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That wealth is not sitting in a bank account somewhere. It is in the form of corporate ownership, stocks, it is part of the economy. Some of it is never raw c
by b112 3y ago
That wealth is not sitting in a bank account somewhere. It is in the form of corporate ownership, stocks, it is part of the economy. Some of it is never raw cash.
Are you purposing the governement take 99% of ownership of endless corporations? That's pretty much what would happen, if you taxed 99% of billionaire's wealth.
And if you did that, who would the governement sell the shares to? Remember, you just taxes those nasty billionaires, taking 99% of their wealth, so there is no one to sell those shares to.
And next year, there are no billionaires left. And likely the economy has crashed, because yeah, the government knows how to run large corporations well.
All that "billionaire" means, is that the person directs private enterprise. Get over it. We need leaders, and they're it.
- titzer 3y agoHello me from 2003. I would have written almost this exact comment twenty years ago. In the meantime what I've learned is that: 1. Billionaires have 10 fingers and 24 hours just like the rest of us. They are not superhuman, superintelligent, or even particularly good at anything. Many are on top of their organization simply by inheritance or successfully navigating internal organizational politics. 2. Greed is a real disease. It's a mental illness. We don't call it that anymore. But what would you call an obsession with acquiring thousands of times more wealth than is necessary to have a full and complete life? Many lifetimes!? There's some kind of serious pathology there. 3. Billionaires either inherit huge amounts of money or they create organizations that funnel money up to them. The day-to-day earnings of the organization are the operation of a huge pyramid of people who do real work. They're taxing the produced wealth of their org they sit atop of. 4. Most organizations can coast for months or years without any real leadership, but would sputter and stop instantly if the people at the bottom stop working. Our age's conceit is to think the guy with the rudder in the fog is the leader when there are dozens of slaves doing the rowing and fish are jumping in the boat. 5. Billionaires never get screwed. Ever. They have bad ideas all the time. They can literally fuck up until the cows come home and still get mega payouts and people still lionize them.
- jntvjnvutnuvt 3y agoYou completely misunderstand where billionaire wealth comes from. They are billionaires on paper, not from funneling money from workers to their bank accounts.
- titzer 3y agoI get your point, that the wealth is based on the value of stocks and so on, but keep in mind that not all billionaires are founders whose billions originated from incepting a company. Some get hundreds of millions in stock grants each year, which is indeed revenue not paid to workers or shareholders.
- aaomidi 3y agoI love how this line is used. so if they’re billionaires on paper, can someone explain their lifestyle? How does Gates own so much farm land? Yall are actively fooling yourselves.
- b112 3y agoSimply because I speak truths about billionaire assets, does not mean I idolize them. I also do not idolize politicians, thought leaders, or really anyone. But billionaires, as I said, are a focal point in a capitalistic society. They direct the wealth they control. There are indeed good and bad billionaires, just as there are good and bad dentists, janitors, and violinists. I wonder, in your world, how readily you realise this, in categories you villianize? It seems more to me, that once you realised billionaires are human, you became angry with the the wealth they manage. Did you become mad with other levers in our society, when you realised the same?
- boredpeter 3y agoThere’s many things we can do to address the problem without resorting to seizing all of their wealth in a single year. 1. A wealth tax of 1% (we pay property taxes today this is no different) over a wealth of $10 million 2. End share buybacks (this is just stock price manipulation to enrich shareholders) 3. Tax corporations on the profits they report to shareholders, not the IRS. If corporations want to dodge taxes with nonsense ownership structures but want to brag about their profits to shareholders then fine, we’ll use that number instead At the end of the day we don’t need billionaires to run corporations. Amazon would be fine without Bezos, as would Tesla, etc. There’s millions of competent people that exist that can run a business without privatizing all the wealth for themselves.
- WalterBright 3y agoFrance tried the wealth tax. It resulted in lower tax revenues, not higher. > There’s millions of competent people that exist that can run a business without privatizing all the wealth for themselves. So why aren't they billionaires?
- aaomidi 3y agoBecause becoming a billionaire requires stealing labor that you didn’t do, which goes against the whole comment they made?
- WalterBright 3y agoMaking a deal to exchange money for labor is not stealing. If you still think your labor is being stolen, start your own business, where you get to keep all the profits.
- boredpeter 3y agoIt does when all the land in a country is privatized and people can’t sustain themselves without being coerced into an employer-employee agreement where the employer has all the leverage.
- no_wizard 3y agoMind you, when taxes were the highest ever in the US, we produced billionaires, such as Howard Hughes[0]. On the highest end during this period, income tax was 70% and capital gains tax was a high as 25% (compared to 15% today). It doesn't stop people at a certain point, because at a certain point the money just isn't "real". If you could earn 60% of a billion dollars, would you take that deal? Of course you would. anyone would. 400 million dollars is a staggering amount of money for anyone. [0]: https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/25483-howard-hughes-aviator-billionaire-philanthropist https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/25483-howard-hughes-aviat...
- andrepd 3y agoDamn, TIL that it's either "billionaires pay the least amount of tax in any income bracket" or "the gobnmint seizes 99% of all enterprise stock in 1 year".