There should be a maximum personal net worth of a billion dollars. Any income over that needs to be put into public infrastructure projects. Violators will be subject to reduction of maximum net worth to no more than one million dollars.
Posted by MyFakeUsername11@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 202 comments
SucculantSavant@reddit
We should get rid of the capital gains step up basis.
If billionaire makes $$$ currently they don’t pay taxes because the capital gains aren’t realized while they are alive. When they die, those taxes are forgiven. If their estate had to pay taxes, then the gov. Would get their money, (even though they had to wait for it)
CharmingTuber@reddit
So if I own 30% of a company that becomes incredibly successful, would your system force me to sell my portion of the company until my net worth is less than a billion dollars?
Usual_Zombie6765@reddit
Yes, because people don’t understand how wealth is generated IRL. They think there is a giant pile of money, and the rich people got there first and took a larger share than others got.
zmaneman1@reddit
Not a single person actually thinks that.
Usual_Zombie6765@reddit
If you ask them “how is wealth generated?” Or “What is the primary job of a CEO?” They typically have no idea.
AbroadImmediate158@reddit
Yeah, most just don’t think
LotionedBoner@reddit
Nah. I have it on good authority that billionaires have a money vault that they swim in daily.
whatstwomore@reddit
What would be wrong with that? Genuine question
HeadGuide4388@reddit
I'm assuming your asking the guy criticizing? The common argument against a wage cap is that it will deincentivise people from trying to maximize their potential.
Say there is a law, like the post starts with, that says "You can only have $1 million. Anything after that will be absorbed into a central fund." If you were capable of obtaining that kind of wealth, either you work hard until you get to $999,999,990 then take the rest of the year off or find ways to donate it to a charity ran by your cousin that has sloppy records. Similarly if your business was too successful it might make people not want to invest because any money they contribute would go to that central fund instead of into the company.
whatstwomore@reddit
I don't disagree with anything you said. I just don't see the downside of every billionaire retiring today/the day they hit $1b?
Particular_Yard304@reddit
So why would anyone start a company? You create a successful company like Facebook or Apple etc. Then once it becomes worth more than a billion dollars you have to get rid of that company? And other people can also only buy in at a max of a billion dollars? So a company like Apple which is valued at over 3 trillion dollars would have to have almost every billionaire in the world invest in it leaving few left for other companies devaluing every other company on the market. And who would own or control any of these companies with hundreds or thousands of people owning a tied majority share? Also if you have a vision to create a car company like Tesla or Rivian it takes billions to do so, so there would just be no new companies in certain industries due to incredible difficulty securing funds. And even if you could secure funds once again you would have many, many majority share holders all having equal say in how a company should be run, I think we all know how well that would go. And who wants to spend their life creating a company just to have it taken from them once it becomes hugely successful? Many of whom don’t even do it for the money after a certain point but to push their vision to greater success. They shouldn’t be allowed to grow the company they started because everyone’s capped at a billion dollars? And if they do they lose control over it. What a great way to incentivize growth in America.
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whatstwomore@reddit
Ok admittedly I'm incredibly high, so take this response with a grain of salt. But first of all, I'd say that overall you're trying to slippery slope the situation. Economics would indicate that supply and demand would prevent the catastrophe you describe.
A few things that I want to respond to specifically though.
To become a billionaire. A billion is a HUGE number and you'd likely make 1000 times your initial investment with any given company.
You're literally describing demo€racy. If you're saying that people are stupid (see: Turnip) that's a somewhat valid argument, but in a perfect world everyone should have the baseline education to where this isn't a problem.
Again, $1b is a HUGE number. You're making a large profit if you cab get any company to $1b. And if you want to say that some industries are too expensive to get into with <$1b investment, that would be solved by companies getting devalued by the fact that you wouldn't have any shareholder with over $1b in the company
Fuck this is a bitch to get around automod.
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whatstwomore@reddit
Ok admittedly I'm incredibly high, so take this response with a grain of salt. But first of all, I'd say that overall you're trying to slippery slope the situation. Economics would indicate that supply and demand would prevent the catastrophe you describe.
A few things that I want to respond to specifically though.
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jumper34017@reddit
I support this idea in theory, but billionaires would find a way around it.
anarchistright@reddit
Why do you support theft in theory?
M1lV@reddit
If you managed to accumulate a billion dollars, you only did so by profiteering heavily of the work of others. It's only fair that you give back
anarchistright@reddit
Prove that “profiteering heavily of the work of other” is wrong.
