As of this point every wealth tax that has been implemented ends up getting abandoned because if how inefficient they are. It's like rent control, it sounds great on paper bu historically never works out like it was planned.
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Forcing Bezos to liquidate $6b of Amazon would have an effect on the economy.
Plus, you don't think they would really pay that tax, do you? There's always a loophole.
Only $4.6 Billion for Musk? I'm sure he'd appreciate that, since he paid $11Billion in 2021.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla-zero-tax-bill/index.html
How would this be implemented? I don't think the market would appreciate if all billionaires were suddenly forced to sell off billions worth of their shares. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to fight back against these tyrants, but not if it crashes the economy and makes the lives of workers worse.
Say it with me: The stock market is not the economy.
I hate the stock market as much as the next guy. Glorified gambling.
But, the stock market is tied directly to the economy
What do you think most people's retirement accounts are tied to?
According to a quick Google, 61% of adults in US own stock. Which means more than half the population has an interest in the stock market not crashing.
Yes the 1% probably owns the majority of stocks. Quick Google says 54% of all stocks.
US Dollar is a fiat currency. It's only backed by the faith of the people behind it.
It can absolutely crash and while the 1% will suffer, we will all suffer at least a little bit.
The stock prices wouldn't be affected except in the short term. The fundamentals of the companies wouldn't change and so the price would recover quickly. Any dip is due to a temporary imbalance of buyers and sellers.
These stock sales would likely be spread over longer durations so as not to crash the price which would also be bad for the billionaires because they would have to sell more stock to cover the tax.
Bernie shit lol, this is never gonna happen
I agree we should have a more progressive tax. The problem is fair is a relative term. When is fair fair enough? The fact is the underlying problem is overspending and no amount of "fair" increases to the tax rate is going to solve that problem.
At this point I'd be happy if they would just stop CUTTING the taxes for the rich. Somehow even with massive deficits, that continues to be one of the primary policy positions of the Republican party.
As a temporarily embarrassed billionaire myself, I have reservations about this
Wealth taxes actually work, that's why the rich attack them so vehemently.
I think you're wrong on both points. I've heard plenty of rich people say they believe their tax rate should be higher including some of the ones on that list. You're also wrong when you say it works. It works for who? If you don't attack the spending problem it's just more money to be wasted. Let's face it the political system is outstanding and finding some need to spend every cent they can possibly get their hands on. It won't matter if they spend it on your priorities or someone else's they will always find the need to spend it. In our current inflation based economy they don't even need to spend what they take in it's easier to just print more and that's exactly what they're doing.
rich person talk: it's not a tax problem, it's a spending problem.
No it's not, money spent in the economy is money going around. rather than hoarded offshore.
Fuck the billionaires, tax them all by 100% of their income beyond 1 billion.
None of these guys has income anywhere near a billion in yearly income. They have stock and other assets that are worth billions but it is not income per se. If anything they go to extreme lengths to minimize their income.
See? that's another thing. Why is some income not considered income?
People who actually have to work ALWAYS have to pay taxes, but the parasites that gamble in the stock market get to keep all that money they won, and if they lose they get a bailout from the taxpayers.
There are billionaires out there that have become so narcissistic that they just say it outright. "I'm going to privatize the profits and socialize the losses"
is there anyway to classify new/gained assets and tax that?
Ate they not taxed when they are bought and sold?
Here's the basic idea of what I'd think is fair
You have a basic rate for income below the 20th percentile of all incomes
Multiply that by 1.5 for income between that and the 40th percentile
Multiply that by 1.25 for income between that and the 60th percentile
Multiply that by 1.125 for income between that and the 80th percentile
Multiply that by 1.0625 for income between that and the 95th percentile
Multiply that by 1.03125 for income between that and the 99th percentile
Multiply that by 1.015625 for all income above the 99th percentile, with the additional caveat that people who top this bracket even once cannot hold public office, donate to political campaigns, or hire lobbyists and lobbying firms for ten years following them topping out.
Imagine something similar for taxes on units of housing owned, dividends earned, and so on and so forth.
The idea being that the highest rate can't be adjusted without significantly reducing the tax burden of the poorest, basically erasing the only way conservatives have been able to balance the books whenever they try that shit.
Wealth taxes are stupid. That said, nobody needs multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.
The solution is to have regulations and laws in place that prevent them getting this large in the first place. The fact that Amazon and Google own 90% of the internet is absolutely fucked.
I agree, no one should be able to hold such an obscene amount of wealth. Right now they do, though. How do you propose this be remedied?
Sad day when "billionaires should pay taxes" is considered a far left position.
Billionaires should pay a wealth tax is considered a far left position. Billionaires should pay an income tax is a position supported by all except maybe some tea party folk.
Wealth is not money. There's nothing to tax.
It's also real money, otherwise Musk couldn't have bought Twitter for $44 billion. He sure didn't have that amount on his bank account but he still bought it all the same, thus giving him a substantial soft power through information.
And now Twitter is down to $4b. Because wealth is not money.
This is a very true statement.
Stocks won't get taxed unless they get actioned on. That is where the majority of their preceeded wealth is.
The US government is sovereign, it can very much either take ownership of the stock, or estimate its value and construct a loan that the company owners needs to pay back because they owe this tax. Or probably 100s of more clever solutions as well.
It can definitely decide to tax wealth if it wanted to, it could also break up large companies to at least spread the wealth of these institutions wider. It mostly just doesn't "want" to.
This argument is so unnecessary defeatist pretending the most militarised and police ridden country in the world has no power to enforce laws it could write.
Opposite to that notion I think if the US had any interest in fairness in taxation, especially on a more global scale, it could easily get all the common tax havens/financial secrecy jurisdictions, to fold to essentially whatever demands if has. But again it seems like the US government strangely doesn't really want that either.
Which is still the central issue the US government is more captured by the billionaire class than a lot of people like to think they are, and it's never just the dem or just the reps, it's large portions of both parties that are essentially captured in this way, or just fall into it because preserving the status quo is easy.
Regardless of how hard it's to do this, you'll get what out of this... 15B? That's nothing... the government spends that in less than a day. Maybe cut government spending in half first. None of this is sustainable.
You hear that everyone? $15 billion is nothing.
Wealth tax should absolutely be a priority. In my state, MA, we voted in a "millionaires tax". One thing it will cover is state wide free school lunch.
Do billionaires actually have billions in real money sitting around? I've always thought the billions were in stocks and couldn't be taxed until they cashed it out and they could technically lose everything if the stock price falls. That's really fucked up if true
Nobody keeps that amount of cash. Even below a million, most people have most of their wealth in either real estate (their own house) or financial securities (stocks, ETFs, bonds).
Yet, we all gotta pay property tax and capital gains.
The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds.
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