Before the oligarchs say this is “violence”.
This can be done peacefully. Just enact a law that taxes everything above like 999 million (or a fewer amount, to be debated on), and if you don’t comply, that’s tax evasion and you go to jail. Complelete peaceful (other than the tax-person we’d have to send to arrest the rich for non-complance), comply and everyone is happy.
Voila, no more billionaires, and that wealth redistributed will let everyone become a millionaire. Everyone is happy, maybe the 1% cries that they now have a few less yachts and mansions, but like, they can still enjoy that one house, same as everyone else would also have.
But could this really be done? As far as I’ve understood, billionaires typically don’t have a billion liquidized and ready for spending. Rather, their value is distributed in ownership of several companies. How would the 100% taxes on ownership in companies be applied?
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see it work, but I feel like it’s a lot more complicated than stated. And if a good way of applying those taxes would be introduced, I’m sure the billionaires would either find new ways to make the money untouchable or personally move to a country with looser tax laws.
That’s what conservatives always claim. Most of them won’t move and even if they do, good riddance. Simply tax their wealth beforehand.
I’m not against people having money, but to have a thousand times more than most people can make in their entire lifetime is just taking it too far. There should be a cap after which you pay 90% tax or something
Problem is billionaires don’t make “income” and it’s quite difficult to even know what they own, let alone how to tax something like unrealized gains on stock holdings that they are using as leverage to get loans
At some point, somebody convinced people that unrealized gains were not actually income because you don’t know for sure that you’d make that money, and I think that was a bad idea. Maybe unrealized gains aren’t 1:1 the same thing as income, but the calculations of an income equivalent aren’t going to be complicated.
Somehow property taxes are okay, though, even though we haven’t realized the gains!
This exactly. At some threshold of worth, you should get taxed an amount based on your worth that will be big enough to force you to realize some gains in order to pay it.
The issue with realizing the gains is that you have to relinquish control of your company bit by bit. However, you could have the company (which you likely control) give out dividends, or you could use the stock as collateral for a loan. Or just pay yourself a bigger salary.
Even the billionaires would be better off without billinaires. It their relative ranking was the same they would still have more money than they could spend but it would now come with clean air, water, land, better infrastructure, a healthier world, happier people to interact with.
Imagine life was a game. You lived for 2025 years. You worked 260 days / year. You made the median US salary.
You would need to relive that process 3,145 times to match an Oligarch.
That amount of wealth is unethical while humanity suffers. No one can really fathom “1b dollars.”
Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has backed President Donald Trump in the past, on Thursday pledged to use his money to bankroll a challenger to Mamdani in the general election.
Case in point.
