4 ms·

I've wondered about this. Would it be possible to have an income/asset tax such that it introduces a wealth cap of some amount which can never be reached? For

by warent 7y ago

I've wondered about this. Would it be possible to have an income/asset tax such that it introduces a wealth cap of some amount which can never be reached? For example, the limit could be $30,000,000 so if you're making more than that in pretax income, your income would be $29,999,999.999 etc. with the fractional cent increasing so people could still compete on a scoreboard. Also, it seems like one of the biggest arguments against capping wealth is that it would disincentive innovation. But just about every person who became billionaires through innovation never had that intention to begin with. I firmly believe Jeff Bezos would still be running Amazon if he had a wealth cap. Mark Zuckerberg would still be running Facebook. No?

munk-a 7y ago
An explicit wealth cap seems unnecessary so long as there are appropriately punishing taxes on wealth retention - If there was, say, a 5% wealth tax above 5 or 10 million then Gates & Bezos both would never be able to sustain their fortunes but they would remain fabulously wealthy.
- ggreer 7y ago
  Their wealth is not a pile of cash or a number in a bank account, it's ownership of the companies they founded. Every year, they would be forced to hand 5% of their shares over to the federal government. If such a tax were implemented 15 years ago, all Fortune 500 companies today would be controlled by congress and Donald Trump. Also both SpaceX and Tesla would have almost certainly gone bankrupt in late 2008 as Musk would not have had the wealth to support both of them.
rtkwe 7y ago
An annoying side effect of extreme wealth is they have a lot of money to spend finding ways around taxes. If any country ever does move to a hard wealth limit I imagine there will be a lot of rich people suddenly getting sweetheart deals on 'renting' all the things they used to own from fly by night offshore companies or something.

by warent 7y ago

munk-a 7y ago

An explicit wealth cap seems unnecessary so long as there are appropriately punishing taxes on wealth retention - If there was, say, a 5% wealth tax above 5 or 10 million then Gates & Bezos both would never be able to sustain their fortunes but they would remain fabulously wealthy.

ggreer 7y ago
Their wealth is not a pile of cash or a number in a bank account, it's ownership of the companies they founded. Every year, they would be forced to hand 5% of their shares over to the federal government. If such a tax were implemented 15 years ago, all Fortune 500 companies today would be controlled by congress and Donald Trump. Also both SpaceX and Tesla would have almost certainly gone bankrupt in late 2008 as Musk would not have had the wealth to support both of them.

rtkwe 7y ago

An annoying side effect of extreme wealth is they have a lot of money to spend finding ways around taxes. If any country ever does move to a hard wealth limit I imagine there will be a lot of rich people suddenly getting sweetheart deals on 'renting' all the things they used to own from fly by night offshore companies or something.