Re:Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires
by danaris on Friday August 13, 2021 @12:54PM
(#28171441)
This is exactly the kind of misunderstanding—willful or not—that has been used to prevent progress on these types of issues for decades.
Even if we did what david927 suggests, and imposed a $20 million/person wealth cap globally, no one would be meaningfully "leveled down." The differences between the lifestyle of someone with $20 million and someone with $200 billion aren't that different: what's different is the level of power the latter has over people and governments. Power that has no checks and balances, no strings, no way of ensuring it's not massively abused. And given the kind of person you need to be to amass a fortune in the billions in the first place, it's nearly guaranteed that it will be abused.
The amount of money people are actually talking about taking from the billionaires will not affect their lifestyle. Period. They will still be vastly, unimaginably rich. They will go on accumulating more money, probably faster than any wealth tax will be able to appropriate it, without doing *anything*.
No one deserves to be paid more in a year for simply existing than an average human needs to spend in their entire lives on food, clothing, and shelter.
Even if we did what david927 suggests, and imposed a $20 million/person wealth cap globally, no one would be meaningfully "leveled down." The differences between the lifestyle of someone with $20 million and someone with $200 billion aren't that different: what's different is the level of power the latter has over people and governments. Power that has no checks and balances, no strings, no way of ensuring it's not massively abused. And given the kind of person you need to be to amass a fortune in the billions in the first place, it's nearly guaranteed that it will be abused.
The amount of money people are actually talking about taking from the billionaires will not affect their lifestyle. Period. They will still be vastly, unimaginably rich. They will go on accumulating more money, probably faster than any wealth tax will be able to appropriate it, without doing *anything*.
No one deserves to be paid more in a year for simply existing than an average human needs to spend in their entire lives on food, clothing, and shelter.