M1lV@reddit
No. You prove that it's right
anarchistright@reddit
You made the claim, you carry the burden of proof.
You’re asserting moral guilt without proving harm. If someone accepts a job freely and I profit by organizing capital, risk, and labor efficiently, it’s not exploitation, it’s value creation.
M1lV@reddit
I never said that it's wrong. I said that you should give back, since you also took something from others. Taking the job freely doesn't really matter. You either help Billionaire A got get rich, or Billionaire B. They profit from society as well. No one is a self made Billionaire and no one needs more than a billion dollars
anarchistright@reddit
“Give back” assumes they took something that wasn’t theirs. Every exchange was voluntary. The baker, the engineer, and the janitor weren’t robbed: they were paid what they agreed to. The billionaire owes them nothing beyond that.
No one “needs” a billion dollars? Need is irrelevant. The market doesn’t reward based on need, but on the value others are willing to pay.
M1lV@reddit
He did. He took the labour of their employees and paid them lass than what it's worth. Marx called this "surplus value." Look, we are never gonna see eye to eye on this, and that's alright. I think society would be better if there was no one hoarding an ungodly amount of money and paying their employees as little as possible. It's easy to say "just switch jobs" from behind your keyboard.
anarchistright@reddit
“Surplus value” is just Marxist wordplay for profit. It assumes value is created solely by labor, ignoring the entrepreneur’s risk, capital, coordination, and time preference.
Again, workers are paid what their labor is worth on the market, no one’s forced to work.
If you think they’re underpaid, start a business and offer more. Let’s see how far that surplus takes you.
M1lV@reddit
Of course they are underpaid. How else is a Billionaire getting a billion dollars.
anarchistright@reddit
Underpaid according to what standard.
M1lV@reddit
The cost of living. Amazon workers can't even take a break and have to pee in bottles
anarchistright@reddit
Classifying someone as underpaid assumes a central planner knows each worker’s “true” value, yet wages emerge from voluntary exchange, not moral guesswork.
If someone accepts a job over all alternatives, then, by definition, it’s their best option. You don’t fix hardship by punishing wealth; you fix it by freeing markets to create more choices.
Peeing in a bottle sucks, but it’s not theft, it’s a bad job someone still chose.
GfxJG@reddit
Let me guess - You thought Robin Hood was the bad guy?
Usual_Zombie6765@reddit
What was Robin Hood’s crime?
paypiggie111@reddit
Literally stealing lol
Usual_Zombie6765@reddit
Sort of, in the newer movies that is his crime. In the book, his crime is poaching.
WanderingFlumph@reddit
Being dope as fuck
Usual_Zombie6765@reddit
Poaching
2sAreTheDevil@reddit
King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is!
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anarchistright@reddit
Evidently.
Physical_Floor_8006@reddit
If you define theft as that, then yes, I support theft both in theory and in actuality.
anarchistright@reddit
How is it not actually theft? After revising the definition I’m pretty sure it’s that.
wehrmann_tx@reddit
Billionaire steals from 100,000 people through predatory/exploitive business decisions, not a peep from you. 100,000 take back the money their labor provided, theft to you.
anarchistright@reddit
Money their labor “provided” is irrelevant. Firstly, the worker agrees to work for the billionaire for a set wage. How is profit theft? Prove it.
RemarkablePiglet3401@reddit
The billionaires only earned their money through theft.
anarchistright@reddit
Prove it.
Confident-Drama-422@reddit
Ahh, they probably think that they stole it through theft because they didn't pay an employee the full profit that they produced. We both obviously know why that's not the case but these individuals aren't capable of understanding that and fall into a contradiction logically and empirically everytime they try to prove that
wehrmann_tx@reddit
No ones asking for full profit. Just way more than the 5% it seems.
anarchistright@reddit
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Tulip_King@reddit
how does that boot taste?
anarchistright@reddit
Which one?
Single_Blueberry@reddit
Because it's about stealing back from thieves.
anarchistright@reddit
Show how being a billionaire necessarily implies theft.
MoonCat_42@reddit
there is no ethical way to make a billion dollars. someone is being exploited if that happens
anarchistright@reddit
That’s what I’m asking evidence for.
PlagueFLowers1@reddit
Let's take a wage of $100/hr. Assume 0 expenses so you can save every penny and a nice 40 hour work week
If we take $1,000,000,000.00 and divide that by $4,000 we get 250,000.
That means it will take you 250k weeks to EARN a billion dollars at a pretty high hourly wage.
