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>No single human needs a billion dollars And no human being needs however much you're earning, as people in third world countries survive on far less. Life's a

>No single human needs a billion dollars And no human being needs however much you're earning, as people in third world countries survive on far less. Life's about more than "need", and if you give the government enough power to prevent people having more than they need, you inevitably create a horrible dystopia, probably accompanied by genocide, like happened in Russia, Chinaa and Cambodia when they let the government make the final decision on how much wealth people are allowed to have. Because when the people in the government have that power, they'll inevitably decide that they're the only ones who should have wealth.

wpietri 3y ago
That is regrettably low on data. Take a look at countries sorted by Gini coefficient (a measure of wealth inequality): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... Note, for example, that the Nordic countries do very well by this measure. I'm no expert, but why do you think Denmark is a "horrible dystopia, probably accompanied by genocide"?
- mrep 3y ago
  You know there is a wealth gini right [0] which has Sweden actually being higher than the US and Denmark 4 spots below it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
  - wpietri 3y ago
    Those are very dodgy numbers. Created by one company from patchy and suspicious data, and then just SWAGging the numbers for most of the countries. No peer review. Source data and code both unavailable. And even they say their numbers are "based on the view that wealth inequality is likely to be highly correlated with income inequality", so I think the numbers I used are the better ones for this case.
kthejoker2 3y ago
This is quite the slipper slope fallacy. We can absolutely have surtaxes on personal wealth that effectively limit people to a billion dollars. We could for example have a 100% surtax on building a superyacht or buying an island in Hawaii or any political donations above $50,000. These taxes could then just offset payroll and income taxes for lower wage citizens. Pure redistribution, tied to work. Taxing superyachts isn't Cambodia.

wpietri 3y ago

That is regrettably low on data. Take a look at countries sorted by Gini coefficient (a measure of wealth inequality): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... Note, for example, that the Nordic countries do very well by this measure. I'm no expert, but why do you think Denmark is a "horrible dystopia, probably accompanied by genocide"?

mrep 3y ago
You know there is a wealth gini right [0] which has Sweden actually being higher than the US and Denmark 4 spots below it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
- wpietri 3y ago
  Those are very dodgy numbers. Created by one company from patchy and suspicious data, and then just SWAGging the numbers for most of the countries. No peer review. Source data and code both unavailable. And even they say their numbers are "based on the view that wealth inequality is likely to be highly correlated with income inequality", so I think the numbers I used are the better ones for this case.

kthejoker2 3y ago

This is quite the slipper slope fallacy. We can absolutely have surtaxes on personal wealth that effectively limit people to a billion dollars. We could for example have a 100% surtax on building a superyacht or buying an island in Hawaii or any political donations above $50,000. These taxes could then just offset payroll and income taxes for lower wage citizens. Pure redistribution, tied to work. Taxing superyachts isn't Cambodia.