Billionaires hold a tiny percentage of their wealth in money, so taking all their money away wouldn’t even make them stop being a billionaire.
Let’s remove their control of all that wealth, then. If they’re so good, they’ll soon be in control of more.
That would be fascinating to find out. It would be such a badass move, too, if one of them were to give everything away to show they could do it again. I think it actually would be fine for quite a few of them. Their reputation would get them in so many doors and get them so many investors for whatever they get into after the big giveaway. To really do this experiment well, they would need to get plastic surgery and change their identity so they can really have a fresh start.
It would also be interesting to see the effect it would have on whatever they were doing before their exit. I guess it really depends on who gets their shares/power. If it goes to the government, then in most cases, things would probably get worse, I’d imagine. If it somehow gets evenly distributed amongst the world’s population, that could be interesting. How would amazon fair if we all got 1/8B of Bezos shares? That would be quite interesting.
You’re a little biased against public sector, and seem to be in favor or privatization. I assume your incorrect understanding of public versus private sector efficiency is based on the cliche that public workers are so lazy or whatever.
But here’s an interesting article discussing the issue. I myself am biased against private sector in favor of the benefits of public sector efficiencies (no profit motive for example). But it’s an interesting article.
What you’re describing would amount to either eminent domain or civil asset forfeiture, both things that you really shouldn’t be resorting to for money unless you’ve run out of all other options to cover a budget and have a spectacular plan to get the country back onto regular revenue with that money already in place, because that window can only be broken into once.
This is a silly thought experiment to point out that billionaires do not earn their own wealth, and you treat it like it’s proposed as an actual economic plan for the whole country?
… rofl
The purpose is wealth redistribution, not financing the State. Ideally, that money would go to a one time expenditure like a tax rebate for lower earners or a stimulus or something. Revenue neutral for the State.
Not necessarily. If you want to do a new thing, make a new rule
For example, send them a tax bill for 99% their net worth. Offer to accept assets at the calculated market price and the government can sell it slowly, or let them sell it off for pennies on the dollar and submit their new net worth for an adjusted amount
Obviously that’s super heavy handed, but you can slice it a million different ways
I’ll take some Amazon shares from Bezos.
I would honestly hold them and demand more ethics from the company that I now “own a part of”.
If enough people do this…
In this experiment, you wouldn’t have that power because you would only get a tiny fraction of the shares. The interesting bit would be to see what would happen to the company if everyone had a tiny say in what happens. Judging by the fact that most people are quite selfish, I think it may not be too much better for the workers.
What’s fun is everytime something like this is tried, it fails spectacularly… and they know that.
There was a recent case of a young billionaire who basically signed over everything to a family member to live on the street to prove he could “Make millions from nothing!” and that the poors “Were just being lazy”
It didn’t end well for him and he begged mommy to give him his wealth back because going too long without his gold-plated jaquzzi was hard
The French revolution and other related uprisings. See: Romanov family vs Bolsheviks.
Edit: it was a joke ffs
They killed left and right, we’re talking about like taxing unusable wealth from peop’e who don’t need it (and didn’t earn it in any kind of morally okay way).
I say tax rates should be decided based on wealth shares.
Break it down like this, brackets set at the 20th, 40th, 60th, 80th, 95th, and 99th percentiles of household incomes.
People in the 20th 40th and 60th percentile brackets pay a tax rate equal to how much wealth is controlled by households in each of those brackets.
People in the 80 and 95 brackets pay twice the share they control.
People in the 99 bracket pay three times, and also can’t hold public office for ten years after the last time they peak this bracket because, objectively, they are doing just fine for themselves and don’t need to be going ahead of others who have actual problems a nation should be focused on addressing.
Also, with very few exceptions like a mortgage on a primary residence or a car loan for a primary vehicle, loans collateralized on capital assets are treated as income for tax purposes.
The central problem of a wealth tax is defining wealth. Real estate is relatively simple and well-tried, there’s an appraisal process. But securities can fluctuate a lot. A billionaire CEO might turn into a millionaire after a bad earnings report, and end up paying taxes on wealth he was never able to actually have.
Then there’s the whole infinite banking, living off loans secured with investments thing.
Not saying it’s impossible, just difficult and complicated.
A billionaire would potentially turn into a multi hundred millionaire. Very unlikely they would lose ~99% of their wealth to “only” become a millionaire.
The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
Great but that doesn’t change my point. Securities fluctuate, if you don’t sell then how do you value them?
I said in the thing, loans collateralized on capital assets are treated as income under this model
It’s not a wealth tax, it’s a tax on trying to avoid using that wealth through the bank shit.
loans collateralized on capital assets are treated as income under this model
As soon as someone unironically suggests that loans should be considered income, under any circumstances, you can safely stop listening to their economics takes, lol.
So if you get a loan for 100k, and pay back 100k + interest, what are you taxed on?
Everybody poor.