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Taxing the 1% more heavily isn't really the same thing as eliminating the 1% though is it? And taxing wealth over a certain limit, which is what the person you

Taxing the 1% more heavily isn't really the same thing as eliminating the 1% though is it? And taxing wealth over a certain limit, which is what the person you were replying to is probably getting at, solves your problem taxing income preventing people from becoming wealthy in the first place.

WalterBright 7y ago
> Taxing the 1% more heavily isn't really the same thing as eliminating the 1% though is it? Bernie Sanders has stated he wants to tax billionaires into non-billionaire status. So yes, it's about eliminating the 1%.
- learc83 7y ago
  There are only about 600 billionaires in the US. The top 1% is over 3 million people. Also they'll still be in the top %0.01 with $999 million. You're also making some weird assumptions that transferring money away from billionaires would just destroy that money, and that the current billionaires are using their resources in the most productive way possible. The real world isn't Atlas Shrugged. Look up income velocity of money.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    > You're also making some weird assumptions that transferring money away from billionaires would just destroy that money, and that the current billionaires are using their resources in the most productive way possible There's nothing weird about that. You don't get to be a billionaire by being bad at managing your money, nor do you get to be a billionaire by investing in less productive investments. By taxing the 1%, you are removing money from the most productive investments.
    - learc83 7y ago
      >You don't get to be a billionaire by being bad at managing your money, nor do you get to be a billionaire by investing in less productive investments. Since close to half of America's billionaires inherited their fortunes, that's not really something you can prove. And that fact that it makes money doesn't necessarily mean it's beneficial to society, nor does it even mean it's the most economically productive possible use of resources. >By taxing the 1%, you are removing money from the most productive investments. Billionaires aren't the 1%. And "the most productive" investments isn't something you can prove or even make a semi-convincing argument for.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        You're going to have a tough row to hoe convincing anyone that the people who make the most money from their investments aren't the best at productively investing money.
        learc83 7y ago
        1. There's no way to prove that. We aren't a pure meritocracy. There's a huge element of luck to becoming a billionaire. So it's very likely that there are > 600 people out of the 330 million non billionaires who are at least as good or better at investing than the current billionaires. 2. Even if we do assume that the current billionaires are better at making money individually, there are still advantages to collective action. That is to say that taking 10% from the most individually productive members of society and building an interstate system likely produces more societal and economic benefit than whatever they would have done with the that money individually.

WalterBright 7y ago

> Taxing the 1% more heavily isn't really the same thing as eliminating the 1% though is it? Bernie Sanders has stated he wants to tax billionaires into non-billionaire status. So yes, it's about eliminating the 1%.

learc83 7y ago
There are only about 600 billionaires in the US. The top 1% is over 3 million people. Also they'll still be in the top %0.01 with $999 million. You're also making some weird assumptions that transferring money away from billionaires would just destroy that money, and that the current billionaires are using their resources in the most productive way possible. The real world isn't Atlas Shrugged. Look up income velocity of money.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > You're also making some weird assumptions that transferring money away from billionaires would just destroy that money, and that the current billionaires are using their resources in the most productive way possible There's nothing weird about that. You don't get to be a billionaire by being bad at managing your money, nor do you get to be a billionaire by investing in less productive investments. By taxing the 1%, you are removing money from the most productive investments.
  - learc83 7y ago
    >You don't get to be a billionaire by being bad at managing your money, nor do you get to be a billionaire by investing in less productive investments. Since close to half of America's billionaires inherited their fortunes, that's not really something you can prove. And that fact that it makes money doesn't necessarily mean it's beneficial to society, nor does it even mean it's the most economically productive possible use of resources. >By taxing the 1%, you are removing money from the most productive investments. Billionaires aren't the 1%. And "the most productive" investments isn't something you can prove or even make a semi-convincing argument for.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      You're going to have a tough row to hoe convincing anyone that the people who make the most money from their investments aren't the best at productively investing money.
      - learc83 7y ago
        1. There's no way to prove that. We aren't a pure meritocracy. There's a huge element of luck to becoming a billionaire. So it's very likely that there are > 600 people out of the 330 million non billionaires who are at least as good or better at investing than the current billionaires. 2. Even if we do assume that the current billionaires are better at making money individually, there are still advantages to collective action. That is to say that taking 10% from the most individually productive members of society and building an interstate system likely produces more societal and economic benefit than whatever they would have done with the that money individually.