Tax Billionaires Out of Existence

[ItsjustMe]

[Wicked Blue]

1. People talk about income inequality. This is the solution. nt

[Amishman]

15. It is not, too easy to shelter or offshore that personal wealth. there is a better route

Targeting billionaires directly is difficult and ignores the abuses and exploitation of large corporations that lack that big name billionaire founder.

The root issue is that due to a variety of factors - favorable tax laws, economies of scale, capital to invest in emerging technologies, etc - large corporations have a massive amount of leverage over their workers and a huge competitive advantage over smaller businesses.

At the same time, due to the size of the baby boom generation, corporate culture has become accustomed to the idea that employees were replaceable and largely powerless.

Rework the corporate tax structure to shift the tax burden more onto large businesses that can afford to carry a heavier load, off of the shoulders of their smaller competitors.

Cap total executive compensation at 100x the annualized rate of their lowest paid worker.

Require that any stock buybacks, stock options, executive bonuses be matched by a bonus program which is evenly distributed to all employees.

Require profit sharing programs.

Create tax penalties for use of offshore contractors to reduce the incentive to send things like IT support, call centers, and other entry level jobs overseas.

[brooklynite]

2. President Biden disagrees. So do most American voters.

[ck4829]

6. With the federal minimum wage in the OP?

[jimfields33]

9. The congress could have added minimum wage in the IRA bill easily.

[tritsofme]

27. This is simply not true. The parliamentarian ruled against minimum wage in reconciliation

during the debate over the 2021 American Rescue Plan.

[brooklynite]

10. "Tax Billionaires out of existence"

[jimfields33]

28. There going too

Problem is once that money is gone then where do they go?

[FoxNewsSucks]

11. I don't know why anyone would disagree.

Biden should know better.

Most American voters don't know better, that's why they unwittingly go along with it.

Nothing new, the game of Monopoly was invented to give the average person an understanding of this and monopolies. We need something like that to inform everyone of the damage being done by billionaires and greedy corporations.

There is no good reason for billionaires to exist. None. Their hoarding of money is destroying our country and economy.

SS is on the chopping block because those greedy fucks don't want to pay the taxes necessary to pay back what was borrowed from the SS fund. Even though they'd STILL be rich greedy fucks.

I'll repeat - there is NO good reason for billionaires to exist.

[brooklynite]

14. Have you contacted your elected officials on this point?

Perhaps they have a different perspective.

[FoxNewsSucks]

18. I have no doubt that both senators from KS

ignore anything I have to say. They don't even bother with responses to letters or email.

I haven't gotten a satisfactory answer from Sharice Davids' office, however she has opposed making tRump and Bush tax cuts permanent, so that's a start.

Anyway, on the topic of the thread, I still have seen NO GOOD REASON for billionaires to exist.

[brooklynite]

19. What do you consider the acceptable threshold?

$100 Million? 10? 5?.

[FoxNewsSucks]

21. See post #12, someone already brought that up

[Bayard]

3. K&R

Agree on all counts.

[Rebl2]

5. Agree with

you. Also make them pay into social security on all those billions and SS will be set forever. Yes I know it will never happen, but I can dream.

[sarisataka]

4. What should the cap be on personal wealth?

At what point does "rich" become "too rich"?

[ck4829]

7. On that note, what should the floor be on personal wealth?

At what point does "poor" become "too poor" and gets protected from "too poor" with a minimum income?

[sarisataka]

8. I believe that would be more

Important than an upper limit.

However the OP is about the high end of wealth

[FoxNewsSucks]

12. How about $1 billion?

That's still unimaginably rich for most people. But if that excess money weren't being hoarded by billionaires, our society and economy would be so much better off.

Anyone with a billion dollars should be able to live within their means, like they tell poor people to do. Live within their means and they should be able to scrape by with a mere billion dollars.

So let's start with that.

[sarisataka]

17. That's good, we have a number to start.

Now is that $1 billion cash or total assets?

I'm pretty sure if you are behind Jeff Bezos at the ATM when he takes out $20 and forgets his receipt you won't see a balance of $133,999,999,980.17

[FoxNewsSucks]

20. Assets, and income.

A lot of the problem is that they pay no income tax because of gimmicks like "carried interest". And the ones that do pay, pay a smaller percentage than their secretaries.

I forget if it was Bezos or Musk, but remember- one of them got the federal COVID payments because his "taxable income" was under the limit.

So it's clear we need to tax billionaires, not workers.

