millions = lifetime human income
billions = massive company (top 5,000)
trillions = large government (top 20)
- Read “gov spends millions” as “they employed 3 to 30 people”
- Read “company is fined 1 million” as “the had to hire 2 lawyers instead of 1”
- Read “company is fined 100 million” as “paying ~100 employees for ~10 years”
People think of a billion as 10-100x more than a million. It’s one thousand million.
Its so crazy our highest tax bracket is at low 6 figures when we have people at 10 figures.
The problem is investments vs income. It’s not a super straightforward problem to solve. Having said that other countries have implemented a wealth tax, so it can be done
It’s a percentage that nominally increases as wealth goes up.
Poor people need to spend a higher percentage of their income meeting basic needs, so having them pay the same percentage as the wealthy puts a higher burden on the poor.
In top of that, the wealthy are able to put a higher percentage of their income in things like investments, which are taxed at a lower rate (to encourage investing in the economy over hoarding wealth), so a flat rate tax would be effectively a regressive tax.
because then paupers would pay the same rate as billionaires. At the same time brackets make sure eveyone pays the same for the set amount. So even if more brackets were introduced billionaires would pay the same rate on their first 100k as millionaires. People of wealth only pay higher on the actualy high level. Whats crazy is we have several brackets that basically run through the 5 figure range and just into the 6 but none higher were 5 figures should just have one lowest rate.
Percentages don’t scale well into the billions, you will still need brackets.
A billionaire can give away 98% of their wealth and still comfortably be a multi millionare.
A full time cashier on the minimum wage can barely even survive on 100% of their wage. When it comes to living a healthy fulfilling life, If they contribute just 5% of their wage to tax they are sacrificing far more a billionaire paying 98% tax would be.
well then there should be a continuous way to make the percentage increase, like a sigmoid or so
One million years ago some of our more advanced ancestors walked the earth
One billion years ago multicellular life having evolved yet is debated