I got into it with someone I worked with [who made exactly as much as me.] Asked what would someone buy with $5 billion that they couldn’t get with $1 billion. He couldn’t come up with something, but was still going to defend someone else’s right to have it.
Twitter in about 6 more months?
Funny, but you have to admit it was low hanging fruit.
The lowest.
A small country
At the expense of giving 100,000 people a $1000,000 raise, which would massively stimulate the economy.
And those 100,000 people being the country’s industrial elite, the raise being tax breaks for those people, and the country being USA.
You could run on a over the counter GOP ticket.
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Yeah the conservative fine print is really becoming their front page material fast.
It’s like, they don’t have to cover it up anymore, decades of political brainwashing has gotten enough people on board with the original psychosis for them to just flaunt it.
Abortion access is really hurting them on that front.
It’s all well and good to obsess over and villanise minorities like trans people that have no meaningful effect on conservative lives, but you start attaching a life-long responsibility to another human for an accident, and people aren’t going to like it.
The only issue I can think of is that when people reach that billion, they’ll just close up shop cause why continue if your revenue is limited to your spending habits. I’d want the answer to that question to be “out of the goodness of my heart” or “to help people” but I sadly don’t think a lot of them would do so
Your commnet reminds be about a story I heard. A American guy graduated college and then volunteered to go out and do good in the world. After a year he checked in with some of his fellow grads and saw how much they were making. He did some calculations and decided that he should come back to the USA and get a job. He got a great job with a big salary, and by living frugally he was able to donate enough to support five aide workers.
That should be more common, especially among “Christians”. But people rarely act altruistically. That’s what makes it nice when they do.
Donate to Doctors Without Borders (or something similar) people. Charities have volunteers coming out their ears.
When you can’t have an engaging conversation about anything related to the wealthy because everyone has Stockholm Syndrome.
Maybe if they simp hard enough the billionaire will see their hidden worth and befriend them.
“Why are you poor? You clearly belong with us rich folk. Hop on, there’s always room for one more, innit!”
They’re all just as entitled as this character was too.
At least Joffrey was actually rich though.
They did depend on a big bank, didn’t they? And they also used debt as a currency
Isn’t that how modern economy works?
Yes! I tried to imply that. They are no different than modern rich
Aww right. I got it! I get things! Now, let me get back to living in poverty and squalor, if you don’t mind.
“We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same. Like somehow the rich will eventually get SO full that they’ll explode. And the candy will rain down on the rest of us. Like they’re some kind of pinata of benevolence. But here’s the thing about a pinata: it doesn’t open on its own. You have to beat it with a Stick.”
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Why should the fact the guy makes 35k change his opinion?
That is contradictory. If there are no billionaires you cannot tax them. Obviously the 35K guy reacts to that.
I still call the guy with 900 mil “ultra wealthy”.
Obviously not for 35K guy. :)
Edit: asker chatGPT about it:
The most well-known lists that rank the wealth of individuals are Forbes’ various lists, including the Forbes 400 for the United States and the Forbes World’s Billionaires list for international rankings. As of 2023, to be included on the Forbes 400 list, which ranks the wealthiest individuals in the United States, a person needed to have a net worth of at least $2.9 billion
My point is that we often forget how rich the rich are. Human brain just is not good operating with billions.
During the Occupy Wall Street days a group of guys started yelling at my wife and I, calling us 1%'ers because we were having dinner at a “nice” restaurant (~$200 for ap, entree, dessert, drinks, and tip). I realized how clueless most people are about what truly rich means.
I’m wealthy, not gonna lie, but I’ve also had two serious health scares, one being cancer. All it takes is one prolonged bout with cancer to fully wipe the proceeds from our 25 year career in tech. That’s not rich, that’s called wealthy enough to be able to take a breath from under this boot were under.
