Comment on 🤔 Interesting
Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 month agoWealth cap or bust. No one should ever be able to make 1 billion. I think there should be forced divestments after 1 bil and you’re barred from the stock market for 5 years. Plus☝🏻, if you use any money to build anything whether it be a building or a business, said billionaire is not allowed to earn more than a total of 1 million/yr.
What do you mean by forced divestments?
Oh and are you going to hard code these numbers into the law? Because rich people would respond by deflating the currency to the point where the average person makes 10 cents a day and a millionaire is inflation-equivalent to a billionaire today.
forced divestments
Selling off half their stocks or ¼ of their their majority share to lower their stake in their own businesses so their wealth is stifled.
Selling it to who though? And who gets the money from the sale? Taxes? But rich people already control the government…
This only sounds good to people who are ignorant of both economics and history. Wealth caps, rent control, fixed prices, etc all sound nice until you take a minute to learn about the side effects. These sorts of policies aren’t knew, but they don’t work which is why they haven’t stuck around.
At this point in time just blow out everyone’s bank accounts and start over again.
But exactly do you think this will accomplish?
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That sounds like a cat and mouse game. You make a rule that person A can’t be on the stock market for 5 years. This does two things. First, it causes rich people to find some loophole or exploit.
And second, it just disincentivizes them from using the stock market at all, in favor of some unregulated form of making money. Like crypto.
Now you could say “Well then we’ll place caps on how much you can trsnsfer crypto over to american currency”.
And now you’re in a cat and mouse game. Because now they just need to convert it to some foreign currency. Then convert the foreign currency to American currency.
See? Cat and mouse.
See, this idea thread is putting up fences to seperate the corrupt from illicit gains. You build a fence, they bring a ladder. You build a bigger fence, they bring a bigger ladder. You build a wall, they install a window. The incentive is always there to overcome the barrier.
Instead, we should be finding ways to make bringing a bigger ladder cost more than the gains. Rewrite the whole system so that all people benefit before the greedy have a chance to hoard it all.
Regulate every system. Regulate every persons finances. If they cheat the system, make them pay twice the gains they got. Then distribute those fines to fund education and poor neighborhoods.
Suddenly you don’t need to worry about how big their ladder is, because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.