produnisfair share?
PheganTax 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.
Idle-game users glance around nervously.
It’s actually taxes less if it’s earned from investments
I’m cool with numbers past a billion being asymptotically possible. Let the money-addicts keep chasing N+1 dollars, if each +1 puts ten times more money into public funding.
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 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.
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.
Amazon does invest most of their profits back into the business, that is why they were operating with basically no profit. They still paid plenty of taxes though, like payroll taxes, that aren’t based on profit.
Then apply income tax or something on loans against stock over a certain amount, but I’m guessing that isn’t enough for you? I’m guessing like everyone else here the only solution is to tax them so much they aren’t a billionaire anymore, forcefully taking their company away from them in the process.
I know, it’s awful that people want rich people and rich corporations to pay their fair share of the tax burden. If they can’t pay their fair share and keep ungodly amounts of wealth, while people are homeless and children are starving, while shit, I guess they just shouldn’t have to pay taxes then. What if they had to sell some stock…ohh, the humanity! Will the horrors never cease! You sound like an absolute clown.
What is so bad about investing money back into yourself, it’s exactly what non profits are built around doing.
What is their fair share? Your rant to take away all their profits even if they make none? Stop job growth in the company by not allowing them to invest in new products or ideas?
Why should owners be forced to sell their business just because it’s successful? Why should we punish success? Stock isn’t just some made up currency, it’s literally proof of ownership in a company, it’s voting power, it’s not someone we should be forcing owners to give up.
We want all the tax giveaways of the past fifty years revoked. NONE of them gelp the economy in any way and have caused insurmountable destruction to civilization.
I’m fine with stopping new tax exemptions, but the ones we already gave were just have to live with. It’s not right to ask for it all back.
Yes, it is reinvestment, new ideas aren’t free, they cost startup money, it costs money to develop new products and ideas, it’s literally reinvestment of profits back into the company.
Jeff Bezos does not reinvest his money back into any company. The company profits do that.
And? His wealth is tied directly to your much Amazon is worth, and it’s worth more of it is successful in reinvesting into itself
It IS right to ask for it all back because it was NEVER deserved. It was nothing but crony corruption from Day 1. We HAVE history on this. You are not old enough to understand any of it.
It was given and received, there are no take backs. If you want to complain, complain to the ones who allowed it in the first place.
“No takebacks”??!
So what you’re telling me is that you don’t know anything about the law either.
Where does the law say we can take it all away and require back pay when the other party didn’t break any rules?
It’s known as a “repeal”. It even occurs with Constitutional amendments
This doesn’t happen with financial assets though, at least not that I’ve heard of. Can you name an example of " we are going to give you a break on these taxes or fees" then that turns into “you did nothing wrong, but we are going to want those 20 years of unpaid taxes/fees that we told you that you didn’t need to pay, we changed our minds”.
Are you on drugs? Are you just making stuff up as you go? Where in THE ROYAL FUCK did you even come up with that?? Who even said that?? What the fuck are you talking about??
Were you not suggesting we require all the tax breaks over the last however many years be paid back in full? If not I just have been mixing you up with one of the other dozens of far left crazies I’ve been chatting with.
If you just want to repeal tax breaks that didn’t have a guaranteed life that hasn’t been reached yet, then that’s fine I would probably agree to it depending on the side effects it might cause the middle and lower classes.
Yes, you must be thinking of someone else who also isnt a radicalized right wing fruitcake.
There is no reason that any of them should have a guaranteed life. They were all sponsored by the ones who benefit the most from them. In the words of TFG to his billionaire associates after his cuts passed: “Congratulations, you all just got a lot richer!”
The cuts are destroying the economy and they should ALL be repealed, including the permanent ones.
You realize your ideas that are also being suggested by most people here are radical, right? Radical left is a thing, and this place is overflowing with it.
It’s one thing to suggest doing something about the cuts, but most here don’t think that’s nearly enough, proposing literal theft and preventing movement outside the country. I would argue it’s just as insane here as it is in far right circles, just a different kind of insane.
Radical according to whom? By what standard? That of corporations, stockholders, and fascists?
SketchySeaBeast“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?
I do. Fuck 'em. They already have 100 million dollars. They can go cry into that.
So your argument is “Fuck them because they have more than me”. Is that about right? We can steal from them because they have more to steal?
