Is it because the people that we need to worry about don’t get paid massive wages? Instead they leverage their massive stock ownership as collateral for loans. And stock bonuses are not regulated or taxed in the same way as real wages.
I’d be fully supportive of a “maximum wealth” limit.
What we need to do is implement “prestige wealth”. Once you hit, say, 100m you get your assets sold in order to fund a UBI, but you get a nice pin that marks your achievement.
Every time you prestige, you get a new pin, but the color of the pin changes.
“You win! 🥳”
A sort of “moneygrubbers anonymous”?
I’m totally cool with rewarding people for making a bunch of money and giving it back to the people. Hell, make each prestige cooler. You find 100 billion in taxes? We’ll build you a little statue. You fund 1 trillion dollars in taxes? You get to be on a coin or some shit. Really put these greedy fucks incessant need for attention to work.
That still maintains an incentive to extract and hoard wealth. There should be none.
Yeah, we can also make it fun. Once someone has amassed a certain quantity of wealth, make a big ceremony, where the guy is given a trophy that says “I won capitalism”. After that, every dollar he makes past the limit is taxed 100%
“I won capitalism”
Or we could think outside of the system we’ve been indoctrinated to believe is the only one that can “work” (by the very few people it does actually work for), and eliminate capitalism altogether so that there is no incentive to extract and hoard wealth in the first place, because those don’t serve society in any way shape or form.
No, let’s give them random privileges too. You get to drive in the HOV lane alone, you get a license made of metal, and you get to park in all handicap spaces except the closest to the entrance. And if you pay enough in taxes, you get an invite to the yearly pizza party with the president
How does that work though? Let’s say the maximum wealth limit is one billion dollars and you own $750M of stock in the company you founded. Your wealth could go above and below that $1B limit multiple times in a day as the stock price goes up and down. What happens then?
I’ll preface this by saying the 1%'s stock holdings are pretty much the last thing I’m worried about protecting. But it could be as simple as requiring your wealth to be under the limit when you file your taxes. Let’s say it’s a billion dollars (I would argue it should be much lower). If you end the year with 11 billion dollars in wealth, you owe the government 10 billion dollars. There are controls we can put in place to prevent stock manipulation, similar to the ones we have now. Just actually enforced.
I think what we would see in response to that is people hiding their wealth offshore, through private companies, through family members, trust funds, non-profit foundations etc.
So the billionaire has 10 relatives and hires each of them at his company, giving them all stock options as a bonus, which come from his own personal accounts. Then when it comes to tax time he’s managed to limbo his way under the $1B bar.
Take all your wealth and use it to set up a bunch of non-profit organizations for preserving national parks or saving the rainforest or running homeless shelters. Then have those foundations hire your family members to the boards of directors and pay each one millions of dollars in salaries.
There are countless ways to do this. Not just for individuals but for companies. Apple is pretty infamous for its use of Ireland as a tax haven that allows it to avoid paying corporate (profit) taxes on all its sales in the EU.
The other issue I foresee with the maximum wealth limit is how much chaos it could cause for companies. Let’s say you found a furniture company and run it really well and hire tons of employees. Then over time it grows above the billion dollar limit, so in order to pay your taxes you sell off the company to private equity who proceed to liquidate all its assets and fire all the employees. Without the limit in place you may have been happy to keep running the company and maintaining a great workplace for all your employees but the giant tax bill forced your hand. In the end, the company is largely destroyed, everyone has lost their jobs, and you retire with your billion dollars in cash.
I think the above scenarios are problematic no matter what you set the limit to. It also doesn’t address the issue of private companies (not traded on the public stock exchange) which don’t have a nominal market value. Sure, they have a book value for all their hard assets, but that can be far lower than the true value of the company.
Think of something like Snapchat which went from maybe a dozen employees and a bunch of laptops to rejecting a $3 billion buyout offer from Mark Zuckerberg just 3 years later. Anyway, also how to deal with that? Let’s say you have a small company making calculator apps for iOS and Android. You earn $10,000 a year in profits from sales. Then some group of investors come together and offer you $10 billion for your company. Is your company now worth $10B just because of the offer? You’re not on the stock market. You barely make enough money to pay rent, yet come tax time you owe $9B.
