It’s really insane that we legally treat the tenth billion dollars at the same level as a working persons house or car.
Everything is legally just “property”.
No, fuck that.
The law should protect the first million of every citizen with ferver.
(and when we tackle wealth inequality, most people will have this level of wealth at the end of their working life. The fact that most currently don’t is due to inequality. )
Up until 100 million, it should be taxed at a reasonable level. Because at some level, it’s fair that people prefer watching Taylor Swift instead of me sing on a stage.
Above that it should be taxed heavily.
And above a billion, it should be just confiscated. As in, oopsie, our system malfunctioned, you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a whole lifetime of work, so we are taking it back.
you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a while lifetime of work
I actively try to cheat at every single-player game that I play. I still don’t think I’ve accumulated a billion anything other than self-criticisms. Even that’s questionable.
I’m cool with numbers past a billion being asymptotically possible. Let the money-addicts keep chasing N+1 dollars, if each +1 puts ten times more money into public funding.
The problem is that this wealth is ownership in companies they made. If you start a company and it becomes too successful, Is it right that we really just forcefully take that ownership away from you? Who wants to start or keep a company in a country that takes away your company from you if it’s too successful?
“I won’t start a company because it may be worth over a billion one day and that would only leave me with hundreds of millions of dollars. That doesn’t seem worthwhile,” thought no one ever in your hypothetical.
" why start a company when if it becomes too successful it will literally be taken away from me for being too successful". I don’t believe we should be taking away businesses from business owners, do you?
Come on, man, at least understand the concept of the reification of labour-power-at-work if you’re going to debate the very concept of what it means to have capital.
The value of arbeitskraft is only extracted when the means of production are privately owned. Assets and liabilities have to cost less than the output for value to be generated, I’m saying that value should have an (extremely generous) upper bound as a compensation for the initial outlay of creating a private capital asset, after which additional value is returned either to the creators of the labour in the labour-power or the labour-power-at-work is deemed valuable to society and the value is returned in general there.
If you’ve gone public with the company yes, you’ve set up the situation where paying your due means giving up some control of the company. That was a you decision. But congratulations you’re worth hundreds of millions. If you find yourself thinking that’s not enough you’re deeply broken and one of the most selfish people in human history, a true 0.01%er.
And again, this is a billion dollar baseline people are talking about. This is the same as people upset about the possibility of inheritance taxes because then they’d only get $10,000,000 tax free. No one is not starting a business because of that, which was your original argument.
It’s one thing to willfully sell some company shares to investors, it’s another to be forced to give up more shares just to pay taxes on wealth because of those shares.
This brings up an interesting point though, let’s say it’s a private company worth billions, where one person owns 100% of the shares, do you force them to sell also?
People may not start a business with the intent to be a billionaire, but if we say that if you make it that far we will just tax you so much you will be forced to sell away your ownership, who would keep their company here when they get close to that? I think it’s telling that many of the most successful worldwide companies are US companies.
At some point you just have to give them a gold sticker, a “Congratulations! You won capitalism!” plaque, and leave something for the rest of humanity.
Yes, I’m sure if Jeff Bezos were worth 10 billion dollars less he would have just said forget it I’ll flip burgers instead. I don’t think you need to rip their company from them, you just need to tax them.
You are literally suggesting to rip the company away from them though. They are only worth billions because of that value, if you rant to tax them billions where do you think they are going to get that money? They only have one option, to sell their ownership in their own company. If that’s not ripping their company away from them I don’t know what is.
Are other people paying taxes described as “ripping” away their ownership in “x”? What a bizarre framing. Also, Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon, so he’s already given away ownership of the company. He has assets, and they should be taxed
How does Amazon exist? How do they continue to operate? They run on the Internet created by the US government, they deliver packages by flying through US airspace, and driving on roads paved by several levels of government. Their factories don’t burn down because of municipal fire departments, and aren’t burglarized because of municipal police departments. Why shouldn’t they pay for those things, which they make much more use of than you or I?
Others aren’t using taxes on wealth though. Should the middle class be taxed on the amount in their retirement funds also? Or the amount in their bank accounts?
10% of Amazon is still a lot, it’s still a lot of power.