Ten years ago, a dear friend, a genius, and highly regarded in his field (not tech) had a house in an affluent neighborhood, a BMW, nice clothes, nice watch, kids taking dance and music lessons, etc. The full blown suburban Bliss lifestyle. One nervous breakdown led to job loss, to divorce, to mental health issues, to drug use (though mostly weed), to now living with his elderly mom in a run down trailer in the bayou. That slide to ruin took less than the ten years but I rounded up. Now look at Elon. A hundred kids, baby mommas everywhere, some suing him, his mental breakdown led to blowing 44BILLION on a dying platform, and none of it even makes a dent.
Your second paragraph could be fixed by the US not having the worst Healthcare system on the entire planet.
And we can pay for that by taxing the ultra wealthy and eliminating billionaires
Its insanity, he could quite literally burn his fortune and I don’t think the flames would consume it fast enough to burn it all. Our systems become nonsensical when individuals control this much. Most people are financing everything, one mistep and they’re done for, yet these goliaths are meandering around, shitting the bed, and it doesn’t even register in their conciousness. Fucking insane.
Nice crown bro
Succinct.
If they did tax the wealthy heavily, they’d probably leave the country, and pull their money and resources with them.
I’m sure another nation would be more than willing to house billionaires/ultra millionaires and their assets, and your country would lose a lot of money/cash flow/jobs
It’s a hard challenge to solve in a world wide setting.
While that is a load of horseshit, it doesn’t matter.
Either they leave and cost the country less to prop up their businesses through tax exemptions so someone else can fill the void, or they don’t leave and pay their taxes. Society wins either way.
That’d be awesome if it were always the case, but it doesn’t appear to be - below are a couple articles about raising taxes in nations and what happened when they did:
Hopefully we can figure something out though, there is too much wealth being horded by only a few at this point. That always seems to be what happens in every modern system we’ve made on a large scale. Communism or Capitalism, the wealth/power eventually ends up in the hands of a only a few people
So, that is one specific way to tax the wealthy and isn’t even one that I am thinking of.
The biggest loopholes to close are:
- Caps on things like medicare that are a percentage of income with a cap. Just remove the cap and make it a percentage of any amount of income.
- Raise the taxes on capital gains to align with income tax instead of being a tax break and apply percentage of income taxes like medicare to them. Income is income, and unless capital gains is taxed higher than regular income it should just be income because it is treated like income.
- Lower the caps on tax breaks for things like home interest. Currently the rich can buy multiple homes at interest rates lower than the rest of the population and then they get both income from selling it later and it makes them money just by being able to buy whatever. Tax that process more when the house is worth an excessive amount.
- When they get a loan against stocks and other assets it should be taxed as income if it is above a certain threshold, say the median household income. So if the median household income is 100k in some area, then them getting a cash loan should be taxed for every dollar over 100k as income. This closes the loop where they don’t need ‘income’ from jobs because they get assets that appreciate instead and avoid income tax while never paying taxes on those assets until they sell them.
- Don’t let them lower their taxes because they ‘lost money’ in one year. Regular people don’t get to do that, don’t let them either.
There is even more that goes into the process of them getting massively rich while avoiding taxes by business and asset appreciation that doesn’t count as income, which appreciates faster when they are underpaying their staff. The whole problem is how fast having money lets you get more money without paying taxes.
And don’t get me started on tax exemptions for businesses that are never a net benefit for the community they are in. That is a whole race to the bottom.
Good riddance
Having the wealthy here hasnt really helped us they lobby for laws that hurt the common person and benifit them and they dont pay their fair share in taxes.
They can’t take all their resources with them.
As for jobs most of the resources that create those jobs would still be here why coulden’t they just change ownership?
If they did tax the wealthy heavily, they’d probably leave the country, and pull their money and resources with them.
We did tax the wealthy heavily- in the period between FDR and Reagan. From the 40s to the 80s the top marginal income tax rate was between 70 and 94%. And do you know what the ultra-rich did? They prospered along with everybody else, they stayed put in the USA, and they seethed about other people prospering and their loss of power and influence.
