It's a topic almost perfectly designed for a useless shouting match.

Meanwhile. In the 1950's, citizens in the US were expected to pay around 50% of the cost of running the government. Corporations paid 25% of the share and the rest were import and other use taxes.

Today, citizens are expected to pay 85%. Corporations pay a mere 7%, and they enjoy reductions in the other tax categories more readily than citizens and consumers do.

The elite business class billionaire CEO is just a symptom of this problem, and a fraction of the overall class anyways. Tiger Woods just joined the three comma club recently.. what was his original sin?

That is definitely the big question. Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples.

But even biting the bullet and accepting the premise, it’s not immediately obvious that losing all of the work from current billionaires would be a bad trade in exchange for substantially reduced inequality.

My counterpoint is that most billionaires don’t seem to be continuing to work hard primarily to get another billion. It’s more for the fun/fulfillment and status. If they can still have fun and status even without controlling as much wealth they will probably still go for it.

A charity of your choice vs being taxed more. If you had a few billion dollars to spare, which option would you choose?

>Why n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶a̶x̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ let elected officials representatives decide how best to spend the money?

>Why should so few individuals have outsized social, political and economic power over the whole country?

Regardless of which political party you root for I'd be shocked if your really thought elected representatives do a good job of spending money, especially to the point you think they should be given MUCH MORE money.

You just answered the question. Because they are the elected representatives. If you didn't trust them, why did you elect them in the first place?

In the last few years, elected officials (in the USA) spent over $10 billion on a wall. The previous admin's COVID relief bill included billions towards missiles, warships and other military spending. The current admin's $1T+ infrastructure bill allocates less than half of that amount towards roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, etc.

It includes billions in corporate subsidies and items like over $500M to Alaska including $100M for an airport when no other airport in the country even received $10M (AL senator Shelby is the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee). Middleburg VA gets $2M for a new town hall, and Palo Alto CA gets $3M for their history museum. Giving these people _more_ money is madness.

The question remains open.

Blaming billionaires is failure to see that the money is already available, it's just that the voters refuse to stand up. Why would more money in the government's hands change anything?

If you think 100 million dollar houses are egregious, you could try to make building them illegal. But then they'll just buy one in another country, or a yacht, or something similar.

A lot of this is why capitalism works.

There are people who are not motivated by money, but they’re not billionaires. They’re professors, priests, politicians, etc. Pope Francis has achieved more glory and fame than nearly any billionaire CEO.

Yes, the billions is hugely motivational to those who have them.

They can still own the trillion dollar company for glory and fame; they just can't cash out.

Also I don't think there should be a cap, but the tax rate should go up indefinitely, causing diminishing returns for higher earners. I pay a higher percentage of tax if my employer pays me more, but I still prefer higher paying jobs.

Give them a public museum name for each $B for all I care!

Or more generally, just let them pick which program they want to have their face/logo on. “The Musk EV car subsidy” etc.

Let's not pretend that billionares are working 1.44 million hours a week to earn 18000 times what the janitor earns working two jobs in an 80 hour week. The quality of a billionaires 'work' is different than 'real work' so what you feel intuitevely about work may not be a great touchstone for how billionaires should be taxed.

They are already doing that, so what would be the difference?

Let's say I earn over the threshold, and I can now either choose to continue to try and innovate and add value to society, or retire to a private island and just become a carbon contributor, I mean, why work myself into the ground if I can no longer benefit?

Most people have assets not liquidity too, so it's like saying, if you own too much, you have to stop. Well, what if Elon stopped and we reverted back to dropping rockets into the ocean? What if Bill Gates stopped and never did any of the philanthropy that he does?

I feel like this is used by people as a cheap excuse for a problem they can't solve.

Not sure what your point is here--Bill Gates is not getting paid to do his philanthropy...he is in fact trying to give his money away. Are you arguing that it's a greater benefit to society for him to acquire his billions and then give some portion of it away after the fact?

It's an interesting thought experiment--how might the world be different had Gates's assets been capped at $1B back in 1987 or whenever, and whatever earnings he made been allocated to a social wealth fund?

That's a good question for the current situation -- why does Bezos still go to work? Once you have $100B, what tangible benefit do you get from more? Surely he's not doing it for the money, another $1B, or even $100B isn't going to change his lifestyle.

It’s not like my increasing savings bring me any material benefit.

If a world-class marathon runner is 4 minutes ahead in a race, and can see the finish line, do they start walking? Or do they try to push themselves even harder to see how much more they can win by?

People are competitive, and are always motivated by achieving “more”, even if it doesn’t change the outcome for them. Does society benefit by billionaires pushing for more? I’m not sure, but I don’t think that the answer is clearly “no”.

Does society benefit by billionaires pushing for more? I’m not sure, but I don’t think that the answer is clearly “no”.

I think the correct question is "Is there a net benefit to society", not any benefit at all.

Especially past 100M

Your suggestion is to give it to the government, which will more wisely spend it?

I think not.

[1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/06/basics.ht...

There are a universe of people who earn and have a net worth much less than you who would be very happy with that ceiling figure. But would you?

Western politicians who float this idea are hilarious too - they're all multi-millionaires themselves, but a wealth tax is always proposed at a level that is "slightly more than what I have", never below.

If you set the limit much lower than my net worth, the government is going to have to support me.

But I'd think that someone with "only" $100M of net worth could scrape by on their own.

But most of my net worth came from taxable ordinary income that was invested into retirement accounts that are tax advantaged and untouchable until I retire. If Bezos was drawing a salary of 3 billion dollars for the past 30 years, paying 37% income tax on that income, then we probably wouldn't be talking about a "wealth tax"

Doesn't have to be much lower, just low enough to free you of the wealth you don't _need_.