You could say “well you rejected the offer so you don’t owe the government anything because you actually aren’t worth $10B.” But who decides what you’re worth? Snapchat rejected the $3B offer but most investors would’ve agreed they were worth it. But all they had was a few employees, some laptops and servers, and the app they made. They’re really not much different from the hypothetical calculator app company.
Wow, just running off into the wild blue yonder there. First of all, they already do all of that. A properly funded IRS would be able to go after them. There is only so much they can do.
Second who needs a 3 billion dollar payday? 10 million, just a hair shy of an entire order of magnitude less; is enough to fly first class, own a mansion, own the luxury cars, attend every major sporting league championship, vacation in Bora Bora resorts half the year, and just generally party your way through the entire rest of life.
Heck once you reach 1 million in stocks you can generally just stop working and live a normal life off the dividends alone.
You’re out here defending literal bond villain levels of money. A billion dollars could employ a 100 people at 100k and leave you 990 million dollars left. That’s enough money to actually have a private militia. (100k is the going rate for good guard contracts with combat experience)
Don’t mistake my argument for a defence of billionaires. I don’t care for them any more than anyone else here. I just want to make sure that any changes we make to the law actually work and accomplish their intended goal. Poorly-thought-out laws are worse than doing nothing: they can backfire.
To give an example, the government of Canada passed a law called the Online News Act. This law targeted Google and Facebook with a special tax, called a link tax, that would force them to pay every time they or one of their users linked to a Canadian news site. The money collected by these link taxes would then go to pay to support Canadian news agencies in general.
The law backfired. Google struck a deal with the largest Canadian newspapers to pay them a flat fee but Facebook went ahead and blocked every single link to a news site for all users in Canada. This left thousands of small, local, Canadian newspapers high and dry (they were getting most of their traffic from Facebook posts linking to them). A law intended to benefit Canadian news publishers ended up putting most of them out of business.
The point of my previous example is to show that if a company is privately held (not traded on the stock market) then how much it is actually worth is not clear or obvious at all. This makes imposition of the $1B maximum wealth limit extremely difficult to properly implement.
Or, if that’s your only concern, you make sure there’s a provision stating a company’s worth isn’t an issue unless someone is using it to fund their lifestyle.
End of day holdings. Also if you’re worried about ownership, we can just revert companies to contract ownership.
Absolutely, even at something like 100 * min wage. Still a hell of a lot less than what’s happening today.
They borrow against their stocks tax free. The system they have created is perverse and should be illegal.
Because making 400k/yr by sitting on a pile of assets and living a low-cost life in a paid-off small-town cottage is not the same as making 400k/yr as a debt-saddled surgeon renting in a high-cost city center, so targeting income instead of wealth gets us farther from a fairer economy.
Next question.
Next question, why did you immediately go to 400k? Why not 1 million? If you make a million dollars then you’ve made half the average lifetime earnings of a worker. Double question, if we capped earnings at 400k, would school lenders not take that into account?
I think a maximum yearly income, including any money you could conceivably spend for personal use, would be a wonderful idea. It would certainly put a damper on being a billionaire if you know you could never actually get more than about a hundred million dollars in your life. Just literally running the score up at that point.
Ok sure, but if you frame the conversation to mean the limit would be set at $400k/year then you’re missing the point. We’re talking billionaires not single digit millionaires. Despite how those numbers sound to the average person there’s several orders of magnitude between them.
i couldnt read the article (paywall) but is that applicable when billionaires often get paid significantly less than $400k/yr?
I don’t mean to argue against your point but they became billionaires somehow. There are people who are becoming billionaires today and their wealth accumulation could be limited. It seems like more than one solution is needed. I don’t think billionaires are good for society… They have too much power, political power
Lets put that maximum at $10M/month (or year). Now your counter argument doesn’t work any more.
The people who make that kind of money don’t make it through wages but other compensation.
Yes, so block that at a maximum rate (too)?
I am not an accountant but from what I know, taxing stuff like compensation in the form of stocks is pretty hard to do.