You think Amazon doesn’t pay for any of that? They pay for their use of such things like we all do. They do get some discounts thanks to scale, but they are paying way more than you or me.
The problem is that they are all employing tax avoidance schemes. Corporations like Amazon will spin off their IP to a separate off-shore corporation. Then they’ll pay that corporation for the use of their IP. That reduces Amazon’s profit to near zero, meaning they’re not paying taxes. The off shore corporation doesn’t pay taxes either.
People like Bezos won’t take salaries, because they’re taxed. Instead they’ll take stock. Then they’ll take loans against that stock, so they don’t pay taxes. They just roll that loan into another loan and continue to live off of it, never paying taxes because they have no “income”.
So yes, their wealth should be taxed. Otherwise the richest among us pay next to nothing and yet benefit the most from what our taxes buy. If we weren’t adequately capturing taxes from the middle class, then sure, but that’s not the case.
Amazon does invest most of their profits back into the business, that is why they were operating with basically no profit. They still paid plenty of taxes though, like payroll taxes, that aren’t based on profit.
Then apply income tax or something on loans against stock over a certain amount, but I’m guessing that isn’t enough for you? I’m guessing like everyone else here the only solution is to tax them so much they aren’t a billionaire anymore, forcefully taking their company away from them in the process.
I know, it’s awful that people want rich people and rich corporations to pay their fair share of the tax burden. If they can’t pay their fair share and keep ungodly amounts of wealth, while people are homeless and children are starving, while shit, I guess they just shouldn’t have to pay taxes then. What if they had to sell some stock…ohh, the humanity! Will the horrors never cease! You sound like an absolute clown.
We don’t really need giant companies? Ok, sure… personally I like my high tech options these large companies offer, and their ability to offer lower prices thanks to the economics of scale. If you want to pay more for everything then feel free to go to small companies, personally I prefer to pay less for the same stuff from large companies.
If employees are treated so poorly they would leave, it’s not like we force people to keep their job. If you prefer to pay more, it’s your choice to buy from smaller companies.
Everybody is free to leave and free to find new jobs, im not sure where you get the idea that isn’t the case.
Also how is it stealing value to pay less than the profits made? You realize a company has to make profits to survive, right?
How is the US arguably the most successful country on the planet if stuff is really as bad as you say it is? The US is far from perfect, but it’s impossible to deny it’s one of the best places to be and people risk everything trying to get in wanting a better life.
What do employees get for their efforts? Oh yeah, that’s right, they get a salary and maybe even bonuses. What are you suggesting we do the owners? Oh, punish them by removing their company from them? Yeah, they will surely keep the company in the US if that is their reward.
How can you talk about improving society and in the same sentence day we should punish them for trying to leave? Is that what we should do, punish people for moving their business elsewhere? Maybe ban their business from the country so nobody benefits?
You are promoting a more hostile and authoritarian country under the guise of “better for everyone”, it’s insane.
They don’t actually sell stock in a lot of cases, they keep it and take out loans against it. That can only go so far though, if you are like the rest of the crazy people here and suggest we just tax billionaires until they are no longer billionaires, then that won’t work.
Why not take the income of these business owners? Just like we take the income of everyone else? Why special rules for taxing this specific group of people you don’t like?
If they can take out loans to buys islands, Yachts and overpriced tweet companies, then let them take out loans to pay tax.
They only have five figure incomes thanks to the loopholes, so that isn’t a fair level of taxation compared to their actual capital gains that they artificially keep as “unrealized” on paper. A trick unavailable to us mere mortals.
Or, crazy thought, make it so they can’t take out loans against their stock; especially if it’s not for private use! Maybe that way, people like Musk will be forced to give themselves salaries that can be taxed by the government.
It’s clear you don’t know how things work at all. You can’t expect to tax someone billions every year and not have to sell the thing causing such a huge tax burden. This isn’t an infinite money glitch, the loan thing can only go so far.
Also, unrealized gains are a real thing, stocks go up and down, and the change in value is unrealized until it’s sold. If a stock goes up $100 that isn’t $100 in my pocket, because tomorrow it could go down $200. If you want to tax these unrealized gains, then you should be paying out the unrealized losses as well. You would also be screwing up the middle class retirement funds, so thanks for that.
