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.
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
Well they are public companies bar space x so. Just redistribute those shares.
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.
It's actually taxes less if it's earned from investments
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?
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.
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.
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.
Yeah and maybe also cutting down on their non-profit organisations scheme to avoid taxes would be nice..
Wealth taxes actually work, that's why the rich attack them so vehemently.
I think you're wrong on both points. I've heard plenty of rich people say they believe their tax rate should be higher including some of the ones on that list. You're also wrong when you say it works. It works for who? If you don't attack the spending problem it's just more money to be wasted. Let's face it the political system is outstanding and finding some need to spend every cent they can possibly get their hands on. It won't matter if they spend it on your priorities or someone else's they will always find the need to spend it. In our current inflation based economy they don't even need to spend what they take in it's easier to just print more and that's exactly what they're doing.
Wealth tax should absolutely be a priority. In my state, MA, we voted in a "millionaires tax". One thing it will cover is state wide free school lunch.
Okay but why did you call it "millionaires tax" instead of like "1% earners tax" or something? Headlines are all scaring lazy people who don't read the article to think that their lifetime retirement savings is at risk. When it's really for people making over a million per year!
Counterpoint: But they don't wanna pay taxes! They don't wannaaaaaaaaaaa.... why are you being so mean to the precious billionaires?
So there are irreconcilable issues on this issue and Congress is currently too busy trying to impeach Biden because his son had dick pics on his laptop.
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.
Here's the basic idea of what I'd think is fair
You have a basic rate for income below the 20th percentile of all incomes
Multiply that by 1.5 for income between that and the 40th percentile
Multiply that by 1.25 for income between that and the 60th percentile
Multiply that by 1.125 for income between that and the 80th percentile
Multiply that by 1.0625 for income between that and the 95th percentile
Multiply that by 1.03125 for income between that and the 99th percentile
Multiply that by 1.015625 for all income above the 99th percentile, with the additional caveat that people who top this bracket even once cannot hold public office, donate to political campaigns, or hire lobbyists and lobbying firms for ten years following them topping out.
Imagine something similar for taxes on units of housing owned, dividends earned, and so on and so forth.
The idea being that the highest rate can't be adjusted without significantly reducing the tax burden of the poorest, basically erasing the only way conservatives have been able to balance the books whenever they try that shit.
Fuck the billionaires, tax them all by 100% of their income beyond 1 billion.
None of these guys has income anywhere near a billion in yearly income. They have stock and other assets that are worth billions but it is not income per se. If anything they go to extreme lengths to minimize their income.
See? that's another thing. Why is some income not considered income?
People who actually have to work ALWAYS have to pay taxes, but the parasites that gamble in the stock market get to keep all that money they won, and if they lose they get a bailout from the taxpayers.
There are billionaires out there that have become so narcissistic that they just say it outright. "I'm going to privatize the profits and socialize the losses"
3% is a fair share?
3% annually would be really huge, and probably shrink a lot of personal wealth out there. 3% one time is not as big of a deal, but it also doesn't raise so much revenue. The problem with a one time wealth tax is it incentivizes a future government to try a second one-time wealth tax, and then maybe a third. Soon enough it's not really a one-time tax any more.
In the United States there would also be a serious question on whether wealth tax was constitutional. The income tax was not raised until the 16th amendment explicitly gave Congress the power. It's possible the court will say there's no power to levy a national wealth tax absent an amendment.
I imagine a realistic implementation would involve a system of progressive brackets and minimums/deductibles, modeled after the way income tax is. Ideally, things are modeled such that the tax is only full percents among those absurdly high brackets that can afford them
Constitutionality is another matter though, and yeah it seems like it would be awful hard to get that through the current court
This is a wealth tax, not an income tax.
too low
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.
When do we start burning things.
As a temporarily embarrassed billionaire myself, I have reservations about this
As of this point every wealth tax that has been implemented ends up getting abandoned because if how inefficient they are. It's like rent control, it sounds great on paper bu historically never works out like it was planned.
Forcing Bezos to liquidate $6b of Amazon would have an effect on the economy.
Plus, you don't think they would really pay that tax, do you? There's always a loophole.
The problem is, unless them getting taxed more results in you getting taxed less, it almost doesn't matter. It seems like any extra money the government ever gets just ends up going to more war.
Found the US American.
So are most of these billionaires. The dude is right, giving more money to the US government just means inflating Washington’s war chest.
Unpopular opinion: You’ll get the same amount out of the billionaires if you tax them 3% or 97%.
Ah yes, apathy is a famous solution to all our problems!
I’m not being apathetic, just pragmatic. If you want to bring about positive change you need a better solution than something that has failed and will continue to do so.
Even if the wealth tax will get passed, it'll cost much less than a billion dollars to hire a big and expensive team of lawyers and accountants that can find several ways to bypass it.
Look at that it's already creating more jobs and it hasn't even been implemented yet
Wealth is not money. There's nothing to tax.
This is a very true statement.