[sarisataka]

24. So then we have the issue

What do we do when some CEO reaches a net worth of $1 billion.

Does their company stop paying them? Forced retirement?

And what if property they own jumps in value? Do they pay the government the difference to get below $1 billion? They could sell it but that also gives them money so makes the situation worse? And a year later the value drops a hundred million- do they get to claim that loss?

There is a serious problem with income inequality but there is no "easy" fix. Especially not at the upper end.

Probably the easiest would be a more fair graduated tax paired with a minimum income. It is less important, IMHO, to punish people for being successful than to make sure everyone can afford enough to eat a place to live.

[FoxNewsSucks]

26. "punish people for being successful" ???

That's the language and terminology used by Fox, the billionaires, corporations and republicons.

They're not being "punished". As far as successful, most had help. Elon Musk, for example, took advantage of every government program to get Tesla going, and now doesn't want to pay the taxes that would fund things for others. MF45 would have been no one without Daddy's money. Lyin' Paul Ryan used social security to pay his way through college. The list of people like that is endless.

In any case, it's not punishment. Maybe you are thinking that if we imposed a wealth tax, an unfortunate billionaire might have to sell something to pay it. If so, how is that more punishing than when the county throws an old person out of their lifelong home because their social security income no longer is enough to pay the wealth tax, uh I mean, "property tax" on that home?

I don't know exactly how to implement things, but I'd go back to income tax rates we had in the 50's and 60's to start with. There were rich people then, it just wasn't obscene. And I'd put a 100% tax on income over ~$100 million. Along with expanding the things covered by "property taxes" (since that's a more acceptable term than "wealth tax&quot so that there would also be a 100% tax on value over 1 billion. And increase the estate tax.

The worst thing to be done is continue the way we are now, thinking we can't "punish" them, when in fact they are punishing us every day by hoarding money. From homelessness to inflation to governments that can't afford good schools or roads, failing to tax the billionaires is one of the most destructive things we've ever done.

[sarisataka]

31. I wouldn't know

What fox or Republicans say as I avoid both.

I am not concerned about how much people make as long as they are paying in fairly. If someone can get a net worth of 100 billion while paying a 90% tax rate, fine. They are contributing 900 billion.

I would, however, eliminate the FICA cap. The rich do benefit from workers so they should pay FICA on their full income.

Even more than having individual billionaires pay a fair share, go after their companies that manage to earn tens of billions in profit without paying taxes.

[ck4829]

13. K&R. And google "billionaires cause inflation"

[Johnny2X2X]

16. It's impossible to try to control equity in ownership of companies

The term billionaire generally refers to someone's assets being worth $1 Billion or more while their liabilities are zero, net worth so to speak.

So how do you regulate someone owning their own company? That's what we're talking about here. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, he has his wealth in the form of shares of his own company. As the company he built did better, his shares increased in value. How do you regulate that? If you start a company and it becomes worth more than X amount of dollars, should you be forced to give up control of your company? Give up control to who? The government? And what threshold of value do you have to give away your company? $1 Billion? $1 Million? And what if Amazon tanks? Do you then give Bezos back his shares after it becomes worth less than some threshold? Same with Musk, he joined Tesla when it was worth a ton less than it is now, he got shares as compensation, and then he drove the value up with his actions as CEO.

A wealth tax is tough because of the difficulty in taxing shares of stock that might go up or collapse down to nothing.

I believe there is a way to tax the wealthy on their wealth, but it's never going to tax billionaires out of existence because you can't penalize companies for growing and earning value. Billionaires are going to exist, but we need to make sure that if we allow them to exist, the floor for people in this country is at a minimum a dignified existence.

[Chainfire]

22. The logical solution is to tax everyone and every business at the same rate.

No deductions, no special breaks, and based on income or increase in wealth. Send cheaters to jail. For what good is having a billion dollars if you eat beans six days a week, shower on Thursday and have visitors on Sunday.

The thing that the ultra-rich fear the most is a fair system.

[Kid Berwyn]

23. This thread should have 5,000 Recs

Trickle Down is celebrating its 41st birthday. May it be its last.

[Prairie_Seagull]

25. Ah greed. billionairs should not exist.

Show the rest of the world how it is done.

[Stuart G]

29. Not exactly....Unions have changed the cookie formula.

Depends on what you eat and where you eat. Some unions make sure that the "cookies are shared."

[TexasBushwhacker]

30. You could spend $50K per day

Every day for 50 years and still not spend $1 Billion.