their fair share is connected to their necks, but im sure we can figure out a way to get it off them
Death to America
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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I always use seconds as an allegory to dollars when I explain to people the difference between thousand, million and billion (I did the number crunching in my head and rushed it, so if I made any errors lemme know).
1000 seconds = 17 minutes
100,000 seconds = 27 hours
1 million seconds = 11 days
1 billion seconds = 31.70 years
148 billion seconds (Bezos' net worth) = 4693 years
I like it, it's like saying: Imagine how rich you would be if you got a dollar every second. Well, not as rich as Jeff Bezos.
Wealth tax should absolutely be a priority. In my state, MA, we voted in a "millionaires tax". One thing it will cover is state wide free school lunch.
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Counterpoint: But they don't wanna pay taxes! They don't wannaaaaaaaaaaa.... why are you being so mean to the precious billionaires?
So there are irreconcilable issues on this issue and Congress is currently too busy trying to impeach Biden because his son had dick pics on his laptop.
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Here's the basic idea of what I'd think is fair
You have a basic rate for income below the 20th percentile of all incomes
Multiply that by 1.5 for income between that and the 40th percentile
Multiply that by 1.25 for income between that and the 60th percentile
Multiply that by 1.125 for income between that and the 80th percentile
Multiply that by 1.0625 for income between that and the 95th percentile
Multiply that by 1.03125 for income between that and the 99th percentile
Multiply that by 1.015625 for all income above the 99th percentile, with the additional caveat that people who top this bracket even once cannot hold public office, donate to political campaigns, or hire lobbyists and lobbying firms for ten years following them topping out.
Imagine something similar for taxes on units of housing owned, dividends earned, and so on and so forth.
The idea being that the highest rate can't be adjusted without significantly reducing the tax burden of the poorest, basically erasing the only way conservatives have been able to balance the books whenever they try that shit.
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They should perhaps pay more from their yearly income, but paying a wealth tax based on stock ownership is just an absolutely dumb idea. Floating that idea absolutely proves that you have no idea how any of this works.
There are so many ways to avoid paying income taxes in a country. Perhaps the easiest is taking a loan with security in stock. Wealth tax and taxing stock in general is practiced in my country with great success (should be much higher still) and is in fact great for the economy: it forces people to invest or see their fortunes diminish. Your statement shows lack of knowledge and imagination that other systems than the one you preside in could exist.
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Fuck the billionaires, tax them all by 100% of their income beyond 1 billion.
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3% is a fair share?
3% annually would be really huge, and probably shrink a lot of personal wealth out there. 3% one time is not as big of a deal, but it also doesn't raise so much revenue. The problem with a one time wealth tax is it incentivizes a future government to try a second one-time wealth tax, and then maybe a third. Soon enough it's not really a one-time tax any more.
In the United States there would also be a serious question on whether wealth tax was constitutional. The income tax was not raised until the 16th amendment explicitly gave Congress the power. It's possible the court will say there's no power to levy a national wealth tax absent an amendment.
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