dan đź’ľThis article says that a report says that billionaires should pay a minimum 2% tax rate... But most folk I know pay somewhere around 20%-40%, give or take. Why should billionaires pay a teeny-tiny fraction of what everybody else pays?
A billion seconds is almost 32 years
A million seconds is a bit over 11.5 days
A hundred thousand seconds is a little over 1 day
And ten thousand seconds is not quite 3 hours
Subtracting 1 million seconds from 1 billion seconds still leaves you with 32 years.
Maybe what we need is a new word for billion that sounds less like million.
lucretia@billgoats I propose megamillion.
@lucretia I think it needs a completely different sound and mouthfeel, like how thousand is very different from hundred, and million is very different from thousand.
garry@billgoats ok let me think something up
@repeattofade Garry to the rescue!
Jamie@billgoats @repeattofade a Garrotte
John LamGood luck, the previous issue with “billion” still lingers in old texts and mistranslations to and from Swedish, Ukrainian, Turkish, for example, and out of context can even confuse Brits. Their long billion is 10^12.
Red_Shirt_no2@billgoats
1000 million = 1 guillotine
1000 million = 1 guillotine
Lieven Dekeyser@billgoats In Dutch/Flemish it’s miljoen (pronounced “milyoon”) vs miljard (“milyard”), but we still don’t tax the obscenely rich 🤷‍♂️
@lieven miljard sounds a lot more on the way to pejorative though, so it’s a start!
CharlieG@billgoats Because the idea would be that they’re paying it on their total assets rather than income, no? Needs a different solution because the hyper rich can structure their affairs to minimise tax.
Nini@billgoats They shouldn't but if you get to own the system you get to set the terms you play by. That 2% is seen as outlandish for those who'd still be wealthy with far higher taxation is somewhat insulting to those paying 20-40%.
feistel 
@billgoats wealth tax can't be directly compared to income tax, but I think it could be a good idea to tax the pseudo-income the wealthy get from borrowing cheaply against their wealth