They stole it from “me” first.
How did they do that exactly?
Come on, man, at least understand the concept of the reification of labour-power-at-work if you’re going to debate the very concept of what it means to have capital.
The value of arbeitskraft is only extracted when the means of production are privately owned. Assets and liabilities have to cost less than the output for value to be generated, I’m saying that value should have an (extremely generous) upper bound as a compensation for the initial outlay of creating a private capital asset, after which additional value is returned either to the creators of the labour in the labour-power or the labour-power-at-work is deemed valuable to society and the value is returned in general there.
I don’t know all the details of Marxism, basically because I think it’s a flawed view and don’t see the value in dedicating a lot of time to understanding the whole thing.
The problem is that, again, you are suggesting that company owners be forced to give up their ownership, in this case it seems like you are saying they should be forced to give it away to employees? That’s where all the value we are talking about is, it’s the value of stock, or ownership, that’s worth billions.
Why should owners of anything be forced to give up that ownership? If they sell or give any ownership that should be their choice, not forced. This goes for anything from your car to your house to your company, ownership is ownership.
I don’t know all the details of Marxism, basically because I think it’s a flawed view and don’t see the value in dedicating a lot of time to understanding the whole thing.
I thought the same thing before I actually started to think critically about socialism (and just life in general) and take some time to read into it. A lot of your reasoning isn’t too far off from how I understood the world. It’s possible that the only reason you believe it to be so deeply flawed is because you haven’t spent much time learning about it. Just my opinion.
pro-capitalism, pro-socialism, pro-communism, pro-anarchism are all post-Marxist.
Just like things like “subconscious” or “trauma” or “unconscious thought” are post-Freudian.
You can be the most ardent unrestricted market Libertarian, you’re still using Marxist terminology. We’re not debating whether money exists, we’re debating about how to use it.
For e.g., it’s talking about whether you like strawberry or chocolate ice cream, not that milk doesn’t exist.
BarbarianAt some point you just have to give them a gold sticker, a “Congratulations! You won capitalism!” plaque, and leave something for the rest of humanity.
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.
agent_flounderTrue. 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.
No, it isnt their choice, and yes, you dontorce people to keep their jobs. The constant stealing of value and hoovering it towards yourselves keeps people bound to a neofuedal system. This is ABNORMAL. It is the EXACT OPPOSITE of a prosperous economy. The system you espouse is a PROVEN FAILURE. We have decades of tax law to PROVE THAT YOU ARE A FAILURE and not at all a success.
Everybody is free to leave and free to find new jobs, im not sure where you get the idea that isn’t the case.
Also how is it stealing value to pay less than the profits made? You realize a company has to make profits to survive, right?
How is the US arguably the most successful country on the planet if stuff is really as bad as you say it is? The US is far from perfect, but it’s impossible to deny it’s one of the best places to be and people risk everything trying to get in wanting a better life.
I get that idea because tax breaks allowed big companies to put small ones out of business, therefore eliminating competing jobs. THATS why they arent free to leave.
All your responses tell us that you are really, REALLY insulated from the real world. You dont know anything about business or economies; you only know what you uave been able to take freely.
Unless that’s part of the agreement (pretty sure it isn’t) then they are free to do what they want, especially if the government becomes hostile to them.
You are living in fairy land and way outside the realm of reality. What you want isn’t realistic, and it doesn’t matter how badly you or everyone else wants it. I’m being realistic here, not falling deep into fantasy land.
Of course you aren’t, mr chriskmee.
That we can agree on something finally!
Also, I nitice everyone who says people are coming here for a better life aee also the same ones who say close the borders because its all lazy welfare criminals. You people need to make up your goddamn mind; are there plenty of jobs to compete for, or do they only exist for multibillion dollar corporations? Which is it??
What other reason are they coming here for it it isn’t a better life? Who is saying anything differently?
I’m not against legal immigration, I’m just against the illegal kind, we have to control who and how many come in.
I’m not sure who you think you are talking about with “you people”, but I don’t think I’m part of it.
Stealing value occurs when profits are exhibitant while paying less than the inflation-adjusted minimum wage while having the jobs market cornered.
It is amazing how little you know but are so convinced that you’re smart.
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 they 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.
Dark_BladeOr, 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.