Yo break that down to years it is 4,807 years of work. Again this is with no expenses.
Even a wage of $1,000/hr cuts that to 25k weeks. Which is still multiple multiple lifetimes.
Idk many jobs that are paying over $1,000/hr but there ya go there is no real reasonable way to earn it.
However. Let's say you own a company and employe a bunch of people. If you employee 20k people, and underpay 10k of them by about 25k. Just numbers I'm pulling out of my ass.
With those numbers those 10k workers are producing $250,000,000. 250 million. Now after a mere 4 years the owner can be a billionaire. Again, assuming 0 expenses. But even with reasonable expenses it will be approximately 4 years.
anarchistright@reddit
Respectfully, that’s a just a nonsense answer to the me asking for evidence of exploitation.
Exploitation only happens when there’s coercion. If someone accepts a wage voluntarily, there’s no exploitation. They agreed because it was better than their alternatives.
Wages aren’t based on how much you produce for the company, but on how easily you can be replaced. Owners risk their money, organize everything, and create the conditions for those jobs to exist at all, that’s why they earn more.
Your math actually proves the opposite of what you think: you can’t labor your way to a billion, because labor alone doesn’t create that kind of wealth. Capital, investment, and organizing others’ efforts is what scales productivity to that level.
Inequality doesn’t automatically mean injustice. As long as no one is forced, no one is exploited.
PlagueFLowers1@reddit
Individual labor alone doesn't create that kind a wealth.
That's why wage exploitation by an owner of a bunch of workers DOES create that wealth
You don't understand how scaling something up works and that makes sense based on being a ring wing anarchist I wouldn't expect you to understand most basic concepts.
Your response lacks any semblance of logic or you're just really really dumb and don't understand how bezos or the Walmart owners under aging their workers is exploitation. Again, being a right wing anarchist leans me towards a certain answer here.
That's a whole nother conversation and I don't feel like explaining fucking everything to someone who is looking for weak gotchas.
anarchistright@reddit
Your response is mostly emotional venting, not an argument. You haven’t addressed my original point about voluntary exchange and coercion; instead, you resort to ad hominems and strawmans. Scaling wealth through organizing labor, investment, and risk is not exploitation unless coercion is involved, which you haven’t proved. Simply calling something “exploitation” doesn’t make it so.
You also commit a non sequitur: even if wealth is created by organizing many workers, it doesn’t logically follow that it’s exploitation. Workers voluntarily accept their jobs based on available alternatives; they aren’t enslaved. Repeating “exploitation” without defining or demonstrating coercion is just circular reasoning. If you can’t engage without insults or basic fallacies, you’re not arguing, you’re just rationalizing resentment.
Zootsoups@reddit
If I gather up a group of homeless women and start a brothel, am I exploiting them? They can always go back to being homeless.
anarchistright@reddit
No, it’s not exploitation.
They’re adults making a choice. Having bad options doesn’t mean someone is being forced, it just means life is hard.
You’re confusing having bad options with being forced, that’s a false equivalence. Just because a choice sucks doesn’t mean it’s coercion. Nobody’s threatening them; they’re picking the best out of bad situations. Also, just because you find something ugly doesn’t make it unjust, that’s you projecting your feelings onto reality.
Zootsoups@reddit
You seem to have a very narrow definition for what constitutes exploitation. So in my scenario, you'd only agree it's exploitation if I had kidnapped them or prevented them from leaving. I actually don't have a very negative view of sex work, but when the options are that or homelessness, I'd argue that it's exploitative since I'd be profiting off of their misfortune. I'm sure you'd argue that there's nothing preventing them from being a solo act, but presumably the brothel would effectively cover protection, advertising, and probably most impactful: cleanliness and a place to do "business." If you want to debate, I'd probably recommend listing your definition of exploitation to start off with. Preferably from a dictionary.
anarchistright@reddit
Exploitation is “the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.”
Refer to my previous comment. Same point.
Zootsoups@reddit
Well then you have to define what fair is. I don't necessarily disagree with your definition of exploitation, but I probably disagree with how you define fair
anarchistright@reddit
I’d say fair means voluntary contract and not coercive action.
Zootsoups@reddit
Idk I'd probably call adjustable rate mortgages unfair and that's a voluntary contract. People can accept whatever terms they want, but I disagree that that inherently makes the terms fair.
PlagueFLowers1@reddit
Wage exploitation is exploitation. I'm not here to explain simple concept to you.
