I don't think the problems of US corporations are due to being over-capitalized, they're all to do with interactions with the political and media sphere plus unnecessary conflict with the staff.

If no corporation is allowed more than 1 million dollars (10 years of median income) then 10 average people can counter a single corporation. That’s a good ratio.

It's also impossible to have a larger business than a restaurant, or almost any kind of technological or manufacturing industry. The limited liability corporation has existed for hundreds of years for a very good reason.

Heck, even things like shipping, the oldest insured industry, become impossible. Corporations used to have minimum capital requirements that were roughly in the region of a year's average income. https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/medi...

("corporation has too much money" and "individual has too much money" are different problems; Elon Musk is a problem in the way that Apple isn't)

And has life gotten better in those years? These days Elon Musk and Sundar Pichai are stealing all of our work. Back in the day, a father could take his kids on a grand tour of Europe and discuss philosophy in the cafes of Vienna all on a single income.

> And has life gotten better in those years?

Almost immeasurably better

In the 1800s almost no one lived in their cars. These days thousands of people do.

That's too arbitrary, and you say that as if a billion dollars is a lot of money.

It's not.

There was a time when millionaires were considered 'rich'. Now that's just a retiree, in most housing markets, who's paid off a house. Or even a townhome... and in some places, a condo!

It doesn't matter "whether it should" cost that much, that's irrelevant for my example. The point is, being a millionaire isn't a big deal. It's common. It doesn't mean wealthy.

Likewise when a company is large, and has infrastructure all over the world, and is worth much of a T, a B is nothing. Cash reserves in the billions is really not all that much, just fiscal prudence.

An alternate is that "banks should get free money, by forcing all companies to borrow money for capital projects". Because if you tax companies for "wealth", then they'll just spend all that capital on loan payments.

I feel people have such weird ideas about taxation. People see "oh no, someone has free money!" then get excited and want to tax. What? The goal of taxation isn't "take money from anyone we can", nor is it 'wealth redistribution', it's instead 'how to pay for joint projects' that all of society benefits from.

Losing track of that last bit, is when people stop asking "should we tax" and instead say "they have money, so tax"

You write: > The goal of taxation isn't "take money from anyone we can", nor is it 'wealth redistribution', it's instead 'how to pay for joint projects' that all of society benefits from.

But I think the author of the comment you were replying to had a different goal in mind. I think their goal was "prevent corporations from getting too big".

We can and should debate whether that is a goal we should be trying to achieve, but if it is then progressive taxation for companies might be a way to achieve it.

We might presume that was the goal, yet it wasn't explicitly stated. And many have a goal of generic wealth redistribution, and will inject such into any conversation about large companies.

One might note the unrestrained concern about fluid capital acquisition, in the post I replied to. It's not having billions in infrastructure that was cited, nor having a large number of employees, both metrics of size, but instead having fluid, unused capital.

If we wish to constrain upon size, there needs to be nuance, conjoined with the specific industry, and even sub-industry. Some capital equipment costs can be enormous. Should we work to prevent financing such via stored profit? Should we work to force companies to finance, then pay off, just to feed the banks, rather than store and then spend?

Should we tax so that "big ideas" may never occur?

I think far more would be gained by ensuring taxation just stays fair between smaller and larger company structures. There's a lot of book-keeping that can be done as a large company, to hide profits, that cannot be done when you're a small mom and pop.

Tax is not only that, it's a way of incentivizing growth in the "correct" areas (areas that build long-term value), and correcting inevitable distortions in the market. One of the problems with money is that it's both extremely important for some people (on the edge of poverty) and a complete plaything for others (investor class).

So? People are starving to death in the US and so many are homeless. Because a bunch of Bay Area retirees are millionaires doesn’t mean we shouldn’t wealth tax them. For every dollar over median wealth they should face a 10% wealth tax so that we can fund universal healthcare. There are many studies that show healthcare is more important than wealthcare.

> For every dollar over median wealth they should face a 10% wealth tax so that we can fund universal healthcare.

A ten percent wealth tax would put most investment returns into the red. Savings and investment would plummet. Capital would flee the US, interest rates would skyrocket, the US dollar would become worthless, the housing market would collapse. You wouldn’t be able to fund roads, let alone universal healthcare.

Yeah, all that's true but I noticed you didn't mention inequality. What would happen to inequality?