You have a big mouth for someone who has zero clue.
Obviously, taxes are levied on a yearly basis and not every day, so daily fluctuations in value are irrelevant.
And retirement funds are tax exempt, so they will not be screwed.
And yes, people who can’t afford to pay property taxes have to sell property. That is a reality we all have to deal with, so why not let the super rich also deal with it.
Are you not proposing taxing billionaires billions in taxes until they are no longer billionaires? That’s what everyone else seems to be suggesting. If they took out billion dollar loans to pay this tax, their wealth would be the same or more every year and they would pay billions more next year. It doesn’t take long for there to be no more loans available because all the owned stock is held as collateral for these billions in tax loans they took out.
Oh, thanks for singling out one form of stock ownership while harshly taxing another. Not all middle class “retirement” accounts are under that retirement umbrella though. Since there are a lot of restrictions in those many will have regular stock holdings that would be taxed under your plans.
Financial and real assets are different. We don’t tax financial assets as property, and only some real property gets a property tax.
You really don’t see how your ideas won’t work, do you?
There are loopholes that can be closed, but won’t because the majority of American politicians are also rich assholes. I do think most of the ideas that get bandied out are dumb as sin, however.
It’s really insane that we legally treat the tenth billion dollars at the same level as a working persons house or car.
Everything is legally just “property”.
No, fuck that.
The law should protect the first million of every citizen with ferver. (and when we tackle wealth inequality, most people will have this level of wealth at the end of their working life. The fact that most currently don’t is due to inequality. )
Up until 100 million, it should be taxed at a reasonable level. Because at some level, it’s fair that people prefer watching Taylor Swift instead of me sing on a stage.
Above that it should be taxed heavily.
And above a billion, it should be just confiscated. As in, oopsie, our system malfunctioned, you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a whole lifetime of work, so we are taking it back.
I actively try to cheat at every single-player game that I play. I still don’t think I’ve accumulated a billion anything other than self-criticisms. Even that’s questionable.
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I’m cool with numbers past a billion being asymptotically possible. Let the money-addicts keep chasing N+1 dollars, if each +1 puts ten times more money into public funding.
It’s actually taxes less if it’s earned from investments
At a billion you get a small plaque that says ‘yay you won capitalism’, they name a park bench after you and you replay from scratch.
The problem is that this wealth is ownership in companies they made. If you start a company and it becomes too successful, Is it right that we really just forcefully take that ownership away from you? Who wants to start or keep a company in a country that takes away your company from you if it’s too successful?
“I won’t start a company because it may be worth over a billion one day and that would only leave me with hundreds of millions of dollars. That doesn’t seem worthwhile,” thought no one ever in your hypothetical.
No, it’s more like
" why start a company when if it becomes too successful it will literally be taken away from me for being too successful". I don’t believe we should be taking away businesses from business owners, do you?
Or maybe you’re the successful owner and you reward the people that made you successful with a larger portion of that success?
Sure, give the owner that option, just don’t steal ownership from them.
I do. Fuck 'em. They already have 100 million dollars. They can go cry into that.
So your argument is “Fuck them because they have more than me”. Is that about right? We can steal from them because they have more to steal?
They stole it from “me” first.
How did they do that exactly?
Come on, man, at least understand the concept of the reification of labour-power-at-work if you’re going to debate the very concept of what it means to have capital.
The value of arbeitskraft is only extracted when the means of production are privately owned. Assets and liabilities have to cost less than the output for value to be generated, I’m saying that value should have an (extremely generous) upper bound as a compensation for the initial outlay of creating a private capital asset, after which additional value is returned either to the creators of the labour in the labour-power or the labour-power-at-work is deemed valuable to society and the value is returned in general there.
If you’ve gone public with the company yes, you’ve set up the situation where paying your due means giving up some control of the company. That was a you decision. But congratulations you’re worth hundreds of millions. If you find yourself thinking that’s not enough you’re deeply broken and one of the most selfish people in human history, a true 0.01%er.
And again, this is a billion dollar baseline people are talking about. This is the same as people upset about the possibility of inheritance taxes because then they’d only get $10,000,000 tax free. No one is not starting a business because of that, which was your original argument.
