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Just like any other tax enforcement works. It’s leg work, forensic accountants and laws that demand accountability. If the government thinks your cheating your

Just like any other tax enforcement works. It’s leg work, forensic accountants and laws that demand accountability. If the government thinks your cheating your taxes people are tasked to investigate… if the government suspects your cheating the 100% billionaire tax they would assign people to the task and investigate. I don’t know why people pretend this has to be special… like billionaires are supervillains with unbelievable power to conceal their globe spanning networks and operations.

elsjaako 4y ago
I didn't mean how would the tax work. I meant how would ownership of companies work? If a company is worth 100 billion ($1e11), does that mean you need 100 000 people who together own that company (and nothing else)? If it has a good month and becomes worth more, you need to find more people? Capping wealth at a billion has a couple of icky practicalities, but I can definitely understand why you would want to do this. There are less than a thousand billionaires in the USA right now, if we can radically improve wealth equality by affecting that many people it seems like a good trade, and those people are still filthy rich at the end of the process. But if you cap it at a million, I start to see things that require millionaires. Starting large companies and family owned farms are two of them. I'm genuinely curious what alternatives to millionaires we have there. Are you (or bambax) arguing for straight up communism, where everything is owned "communally" or by the state?
- techdragon 4y ago
  The day to day value is probably not even a remotely practical metric for this sort of taxation. Average yearly value or quarterly value or something like that seems much more sensible. You can’t expect anything to work if people are worried about daily price fluctuations causing them significant impact. This isn’t meant to be some sort of punishment after all, just the logical extension of steadily increasing high income tax brackets to a point where we as a society agree you don’t need any more money and the tax rate becomes 100%. If it worked with strait income it wouldn’t be too hard but at the level of wealth we’re talking about most of the money isn’t income it’s just capital… a big pile of capital assets of value they have control over which they can leverage small portions off to take loans against for cash to do whatever they want at an interest rate lower than the rate of growth in the value of their capital assets… because they’re never a risky loan applicant and the whole system tilts towards them almost as if money had some weird form of financial gravity. So while I’m no super genius economist and political wizard with all the answers to how it can be done, I just think it’s important we recognise that there’s a point where these people have so much money the system is broken for them and if we believe in the equality of all people, that all people are born equal, we should be trying to change the system in a way to rectify the problems their wealth causes. There would be years of arguing all the details about trusts and percentages and inheritance and family control and super PACs and even if it’s constitutionally allowed since there’s precedent that money is speech and this could be argued to be an unreasonable restriction on the sort of speech (money) a person can have (not more than a billion dollars worth)… it’s a massively complicated question I’m just saying I think we can agree it’s well and truly kicked in by the time you have a billion dollars and maybe we can all get together and work out a way we agree on that stops people getting more power and money for free due to capital interest rate returns each day than many of us will ever have in a lifetime.
  - b112 4y ago
    all people are born equal All people should have equal opportunity, free from prejudice, sexism, etc. But all people are not born equal. Equality in rights, does not mean people are identical. Where I live, taxes become crazy high if single, and with imcome over 100k. So I just work less. And I get paid well, for I am exceptionally good at what I do. This means that by taking more of my money, simply because I choose to excel, the government has taken part of my labour, right off the market. The skills they so very much desire, are diminished. People blather on about billionaires, and how the wealth should be redistributed. I've done the math. Take all that wealth, and in 1 year it is gone, forever, never to return, and it barely makes a dent in anything. Communism just doesn't work, because it removes that drive, that zen to compete, that desire to build from people. It just smacks of jealousy to me.

elsjaako 4y ago

I didn't mean how would the tax work. I meant how would ownership of companies work? If a company is worth 100 billion ($1e11), does that mean you need 100 000 people who together own that company (and nothing else)? If it has a good month and becomes worth more, you need to find more people? Capping wealth at a billion has a couple of icky practicalities, but I can definitely understand why you would want to do this. There are less than a thousand billionaires in the USA right now, if we can radically improve wealth equality by affecting that many people it seems like a good trade, and those people are still filthy rich at the end of the process. But if you cap it at a million, I start to see things that require millionaires. Starting large companies and family owned farms are two of them. I'm genuinely curious what alternatives to millionaires we have there. Are you (or bambax) arguing for straight up communism, where everything is owned "communally" or by the state?

techdragon 4y ago
The day to day value is probably not even a remotely practical metric for this sort of taxation. Average yearly value or quarterly value or something like that seems much more sensible. You can’t expect anything to work if people are worried about daily price fluctuations causing them significant impact. This isn’t meant to be some sort of punishment after all, just the logical extension of steadily increasing high income tax brackets to a point where we as a society agree you don’t need any more money and the tax rate becomes 100%. If it worked with strait income it wouldn’t be too hard but at the level of wealth we’re talking about most of the money isn’t income it’s just capital… a big pile of capital assets of value they have control over which they can leverage small portions off to take loans against for cash to do whatever they want at an interest rate lower than the rate of growth in the value of their capital assets… because they’re never a risky loan applicant and the whole system tilts towards them almost as if money had some weird form of financial gravity. So while I’m no super genius economist and political wizard with all the answers to how it can be done, I just think it’s important we recognise that there’s a point where these people have so much money the system is broken for them and if we believe in the equality of all people, that all people are born equal, we should be trying to change the system in a way to rectify the problems their wealth causes. There would be years of arguing all the details about trusts and percentages and inheritance and family control and super PACs and even if it’s constitutionally allowed since there’s precedent that money is speech and this could be argued to be an unreasonable restriction on the sort of speech (money) a person can have (not more than a billion dollars worth)… it’s a massively complicated question I’m just saying I think we can agree it’s well and truly kicked in by the time you have a billion dollars and maybe we can all get together and work out a way we agree on that stops people getting more power and money for free due to capital interest rate returns each day than many of us will ever have in a lifetime.
- b112 4y ago
  all people are born equal All people should have equal opportunity, free from prejudice, sexism, etc. But all people are not born equal. Equality in rights, does not mean people are identical. Where I live, taxes become crazy high if single, and with imcome over 100k. So I just work less. And I get paid well, for I am exceptionally good at what I do. This means that by taking more of my money, simply because I choose to excel, the government has taken part of my labour, right off the market. The skills they so very much desire, are diminished. People blather on about billionaires, and how the wealth should be redistributed. I've done the math. Take all that wealth, and in 1 year it is gone, forever, never to return, and it barely makes a dent in anything. Communism just doesn't work, because it removes that drive, that zen to compete, that desire to build from people. It just smacks of jealousy to me.