I’m not disagreeing with you, the system is just rigged in favor of very wealthy people.
the system is just rigged in favor of very wealthy people
I think that’s the whole point we’re trying to change in this discussion. 👍
Oh for sure, it’s just going to be a really long uphill battle as long as the current liberal system is in place.
I don’t have any faith in any reform happening with wealth in any country. Money is too powerful to change anything at the top. 😔 So in that sense, a very long battle indeed. 😞
Not with that attitude ;-)
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shut up dork
You just make it illegal to compensate in this form. Problem solved.
Which is why we need to not allow borrowing against assets to get over the maximum.
I think we should be setting these max/min wages as relative values, not absolute values. Otherwise we have to pass laws every time the min wage needs to be adjusted. And we’ll end up with stagnation.
For example, a person’s wage can only be X% higher than the lowest wage of someone a step below them in hierarchy. Including contractors and suppliers so they can’t skirt or find loopholes.
There still might be some haywire incentives that require more thought, but it should hopefully encourage labor to be valued at an appropriate proportion of value. Either everyone makes good money, or nobody does.
Should also probably deincentivize layoffs, stock buybacks, etc. at the cost of shareholder earnings / value.
but then businesses couldn’t run properly right? idk for sure but I feel like smaller businesses would be paid to a person and distrubuted to the company
I’ve often said we don’t need billionaires. That when one reaches that milestone anything above $999,999,999 should be taken as taxes from that person.
When I say this people often become defensive saying that the government shouldn’t be able to dictate how much wealth one person can accumulate. (It also happens that many of these people are prolife but that’s neither here nor there.) Often times comparing this action to communism which of course it isn’t.
The issue of course is that many people don’t understand what a billion of anything is. The human brain can’t comprehend such massive numbers. But nevertheless, there are people that are approaching the trillion dollar mark a number even further removed from a billion by several magnitudes.
Should there be billionaires. Probably not… What do you think?
I was thinking about this the other day, one of my favorite analogies is seconds.
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is … 31,688 years.
The analogy already breaks down, because while most people could understand 12 days and a lot of adults can understand 31 years for having lived it (some even twice or more!), 31,688 years is completely incomprehensible again. How many human generations is that? All of recorded human history is only like 5,000 years. It’s utterly, mind-numbingly insane. No trillionaires, ever! No billionaires!!!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/business/elon-musk-richest-person-trillionaire/index.html
This was published on September 17th of this year, after most of the nonsense of Twitter and utter things. He’s still on track, by 2027 no less. There’s no telling how directly and flagrantly he’ll benefit from a Trump win, either.
My favorite is “do you know the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars”
Like, being a millionaire is a pretty sweet spot to be in if you’re lucky enough. Not quite like a millionaire of decades ago but still good. But if you’re a billionaire, a million dollars is basically a rounding error.
I think the best way I’ve seen to illustrate it is the stories of immortals earning incredible amounts of money every day who still can’t reach the wealth of Elon Musk.
Like, you’re an immortal born during the ice age 80,000 years ago. You are somehow making $5000 per day (or its equivalent in gold for the 79,700 years before dollars are invented, and you save all of it. You’re not as rich as Elon Musk.
Use milliseconds instead: a million milliseconds is 17 minutes, a billion milliseconds is 12 days, a trillion is 31 years.
I think all the talk about billionaires is using a completely arbitrary number and subject to inflation. Wealth inequality is the big problem, it doesn’t matter what number on their bank account is.
people often become defensive saying that the government shouldn’t be able to dictate how much wealth one person can accumulate
Of course it should. If we’re expecting to live in a democracy, then people need to have equal voices. If you’re a billionaire you have a megaphone, as Elon Musk has shown. Democracy can’t work if some people have far more power than others.
The problem is that they have enough independence to just cross borders and easily pay for new citizenship if it suits them. It would have to be a world wide movement. It’s impossible, or at least would only be possible within some mythical completely self-sufficient country that could withstand their meddling.
My solution:
Your tax burden is your tax burden. If it’s 15% and you run off to a country where it’s 5% to avoid taxes, that’s fine. You can pay them 5%.