It’s one thing to willfully sell some company shares to investors, it’s another to be forced to give up more shares just to pay taxes on wealth because of those shares.
This brings up an interesting point though, let’s say it’s a private company worth billions, where one person owns 100% of the shares, do you force them to sell also?
People may not start a business with the intent to be a billionaire, but if we say that if you make it that far we will just tax you so much you will be forced to sell away your ownership, who would keep their company here when they get close to that? I think it’s telling that many of the most successful worldwide companies are US companies.
At some point you just have to give them a gold sticker, a “Congratulations! You won capitalism!” plaque, and leave something for the rest of humanity.
Yes, I’m sure if Jeff Bezos were worth 10 billion dollars less he would have just said forget it I’ll flip burgers instead. I don’t think you need to rip their company from them, you just need to tax them.
You are literally suggesting to rip the company away from them though. They are only worth billions because of that value, if you rant to tax them billions where do you think they are going to get that money? They only have one option, to sell their ownership in their own company. If that’s not ripping their company away from them I don’t know what is.
Are other people paying taxes described as “ripping” away their ownership in “x”? What a bizarre framing. Also, Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon, so he’s already given away ownership of the company. He has assets, and they should be taxed
How does Amazon exist? How do they continue to operate? They run on the Internet created by the US government, they deliver packages by flying through US airspace, and driving on roads paved by several levels of government. Their factories don’t burn down because of municipal fire departments, and aren’t burglarized because of municipal police departments. Why shouldn’t they pay for those things, which they make much more use of than you or I?
Others aren’t using taxes on wealth though. Should the middle class be taxed on the amount in their retirement funds also? Or the amount in their bank accounts?
10% of Amazon is still a lot, it’s still a lot of power.
You think Amazon doesn’t pay for any of that? They pay for their use of such things like we all do. They do get some discounts thanks to scale, but they are paying way more than you or me.
The problem is that they are all employing tax avoidance schemes. Corporations like Amazon will spin off their IP to a separate off-shore corporation. Then they’ll pay that corporation for the use of their IP. That reduces Amazon’s profit to near zero, meaning they’re not paying taxes. The off shore corporation doesn’t pay taxes either.
People like Bezos won’t take salaries, because they’re taxed. Instead they’ll take stock. Then they’ll take loans against that stock, so they don’t pay taxes. They just roll that loan into another loan and continue to live off of it, never paying taxes because they have no “income”.
So yes, their wealth should be taxed. Otherwise the richest among us pay next to nothing and yet benefit the most from what our taxes buy. If we weren’t adequately capturing taxes from the middle class, then sure, but that’s not the case.
Amazon does invest most of their profits back into the business, that is why they were operating with basically no profit. They still paid plenty of taxes though, like payroll taxes, that aren’t based on profit.
Then apply income tax or something on loans against stock over a certain amount, but I’m guessing that isn’t enough for you? I’m guessing like everyone else here the only solution is to tax them so much they aren’t a billionaire anymore, forcefully taking their company away from them in the process.
I know, it’s awful that people want rich people and rich corporations to pay their fair share of the tax burden. If they can’t pay their fair share and keep ungodly amounts of wealth, while people are homeless and children are starving, while shit, I guess they just shouldn’t have to pay taxes then. What if they had to sell some stock…ohh, the humanity! Will the horrors never cease! You sound like an absolute clown.
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True. But generally I think giant companies cause more systemic problems than they solve. So maybe we don’t really need them.
After we die back to a manageable level from climate change we should try to remember that and prohibit it happening again.
We don’t really need giant companies? Ok, sure… personally I like my high tech options these large companies offer, and their ability to offer lower prices thanks to the economics of scale. If you want to pay more for everything then feel free to go to small companies, personally I prefer to pay less for the same stuff from large companies.
Meanwhile the downsides are invasion of privacy, destruction of the environment, poor treatment of workers and on and on.
If employees are treated so poorly they would leave, it’s not like we force people to keep their job. If you prefer to pay more, it’s your choice to buy from smaller companies.
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Everybody is free to leave and free to find new jobs, im not sure where you get the idea that isn’t the case.
Also how is it stealing value to pay less than the profits made? You realize a company has to make profits to survive, right?
