What will happen when the billionaires and the corporations are gone?

[Moostache]

7. Your premise is flawed though...

The concept you seem to be promoting is not accounting for the nature of progressive taxation, instead focusing on the "fairness" argument of the uber-wealthy.



Billionaires being taxed at a high rate does not stop tax collection at lower levels, not in any sense. It simply begins to level the field from the top down. If Billionaires are forced into lower tax brackets due to divestment from their corporate or business entities, then that money does not evaporate and disappear from the overall economy. It is simply circulated through the larger economy instead of coagulating inside the investment vehicles of a single person.

Our current tax structure, especially when considering capital gains rates and corporate giveaways, is a classic regressive system - allowing the richest among our society to pay LESS as an overall percentage of wealth than the poorest pay.

In addition to income taxes becoming regressive more than progressive in reality, the poor are also disproportionally hit by duties on alcohol, tobacco, and other 'sin taxes' where governments raise revenues by taxing activities that are more likely to occur among lower income brackets.

Billionaires can all disappear tomorrow and the taxes that would be due on the money they "earn" would simply need to be distributed wider and taxed at lower rates but still generating the same revenue stream to fund government services and programs to help equalize access to things that currently are gated off by income rates - like healthcare, education, business and financial opportunities and more.

Distribution is looked at as a dirty word in politics because of the cheap thrills of attack ads and the minuscule attention span of the "undecided" voter. In reality, without fair distribution of capital, access and opportunity, you get the kind of wealth concentration we have right now....same as we had before the last Depression and calamitous era from 1929 through 1945. Proper, functional distribution of goods and services grows an economy, while proper distribution of the gains and wealth of nations drives a society to achieve more together than individuals can alone - even that is NOT measured in cars, boats, houses and bank statements but instead by health and happiness of the population, percentages of people in meaningful careers and working at tasks that bring adequate remuneration to provide for a family without the stigma of "welfare" when one is employed and working full time hours (or more)....

We're on that EXACT same trajectory now...democracy is on the ropes around the world, the rule of law is dead in America and the climate disaster is going to force a lot of people to do things that they would never have thought possible in 1985 or 2005, but by 2025 (without MAJOR structural changes across the world) may become inevitable.