But you’re still on the hook for the remaining 10%.
If the 5% country tries to act as a tax haven and refuses to enforce the remaining 10%, they get a national embargo until they get in line.
I have to repeat my response here, that is meaningless, when their taxable income is meaningless. How much did Trump pay in taxes again? The trick is to keep it tied up in an “investment” until they need it.
Isn’t that already how it works? Currently, US citizens still have to pay taxes when living outside the country unless they’re paying taxes to a specific set of other countries. Although consequences are on the individual who fails to pay and not their country of residence.
I’m not saying for US citizens and US companies. That’s how they avoid taxes - by registering in anther country.
Any person or company that does business in the US, even tangentially.
You’re based out of Panama? Cool. Pay them what they require, then pay the remaining X that a US company would own to either Panama, the US, or some other country you operate within.
Don’t grant them tax havens.
Welcome to yet another world war I guess?
We’re due.
The US has exit taxes, as do many countries. If you try to renounce your US citizenship, you can be taxed based on the value of unsold assets.
I hate that the US is one of the few countries in the world that has citizenship-based taxation. It’s awful and stupid. But, in theory, it does mean that an American couldn’t just avoid taxes by moving to another country.
Those are meaningless, when their taxable income is meaningless.
But, if they tried to move to another country and renounce their US citizenship they’d have to pay an exit tax based on the entire value of their assets, including unrealized gains.
Also gameable.
Sure, everything is gameable if you’re a billionaire, but it would require clever lawyers and involve some risk.
The biggest problem is that part of the way they usually game is by trying to create and promote a legal minefield by promoting footnotes in the law.
Before you get to their armies of clever lawyers, you will be inundated with rights issues from Accidental Americans and senior expats who have not resided in the US for decades. Not even from taxes as most publications seem to claim but from the far steeper charges of failing to report “foreign bank accounts” of normal banks people have been living literally right beside of for normal day to day tasks, which have been mined with things like fines that are life shattering for anyone but billionaires.
It is designed so that any such solution will grind to an halt by fostering the prosecution of those least capable to defend themselves who are earning even well below what they would in the US. It is why the US renunciation rate is at record highs in the US, because the nation of immigrants have forgot what it is to be an immigrant.
So bringing it back to the point at hand, it isn’t just that they have clever lawyers, like Charles Rettig who was literally appointed by Trump to lead the IRS, it’s that they are able to hire and influence everyone involved in the process, not just on their side, to make sure they are the last to ever be affected.
Show them the money visualizer website https://alteredqualia.com/xg/examples/money.html#s[orders_of_magnitude]
There really isn’t much difference in lifestyles between billionaires and people with 100 mil. No one needs that much money. Anyone who has made more than 100 million has done something truly heinous to do so. I feel we should set our sights at a much lower tax bracket to cut down any potential antisocial oligarchs.
Considering there’s no fully legal and definitely no moral way to get that kind of money, they should all be behinds bars. As for kids that inherit such wealth, shame on them for accepting blood money and doing literally nothing with it, besides make the world around them even worse.
if you exceed $999,999,999 it should reset, giving people a motivation to keep things well under the cap. like exceeding the high score registers in a game, let it roll over.
What would be the point in amassing more wealth when its capped? At that wealth no matter what you do, its not gonna get less really if you invested into things. How does that solve any of the problems we have in society?
There wouldn’t be a point aside from maybe philanthropy. That these powerful Rich individuals will continue in Mass more wealth above the $1 billion cap specifically so others can benefit from it. I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything like that.
Just tax any income above $10,000,000 per year at 90%. There really isn’t a need for more than that.
Billionaires have very little taxable income. We need a wealth tax.
Billionaires don’t have taxable income because they’ve successfully lobbied for carve outs that exempt them from taxation.
That’s what makes a wealth tax impractical. How do you pass it through a Congress that’s been wholely co-opted by a billionaire friendly caucus?
Chuck Schumer, the senior senator from Wall Street, isn’t going to author a wealth tax. Kamala Harris, the former Senator from Silicon Valley isn’t going to sign it. And the SCOTUS majority that’s on the Harlan Crow payroll isn’t going to uphold it.
