Flying SquidBut how would they be able to live on that?
apfelwoiSchoppenGo for it and then expand it. Being a billionaire should not be legal.
CableMonsterDo you think that it wont get expand to the point where it harms you too? Do you think the government would do good things with the increased revenue (if it actually got increased revenue)?
Government is as good or as bad as we make it. Pretending like it can’t be good while actively sabotaging it is conservative’s entire playbook.
And yes, increase my taxes. I’m happy to pay more if we can improve the lives of everyone. If we can pay for things like universal healthcare, good infrastructure, public transit, and decent public housing, double my taxes.
I agree a little bit, but the government tend to be a mechanism to take from one person and give to another. And in regards to america, the money goes directly to killing people all around the world.
If you want to give more money in taxes, why dont you give it away to charity instead?
I loath the argument that government is slow. It is an intellectually lazy argument, if not dishonest. Why do you think that private business is any different? Having experience with a company that was small and nimble that grew to a behemoth. Having friends and acquaintances in places big and small, private and government: you see this at play. You have to accept moving slower at scale, especially at government scale. It is as good at you make it. And at least there is objective accountability from people not using it for passive income.
Exactly this. Any random billionaire has the same Good vs bad argument against them, but without transparency and without accountability… It shouldn’t be 1 white rich guy’s decision how to spend billions of wealth, how society’s wealth is spent should be the result of democratic process, because creating the wealth is an effort in which (nearly) everyone participates too!
When did I say the government is slow? The government is just the most inefficient by nature of how business works. Large corporations are also inefficient, but they tend to be propped up by the government so they dont need to be efficient.
But it’s not real money in their bank accounts! They can barely go by as is!
Aren’t they using that to get loans? They can easily buy anything they want using that as a collateral. So it is real money.
Pretty much yeah. It’s virtually unlimited money.
Seriously, I saw some of besoz finances (which is a tiny sliver of the big pie) and he got a loan at 0.1% for $2m. Imagine that, and then he doesn’t even have to repay the loan. It’s just as long as he’d pay interest he’s A okay.
That’s why they play a whole different game than us. He isn’t worried about paying back that interest or loan, he’s trying to find a way to make that $2m pay him back 1% or more per interest period. They never have to consider the loan amount, because those interest and payments will be done in 10 years while the profits from that loan will explode into hundreds of millions.
See? Anyone can do it, it’s honestly really fucking easy to come up with a million dollar idea. The hard part is that first couple million dollars. If you aren’t born with it, you will literally never have access to that type of wealth.
PromethielYou could write this in stone and metal on everything on earth; carve it into the very DNA of humanity. And still…
A big subset of these leeching fucks and their admirers would still be on “but he’s so smart and if it so easy how come not every blah blah blah”.
They really do mistake financial Inertia with intelligence; billionaires don’t actually need finance degrees the stupid fucks.
Look at Trump. Doesn’t matter that all of his wealth is on paper and he’s in massive debt. Unless he’s in prison, he will die in the lap of luxury.
That’s only because they let him do it, in a less corrupt country his ass would be in jail already.
You have to pay loans back. Do you think lenders are in the business of handing out free money? They lend because they get a return–if they didn’t, there would be literally zero motivation to lend.
Obviously they pay it back, but the assets used as collateral usually grow faster than the interests they have to pay back. Which is pretty much free money.
Yes, Musk easily found $44 billion to buy out the largest social media platform in existence but there’s absolutely no possible way for him to pay a $6.6 billion dollar tax bill because he doesn’t have that kind of liquidity!
Make them take out loans against their portfolios to pay the wealth tax.
IninewCrowLol … That’s the game every rich person plays and we all accept.
They’re super rich so they can use their imaginary wealth to get even more rich.
When you ask to tax them, the money doesn’t exist or it isn’t what you think it is so you can’t tax them.
We all accept it because these people and their friends own most of the media, so it’s easy for them to make us turn a blind eye to it.
That and they also own enough representatives that there is barely any wiggle room to get out of this mess.
That and they also own enough representatives that there is barely any wiggle room to get out of this mess.
☂️-break up their monopolies then.
JackGreenEarthWhy take so little? I would recommend a 80% tax bracket above £1b.
Personally, I would say anything over $100 million (or £ if you wish) should be taxed at 99%.
No one even nees $100 million, so that’s being quite generous.
Are you counting actual money or just the value of assets?
And the value of the assets is defined by whom?
If only there were ways to value assets for tax purposes.
Too bad that’s 100% impossible.
The deal with wealth is that it’s not income. Wealth is income accumulated over time.
So is your 80% top bracket rate a one time thing, or every year?
Why not? No one can accumulate that much money without exploitation.
The thing is that in the presence of wealth taxes, wealth dis-accumulates exponentially in the same way that it accumulates exponentially without the tac.
