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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.
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.
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.
So take away ownership of a company just because it's too successful? That wealth is mostly in company ownership, so are you really suggesting we steal away legitimate ownership in successful companies?
I mean, why do we have 'too big to fail" companies? Isn't that counterproductive to having a robust society?
That's how you compete in the world. Imagine for a second if the US didn't bail out the automotive companies, I think Ford would have survived, but that's about it, no more American competition for them. If they also failed, then we might not have any US car companies, how bad would that have been for our society?
Or the banks, could you imagine how screwed we would be if the whole baking system collapsed? Even the small banks were in trouble, it's not a solution to just split them all up.
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.
I don't think the government would ban the practice, since the middle class uses the same thing for stuff like reverse mortgages. I can see them limiting the amount though.
If they did ban it though, billionaires would still be billionaires, they probably don't need much of an actual salary when most of their stuff is paid for.
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.
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...
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.
no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc...
Oh no! Anyway, so how can we make this happen, like, yesterday?
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.
The people on here want you to work hard and take all the risk, create Cancer Cure Inc. Then take all your company and give it to the workers so you have nothing.
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
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.
Well they are public companies bar space x so. Just redistribute those shares.
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.
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.