> But I'd think that someone with "only" $100M of net worth could scrape by on their own.

Certainly. Someone with $10k of net worth and a minimum wage job could scrape by too. Nobody _needs_ more than that, surely?

> But most of my net worth came from taxable ordinary income that was invested into retirement accounts that are tax advantaged and untouchable until I retire.

Sounds very wealthy and privileged, to be honest. Surely you don't _need_ that it could be much better spent now helping less advantaged people who have never worked and don't have any savings or retirement. If, when you retire, you need further assistance after selling your house and other possessions, the government would be glad to step in and provide you a subsistence income and housing thanks to this wonderful redistribution scheme.

I agree though. Cap it at $1B

and usually universities are funded by governments.

private companies ruined internet actually.

you can argue that has been a net negative for the Internet, but it is clearly better for society generally.

If you start a company and that company becomes succesfull you will end up rich.

> Being a CEO/leader doesn't require some skill set that's given to you from some mythical watery being just because you're special.

Controlling a company requires shares, and shares are networth, it is good that companies are controlled by people who most understand them, and those are the people who started/built them.

There seems to be an illogical hate to people who have build companies that ended up being successfull.

If you are a small business ( non mega successfull company ), everyone is with you, "Small businesses are the backbone of our economy ", but then you win.

Voting shares don't have to have monetary value. Rememeber Google's IPO where the founders had stock with 10 votes per share, or Berkshire Hathaway's Class B stock with 1/10000th the voting rights as class A?

So a founder could retain control of a company without becoming personally rich.

I would think the power to control a large company would be worth at least something even if it is decoupled from the right to get part of any money they decide to give to stockholders.

:facepalm:

If you control a company worth $1T, someone is going to be willing to buy your share. If you're implying that voting shares don't have to be transferable, the question becomes how do you pick the next leader? The current owner gets to appoint the next in line? That's basically monarchy. The history I was taught says that only those at the top thrive under monarchy.

Companies are comprised of people and people do not like giving up control they have fought for, whether it is reasonable or not. It is difficult for many to avoid the temptation to use a position of power unethically to retain it. Nobody wants to be RIM/Blackberry, but it's neither okay for a company like Qualcomm to make immensely inequitable deals that are tantamount to extortion because they own patents on essential technology.

If you're the only game in town, you have a responsibility to act reasonably, but many do not and often the founders/execs seem to think they are entitled to keep their success.

Yes, you earned your success, but keeping it is another fight.

Yes, indeed this is how things work in this particular system, so you are kind of making a circular argument.

For instance, I disagree with the whole concept of joint-stock companies.

A lot of people dislike/hate Elon Musk for example, and usually they focus on two things: his tweets, and his wealth. Conveniently forgetting that prior to his work at SpaceX and Tesla (which he's driven) reusable rockets weren't a thing and EVs were restricted to oddities laughed at on Top Gear.

It seems to be the way, people look at the wealth and think "well that shouldn't happen". But it doesn't come from no where, it doesn't just appear.

For anyone who thinks this wealth shouldn't appear, let me ask this: if someone could discover a cure for all cancers — how much should they be allowed to earn for it? I.E. What price would you put on the cure for all cancers?

Whatever you do now, anything, is not just your own genius but its the accumulated genius of society. It would be quite literally impossible for anyone that "cures cancer" to have done it on their own. Not only it is extremely unlikely that they could do all work just by themselves (though possible) but they will have to rely on the work others have put through out the years... Work that in most cases has been funded through tax money!

So why would one person at the end of the line get to benefit so much from the collective work put by all of humanity to that point?

because the possibility of being the one to finally crack would be what motivates every preceding researcher as well.

majority of billion dollar companies are associated with bad behaviour : anticompetitive practices, shady deals, government subsidies etc. amazon got billions in subsidies just for opening second headquarters. amazon is selling ripoffs of big brands. worker rights abuses. microsoft did many things to eliminate competition. list goes on and on. and I’m not even talking about uber’s shady projects to avoid government agencies.

so when success gets achieved by scams and shady behaviour, probably it’s not much to celebrate and reward.

Because it’s going to spend far more there. Nearly all large commercial builds get similar deals in tax deferrals because having employment is still a big net win for the locality.

Say 50 million?

> I.E. What price would you put on the cure for all cancers?

100 billion?

You've asked two separate questions there, but you're implying that the answer to one is the same as the other.

Just because you are capable of extracting a certain amount of wealth in exchange for something, does not mean that you should be able to.

how does that make any sense?

Shoulders and giants - there's no way you actually fully independently discover a cancer-curing pill. And even if you did, its existence would not and should not belong fully to you.

> its existence would not and should not belong fully to you

...if I didn't make it, it doesn't exist, so it fully belongs to me ..................

Besides, you can only buy a okay superyacht for 100M, definitely not the best /s

How do we compensate everyone who was holding that company in their 401k hoping to retire? The government billionaire taxation has actually hurt the middle class (& upper class but non-billionaires) too in this case, by taking away value of their retirement funds and personal investments.

Do we pay the shareholders the money that was taken from the billionaire to make up the difference? Because then you’ve just created dividends, which already exists, but just with more steps and beurocratic overhead

How else are you going to buy a decent airplane? The nice ones start at a few tens of millions.

- Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Screenplay

Does it mean something specific, or is it just a variant of “Jesus Christ!”? Just curious. Tried Google, nothing turned up on the first page. Not even urban dict.

We’re not talking about improving the break rooms for corporate SWEs.

if your friends are fine does not mean that there are no issues there. plenty of news articles were published about inhumane working conditions where people cannot go to toilet even.

Admiration of others leads us to the good path. Envy and pity are tools of the darkness.