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You're the one who came up with a house analogy. >In contrast, if you were to take an individual worth $10 billion, whose entire net worth is derived from the

You're the one who came up with a house analogy. >In contrast, if you were to take an individual worth $10 billion, whose entire net worth is derived from the ownership of their stock, and were to tax them 2% of their wealth annually, they would have to somehow come up with $200 million every year to pay the tax If your $10 billion dollar asset isn't returning you much more than 2% per year, it has a terrible ROI, and you need to divest. >corporate wealth is NOT zero-sum, it's created. Not absolutely, but the power represented by the percentage of the world's wealth one controls is finite. At the limit if I own 99% of a countries current wealth, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the rest of the citizens of that country to decide that I have amassed too much power and to rectify that by taxation and redistribution.

bhupy 6y ago
> If your $10 billion dollar asset isn't returning you much more than 2% per year, it has a terrible ROI, and you need to divest. That's not how corporate ownership works. It's not about the ROI, it's about ownership in the company you founded / are running. If your goal is just ROI, then you will willingly divest from your own company, at which point your wealth is taxed as a capital gain.
- learc83 6y ago
  For most people they start a company to make money, so ultimately it's about the ROI. They think they'll make more by controlling the company than the alternative When we are talking mutli billionaires like Bezos who may be driven by more grandiose incentives like amassing power, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the rest of us to effectively remove some of their control.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    That's a pretty broad generalization, and you've basically taken what's in reality a spectrum, and characterized it by the two extremes. In reality, there are loads of people in between: founders of medium size businesses. The wealth tax is imposed on everyone in this spectrum. The capital gains tax is only imposed on those that amass the most amount of power.
    - learc83 6y ago
      Even the most aggressive wealth tax that is proposed is for a tax on wealth of over $50 million. So the founder of businesses valued up to around $100 million dollars would reasonably be able to maintain control without paying any wealth tax. So I'm perfectly OK saying you can't single-handedly control a business larger than $100 million without paying the rest of society extra compensation for maintaining that kind of power. Seems perfectly fair to me. Power is finite in the same way land is. If controlling a company is valuable to you in some other way other than just amassing power, say you are really behind the mission of going to space, you can reorganize into a non profit.

bhupy 6y ago

> If your $10 billion dollar asset isn't returning you much more than 2% per year, it has a terrible ROI, and you need to divest. That's not how corporate ownership works. It's not about the ROI, it's about ownership in the company you founded / are running. If your goal is just ROI, then you will willingly divest from your own company, at which point your wealth is taxed as a capital gain.

learc83 6y ago
For most people they start a company to make money, so ultimately it's about the ROI. They think they'll make more by controlling the company than the alternative When we are talking mutli billionaires like Bezos who may be driven by more grandiose incentives like amassing power, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the rest of us to effectively remove some of their control.
- bhupy 6y ago
  That's a pretty broad generalization, and you've basically taken what's in reality a spectrum, and characterized it by the two extremes. In reality, there are loads of people in between: founders of medium size businesses. The wealth tax is imposed on everyone in this spectrum. The capital gains tax is only imposed on those that amass the most amount of power.
  - learc83 6y ago
    Even the most aggressive wealth tax that is proposed is for a tax on wealth of over $50 million. So the founder of businesses valued up to around $100 million dollars would reasonably be able to maintain control without paying any wealth tax. So I'm perfectly OK saying you can't single-handedly control a business larger than $100 million without paying the rest of society extra compensation for maintaining that kind of power. Seems perfectly fair to me. Power is finite in the same way land is. If controlling a company is valuable to you in some other way other than just amassing power, say you are really behind the mission of going to space, you can reorganize into a non profit.