Edit: As far as the three wealthiest in the US owning that much, it still amounts to very little per capita if redistributed to the entire population. You could give every individual in the US a one-time payment of about $3,000, after which there'd be no more money to take from them. The top 1% only have about $25 trillion in combined wealth, which would be enough to fund a UBI of ~$3,000 a month for two years, after which you'd run out of money. And that's pretending that a massive looting of the holdings of the nation's wealthiest wouldn't have any significant economic side effects (and that they wouldn't all just flee to tax havens). And that's ignoring that a good chunk of that wealth is not held in liquid assets.
The combined wealth of the entire 1% is ~$25 trillion. Population of the US ~330 million. Equally distributed and paid out over 24 months comes out to ~3,156. If you only give it to adults (~255 million) the numbers aren't much better.
$3,000 a month is barely enough to get by in several major cities. It'd be fine out in the countryside, but in San Francisco, NYC, and several other major cities it would be barely enough to get a studio apartment and barely enough food to eat.
If it's not universal then it's a misnomer. And it's just another welfare/entitlement program then.
>It’s also amazing that the top 1% can just find everyone in the United States for two whole years. Doesn’t that just prove my point that inequality is a huge problem?
No, not particularly? Why does that matter, other than the usual arguments about wealth in the hands of the poor leading to more marginal consumption and therefore possibly leading to more economic growth?
>Preventing tax haven flee is easy. The US already does this, charging income tax to high income expats. If those expats don’t pay they have big issues if they ever set foot in the country again.
And if you tax them at 100%, or whatever obscenely high rate you're proposing, they won't ever set foot in the country again, and won't have any desire to do so. And they can avoid worries about extradition etc. by simply renouncing their US citizenship before their tax burden becomes too great, something that already happens even with our current tax rates
I only mean to push back on this because your comment seems to be dismissive of the entire concept while seeming to closely align with the interests of the kinds of people who don’t want it (the wealthy).
I find the idea of just not bothering to tax wealth because they’ll just find a tax haven elsewhere to be defeatist nonsense. It’s not hard to craft legislation that forces the wealthy to pay.
If we are overestimating how much wealth the wealthy possess, how is it that three people own more wealth than over half of the entire United States?
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/09/gates-bezos-buffett-have-mor...
Excess wealth needs to be taxed because being excessively wealthy is bad for society as a whole, just like we tax alcohol and cigarettes.