Stocks won't get taxed unless they get actioned on. That is where the majority of their preceeded wealth is.
The US government is sovereign, it can very much either take ownership of the stock, or estimate its value and construct a loan that the company owners needs to pay back because they owe this tax. Or probably 100s of more clever solutions as well.
It can definitely decide to tax wealth if it wanted to, it could also break up large companies to at least spread the wealth of these institutions wider. It mostly just doesn't "want" to.
This argument is so unnecessary defeatist pretending the most militarised and police ridden country in the world has no power to enforce laws it could write.
Opposite to that notion I think if the US had any interest in fairness in taxation, especially on a more global scale, it could easily get all the common tax havens/financial secrecy jurisdictions, to fold to essentially whatever demands if has. But again it seems like the US government strangely doesn't really want that either.
Which is still the central issue the US government is more captured by the billionaire class than a lot of people like to think they are, and it's never just the dem or just the reps, it's large portions of both parties that are essentially captured in this way, or just fall into it because preserving the status quo is easy.
It's also real money, otherwise Musk couldn't have bought Twitter for $44 billion. He sure didn't have that amount on his bank account but he still bought it all the same, thus giving him a substantial soft power through information.
I think you meant to say “wealth is not income”. That’s the whole point of it being a “wealth tax”. That said, there’s pretty sound law arguing that wealth taxes are unconstitutional. There are far better ways to effect similar change, such as capital gains tax reform, and closing transfer tax exemption loopholes.
How would this be implemented? I don't think the market would appreciate if all billionaires were suddenly forced to sell off billions worth of their shares. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to fight back against these tyrants, but not if it crashes the economy and makes the lives of workers worse.
Say it with me: The stock market is not the economy.
I hate the stock market as much as the next guy. Glorified gambling.
But, the stock market is tied directly to the economy
What do you think most people's retirement accounts are tied to?
According to a quick Google, 61% of adults in US own stock. Which means more than half the population has an interest in the stock market not crashing.
Yes the 1% probably owns the majority of stocks. Quick Google says 54% of all stocks.
US Dollar is a fiat currency. It's only backed by the faith of the people behind it.
It can absolutely crash and while the 1% will suffer, we will all suffer at least a little bit.
Wouldn't a wealth tax be a yearly thing?
They can be one off or multi year. Taxes don't have to be annual.
For a community named lefty memes you sure do get a lot of people adding ""nuance"" to taxing billionaires.
Almost makes you wish the .ml circuit was here to dunk em.
Almost.
Only $4.6 Billion for Musk? I'm sure he'd appreciate that, since he paid $11Billion in 2021.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla-zero-tax-bill/index.html
I agree we should have a more progressive tax. The problem is fair is a relative term. When is fair fair enough? The fact is the underlying problem is overspending and no amount of "fair" increases to the tax rate is going to solve that problem.
At this point I'd be happy if they would just stop CUTTING the taxes for the rich. Somehow even with massive deficits, that continues to be one of the primary policy positions of the Republican party.
I completely agree. At this point, I really just don't understand the Republican party. I'm somebody that has always considered myself to be on the side of smaller government and conservative in general but this Republican party does not represent me.
Regardless of how hard it's to do this, you'll get what out of this... 15B? That's nothing... the government spends that in less than a day. Maybe cut government spending in half first. None of this is sustainable.
You hear that everyone? $15 billion is nothing.
…yeah when you think about how the US government spends money, a one-time injection of 15 bil is nothing. Hell, the combined lifetime wealth of ALL billionaires wouldn’t reach the ANNUAL budget of the US military.
well, the top 25 wealthiest americans are together worth about 1.8 trillion, which according to your clock is just about the federal budget deficit and a third of federal spending. The numbers OP gave assume a tax rate of 3% which is already fairly substantial (it would be 3% of the deficit), but we could always raise that number if you feel fit isn't enough.
I'll do you one better. Even if you take ALL their money, that's less than 6 months budget. You steal it from them, spend it in a few months, and you're back where you started in no time. It doesn't fix anything or change anything, but introduces tremendous problems (like inflation).
And besides that and completely ignoring all these direct problems, these assets are not even liquid (Surprise surprise, Jeff Bezos doesn't store $5B in his safe). So, in order to cash them out, you're gonna have to sell them on the open markets, crash the stock markets, crash real estate markets, etc, which will lead to much higher unemployment, and pension funds will be destroyed (just like in 2008), and millions will go bankrupt. And all this even ignores that the net worth you're assigning to them ignores slippage, so it's much less than 1.8 Trillion when sold on the open market, ignoring automated bots that will sell even more to protect their hedge funds.
Yes, let's do all that destruction in the economy just for 6 months worth of spending. Great plan!
Like I always say: A bunch of ignorant, uneducated, stupid and entitled teenagers who don't know anything about the economy want to decide how the economy works. Go read a book, and stop telling us how to run the world before you learn how the world works. Go learn, and your realistic suggestions are welcome. We all want a better world.
Bernie shit lol, this is never gonna happen