Many also don’t truly “pay” for things. They leverage debt against their assets, essentially like a fancy credit card that says “I own MegaCorp, you know I’m good for it, just send the bills to this wealth management firm”.
So it’s not out of the realms of possibility to say that a billionaire is actually spending very little money, ever. What they have is essentially gifts from whoever manages their assets, and that company just skims whatever things “cost”.
IMO taxing wealth is what’s needed, but it needs to be framed in a way that makes a billionaire want to invest in their country through high taxes. Make it a privilege that is praised, and ostracise those business that excuse themselves from contributing.
All countries would need to adopt it because now they can just register their company and summer resort under various identities in [insert tax haven here].
1% tax on all registered securities, payable in shares of those securities. First $10,000,000 owned by a natural person is exempted.
All securities collected in tax are resold by IRS liquidators in small lots over time, constituting no more than 1% of total traded volume of each security.
That wouldn’t catch the people who are the real problem, billionaires, who report something like $1 per year in income.
When you have billions in shares, you can use that as collateral to borrow money from the bank, and then you just spend that money. That’s not “income” so it isn’t taxed.
What’s needed is a 90% tax on people reporting high incomes as a start. But, then you need to close loopholes. The carried interest loophole for a start, which would nail most of the hedge fund crowd. Then, tax unrealized gains when they’re in the tens of millions range. Then prevent billionaires from handing billions to their children tax free by preventing the “stepping up” of capital gains for their heirs.
If I have $250k in shares I can also use that as collateral for a mortgage to buy a house. It would be pretty odd and problematic to be taxed on that like it’s income when it’s not, despite me spending it on a house…because I need to pay it back.
I agree with the rest though. And definitely would love to see 90% for anyone reporting extremely high incomes.
Obviously, the kinds of unrealized gains that are a problem aren’t $250k that someone uses for collateral on a mortgage for a house they plan to live in. The problems are the millions or billions in unrealized gains that someone might use to get a $10 million loan from the bank that they then use to lobby the government to open up new loopholes in the tax code.
Taxing wealth and/or unrealized gains is tricky to do right, but not doing it at all is even trickier. If you let the ultra rich just keep getting richer, they’ll continue to use that wealth to control the political process to make themselves richer and more powerful. Obscene levels of wealth inequality and democracy can’t coexist.
Oddly enough, the same people that wouldn’t want a maximum wage also don’t want a minimum wage. Go figure!
If the minimum wage was a comfortable living wage — like it should be, in my and many other folks’ opinion — then it wouldn’t matter. One person’s excess isn’t a problem, unless it’s at the expense of someone else (which, you know, is kinda the case…).
Even if it’s not at the expense of someone else, too much wealth in the hands of one person is still harmful. It gives one person too much power over others, allows for people to buy their way out of legal trouble, buy politicians, etc.
A handful of people’s excess is exactly the problem.
because the people in the top end are paid via stocks and not actual hard currency.
Of course there is a Maximum wage. According to my employers I am making it,.
To read this article, log in
I’m good, random website. I’m good.
Maximum wage only makes sense as a percentage of other people in the company. Ie. The maximum allowed is 10x more than the minimum wage paid in the company
Anything else means the money would just go to shareholders
And obviously, a minimum wage permitted too by amount
C-suite compensation is already largely handled by share offers - which get further pumped/paid for by share buyback schemes.
This would just further exacerbate it, unless we first re-ban buybacks.
Honestly, we should just ban them regardless.
I think we can do better: nobody who doesn’t work X nunber of hours per week can own stock. That’s how law firms organized as S-Corps do it. Even if the decisionmakers hardly do real work, they have to be at work to gain on their investment. But also, no golden parachutes and executives should be legally responsible for suffering and death from their policies.
Tax rates used to extend over 100% in the USA. The IRS lost the case. They were limited to all of the money earned, not more.
So there used to ba maximum wage.
In the mean time, decorate some pikes with billionaire noggins. The problem might fix itself if extreme wealth becomes a mortal liability.
