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It's the primary goal of a wealth tax. To reduce the concentration of wealth in a small minority of the population. Let's say that there was a 1% wealth tax on
by rswail 6y ago
It's the primary goal of a wealth tax. To reduce the concentration of wealth in a small minority of the population.
Let's say that there was a 1% wealth tax on all wealth over $1b. So Bezos would have to liquidate say $1b each year for that tax.
Yes, he'd have to sell Amazon stock. That would feed into the stock price of Amazon in terms of increased liquidity of the stock, but it has zero effect on the operations or growth or income of Amazon itself.
Arguably it would have little or no impact on Bezos' activities. He would still be running Amazon, he would still be working to make it grow etc.
What would change is that over time, the wealth would be distributed via the items funded by that tax.
- dublin 6y agoIt's worth noting that Bezos does exactly this every year (sell $1B of his stock annually). It's how he funds Blue Origin, among other new ventures.
- zepto 6y ago“The wealth would be distributed by the items funded by that tax” This is highly questionable - the idea that a dollar of tax is equivalent to a dollar of wealth distributed rests on the assumption that elected officials can deploy the money efficiently. I’m not claiming that government can never do this - clearly nation building has been done before.
- dane-pgp 6y ago> Let's say that there was a 1% wealth tax on all wealth over $1b. This is what the article disingenuously(?) leaves out. If a society wanted to deplete billionaires, it could put a wealth tax on just the dollars above and including the billionth dollar that an individual nominally owned. The idea is that anyone who isn't a billionaire wouldn't be affected. Making this tax rate be 1% has the added advantage that you can call it "the 1% tax", because it would only apply to (a small subset of) the top 1% of richest people. I don't know how many Americans became multi-billionaires by founding companies in their twenties, but here is a list of billionaire founders of internet companies: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8562379.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8562379.stm
- Zak 6y agoA tax on the top 1% of net worth households would start much lower than a billion dollars. A quick google search says it's around $10 million. That's more on the order of a medium-large car dealership or similar local business than a significant share in a megacorporation.