Billionaires should not exist.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13165402
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13165402
I love the people who claim things like "they just have stock! Not money!!" Great, I'll take $10 billion in stock please. Should be no problem since it isn't real.
It isn't in the form of sequential 2 dollar bills and simon didn't say!
Such little liquidity, couldn't you just die?
...In the Arms of the Angels plays to images of sad Elon, Warren, Jeff....
You’ve evidently entirely misunderstood what I said. My entire point has been that stocks are worth money and I’m not sure what this “does not apply to you so you’re against it” is supposed to mean. I never said I was “against” stocks and whether I or my family own any is not only something you’d not know, but is also irrelevant.
My point was that when people say something like “Elton doesn’t have $200 billion, it’s just stock!” they’re acting like stocks aren’t real. I’m not.
Ironic to include Sweden, when they are one of the worst countries in Europe in terms of wealth distribution.
There's not a single inheritance tax in Sweden, meaning if you're super rich there, you and your family will stay rich forever. Creating larger and larger gaps between the 1% and the 99%.
For Germany the Informationen is wrong we have at maximum 45% income tax if you make more then 170k a month and you pay 42% at 66 k. We literally have no wealth tax because of a loophole in regards to inheritance. Also social security has a maximal ammount that does not increase after a certain income threshold.
The income ammount is not 100% correct but it is arround that amount.
Edit: spelling
Also for wealthy people this practically doesnt apply. We have a flat 25% tax on income from financial investments like stocks. So while the engineer at BMW is paying 42% on all his income above 66,000 the Quandts as largest shareholder pay 25% on their roughly 1,000,000,000 dividend they receive every year.
Considering loopholes and tax evasion shemes billionaires are among the least taxed people in Germany.
in germany
In the world, but I agree with you, they love when people focus on income tax, takes the spotlight off them while their tax havens avoid all the capital gains tax they should being paying and their lobbyists pay for votes to lower those rates
Yeah almost every income tax barely applies to the wealthy, on all of these. They don’t make their income from paychecks, they make it from capital gains. And capital gains taxes are laughably low across the board. The billionaires and incredibly highly wealthy will laugh all the way to the bank as they vote for higher income tax brackets, as long as the capital gains taxes stay low. Granted they are far higher in every nation outside the US, but still not high enough, and capital gains should have its own set of tax brackets
“Amount” is spelled with a single ‘m’. You also forgot to mention that a “rich people’s tax” once existed, but was ruled unconstitutional because it violated the principle of equal treatment, and that no legislation since has made an attempt at crafting such a tax that would hold up to the court.
Not that the wealth tax was not ruled unconstitutional by principle. It was ruled unconstitutional because it contained certain loopholes that favored owning houses over owningother assets in the calculation.
I think it's odd that there are apparently a lot of super rich people in Germany willing to actually pay more taxes.
It might also be relevant that health insurance is capped at something like 420€/month. Whether you make 70k or 500m a year doesn't matter.
This is just false. Those are the income tax rates for highest earners. Billionaires' wealth is mostly tied up in stocks, property, and other investments. Someone like Jeff Bezos does not have $196bln in his bank account, like you and I have a few $100.
If we want to really tax billionaires, we need a wealth tax on any homes you own after your first, luxury cars, private planes and yachts, a passive tax on holding stock and stock options, and also clamp down on tax loop holes.
The thing about it is they will lease everything because not owning saves more than credit costs.
Focused attempts on the 1% are what is needed, decide what amount we want to extract and hold them to it. Do not let residential properties be owned by companies, only people. Progressive taxation on each subsequent property. Ban private planes - set regulations around average per passenger co2 emissions, yachts are registered in tax havens so jack up docking fees and non public country entry prices.
haha the US government is internally the most bitch made country in the west. When asked, an artist will depict a congressman straddling the average citizen, and the congressman is in turn being straddled by an executive.
Even foreign interests discuss the odd "fuckable" or "breedable" US politician, in how far they would bend over backwards for money. Photos of certain congressman photoshopped over a Japanese maids body have been circulating the UN.
I forgive people who erred on the side of apostrophe because at least there was a moment's consideration of the application. :D
The United States used to have a high tax rate for millionaires.
Then the voters and non-voters let Reagan in through the door.
My ideal would be setting the brackets at the quintiles of household incomes, then setting the tax rates for those brackets at the share of national wealth all the brackets below a given bracket, plus the median point between that and the total including that bracket's share of the wealth.
Allows for dynamic tax adjustment by pegging it to a calculation instead of a congressionally set number, and benefits the working classes by significantly shifting the national tax burden off of them whenever wealth accumulation starts peaking, effectively giving them free money to rebalance the economy with while taking the ultrawealthy through the nose for their shenanigans.
Not to mention how you can adopt similar models for other taxes bracket percentiles for total land value, for unrealized gains, for income tied to productive property assets like factory equipment, etc. etc. etc.
The real sticking point will be finding a way to address how the rich get most of their spending cash outside of direct income streams.
IF THE DEMOCRATS RAN A PRINCIPLED AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIALIST AGAINST REAGAN THEY WOULD HAVE WON, FUCK THE CAPITALIST CANDIDATE WALTER MONDALE REPRESENTING THE BORGOUZHZOHZOOZY DEMOCRATIC PARTY LUCKILY NOW THAT REAGAN WON THE DEMOCRATS WILL BE INFLUENCED TO MOVE LEFT hehe
It's 45% income tax plus 5.5% of 45%, the 5.5% is the so called Solidaritätszuschlag a kind of tax which was originally introduced to pay for the gulf war in 1991 and then kept to pay for the reunification with eastern germany. Anyway, income tax barely applies to the super rich, they pay 26.375% capital gains tax (25% + 25% * 5.5%) on dividends.
To put it simply, if I could sell a penknife with a force-field blade to a nobleman, it would be to his interest to force laws that would allow him to use it. Put that baldly, it sounds silly, but it is sound, psychologically. To make strategic sales, at strategic points, would be to create a pro-nucleics faction at court. -- Isaac Asimov, Foundation
The problem is billionaires are going to put their resources into manipulating legislation and regulation so as to allow billionaires to exist, and to exist without being taxed or otherwise harassed for owning so much.
This was a problem with the train barons and industrialists (who believed the Great Depression was a fine time). We need to stop them before they have armies of AI-managed armies of killer robots with which to defend their fiefdoms.
I don't know how to do that. So far, nobody knows how to successfully tax them or otherwise get them to reduce their personal power.