Trickle-down economics works like a piñata - you gotta crack it open before anything starts to trickle.
Call it crab bucket, but I would hate to work in a system where my labor value is capped by someone other than me, or the person I’m selling it to.
Edit love downvotes with no rebuttal. Any system where a laborer is told they cannot market services at a rate accepted by a client is an oppressive system.
Mind you, people probably don’t think of your standard high earner they they think of an income cap. They think of people who make four (or even five) digits an hour, a rate that maybe high end lawyers can match. Maybe.
CEOs of large companies can easily make that much, often not even tied to performance but contractually guaranteed. The super-rich make that much simply by existing.
Basically, if your labor (or mere existence) isn’t even worth 1000 bucks an hour to your clients you’re a peasant like the rest of us and an income cap is probably never going to be relevant to you.
Thanks for actually discussing.
It’s my understanding that the earnings of the hyper wealthy are derived not through “traditional wages”, but instead loans backed by stock, business entities, etc.
So right out the gate we aren’t hunting the biggest fish: taxation of the hyper wealthy such that they pay their fair share.
Next, I believe that such a system would be contorted to limit the potential of those at the bottom of the ladder. If we hope to improve the lot of those folks, the conversation should folks on minimum wages, and employment and safety protections
I agree that going for wages in the traditional sense doesn’t catch many of the most relevant income streams. However, I think that a “maximum wage” makes sense as a theoretical construct used to create a sensible income tax scheme.
Essentially, tax brackets and rates could be defined in relation to the median income. Go too far above that (hitting the “maximum wage”) and your tax rate rapidly increases, maybe even going as high as 90%. Of course this would have to cover all sorts of income, not just plain money.
This scheme would effectively box people into a certain band of acceptable wealth and would create an incentive to raise wages – after all, if the average worker makes more, so can the most wealthy.
(Also, full agreement on needing to talk about better labor protections. American labor law is really lax.)
Decent points. I don’t want to spam my thoughts so I’ll keep it short, I fear corruption beyond the very sound ideas you shared.
You in particular need not worry about ever hitting that max GBU_28
The goal is to stop the bleeding for those being exploited by billionaires (the entire nation minus ~50)
You in particular need not worry about ever hitting that max GBU_28
But that’s just it - they genuinely are worried about exactly that, because they’ve been convinced by the people exploiting their labour for profit that they too can become a billionaire one day if they just work hard enough and make sure to never remove their tongue from the boot standing on their neck!
This is a live demonstration of propaganda at work.
One day I might be mega rich and then people like me better watch their step!
Yup, exactly.
What max? Who defines it?
Nice try with the personal insult. Schoolyard stuff.
I don’t think you’re being insulted, just that the limit can be unobtainable by 99% of people and still be effective. Personally I think that’s a possible thing, but also a pointless thing, a wage cap is going to do nothing to redistribute Jeff Bezos’ wealth in a sensible manner.
I found the phrasing targeted, but that’s probably because a rude person was calling me a numnuts at the same time.
I wish it was phrased the way you di, it would be more civil.
Further, I agree with you. I’m worried about it being abused and corrupted to keep laborers down
All systems are oppressive by that low bar definition ya numbnut.
Would it be unjust for me to make a law preventing you from accumulating so much gold/wealth in one place as to cause a black hole to form? Is that oppressive? Fuck off.
You shouldnt care about edge case scenarios where someone doesn’t get to be more rich than they already are when we are talking about solutions to problems, affecting millions of people real people with real problems.
Name calling?
Edit on topic, wages are not how billionaires are made. Wages are the concern of the general public. They would be the group impacted.
You are distracting from the fact that the problem can be solved with easy fixes to the language instead of agreeing that rich people should have a limit on how severe wealth inequality is.
Numbnuts
Uncivil, I’m having actual discussion with others. Cya
Look everyone! A sad troll!
A cap like this would have nothing to do with labor. Nobody, laboring, is going to ever be in danger of reaching it.
I believe it would be corrupted to target laborers and the hyper wealthy do not get their money from wages.
Americans need to relearn how to protest, and how to get the boot out of their mouth during primaries. Otherwise everything will be used against the working class while giving the owner class full socialism.
