Every nation should treat billionaires like a natural resource and mine them of their riches until exhausted, just like a nice thick seam of coal or a reservoir of oil, then make the spoils available to the nation's citizens. If they crop up again, mine them again.
@anon_opin
A 100% effective tax rate would do that, but as with everything it requires global consensus

@aaron @anon_opin No, it does not, just effective methods to make sure that the billionaire and his resources cannot disappear.

Actually, if memory serves, that theocracy of capitalism, the USA, has a 30% exit tax for denaturalization AND is one of the few countries that requires its citizens to pay income tax no matter if they live in the country.

The issue is more that in the >1b wealth bracket, the wealth is usually decoupled legally from the physical persons.

So the “family” wealth is literally parked in all kinds of legal constructs like trusts, and the “super rich” are only just simple millionaires or multimillionaires personally but control and benefit from much bigger wealth.

In the past two decades, the cost of such intransparent wealth management has gone up far, but it's still available to the ultra rich.

@yacc143 @anon_opin
It seems you're telling me consensus wouldn't work but then laying out reasons as to why consensus would be required 🙃

@aaron @anon_opin I'm saying that consensus is not required.

And cutting off the "places that still offer" intransparent legal constructs, is simple in theory.

Make deals with these jurisdictions by default invalid until the entities involved prove to be fully transparent. Suddenly that 20b family trust in the sunny climate cannot invest in the US or EU or JP…

It worked to make most of these places kill the worst asocial behaviors simply by changing that burden of proof on transactions.

@anon_opin The rhetoric around them is definitely like that is what taxes are.
@anon_opin If entrepreneurs pull themselves up by their bootstraps and create value in the process, we should make them do more bootstrapping, lest they get lazy

@anon_opin

Me, I think of them as piñatas.

@anon_opin

and then fill them in and plant some nice trees on top?

@anon_opin I don't support treating actual natural resources this way, but billionaires are more like an invasive plant than an oil reservoir so I 100% agree with doing this to them, the same way I'd happily harvest an invasive plant until it's all gone
@anon_opin You’ve pretty much described billionaires’ attitude to us. I’ve often said that to them we are nothing more than a resource to be strip mined down to the bedrock.
@anon_opin Interesting analogy. We already know that countries with rich natural resources tend to get in trouble. Same with billionaires.