If you want to pretend to be stupid and play the "no one is forced to work" card then what can I say you never asked the original question in good faith to begin with.
anarchistright@reddit
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anarchistright@reddit
Literal anti-concept. That’s like saying consensual theft.
Hey, if I prove you use fallacies and deflect the point emotionally, don’t say I’m doing this in bad faith. Thanks!
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unmelted_ice@reddit
This only covers a few of the richest billionaires. But, wage theft is the most common form of theft. At least in the US.
https://www.texasobserver.org/tesla-elon-texas-workers/
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2024/07/08/782639.htm#:~:text=Insurer%20GEICO%20has%20agreed%20to,GEICO%20from%202020%20to%202023
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/corporate-thieves-amazon-stole-62-million-of-tips-from-delivery-drivers/
https://www.hrdive.com/news/oracle-settles-california-paga-pay-dispute/745197/
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-pay-millions-workers-unpaid-security-judge-class-action-settlement-2022-8#:~:text=Apple%20will%20pay%20%2430.5%20million,in%20the%209%2Dyear%20case&text=Apple%20will%20pay%20%2430.5%20million%20to%20thousands%20of%20store%20workers,a%20lawsuit%20over%20unpaid%20wages.
https://calcivilrights.ca.gov/2024/07/03/civil-rights-department-reaches-14-4-million-settlement-with-microsoft-over-alleged-parental-and-disability-leave-discrimination/
anarchistright@reddit
Your argument is not actual evidence that being a billionaire requires systemic exploitation.
It is evidence that some billion-dollar companies have engaged in illegal practices.
Specific instances of wage theft prove individual criminality, not that wealth accumulation itself is exploitative.
Citing isolated violations just implies a hasty generalization.
unmelted_ice@reddit
Fair enough, I only bothered to google the first few wealthiest names I thought of - and there was a 100% hit rate. Which wasn’t surprising because, again, wage theft is the most common form of theft in the US.
Anecdotally - and not that you’d even believe this necessarily - but, hard work alone could never generate $1b in net worth. We can ignore the exploitation here since neither of us will agree on exploitation of workers running rampant.
You need to be lucky and take on a lot of leverage if you want to amass $1b from the ground up.
anarchistright@reddit
I get your point (really), but I’m asking for you to back it up. All the replies to my original comment are just variations of “reaching a billion dollars in wealth requires exploitation”. Understood, but… why? How?
Outrageous-Lychee-30@reddit
Just to clarify the proof you want is all 1700ish billionaires being tied to some form of extortion?
unmelted_ice@reddit
Totally fair! You’ll never prove it; my experience working with people with that many assets is obviously anecdotal.
I’m sure an actuary could give math reasons, but that is not me!
jjrruan@reddit
r/foundelon
El_Durazno@reddit
I'm not on that guys side but refusing to actually provide evidence and do shit like this pushes people further into their ideas
Even if you do supply sources and they still don't read them then at least you've provided them no excuses
anarchistright@reddit
It’s like they’re doing it on purpose lol.
El_Durazno@reddit
Remember I'm not on your side, logically speaking, thinking about simply how large of a number a billion is how do you think someone makes that without at bare minimum sevearly underpaying employees?
A billion 1 dollar bills stacked on each other is a quarter of the way to the moon from earth
Even the highest paying job in the medical industry (an industry that should realistically have the highest paying jobs that anyone can get and make money working with their own hands) anaesthesiologists don't even make 500,000 dollars a year. Even if they earned the billion dollars legitimately, how can you say a ceo of a company like Amazon that can almost run itself at the point it's reached be more deserving of an insane paycheck than someone who's job it is to help keep people healthy?
anarchistright@reddit
If wages are freely agreed upon by employer and employee, no theft occurs. Theft requires coercion, not voluntary contract.
Economic value isn’t based on effort or morality (like healing people), but on how much others subjectively value the service or product. A CEO organizing a massive supply chain can be valued higher than a surgeon because more people depend on it.
Wages reflect what others are willing to pay. If someone accepts a wage, it logically cannot be called “underpayment” without implying the worker is irrational or enslaved, which they are not.
Also, “deserve” is meaningless economically.
El_Durazno@reddit
Although there is no slavery, large companies like Amazon, Walmart, or Target end up bankrupting many small businesses by simply selling their items for cheaper because they can afford to, sometimes even at a loss specifically to get those small businesses shut down. This leads to a shortage of diverse job opportunities. What used to be 6+ different small stores there is now one single massive entity that covers every single need. In the past if you lost a job at a sporting goods store you could easily go get a job at the textile place across the street but now if you lose that job, due to something like illness the likelihood of finding a job is significantly reduced because a large percentage of those available are only available at a big box store
People like Bezos, even if indirectly, are diverting money out of the country, away from our people. They perform predatory practices to make it so they're the only companies that can exist.