With that said, one of the ways you organize is by pushing for laws in an honest manner. If you just stay negative, people stay home. They want solutions, not problems.
I didn’t say anything about America, I think the concept would occur anywhere. As another said, robber barons are the real problem, and they do so through other financial vehicles/ means.
The remedy remains the same. There are countries where imposing it on the working class would not work because the working class would fill the streets.
I’ll agree to that sure.
My overall point is that to improve the conditions of the working class, other techniques would be more durable, and more safe, such as getting the hyper wealthy to pay their taxes, or getting laborers a greater stake in the profits of the company where they work.
Oh I agree this puts a lot of faith in the government when workers are perfectly capable of owning the factory they work in.
Why would you need to have total freedom there? There are plenty of rules and regulations in place for many things. If we as society can agree on a reasonable ceiling, why would that be an issue? What is your worry?
If there would be a cap on the hourly wage or total income the chances of you ever reaching it would be slim to none, and if you did… congrats you won capitalism, be happy.
It feels similar to the “hate paying taxes” and “I’m self made”. Paying taxes is a privilege, more is better, as it means you have more. Self made does not exist, more than half of everything anyone achieves is luck, starting with the birth lottery and going from there.
The big fish to catch is untaxed earnings of the hyper wealthy. Any attacks on the potential of labor is anti worker.
I agree that if there is anywhere to start it is taxing assets like stock portfolios and other vehicles the billionaire class uses to avoid taxation.
The whole trickle down economics did not work, it’s time we start trying rising tide economics, as it lifts all boats.
But anti labor is a stretch depending on where you draw a line. There are amounts that cannot be explained by mere labor.
So some dude accused me of being a troll and I’m certainly not, and I’m certainly interested in this topic. I just care about taking actual actions to affect change.
I believe this would shield the hyper wealthy from further fairness, they would hide behind this.
I further believe this would be corrupted to manipulate true laborers by targeting different professions and tax classes after the fact.
So we have common ground on the fact the primary focus is the robber barons. Any changes should start with addressing the avenues only the robber barons have to avoid taxation and work their way down.
But slippery sloping the fact there are people out there with millions of dollars of “salary” is also nonsense. CEO’s do not add that kind of value, there is a big network component at work.
Then there are several different scales for the first 100K of income to differentiate, but then above that it stops… F- that… if there is a top scale it should be at 99%. Just watch how quick there will be intermediate scales. But no one will be able to convince me that salaries above a certain amount can be defended. Where that amount is… I don’t know… it can be high… but a ceiling is easily defendable.
I think “freedom” resonates emotionally in different ways for different people. If you try to pass a law making it illegal to drink bleach, I will oppose that law. I certainly don’t want to drink bleach, but right now I have the freedom to drink it and you would be trying to take away that freedom. It has value to me even though I intend never to exercise it.
Taxes, unlike drinking bleach, are a matter of trade-offs. I’m not categorically against them. However, I don’t buy into the argument that I shouldn’t oppose them as long as I will never have to pay them.
Well I guess I would say that if obscene wealth disparity is against public interest, which it is. We should curtail it. Personal freedoms that rub against public interests are always going to be a point of contention, that’s why we would need good laws, not just willy nilly ones.
You’re never going to have to worry about it. If you won the lottery every week you wouldn’t be close to what these people have.
Your labour value is already massively capped by the super rich. You earn a fraction of what you produce for others.
“these people” don’t have what they have from wages. They have it from stock backed loans and similar.
Any legislation policing what someone in my job can earn is hurtful to the worker.
Most of the super rich don’t make their Monday through wages.
well most of us super poor can’t even make an afternoon, much less an entire day. jfc the entitlement of these assholes
Most of the super rich don’t make their Monday through wages.
Certainly they must make their Tuesday through wages?
You’d think so, but they don’t even make their Wednesday through wages, let alone Tuesday.
Jello Biafra proposed this as a policy when he ran for mayor of SF in 1980 and has been humping this idea ever since. It wouldn’f fly legally but as someone else here noted, you can tax at 90% above a threshold and do it that way.
