the 10 trillion dollar national debt is not there because we don't tax rich people enough. You could take every single dime of every single billionaire in the US and it wouldn't scratch the national debt.

Why is the answer to the government spending and wasting way, way too much of our money, to take more of our money? It's not.

The rich are... rich.

They can move at any time, anywhere.

There will always be a country that will receive them with open arms.

Income redistribution will never happen.

Many of the countries they might want to move to have higher tax rates than the US. And, until recently, the US probably had the most significant global clout to back their business ventures with.

You’re assuming that if the US tried a serious wealth distribution tax hike, a country like China, India, South Korea, Japan, you name it, would not immediately offer sweetheart deals. The UK is currently learning this the hard way relative to the US with talent fleeing.

ahoka wrote:

> Maybe stop giving tax cuts to rich people

Nor did I write anything about "significant tax hikes".

How do you get from these comments to significant tax hikes? Not giving tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans and not increasing our deficit further is not the same thing as a significant tax hike. If you cannot distinguish these two things, I don't know how any productive conversation could ever be had here.

And if billionaires choose to leave the US to avoid these non tax-hikes, that's their choice. But most countries they'd presently opt for do tax higher than the US does.

With this attitude you should probably pack up the US and call it a day.

1. Inequality has been constantly decreasing for most of the 20th century, worldwide.

2. Income redistribution has happened multiple times throughout history, and you can argue about the process and also about the results but it has happened repeatedly (French Revolution, Communist Revolution in Russia and all associated revolutions and coups, etc, etc).

I don’t think that citing the Russian revolution is the best argument you have. That wealth redistribution attempt took 30 million lives. That’s probably one of the best arguments why we should absolutely not kill the golden geese.

It would be nice if you would read that paragraph again :-)

The French revolution was a complete mess that ended in a tyranny (Napoleon).

The Communist revolution initiated a sequence of events that make communism the #1 cause of death ever. From purges, to famine, wars...

Deng Xiaoping's communism is a completely different thing.

> The French revolution was a complete mess that ended in a tyranny (Napoleon).

Umm... I see that you were schooled in the Anglo-American tradition (classical Conservative, I guess Edmund Burke?).

Let me expand on that... the French Revolution was a mess, like any revolution, that's true.

A mess that:

- shattered MANY legal abuses (primarily stemming from divine right, feudalism, etc) in a lot of Europe, in about 3 major shocks (the initial one which led to the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, then 1848, then slowly to the abolition of any feudal remains around 1918)

- greatly expanded personal and collective freedoms in Europe, freedoms that weren't abolished even by the "tyranny"

- served as a model for a better society for many oppressed countries and regions in Europe (I come from one, Romania)

And it did not end in a tyranny. It went through mass executions, lead to an absolutist regime, back to a monarchy, then back to a democracy, then back to a monarchy, and then finally back to a democracy, for good. All of that was started and made possible by the French Revolution.

> The Communist revolution initiated a sequence of events that make communism the #1 cause of death ever. From purges, to famine, wars...

That's only if you look at global Communism like a single phenomenon and you consider say, monarchy, as a set of disjointed ideologies. Communism also brought great equality in countries that were some of the most unequal and abusive on the planet, it greatly accelerated women's rights to the point to this day, Eastern Europe (for example) has more equal political representation and more women in STEM than Western Europe.

You could argue that fear of Communism also led the West to adopt policies such as high taxes on high earners, that led to more equality during the post war era. Look at what's happening now when Communism is basically gone for good. The US is falling back into a Gilded Era.

Yeah. DOGE might make sense if you're trying to cut the deficit. Tax cuts make no sense in that context.

Raise taxes on rich people, rich people leave the country or invest offshore; or put it into advertising to make sure not one involved politician wins an election ever again.

What is $1 billion to destroy a political career over $10 billion in taxes?

They aren’t leaving the country easily: not paying taxes would mean selling their properties, relocating their businesses, and renouncing their citizenship. Most of the alternatives have higher tax rates, fewer economic options, or both – and they lose significant benefits like preferential access to the U.S. government. Anyone who wanted to pay 0% could already become a citizen of Anguilla, Barbados, etc. but the fact that most haven’t suggests that there is more to the decision than sorting by tax rate and picking the lowest.

> put it into advertising to make sure not one involved politician wins an election ever again.

That’s what happened in 2024 and we are facing rising inflation and a severe recession in the middle of a constitutional crisis. It’s unclear to me why anyone would think that the people who orchestrated that should be catered to.

So because they can fuck us so hard, we should let them keep fucking us.

What an odd argument.

This is a great argument for why we should find ways, as a society, to prevent people from reaching such a level of ultra-wealth in the first place.

Or accept, and recognize, that things kind of go both ways:

The rich can be exploitative of the poor relative to themselves and heavily motivated by greed;

But it can be equally true that the poor hate the rich with motivations based on greed and envy themselves. Poor people, ironically, can be extremely greedy, more greedy than many wealthy people - they aren’t incompatible.

I’m not taking sides on this one.

I agree that it goes both ways, in the sense that I support UBI. As I think there is a level of wealth that society has an interest in preventing anyone being above, I also think there is a level of poverty that society has an interest in preventing anyone being below.

That’s just FUD. Do you see Bezos leaving the country for Argentina? Yeah, me neither. What’s the alternative you’re proposing? Just accept our new billionaire overlords?

Ask why the billionaire overlords are a problem first.

Is it because they subvert the will of the people, and subvert what is good? If so, I agree, they must be stopped.

Is it just the principle of the thing, how dare they be so rich, when so many people aren’t? If so, that’s envy, and cannot be accepted.

The former; by amassing that much money, they gain the ability to both exploit the system to their personal gain, and shape it to their personal preferences, which grow ever less aligned with those of the general population. We're on our way to a techno-feudalism right now.