If people like trump truly want to "make America great again", he would reinstate a former regulation that mandated wholesale retailers not sell at a discount for large orders from major companies, only small shops would get the discount. This makes it harder for those big companies to run mom and pops out on town
No people aren't forced to work for those companies but they sure try their hardest to make sure their one of very few options
I'm busy rn and typed this during a break I had if you need sources for anything I've said ask and I'll do so
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bloody-pencil@reddit
“Why do you support punching the guy who kicked you in the balls?? He worked hard to afford those steel toe boots!”
Tulip_King@reddit
how does that boot taste?
tlk0153@reddit
We shouldn’t be capping anyone’s income. That will take away motivation of innovators to move forward after certain point. We just need to fix our tax laws
Dry-Poem6778@reddit
The real innovators are most often not the billionaires, they are the people who work at those guy's companies.
PABLOPANDAJD@reddit
And they are bankrolled by billionaires and banks. The geniuses at SpaceX wouldn’t be be able to innovate anything without a bankroller like Musk. He didn’t invent anything, but he’s still crucial to the company
wehrmann_tx@reddit
If your only offer to a company is a bankroll, then you shouldn’t get the lions share of the profit.
PABLOPANDAJD@reddit
I think a lot of you are missing the point. They aren’t getting most of the company’s value for no reason. They literally OWN IT. That’s like saying a gardener or landscaper should own the majority of your front lawn because they do the most work on it
Physical_Floor_8006@reddit
He is not crucial. The company is crucial.
PABLOPANDAJD@reddit
And who took the initial risk and through their money into the company? Again, im not saying Elon is some genius who single handedly created the starship rocket, but its ignorant to pretend he wasn’t crucial to the company’s initial success
MyFakeUsername11@reddit (OP)
This is a crazy ideas subreddit, not an economic white paper. But, I don't believe that the potential of vast riches is the main diver of innovation. For some people, maybe- but even then, it is not the innovator or inventor who usually profits most from an idea or invention. It's usually the downstream folks who improve it and/or figure out how to scale it's production and distribution.
Regardless, I think many people don't realize how much money a billion dollars is- particularly if it were in the form of liquid, spendable capital. A billion dollars is so much more than any one person could possibly need, but so many could benefit from infrastructure projects. Notice I didn't say to redistribute this money to any group (ie "the poor" or "the disenfranchised" or whatever), but rather to improve the infrastructure that's very existence surely contributed to the generation and amassing of said wealth in the first place.
itsjakerobb@reddit
I don’t think that’s true. Once you’re at a billion, amassing more wealth doesn’t really have any impact on your means. You can buy whatever you want, whenever you want — and you’d have to spend enormous quantities continuously for a long time to outpace the interest you’d be earning.
We do need to fix our tax laws; that’s true. One of the first things we should do is drastically increase the rate for top earners.
SideEmbarrassed1611@reddit
I don't have $200 billion. My company does. I am actually broke, my company pays me $1 a year. I use my company credit card to make purchases. Legally, I am broke.
I own the company, but I myself am legally broke.
2sAreTheDevil@reddit
Why a billion? What determines that cutoff as opposed to 800 million or 1.2 billion? Does the amount change over time? Why a reduction to a million dollars when that is well under what's considered a health requirement net worth?
I'm not disagreeing with your concept, I'm getting to point out that it's so nuanced that it's basically not enforceable.
dreamingforward@reddit
The Truth is that no one in America is competent enough to earn much more than $100k/yr. You'd have to work for 1000yrs to earn a billion dollars at that rate. People with lots of wealth have either exploited resources or other humans.
Von-Nug@reddit
I would like to say anything over 1B is taxed at 90%. But we can't trust where those dollars will go to. Maybe anything over 1B goes towards employee bonuses? OP has a great thought
indigoreality@reddit
Net worth and income are different. What would you want to place the limit on?
r2k-in-the-vortex@reddit
You don't really understand what net worth is. Suppose your house for whatever reason gets valued at 2 billion dollars. Congratulations, you are now a billionaire. What is to be done, will half your house be taken away from you? Who is doing the taking? Who is going to manage that half of house and in whose interest will it be managed? Would Alphabet be valued at nearly two trillion today if it wasn't just two guys with the ultimate decision making power behind it? If state could spin out trillion dollar successes at will, why doesn't it? Why wait for someone to raise a unicorn just to confiscate it?
