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.
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)
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
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
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?
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.
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.
What did Elon get paid, excluding stock options at companies he works for?
I bet he still makes more than me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You’d have to be dense to think this is capitalism. The corporations are clearly communist
No, this is actually existing capitalism. The utopian fantasies of capitalist theorists like Adam Smith and Keynes simply do not work or exist in reality.
In terms of Smith writing about his present conditions, I think it was accurate enough for mercantile society. The problem (besides his not-always-reasonable history) is that because he often failed to distinguish first principles from idiosyncracies, the logic of his observations shatters in any other context (e.g. global capitalism).
I want to try taxing first. Maybe if we can just remake a bunch of Pre-Reagan SEC rules and raise the top earning brackets, add some tiers, that might help like it did after the Gilded Age and Great Recession.
Of course the only way to do any of that is to vote blue and the USA is kind of fucked as far as the political spectrum goes. Again, Reagan’s fault for deregulating campaign finance.
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.
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?
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
their fair share is connected to their necks, but im sure we can figure out a way to get it off them
Death to America
