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Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

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Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#61

Post by EarlKing »

david927 wrote: post #19
prakhar897 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few more steps and you"ll reach communism.

Right now, in America, you have more people suffering from poverty than you have people with wealth. You also have taxation which is regressive, not progressive -- which was what brought on the French Revolution. We can have empathy now, or we can be surprised later.

Empathy is something that is sorely lacking in a post-COVID world. Apparently some people decided that certain groups are simply vermin to be exterminated and have been quite open about their abuse. Empathy, for them, simply isn't on the menu, because they have been told that these people pose an existential threat. It is left as an exercise for the reader to determine precisely who such parties are, and how this will end.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#62

Post by augstein »

david927 wrote: post #3

Until there's a wealth floor -- until everyone is fed, sheltered and has access to education, there needs to be a wealth cap. We, as a collective humanity, should not allow anyone to have more than, say, $20 million, until the basic needs of others have been met.

At times it seems perverse that people indulge themselves in the most extravagant activities this planet has ever seen, wasting resources per person and day that could help thousands of people.

All while millions of humans go hungry and die from poverty. It’s about time this issue is discussed more publicly.

Don‘t get me wrong, I‘m no socialist whatsoever and have nothing against a decent lavish lifestyle. I just don‘t think the world needs more megayachts, shipping around the world to be near wherever the owner is, in case he/she might want to use it for a day or two. Or 15+ megamansions around the world per billionaire, stockpiled at all times with the most expensive and rare food money can buy.

At some point society has to think about a fair allocation of scarce resources.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#63

Post by civilized »

bigyikes wrote: post #42
david927 wrote: post #3

Until there's a wealth floor -- until everyone is fed, sheltered and has access to education, there needs to be a wealth cap. We, as a collective humanity, should not allow anyone to have more than, say, $20 million, until the basic needs of others have been met.

Policies like this will cause the rich, who have extreme mobility, to leave your country. Maybe to some people this sounds nice, but generally it will lead to worse companies and less innovation.

I've always assumed that this is why early socialist and communist ideology strongly emphasized internationalism. To properly soak the rich, there must be no place for them to escape to.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#64

Post by Workaccount2 »

bigyikes wrote: post #42
david927 wrote: post #3

Until there's a wealth floor -- until everyone is fed, sheltered and has access to education, there needs to be a wealth cap. We, as a collective humanity, should not allow anyone to have more than, say, $20 million, until the basic needs of others have been met.

Policies like this will cause the rich, who have extreme mobility, to leave your country. Maybe to some people this sounds nice, but generally it will lead to worse companies and less innovation.

Except humanity and emotion kick in. People generally don't like to leave their country.

I'd be confident in calling out the rich on this bluff.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#65

Post by dcolkitt »

yayr wrote: post #45

This may be unpopular, but the hard thing in this discussion is to differentiate between consumption and investment. It does not help much to take wealth in terms of equity paper money away from people who know how to invest it efficiently and distribute it. On the other hand, there are minimum basic needs for consumption of food, health services, shelter, education etc. I agree that the system to finance those servi…

Along the points you bring up, John Cochrane had a fantastic series about why wealth taxes are such a terribly economic inefficient mechanism to raise revenue and why virtually no economists support them.

https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wealth-and-taxes-...

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#67

Post by jayjader »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #5
david927 wrote: post #3

Until there's a wealth floor -- until everyone is fed, sheltered and has access to education, there needs to be a wealth cap. We, as a collective humanity, should not allow anyone to have more than, say, $20 million, until the basic needs of others have been met.

The problem is that inflation destroys the value of money quicker than you realize. Nice houses can cost $30M in alpha cities. $20M is a goal post that will need to be moved regularly. It’s too difficult to say what is “enough”.

Then don't pin to a dollar amount, pin to relative wealth available in the world/country/region. Something like estimated total accumulated wealth / total pop.

Inflation destroys the value of money, not the underlying goods or services. Whether there are 100 dollars to go around or 10 billion, for the same "physical context"/material reality a rule along the lines of "no more than %5 of total wealth accumulated in 1 person's account" seems inflation-resistant.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#68

Post by ben_w »

hindsightbias wrote: post #37
ksec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most basic needs are or could be met already. Apart from Housing / Shelter. Which some how no government plans to tackle because the world economy is quite literally built or based on land and property prices. Even talks about UBI completely neglect housing prices. Which I came to the sad conclusion, those that understand housing wont talk about it, those that dont understand will never talk about it.

~700M people live in extreme poverty today ( Homes are a luxury.

That number has been trending downwards for ages even though we’re not capping income: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-populatio...

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#69

Post by notsureaboutpg »

endisneigh wrote: post #49

I have no problem with billionaires personally. I do have a problem with people being billionaires if the "value" they've created is negative (obviously this is my opinion). Consider two billionaries: - One creates a cold nuclear fusion device the size of a 10" x 10" x 10" cube. You can plug anything to this device and it will power it, indefinitely. - Another gets little boys and girls addicted to some sort of super…

Well of course who are you to decide what is addictive vs. what is, by some type of utilitarian calculation, maximally happiness increasing in society.

To many people kids under 13 are addicted to video games. To many others the creators of those games are adding happiness to our society and the negative effects are minimal and outweighed.

Vice versa a cold nuclear fusion device can be used by the US military to try and oppress some group across the world for indefensible reasons.

It's not realistic to apply moral arguments to people's wealth accumulation in any legally binding type of way. Of course we know creating Playboy is a worse way to accumulate wealth than say inventing an efficient battery technology, but how to write this into law that can be applied equally to each new case isn't clear at all.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#70

Post by ghostwriter »

These millionaires are useful idiots, it will be fun to see how their houses get confiscated in the name of further down equality one day. Everyone must be equal, and the most equal place on earth is a collective graveyard, a thing that collectivists are so succesful at replicating every single time they try to bring equality into your lives.
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