You know what else they did? They spent money to corrupt politics, to pack the judiciary, to legalize bribery and money in politics, to build international legal frameworks to prevent countries from regulating or taxing their billionaires. They stood up propaganda organs to subvert democracy, they paid politicians to betray the voters and strip away their labor protections, and here we are today deep into the garters of another gilded age.
They didn’t leave when the top tax rate was something like 90% back in FDRs day so why would they leave if it’s 40, 50, even 60%? I seriously doubt we’d EVER go that high as the ones that would be affected control our government, but still.
But didn’t they leave? I think most 70s British rock bands have a chapter where they leave to France or Switzerland directly because of the taxes.
Apples and livestock comparison there.
Ah yes the ultra wealthy British rock bands in the 70s.
I’m sure a ton of British rock bands left America because of FDR… ?
So you’re telling me that we’ve been able to get Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and the rest of the god-tier narcissists to GTFO this whole time?!
It’d be even funnier to clawback their dinero after they go to Panama or wherever they fuck off to.
If they did tax the wealthy heavily, they’d probably leave the country, and pull their money and resources with them.
Good. Billionaires take many times more wealth from society than they put into it. That’s how they became obscenely rich to begin with.
💀💀💀
Why are you against asking billionaires to contribute back? They get many services from our country, and Uncle Sam expects their duty as well.
they’d probably leave the country, and pull their money and resources with them.
No rich people live in New York City, Chicago, San Fransisco, or LA, because the taxes are so high.
Please don’t Google “cities where the highest net worth people live”.
I’m sure another nation would be more than willing to house billionaires/ultra millionaires and their assets
But would Elon Musk want to move to the slums of Mumbai or the desert wastes of Sudan just to save on taxes? Why don’t all the billionaires live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming or Nashville, Tennessee or Dallas, Texas?
Dallas has a whole lot due to the energy and telecom sectors. The city itself is pretty blue, but sometimes out in the suburbs like Rockwall a full on Alex Jones emerges. It’s pretty much the same for every city in Texas.
Dallas has a whole lot due to the energy and telecom sectors.
Absolutely. What’s more, they have an enormous influence over who gets to run for office and how much positive press they receive. And yet the taxes in Dallas are still some of the highest in the state. Almost as though taxes pay for the public utilities that make Dallas a major energy/telecom hub, and the exceptionally wealthy consider this tax money an investment rather than a loss or a theft.
It’s pretty much the same for every city in Texas.
The dirty truth about Texas suburbs is that they’ll have shockingly high taxes and fees for the purpose of building up local infrastructure. Houston Chronicle did an article a few months back about how the Texas tax system raised more per-capita than California, thanks in large part to the property tax base that has seen housing prices skyrocket over the last decade.
The big difference between these red and blue states isn’t how much money is raised but where it is spent.
Ahh yes, we’re all very familiar with the tale of the time the Billionaire came to town and gave everyone money, jobs, and a golden toilet.
Good luck taking your fucking sky scraper to Dubai
The sky scraper is technically owned by a hive collective of financial AI instruments based out of Kiribati anyway, nothing would change for the elite.
“oh no”
It’s weird how no one remembers the paradise papers and all that. Most of their wealth is already off shore and none of it is taxed. There’s no such thing as “trickle down.” They are not good for the economy even if they did invest in it in any way other than proverbially setting their money on fire. Meanwhile, most of the property being bought and sold in the US now is owned by the wealthiest people from other countries, not US billionaires.
Maybe they can go live in China. Jack Ma says hi.
If a mega rich dude pulls out, someone else who is okay with making great rather then ungodly money is going to step in to take their place. Richie Rich can’t take his factories and land with him, and its rather unlikely his workers would be willing or able to move elsewhere, especially to leave the country, and even moreso depending on the country, so enjoy the brain drain.
Lol, where they gonna go?
Literally any tax haven
Their money is already there so them moving wouldn’t make much of a difference.
