this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
850 points (99.1% liked)
/r/50501 Mirror
663 readers
978 users here now
Mirrored /r/50501 Popular Posts
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Anyone with a billion dollars should be taxed at 110%
I hate that people will argue that highly taxing billionaires is disciplining success. Really? In what way? At what point is the success of their brand, product, or company no longer really theirs? When you're a megacorp with hundreds of thousands of employees what about the success they are producing? It's preposterous to keep holding these oligarchs up on a pedestal and continuing to pretend that they add any real benefit to anything other than the optics their PR people invent for them.
Also, define success. Please, seriously, just do.
Billionaires have failed as humans. They are complete failures. Zero respect for them or their means of money grabbing.
Agreed. Also, billionaires like Musk would still be able to skirt around those taxes by sharing his wealth with his 50 children and baby mamas so it wouldn't even hurt him, it would just limit how much power a single person could have.
Entertainment IP creators like Taylor Swift and JK Rowling is mainly down to their success.
Imagine if the doctor who invented the vaccine for polio demanded a billion dollars. Everyone would be rightfully disgusted even though it was one of the most valuable contributions to humanity of all time. The polio vaccine has saved our country trillions.
Now why is a singer entitled to billions if a vaccine scientists aren't? No one needs or deserves billions. No one.
Not here to argue comparative renumeration.
My point is that there are some individuals are directly worth +1bn. 10 million people paid much more than $100 to see Swift's last tour. That's objective fact, not subjective opinion.
I would certainly join 1bn other people to give the polio vaccine inventor $1.
Yeah, but I would say that is the outlier not the norm. Though, I'm arguing success not talent. At what point has your talent gotten you x amount of fame and fortune and at what point do you not 100% own that success? In both cases, Taylor and JK have an entire crew around them. Makeup Artists, PR people, media personalities, photographers, managers, band members, roadies, and so on and so forth. At what point is a CEO or even a self starter not really 100% owning what the company, product, or persona is? At what point is it down to thousands if not millions of people holding you up? I just think it is something that no economy has ever really determined. It takes a village whether it is fans, consumers, family, friends, coworkers, associates or whatever to build something that can be considered great. I just feel like there's a point where a person really needs to step away and say that it is no longer just MINE anymore, but I'm not greedy either.
I agree with your broader point. For example, Warren Buffet has not done $150bn of work.
Swift and Rowling do have support to make their pie grow much larger than 1bn, but I chose those billionaires because without their contribution there would be no pie at all.
I never understood what you guys mean when you say they should be taxed more. Like.. they are taxed for their income under the same laws you are?
Billionaires are not literally sitting atop a pile of a billion dollars in cash. Their "wealth" is unrealised, which means it's the net worth of assets that they haven't cashed in. In most cases they can't cash in their wealth in even if they wanted. How will you tax them on money they just don't have?
Tax them on loans against those assets. If they can spend it, it's fucking income. Enough bullshit.
Fair enough.
Regardless of their wealth being in M1, M2, or M3, it is wealth taken off the backs of the working class and given to the hands of a few people. Taxing it is the most conservative approach to giving it back to the people who actually created that wealth; it's a solution that works within the existing political system.
Money itself is an abstraction for wealth. Sometimes, it can be a useful one. But take the abstraction away and think about the stuff it actually represents. Taxing that "unrealized wealth" may reduce GDP in a technical sense, but GDP is an abstraction built on an abstraction. Constantly rising GDP is not a good end goal in itself. Ensuring that everyone has their basic needs met is a much better one.
Lots of big words but nothing of value. Answer the question buddy, how will you tax people on money they don't have?
They will sell it.
That's why I say it's going to cause a drop in GDP, but that's only a problem if you hold tightly to the abstraction.
It won't be just a "drop in GDP". It will be investments falling apart, industries closing down, credit getting scarce, unemployment, misery, destitution and death.
Money is a very real driver of the world. It is also the realest manifestation of wealth. Only a fool would call it an abstraction.
What else would it be but an abstraction? As I said, it's sometimes a useful one, but it's an abstraction. It's not dirt or concrete or computer chips or food.
Maybe we shouldn't build a whole society around an abstraction like that?
I feel you, and that's a problem because if you want to tax a billionaires "unrealized" profits, you probably also have to tax some poor shmuck's unrealized 401k profits when they have like 100k stashed away. I'd be cool with higher consumption/sales taxes for ultra rich person items: third or fourth homes, property in the "x" percentile of value above the average, luxury items like yachts or Ferraris. Theres a whole world of solutions, if only we could get the the politicians to enact them.
Or hell, just make them sell their stocks and pay tax on unrealized profits for anyone above like "x" millions. They'll be fine at the end of the day, and it'll dilute their corporate ownership once the company gets too big anyways.
I have a significant 401k savings. If it means building a society that takes care of people's needs better--including my own when I'm too old to work--then I'm totally fine throwing that away. Edit: to add, it gets me to where I wanted to be with a 401k, but by a different route that works for more people.
Are luxury items not already taxed more? AFAIK they are in most countries.
That will tank the share market, close down industries and cause even more unemployment and widespread misery.
Honestly, if they are, then I'm. It rich enough to have heard about it--in the US at least.
How would making a CEO sell their stock crash market prices? If anything, it would just moderate values slightly by increasing supply. Who says this stock market system is the right system anyways? If dethroning assholes like Musk crashes the system, then we need to modify our system.
Investors put money on ventures and industries precisely to build wealth. If they are to be forced to divest at any point, they won't be interested in investing at all. Credit will dry up, overall liquidity will fall. Recession.
Or maybe they'll just have to invest in a diverse group of assets like how mutual funds are already setup?
Or in their own workforce or making their products cheaper for consumers? The money doesn't just exist in a stock market/tax vacuum.