said, nobody needs multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.
The solution is to have regulations and laws in place that prevent them getting this large in the first place. The fact that Amazon and Google own 90% of the internet is absolutely fucked.
I agree, no one should be able to hold such an obscene amount of wealth. Right now they do, though. How do you propose this be remedied?
Tbh you would have to create a really good anti trust taskforce full of people that lost everything to these humongous companies, people whose stores got undercut and etc.
I say this because the only way Colombia fought against Escobar’s control of the police was by having a task force full of people whose family or friends had died to the cartel.
This said, yhe defenetly, not one entity that has that much power should be there without being voted in. How would you feel if the gov owned the internet, cuz that doesn’t sound good to me. Soo yhe between voting for whomever controls most of the internet or having better anti trust laws and regulating forces idk
Not with a wealth tax. I’d say just break up the companies and share prices will adjust to reflect.
Right, let’s go back in time and fix it.
Wealth taxes are a concrete solution. Your proposal is instead some vague notion of regulations and laws. By the way, a wealth tax would help prevent the rich from having so much money which allows them to set those regulations and laws in the first place.
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With or without PACs, the money will find its way into politicians’ pockets.
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It’s to point out that banning PACs, while a good move, wouldn’t solve the problem. A wealth tax would be much more effective.
60% of middle class wealth is held in their property. Guess what get’s taxed? Their property. Right now we have a wealth tax on the middle class who are carrying a very disproportionate tax load compared with the rich.
And, even if they don’t own it, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google probably still help run it with Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
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Because a ton of wealth is caught up in assets that were already taxed in some way, or is not directly usable. Yeah I might have a few million dollars in assets, but if those are all caught up in shares of a company I’d have to sell a ton just for the mere fact of me owning them.
I’m personally not at all a fan of double-dipping on taxes. I was taxed to make money and taxed to buy stocks, that should be it until I’ve sold them or realized any gain from them. Property tax makes sense on some level, since you’re taking up physical space and helping to pay for the utilities you use in your area. But I don’t agree on a tax for just owning something otherwise, it feels incredibly scummy.
There are other solutions to the problem that don’t involve losing shares in a company you’ve built yourself and still taxes in a way that’s less shitty. The rich pay less in taxes by taking out loans against their assets, which is fine, but those loans aren’t counted as income for good reason (otherwise buying a house would mean tens of thousands in taxes just for getting the loan), but they need an income to pay back those loans and that income would be taxed, so I’m not certain there’s a lot that could be rightly done there, either. It would also fuck with a lot of business financials if you start progressively taxing larger loans as income, but it’s something to consider I guess.
I’m not sure what the solution is. Personally I see little difference in someone having 200 million in assets and 70 billion purely from the standpoint of “how much could a person reasonably spend in a year,” but I digress.
In my opinion, the more egregious issue is that the mere fact of having that much money could be easily used to manipulate markets and should be considered anti-competitive from its mere existence. Good on you for making that much money, I applaud you, but capitalism requires healthy competition and if you have literal trillions to outcompete competition by hemorrhaging money through losses for hundreds of years then that’s fundamentally anti-competitive because nobody’s going to challenge you. It’s a losing game and breaks the capitalistic contract necessary for a healthy economy.
Companies should not have any means of becoming so unfathomably large, and that alone would resolve the issue of “paying their fair share.”
Billionaires shouldn’t exist. Their fair share is more like 95%.
how about they can keep whatever the total minimum wage equivalent for 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year times how ever many years they were in business.
And if 95% still leaves them with more than you have you will feel that that rate needs to go higher.
I don’t agree with that. I’m personally completely fine with millionaires or perhaps even 100 millions. Like there should be a social safety net at the bottom there should be a social safety limit at the top even if it is very high and more wealth than anyone could reasonably need. Because beyond that point it’s not they are just getting more wealthy. Everyone else is getting poorer for it.
Well, I’m not so sure about that. If you take that wealth and let the government decide how to spend it, you are assuming it will reach those who need it. I’m not so sure that is the case.
In the current US it would probably go to an even more bloated military budget or other ridiculous projects to line the pockets of people with government connections.
I think the idea is more a long the lines of paying workers more. Instead of shareholders and executives holding 99% of the value of a corporation the workers would take home a much larger portion. Who knows how well that would actually work in practice. Either way I’d prefer multi-billionares forfeit all their wealth exceeding a billion and give it to the government than doing nothing at all. Maybe at least “some” of that could be spent on social programs such as healthcare.
Well I suspect we are looking at this problem through a very simple lens. The billionaires are not necessarily using that money. It is out there being invested and also being loaned out to start new businesses startups etc. if you just handed it to the government assuming it will be better spent or invested is a big leap.
The tax should be even higher. No one needs $100 billion.
No one needs $1 billion
God the insanity of that wealth is hard to fathom.
Nobody needs $100m, which is itself a totally insignificant amount compared to $1b… and we’re talking people with hundreds of billions :/
for real. $400m is closer to $0 than it is to $1b
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How do you handle a CEO owning stock worth that amount in the marketplace, then?
They don’t. No one can explain how a wealth tax work because it doesn’t work.
My issue wasn’t with a wealth tax (even though I’m against it), but pulling some arbitrary wealth cap out of thin air opens a lot of questions that many people don’t consider the implications of.
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I’d be willing to be taxed into oblivion if I knew it’d mean everyone else could lead full lives. And I make nothing.
Now imagine the good their excess wealth could do.
Fuck it, I’m willing to die if it came down to it to ensure the safety and prosperity of my countrymen. And I actually hate most of my countrymen.
If we ask and freely give such sacrifices from the working class, then asking the elite to stop hoarding gold like a dragon really shouldn’t be a big deal.
I do respect Warren Buffet for being honest about it. It’s up to us (the public) and the politicians who work for us to change the system to make it more fair.
There was also another billionaire who gave his money away and is no longer a billionaire. Mad respect for the guy, but he is a rare breed. We have to fix the system, not depend on charity.
Uhhh is the ask to liquidate their assets? They will just sell a Picaso painting that they ‘value’ at 60% of their gross income.
Why do you guys fetishize these billionaires and not the giant hedge fund pools that make these guys rich in the first place?
Um, tax those too.
We don’t need to be perfect with just one proposal. We can have at least 2 proposals.
Yeah and maybe also cutting down on their non-profit organisations scheme to avoid taxes would be nice…
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Lenin and Stalin would have moved you up in the party quickly. You’re family now would probably be an oligarchy. You were born to late. Think of all the expensive yachts and million dollar homes you could have today?
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Wealth taxes actually work, that’s why the rich attack them so vehemently.
well their fair share would be they get nothing (or close to compared to what they do have)
10% off the top
By body weight
The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle one. The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject to the mundane laws of the city. The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody well pay their taxes like everyone else. The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed allegiance to no mortal man. The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly. The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn't put a tax on knowledge. The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged. The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil authority. The Patrician said that he was not proposing to remain civil for long. The wizards said, what about easy terms? The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn't want to know about the hard terms. The wizards said that there was a ruler back in , oh, it would be the Century of the Dragonfly, who had tried to tell the University what to do. The Patrician could come and have a look at him if he liked. The Patrician said that he would. He truly would In the end it was agreed that while the wizards of course paid no taxes, they would nevertheless make an entirely voluntary donation of, oh, let's say two hundred dollars per head, without prejudice, mutatis mutandis, no strings attached, to be used strictly for non-militaristic and environmentally-acceptable purposes.Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
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