6 ms·

Incorrect. There should not even _be_ billionaires. It's _long past_ time to tax billionaires. At this point, it may not even be possible.

bentruyman 3y ago
There really aren't that many billionaires. Most of what we refer to as billionaires are people who have a large equity stake in companies they run. So are we saying once your equity becomes to large you have to start selling shares? People who say this stuff usually have zero clue how money works.
- marnett 3y ago
  I’m interested why you think most of global billionaires are people with large equity stakes in companies? People who often focus in on just the capitalist entrepreneur sect of the billionaire class often have zero clue how global Class Systems work, and just how many billionaires there are that have never worked an honest day in their lives.
  - lkbm 3y ago
    Do you know of a place with a breakdown? Skimming through the Forbes list, the top ones are pretty much ones I recognize as having been founders, CEOs, and/or early employees of large corporations. As I scroll down the list, there are a lot more that I don't know or believe are merely decedents of those such people, but I still see plenty I recognize as founders or as still running companies. Is it 10%? 50%? 80%? Don't just assert we're clueless without providing some source to show us that we're wrong. Far too often such assertions aren't actually based on anything but vibes, so "just trust me" isn't much good.
- nix0n 3y ago
  > once your equity becomes to large you have to start selling shares? Yes. If you own over $1B of corporations, you have too much power.
  - xur17 3y ago
    Even if you created that corporation yourself? And if so, who should we hand over the power to? If we tax assets, it will be given to the government, which historically hasn't been all that great at allocating capital.
    - bentruyman 3y ago
      These people say they don't want all this power centralized to certain individuals, will in the next breath claim that government should seize assets after a certain amount. They want centralized control, they just want their preferred political party to be the ones with it.
    - nix0n 3y ago
      > Even if you created that corporation yourself? Yes. > who should we hand over the power to? The shares are sold to whoever's buying, so the billionaire can pay the wealth tax, to the government. This would essentially be the same as when someone wins a car on a game show. The car is taxable income, which means that they sometimes have to sell the car to pay that tax. > the government, which historically hasn't been all that great at allocating capital The only way anyone gets to be a billionaire is by hoarding wealth. It's a catastrophically bad allocation of capital.
      - nickpp 3y ago
        Do you realize the billionaire has no saying in how much money he “has”? He just owns stock in a company he built from ground up. It’s us saying that that stock has a certain value. It’s us saying the owner is a billionaire. We are the ones making him a billionaire.
        nix0n 3y ago
        You could make the same argument about landlords, but we still tax the value of a building.
        3y ago
aeternum 3y ago
What if everyone carried around little thankyou notes and any time someone did something nice or improved their life in some way, they give/send them a thankyou note. Would you have an issue if someone eventually collected a billion thankyou notes?
- skyyler 3y ago
  I certainly would if those thankyou notes were the only way normal people could secure food and shelter and the collection of a billion of them was contributing to normal people being unable to obtain thankyou notes.
  - jstanley 3y ago
    > the collection of a billion of them was contributing to normal people being unable to obtain thankyou notes. The reason poor people are poor is not that rich people are rich! The rich being rich and the poor being poor are 2 separate phenomena. It's not like there's some fixed pot of utility in the world, and the more one person has the less someone else has.
    - skyyler 3y ago
      >It's not like there's some fixed pot of utility in the world, and the more one person has the less someone else has. There is quite literally a finite amount of resources on this planet. Land, gold, oxygen, lithium... These things are limited. The more land one person has, the less there is for others.
      - jstanley 3y ago
        That's true about land (that's why we should have a land value tax and abolish all other taxes).
      - aeternum 3y ago
        There are either ways to make more, or alternatives for all of those things. We've never run out of a resource despite the constant fear of it happening.

bentruyman 3y ago

There really aren't that many billionaires. Most of what we refer to as billionaires are people who have a large equity stake in companies they run. So are we saying once your equity becomes to large you have to start selling shares? People who say this stuff usually have zero clue how money works.

marnett 3y ago
I’m interested why you think most of global billionaires are people with large equity stakes in companies? People who often focus in on just the capitalist entrepreneur sect of the billionaire class often have zero clue how global Class Systems work, and just how many billionaires there are that have never worked an honest day in their lives.
- lkbm 3y ago
  Do you know of a place with a breakdown? Skimming through the Forbes list, the top ones are pretty much ones I recognize as having been founders, CEOs, and/or early employees of large corporations. As I scroll down the list, there are a lot more that I don't know or believe are merely decedents of those such people, but I still see plenty I recognize as founders or as still running companies. Is it 10%? 50%? 80%? Don't just assert we're clueless without providing some source to show us that we're wrong. Far too often such assertions aren't actually based on anything but vibes, so "just trust me" isn't much good.
nix0n 3y ago
> once your equity becomes to large you have to start selling shares? Yes. If you own over $1B of corporations, you have too much power.
- xur17 3y ago
  Even if you created that corporation yourself? And if so, who should we hand over the power to? If we tax assets, it will be given to the government, which historically hasn't been all that great at allocating capital.
  - bentruyman 3y ago
    These people say they don't want all this power centralized to certain individuals, will in the next breath claim that government should seize assets after a certain amount. They want centralized control, they just want their preferred political party to be the ones with it.
  - nix0n 3y ago
    > Even if you created that corporation yourself? Yes. > who should we hand over the power to? The shares are sold to whoever's buying, so the billionaire can pay the wealth tax, to the government. This would essentially be the same as when someone wins a car on a game show. The car is taxable income, which means that they sometimes have to sell the car to pay that tax. > the government, which historically hasn't been all that great at allocating capital The only way anyone gets to be a billionaire is by hoarding wealth. It's a catastrophically bad allocation of capital.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Do you realize the billionaire has no saying in how much money he “has”? He just owns stock in a company he built from ground up. It’s us saying that that stock has a certain value. It’s us saying the owner is a billionaire. We are the ones making him a billionaire.
      - nix0n 3y ago
        You could make the same argument about landlords, but we still tax the value of a building.
        3y ago

aeternum 3y ago

What if everyone carried around little thankyou notes and any time someone did something nice or improved their life in some way, they give/send them a thankyou note. Would you have an issue if someone eventually collected a billion thankyou notes?

skyyler 3y ago
I certainly would if those thankyou notes were the only way normal people could secure food and shelter and the collection of a billion of them was contributing to normal people being unable to obtain thankyou notes.
- jstanley 3y ago
  > the collection of a billion of them was contributing to normal people being unable to obtain thankyou notes. The reason poor people are poor is not that rich people are rich! The rich being rich and the poor being poor are 2 separate phenomena. It's not like there's some fixed pot of utility in the world, and the more one person has the less someone else has.
  - skyyler 3y ago
    >It's not like there's some fixed pot of utility in the world, and the more one person has the less someone else has. There is quite literally a finite amount of resources on this planet. Land, gold, oxygen, lithium... These things are limited. The more land one person has, the less there is for others.
    - jstanley 3y ago
      That's true about land (that's why we should have a land value tax and abolish all other taxes).
    - aeternum 3y ago
      There are either ways to make more, or alternatives for all of those things. We've never run out of a resource despite the constant fear of it happening.