How is the US arguably the most successful country on the planet if stuff is really as bad as you say it is? The US is far from perfect, but it’s impossible to deny it’s one of the best places to be and people risk everything trying to get in wanting a better life.
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If the company becomes too successful, maybe there’s not just my effort that went into achieving that.
Somehow “you got paid, fuck off” is acceptable, but “you reaped the benefits, fuck off” is not.
What do employees get for their efforts? Oh yeah, that’s right, they get a salary and maybe even bonuses. What are you suggesting we do the owners? Oh, punish them by removing their company from them? Yeah, they will surely keep the company in the US if that is their reward.
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How can you talk about improving society and in the same sentence day we should punish them for trying to leave? Is that what we should do, punish people for moving their business elsewhere? Maybe ban their business from the country so nobody benefits?
You are promoting a more hostile and authoritarian country under the guise of “better for everyone”, it’s insane.
Why do like sucking capitalist dick so much? The only way owners get so rich is because they are exploiting labor.
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I don’t suck any dick, I just think the alternative you are suggesting is so much dumber than what we have
lmao ok, bootlicker
I’m not licking any boots either. Are you projecting your desires onto me or something?
Ok, bootlicker
All these people already sell the stock of their own companies to diversify their holdings or to buy a yacht, island or Twitter.
Selling stock on the market to pay the tax man is no different.
They still keep a billion dollars worth of stock, so its not like they end up poor.
And the government can “forcefully” take a third of a working mans income, which is way worse than taxing wealth. Go cry me a river.
They don’t actually sell stock in a lot of cases, they keep it and take out loans against it. That can only go so far though, if you are like the rest of the crazy people here and suggest we just tax billionaires until they are no longer billionaires, then that won’t work.
Why not take the income of these business owners? Just like we take the income of everyone else? Why special rules for taxing this specific group of people you don’t like?
If they can take out loans to buys islands, Yachts and overpriced tweet companies, then let them take out loans to pay tax.
They only have five figure incomes thanks to the loopholes, so that isn’t a fair level of taxation compared to their actual capital gains that they artificially keep as “unrealized” on paper. A trick unavailable to us mere mortals.
You’re a tool.
Or, crazy thought, make it so they can’t take out loans against their stock; especially if it’s not for private use! Maybe that way, people like Musk will be forced to give themselves salaries that can be taxed by the government.
It’s clear you don’t know how things work at all. You can’t expect to tax someone billions every year and not have to sell the thing causing such a huge tax burden. This isn’t an infinite money glitch, the loan thing can only go so far.
Also, unrealized gains are a real thing, stocks go up and down, and the change in value is unrealized until it’s sold. If a stock goes up $100 that isn’t $100 in my pocket, because tomorrow it could go down $200. If you want to tax these unrealized gains, then you should be paying out the unrealized losses as well. You would also be screwing up the middle class retirement funds, so thanks for that.
You have a big mouth for someone who has zero clue.
Obviously, taxes are levied on a yearly basis and not every day, so daily fluctuations in value are irrelevant.
And retirement funds are tax exempt, so they will not be screwed.
And yes, people who can’t afford to pay property taxes have to sell property. That is a reality we all have to deal with, so why not let the super rich also deal with it.
Dude, get some education.
Are you not proposing taxing billionaires billions in taxes until they are no longer billionaires? That’s what everyone else seems to be suggesting. If they took out billion dollar loans to pay this tax, their wealth would be the same or more every year and they would pay billions more next year. It doesn’t take long for there to be no more loans available because all the owned stock is held as collateral for these billions in tax loans they took out.
Oh, thanks for singling out one form of stock ownership while harshly taxing another. Not all middle class “retirement” accounts are under that retirement umbrella though. Since there are a lot of restrictions in those many will have regular stock holdings that would be taxed under your plans.
Financial and real assets are different. We don’t tax financial assets as property, and only some real property gets a property tax.
You really don’t see how your ideas won’t work, do you?
I’m gonna stop arguing with idiots today, thanks for playing.
There are loopholes that can be closed, but won’t because the majority of American politicians are also rich assholes. I do think most of the ideas that get bandied out are dumb as sin, however.