SirKatzle@reddit
Why so high? 50 millions seem too high. 1 billion?
Comprehensive-Ad4815@reddit
Take their land. Their cars and their stocks. 1bil is the limit. You and your family can live happily for generations on the wealth.
Its just hoarding
Mr_frosty_360@reddit
People don’t get a net worth over a billion dollars through income. It’s assets. Also, every single person who nears $1B in assets will be able to make sure they never earn a penny of income in that country. You’ll just create more laws that the super rich can easily avoid and will accomplish nothing.
Droviin@reddit
Yeah, these people might have very high annual income, but it's their assets that are driving the bulk of their wealth.
Stuck_in_my_TV@reddit
Pretty much every rich person is relatively cash poor. Despite being worth over 200 billion, there’s no way Musk or Bezos actually have even $1 billion in spendable currency. Their net worth is just how much people think someone would be willing to pay for the shares of their company. But even then, there’s price would drop sharply if they actually tried to sell that many shares.
Eric1491625@reddit
It's a misconception that billionaire's can't mobilise gargantuan amounts of usable cash. They can.
It's also a misconception that they can't sell shares to convert it into an Earthshaking amount of cash. Because they can.
Remember, Elon Musk was able to cobble up $44 BILLION in cash to buy Twitter.
swapspitting@reddit
I’m not a fan of the husk, but he quite literally didn’t pay for twitter in cash and had to take loans
Eric1491625@reddit
Taking loans is just billionaires' standard way of converting their net worth into usable cash...
What matters is that Elon Musk was able to put $44B of cash into the pockets of Twitter shareholders, and acquire the rewards of that cash movement (i.e. controlling the company)
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Freak-Of-Nurture-@reddit
Then why do they fight so hard against it?
OrderOfMagnitude@reddit
"Taxing the rich is literally impossible. It's never been done. Nothing you come up with will work so don't bother and don't try. Even on the crazyideas sub I'm gonna argue against it."
Honestly man, just shut the hell up. You're wrong, you're simping for the rich, and it's sad.
Mr_frosty_360@reddit
I never said taxing rich individuals is not possible. If what I said is wrong then you should be able to do more than a straw man.
OrderOfMagnitude@reddit
This is wrong. It's wrong simply on the premise that we have taxed the rich before. It's also a defeatist attitude.
I'm not straw-manning so much as making fun.
KaiserTom@reddit
We have never wealth taxed the rich. Many countries that have wealth taxed repealed it. The UK has tried multiple times but fails to find enough revenue from it to even pay for the cost of administering the tax without collapsing their economy.
A 75 or 90% tax rate on income is not a tax on the rich. The rich do not get rich through their income. Nobody gets rich through their income. Income is cash flow which is its own very important thing, but magnitudes less than the wealth. There literally just isn't enough physical money to account for the wealth, by about 100-1000x. Or more because the fed, and banks, have gotten to just digitally changing numbers and maintaining the minimum physical cash possible to represent it. The fed owes them should they actually need the real cash, but it's not even printed, and won't be unless they actually need it.
Then the banks basically sell cash to each other, just shipping it around where real cash is actually needed. For just the cost of shipping it. Because every bank owes every other bank on their balance sheet somewhere. So the number they owe is just digitally ticked down based on the cash they transferred. As far as banks are concerned real cash is just a thing to inventory manage, and means nothing to the actual "cash and cash equivalents" number on their balance sheet.
Mr_frosty_360@reddit
Not all laws are easily avoidable by the rich. The one being proposed in this post is. I’m not being defeatist. I’m being realistic in regard to billionaires having zero income.
New-Efficiency-2114@reddit
Yeah let's deter wealth generating activities. Yippy
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Jesterhead89@reddit
When, oh when, are Redditors going to sit down and teach themselves about the difference between income and net worth/assets? I get that we all start somewhere and are pretty ignorant to this stuff in our teens and early 20's. But when these grand social and economic ideas are floated, it's like they're sailing right past the basics and trying to jump into Earth-shattering ideas when they don't understand the concepts of what they're talking about.
swohguy33@reddit
Hear me out on this, if you have a maximum, what in the hell motivates anyone to get close to it?
Shadowpika655@reddit
Considering most billionaires get there through owning stocks (and other assets), how exactly would that work?
Realistic-Split4751@reddit
It’s just become more shell companies..
