Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy?
Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 3 weeks agoSounds good in theory. But it is inoperative in a capitalist society. Here’s a thought exercise:
Management might have a salary of $5 million but stock worth 1 billion. Maybe you expect they divest their stock? Okay, who buys? Who has control of the company? Does it become a societal asset? Can’t have a company run by a million-person committee.
Your wealth cap works where someone has liquidity over 100million. I suggest that few do as it’s not a tax-advantaged strategy.
Nah, just 10M wealth caps…
Management is free to give you a 100M bonus! If your current worth is 1M, 91M of that bonus will go to taxes and you receive 9M and after that, all goes to taxes.
If you have shares, and the value of those shares goes up? You’ll have to pay the taxes over that, sell some shares, and pay money to taxes. And yeah, companies would simply need boat loads of small shareholders.
My friend, I think you simply misunderstand the value of companies. Microsoft has a market cap of 2.7trillion. a wealth cap of 10m means that 270,000 people will be maxed at that cap. For one company. Who of that 270,000 runs the company?
Then extrapolate out to all listed and private companies. Your theory is incompatible with how companies operate.
ptc075@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Although I agree, as a thought exercise, how about we also split up companies worth 1 billion dollars? We used to call them monopolies, but corporations have become very good at staying technically just under that bar. I’d argue this is part of the problem.
Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
NOW you’re cooking with gas!!