Large numbers of people don't understand what a billionaire is.
If you, like most of us, ONLY make $1 million a year, it would take you 1,000 years to make $1 billion.
Or, if REALLY lie most of us, you make $50,000 a year, it would take you 20,000 years.
TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS!
If you tax someone who makes a billion a year at a 90% top rate, they would "only" take home $100 million a year.
A thought experiment.
A billionaire buys the oldest known bible.
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/oldest-bible-auction-scli-intl/index.html
The Codex Sassoon, dating from the late 9th or early 10th century, sold for $38.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday. It is believed to be the earliest and most complete Hebrew Bible. The last.
======
The buyer announces they will publicly burn the item on a specific date.
What do you think ?
@dcjohnson George Bernard Shaw noted “ A govenment that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”
Taxation was based on the logical principle payment should be equal for all citizen “equity before taxes” but today has been replaced by the abhorrent principle “equity through taxes,” making taxes a political and fiscal lever to force changes in society.
Altruism is not compatible with capitalism and personal achievements are not freely distributable.
@WJJH @dcjohnson So far as I can tell, the philosophy of Rand boils down to:
- Communism is bad
- Capitalism is the opposite of Communism
- The opposite of bad is good
- Therefor Capitalism is good
- Society should maximalize good
- Therefor society should maximalize Capitalism
The remainder appears to me as a series of tautologies intended to provide a veneer of philosophical justification for the above chain of reasoning.
Ayn Rand is a writer I can appreciate for her analysis and critique on collectivism, based on the postulation that the individual has a moral right to live for his/her own sake, to pursue their own personal identity, personal freedom and happiness based on self-reliance and self-responsibility, not in the name of the common good or the state.
https://wjjh.blog/2021/09/21/who-is-john-galt-and-what-would-alice-oconner-say/
@dcjohnson TWW: Fortune and Disparity
While your life is yours and you determine its course, fortune is fickle. The moment is unbiased to your success or demise and you are used to ends you do not know by forces you may feel but not be able to understand. At any moment events may occur beyond your control and cast you upon a path that tests your will and darkens the light in your soul that you must follow.
*How do you know your own greed? Did you give away what you love? OWOP
You missed the point.
@kegill
I addressed his 90% income tax suggestion, and specifically called for a #WealthTax
I know there is a larger point about the gross disparity in their wealth.
Large numbers of people don’t understand what a billionaire is.
An ELI5. “Why you’ll never be a billionaire”.
@dcjohnson There's a marked difference in someone who HAS a billion dollars and someone who earns a billion per year...
For context, no one in the world earns a billion per year...
@ericmann That's just wrong. Some hedge fund managers and others do.
Gates, Musk, Buffett etc are not hundreds of years old but have hundreds of billions.
@dcjohnson "Have" billions. Not "earn billions per year."
No one makes a billion dollars per year.
A bit of British history: we had a horribly organised tax system which could end up with a maximum tax rate of over 100% and created the "tax exile". We ended that stupidity. There are other taxes, VAT is a sort of sales tax and the scary 20% rate doesn't add to income tax.
A 90% income tax rate might be too high but our current tax system is at the opposite extreme. Right-wing political parties don't like the idea of the rich paying taxes. They lie about how the system works.
@dcjohnson you’re conflating wealth with income. Very few billionaires “earn” $1B per year. Mostly they make it through wealth accumulation/inflation.
Tax all WEALTH over $1B at 90%/year, and there will be no more billionaires. They can still earn obscene amounts, still build obscene amounts of wealth, but they have to actually DO something with the excess excess. Maybe then it will actually “trickle down.”
And tax INCOME over $10M/year (all sources) at 90%, too, no deductions.
@dcjohnson @bigzaphod It really clicked for me when someone reframed it. Statements like “1 million dollars” or “1 billion dollars” are concepts that most people can’t accurately grasp the scale of. Like you said, maybe they’re making $50K they might never be close to having $1M let alone $1B.
Instead of dollars, use time.
1 Million Seconds: 11.5 days
1 Billion Seconds: 31.7 YEARS
When I heard that, that’s when I truly understood the difference between 1 million and 1 billion.
Sam Zell has passed away.
Despite not being an economist he predicted a recession for 2024. Will he be right?
His allies in the billionaire class & House Republicans are doing their utmost to make one happen. Will McCarthy obey his donors?
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/sam-zell-billionaire-real-estate-investor-dies-99428579
Rusal bought McConnell his Kentucky Senate win & now billionaires are dumping their stake in it?
Is the DOJ getting close with #FollowTheMoney investigations?
Florida pension funds lost a mint divesting from their Russia investments.
Here we go again, more imprudent investments to placate GOP donors.
Imagine what kind of mess they'd make if Social Security was privatized.
Kevin McCarthy threatens a global financial crisis so his hedge fund donors can "play" with a privatized Social Security.
The same folks who funded NFT's & crypto scams, & can't keep regional banks solvent, want control of Social Security.
https://jacobin.com/2023/05/ron-desantis-donors-pension-sec-rules-pay-to-play
Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature just sent Gov. Ron DeSantis a bill that would put more state pension money in the hands of his prospective Wall Street donors. The bill could put DeSantis on the wrong side of a long-standing anti-corruption rule.
If I am not mistaken, the 90% tax rate already existed once in the US.
@Raven47
Riane Eisler has been writing about male domination as a core of politics. Worth looking at.
Second point, agree but that isn't what money is. Govt spends money into the economy, doesn't get "revenue" from taxes.
A good analogy I heard recently:
1 billion = every second in 32 years.
I normally write out $1,000,000,000
and
$1,000,000
because all the numbers matter.
Jenn Mercer, CT
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