Celtictussle@reddit
Why so greedy? Why not a million?
Similar_Vacation6146@reddit
I think that number should be way way below 1b. I can't think of a single reason why anyone needs to be worth $20 million let alone $100 million or $500 million. How much land does a man need?
MyFakeUsername11@reddit (OP)
The reason I proposed $1B is because there is clearly some stripe of the population that admires the obscenely wealthy. Some are straight up supplicant bootlickers, frankly. Some argue that the forced sharing of more than one could ever hope to use or need would somehow stifle innovation or drive. So I picked a number that is cartoonishly, Uncle Scrooge McDuckly over-the-top, and yet still there are many who exceed it. It's a thought exercise after all.
Similar_Vacation6146@reddit
There's certainly a lot of cognitive dissonance around this topic. Ask the average person—not a committed ideologue—who believes extraneous wealth boosts competition and innovation about the stagnation of the film industry, the reluctance to design safer and more sustainable transit, the decline in quality of retailers like Amazon, or the dearth of things Elon Musk has invented, etc and suddenly, when confronted with the real implications of exorbitant wealth, they change their tune. And I think most people are themselves happy to tinker and improve things without remuneration. They just believe that everyone else needs that additional incentive.
MyFakeUsername11@reddit (OP)
By the state of things, it would seem that squaring the circle via cognitive dissonance is our national pastime.
OnlyForMobileUse@reddit
That's a great way to have all the innovative Americans leave America to invent things in a country where their income isn't stolen, leading to an immediate crash of our economy
FragrantPiano9334@reddit
So add a corollary that any ip created by such people/companies employing such people is not subject to ip protection.
abundantwaters@reddit
That’s not how economics works, the USA has so many natural resources, we could easily nationalize the raw materials then put it in an investment fund to pay some of it back as dividends to the American people.
husky_whisperer@reddit
I’m with ya but…
You’d have to bypass the light-years of environmental red tape first in order to scale this in such a way that taxpayers got more than $0.01 checks.
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TBNRhash@reddit
I think the OP might have meant for this to apply to the whole world. After all, they didn't specify.
bipolar-femboy@reddit
Unless every country adopts this billionares are just going to open bank accounts in different countries.
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BornAgain20Fifteen@reddit
Yeah totally. Throughout human history, large-scale wealth seizures from the rich have always resulted in massive prosperity and quality of life improvements for the average person /s 🙄
Physical_Floor_8006@reddit
They have before though?
Usual_Judge_7689@reddit
Sounds about right. Should be a floating amount, though, so the law can keep up with the world around it.
Maybe 1000x the median salary of the United States? That way, if the poor get poorer, the rich get poorer too. But it also leaves a lot of room for people who like making money to make a lot of it.
Washington-PC@reddit
I like this
Soft_Cranberry6313@reddit
Why 1 billion? Seems arbitrary.
EducationalRoyal6484@reddit
Why is adulthood 18 instead of 17 or 19? Why is the speed limit 65 mph? Why is the cutoff between petty and grand larceny $1,000?
Life is full of arbitrary cutoffs because sometimes there isn't an alternative, or even if there was a more exact science based number, we value simplicity over precision.
Soft_Cranberry6313@reddit
I agree with you. It may all be arbitrary. However just because other things are the way they are is not a logical reason to follow suit.
Physical_Floor_8006@reddit
Yes, but any limit is arbitrary. The point is that there is a limit. If you think the limit should be $999,999,999, then I'm sure there's room for compromise on the issue. That isn't a fallacy, just a nice round suggestion.
JOliverScott@reddit
Since much of a billionaire's wealth is in the form of shares in the companies they founded, limiting their personal net worth also limits the growth of their companies. When their company becomes too valuable that it makes the founder greater-than-a-billionaire then they'll be forced to divest large amounts of their portfolio which will then cause the values to plummet when all those shares hit the market, robbing both the founder and the company of value. The company declines, retirement accounts decline, and layoffs begin. This idea suffers from the same flaw as the proposal to tax unrealized gains - the value of investments is quite fluid and very susceptible to any hint of disruption.
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jehovahswireless@reddit
This was proposed in the 1970s. Unfortunately all the people who genuinely believe that they deserve more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime, are stinking rich, so it's never been tried.