So you end up needing much lower percentage rates on wealth to get the same effect as an 80% tax on marginal income. Wealth tax rates as low as single % would dramatically alter the distribution of wealth.
One time when the tax is first introduced, then per year on all income that increases wealth beyond £1b.
You mean like what we had during the 1940s–50s when the wealthy were taxed 90% (here in the US)? The tax rate the Baby Boomers started off with? We barely survived that time of massive economic expansion the first time around, Preposterous!
They have a psychological problem. They are mentally unsound and need to be locked up. They are destroying lives just so they can win the game of capitalism and hold all the fake money, all the fake power. They want to be demigods, worshiped by the “lessers” at how wonderful and great they are because they are winning the game of capitalism.
And they are succeeding.
If a family has two dogs and a cat, some might think that’s a little much but as long as the animals are healthy and happy it’s fine…
Billionaires are like animal hoarders that go around stealing every dog they see in someone’s backyard and never getting them spayed/neutered or even acknowledging they exist once they have possession.
Billionaires are hoarders, plain and simple.
It’s just in a hyper capitalist society, that’s encouraged instead of viewed as a mental illness.
The great news is even if we tax them, they can still compete for who has the most money.
Major problem with this analogy is if you don’t have a cat or dog you won’t starve to death. These people are trying to hoard resources that are life supporting. They are hoarders, and should be treated as such. The public as a whole needs to have this view and turn our backs on them, just not give them that power or influence over our lives.
Also citizens united needs to be repealed. Corporations are not people.
The Menemen!The power is sadly not “fake”, but very real.
Anyone working in e.g. public infrastructure will be very much able to assure you, how much power money brings and it gets worse with raising levels of political structures.
Why is Bill Gates paying a smaller proportional share than the other two?
XINHas he been paying taxes already?
He’s not ceo of MS anymore
It’s a wealth tax, not an income tax. According to these numbers his wealth is comparable to the other two, so why is his bill over 10x smaller?
That I can’t explain then
The PantserProbably something to do with charity or donations.
Bezos isn’t CEO of Amazon. He’s still paying lots more.
That also seemed odd to me.
I think they are confusing a wealth tax with fair taxation.
The shown numbers seem to roughly correspond with what would be owed if they had paid fair capital gains tax over the past years. In other words, if all the tax loopholes were closed.
Bill Gates just didn’t have nearly the same amount of capital gains over the past few years compared to Elon and Jeff.
A wealth tax would tax then proportionally similar, so Jeff wouldn’t be paying 10x the tax that Bill G would pay.
He’s not taking full advantage of Trump’s tax system, and has been speaking out against it.
Came here to see the discussion on this. My only assumption is he’s been paying more taxes than others. He’s been one of the few in favor of taxing the rich more.
I think the bottom is supposed to say million not billion.
problematicPantherthat’s how much they would have left after being taxed.
Thank you! Mis-read it.
So how does this wealth tax work? Are stock holdings taxed? Stock quantity doesn’t magically go up unlike fiat currency which governments just print more of.
None of these numbers make any sense in terms of how capital actually works. Is the government meant to take the profit in stocks? Because these billionaires aren’t selling that much stock each year and aren’t earning that much from CEO paychecks.
Not to say CEO paychecks aren’t obscene…
And what do you do when they pack up and move themselves and their companies to tax havens?
This entire thread is people who don’t understand how the system works.
That or they understand the system is broken
JakdraculaThe systems not broken it was built this way.
SLVRDRGNThe system was built broken.
You can understand something is broken without knowing how to fix it. But you can’t fix something without knowing how it works or being extremely lucky.
Naa I think a large chunk just think most of these guys have that in cash laying around. Someones liquid worth is a lot less than what they have. Everyone of these guys has their money tied to a company. If you make them sell the stock to cover the tax you’re going to watch these companies go under.
I’m not saying it’s a good system, just that it doesn’t work the way these memes act like they do.
Would you like to have the gov tax you on your entire worth? Probably not.
s38b35M5“Finance and economics is too complex for the poors to understand. Just trust us; we know what’s best doe everyone.” -The not-poors
RivalarrivalIs the government meant to take the profit in stocks?
Yes.
There is no need for the billionaire to liquidate their stock in order to pay a tax in dollars. The IRS just confiscates an equal percentage of every position they hold, and liquidates it over time, selling no more than 1% of each position’s total traded volume per month, so as to not radically impact the stock price.
When they pack up and move, we say “mission accomplished”. Let them leech off an adversary’s economy.
The IRS just confiscates an equal percentage of every position they hold
Congrats there are now 3 men who can collaborate to collapse the government by shorting an insane position, have a portion of it seized, and wipe out all government revenue for a year. Sure they’d also be infinitely broke but you just gave them the lever to kill a country.