Assuming billionaires were going to get a special tax, how would you actually determine how much to tax them? Sure some would be straightforward like Musk where it’s entirely derived from a few companies with known ownership stakes, but what about all the others?
We don’t even know the names of most of the billionaires. With all the games they can play to hide money, now made even easier thanks to the changes Trump made in his first few months, how would you even figure out who and what amount to tax? They don’t have a normal salary or easily documented income like everyone else.
Sounds good in theory. But it is inoperative in a capitalist society. Here’s a thought exercise:
Management might have a salary of $5 million but stock worth 1 billion. Maybe you expect they divest their stock? Okay, who buys? Who has control of the company? Does it become a societal asset? Can’t have a company run by a million-person committee.
Your wealth cap works where someone has liquidity over 100million. I suggest that few do as it’s not a tax-advantaged strategy.
Nah, just 10M wealth caps…
Management is free to give you a 100M bonus! If your current worth is 1M, 91M of that bonus will go to taxes and you receive 9M and after that, all goes to taxes.
If you have shares, and the value of those shares goes up? You’ll have to pay the taxes over that, sell some shares, and pay money to taxes. And yeah, companies would simply need boat loads of small shareholders.
And no, 100M is already way too much. If you need investment for bigger things, maybe think independent, government funded investment companies that could be a thing?
Although I agree, as a thought exercise, how about we also split up companies worth 1 billion dollars? We used to call them monopolies, but corporations have become very good at staying technically just under that bar. I’d argue this is part of the problem.
NOW you’re cooking with gas!!