AggravatingPin7984@reddit
I wouldn’t say most, but a lot of regulations are supported by big companies. They have money to throw into an entire department to make sure they are within regulations. And they still can find ways around them legally. That’s also what the department is for. Now anyone trying to get into that industry has a higher barrier to entry which makes allowing for healthy competition even harder. I’m not for deregulation, but there are negative consequences to them.
manicmonkeys@reddit
Yuppp. For instance generally speaking in the US (variations by state) you can't cook food in your kitchen then sell it to 10 of your friends...but you can invite your 10 friends over for dinner every week and cook for for them.
It wouldn't be SO bad if there were feasible middle-ground, like you have to be servsafe certified to cook food in your kitchen to sell it, up to $xx,xxx amount annually, or something similar.
ScoutAndLout@reddit
Yes comrade. Together we will seize the means of production and implement a five year plan for prosperity.
Melodic_Plate@reddit
Of course llc and corporations are exemptions.
Ohh that crazy guy don't have anything under his name his just the sole member of the board that owns over 40 billions worth in housing .
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jols0543@reddit
been saying this
Anura83@reddit
Which country ever got richer when they expropriate the rich?
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greasyspider@reddit
10 million is plenty
MetalCalces@reddit
Just take food for example. To feed the world population we need large companies capable of expansive production. These large companies are owned operated and invested in by wealthy people who take the risks. If they were capped at an income level most likely you would kill billions of people. Congrats you just became the biggest murderer in human history.
DogKnowsBest@reddit
That is about the craziest idea ever posted here. It would completely disrupt every single world economy and we would still be living in the dark ages. No major hospital. No technology like iPhones. No steaming services. Nothing advanced. It takes billions; more than billions to do some of these things. To suggest this would be disastrous.
jacobwinton92@reddit
Those are companies, not people.
dacraftjr@reddit
Guess who owns, operates and reap the benefits of those companies. Hint: it’s people.
itsjakerobb@reddit
Sure, but a multibillion-dollar company is made up of many people, yet tends to elevate just one or only a small handful to billionaire status. Think of how many more people could become rich if there were limits imposed.
dacraftjr@reddit
None. This will not result in more wealth for the masses. Capital investment is needed to get these companies started. No one is going to invest the capital if (A) they don’t have it because of the limit and (B) the return on that investment is subject to the same limit. Innovation requires investment to become reality.
itsjakerobb@reddit
Just because we have a system today that works a certain way doesn’t mean we couldn’t have a different system that works a different way but accomplishes the same thing.
The change being suggested would require us to make a lot of adjustments. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible!
jacobwinton92@reddit
But the post is referring to personal wealth. Everything you mentioned didn't take personal wealth to accomplish. Just corporate funds.
luciusDaerth@reddit
And in most cases, a small group. If I'm a large company who makes global commerce, let's say I'm worth 10 billion. If that only shared by an E board of 10, they all are worth about a billion. If I had to split it with all 10,000 employees I have globally, we all have 1 million.
This is simplified, for math, but the ideas carry. This is what workers owning the means could look like. At the end of the day, we are still worth billions and make huge moves that turn the world. But now, none who work for this company are poor. All who contribute to our success now reap the profits.
Visible-Might-2527@reddit
Have you ever taken economics at even the simplest level?
If not:
Then what makes you think that you’re qualified to make economic decisions?
If you have:
Then you’d know that what the 4 FP are and you’d know enterprise is the rarest, if you have enterprise then why would you use it to gain the same amount as you would if you didn’t? For example a founder of a company has enterprise, why would he go ahead and work hard (in a way using his enterprise) just to give everybody else the same amount that he earns?
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kodachromalux@reddit
25 million. A billion leaves them far too powerful
MetalCalces@reddit
How to start WW3 101. So stupid.
Visible-Might-2527@reddit
The fact that you used income and net worth in a way that shows that you think that they are even nearly the same thing shows that your opinion on these matters shouldn’t even count
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I_might_be_weasel@reddit
https://www.memedroid.com/memes/detail/4413281/What-do-you-think-about-this
No-Astronomer3051@reddit
and you think that will make you rich?
focus on what you can have, not limiting what others can have
Marius_Acripina@reddit
How is that, is there an advantage you see for humanity in like 20 People having 80 perfekt of the worlds money. You will be Never Even close to being in their Club or being affected by it, so why would you support them ?
Choice_Price_4464@reddit
Are unrealized gains included in this net worth worth?
carlzzzjr@reddit
You don't understand net worth.
MasterDefibrillator@reddit
Yeah, it should be a maximum of 100 million.
Ryclea@reddit
Just make the tax logarithmicly progressive. If you amass a billion dollars, you'll still be rich AF, but by a factor that makes normal commerce possible.