Comment on Gary Stevenson: 'Tax wealth or we'll return to the feudal age'

GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  You realise that they’ll not leave because it would be A LOT more expensive than just paying their taxes right ? Moving assets is expensive, they will not sell all their property, they will not move their companies. Them moving away is just propaganda for fools like you.

  And in any case, they already don’t pay much, even if 1% of them move away, the tax income from the rest will make up for it.

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  • group_hug@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    According to Abigail Disney they already pay more to avoid taxes than the cost of the taxes themselves.

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    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That’s absolutely not surprising. Paying for attorneys, transfer pricing experts, etc. would definitely cost a lot more

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      • gtrcoi@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        How is it not surprising when it contradicts your argument?

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Short term cost for long term profit. Look at all the companies that up and left Delaware after what their courts pulled with musks pay packet.

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• SacralPlexus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  This objection has been brought up repeatedly but these are solvable problems.

  Firstly, a lot of assets the wealthy own cannot be transferred out of country. Stock in companies, real estate, etc. The super rich are not rich because they have bank accounts with all of their money that can just disappear overnight, but because they own real things in the real world.

  Secondly, economist Gabriel Zucman has proposed a solution to the “they will all take their money and leave.” The USA taxes all citizens on their income no matter where they are in the world. You could simply create a wealth tax that says “if you have wealth over 100 million USD and have lived in this country in the past 5 years, you have to pay the tax no matter where you live for the next X years. (X could be 5, 10, 15, whatever.) If it goes into effect starting in some future date of course people will try to shift assets and move but if you make it retroactive they can’t. Also the tax needs to apply to companies so they can’t have an LLC holding all of their assets tax free neither.

  Finally, taxing wealth is not about being jealous or craven that others have more. It’s about survival of society in some form that isn’t “ten people own everything and the rest live in desperate poverty.”

  For the ultra wealthy, their wealth can grow passively from compounding interest leaving them will little choice but to continue acquiring assets. If you were given a million dollars every week (that’s roughly 5% annual growth on a billion dollars) you would quickly find that you had lots of money sitting around despite paying off all of your debt, upgrading your house, having fun trips. Eventually you would start using that money to either buy stocks, real estate, etc. Then those things appreciate and your $1M per week begins to climb despite living a lavish lifestyle. It’s just a natural consequence at that point that you buy up and own real world assets at an increasing rate. This means there is less and less available to own for everyone in your community.

  Essentially, at a certain point these individuals become financial black holes where their wealth is not only self sustaining but continues to grow and consume things. There is no stop unless society puts brakes on it to limit the growth beyond a certain point.

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  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    You’re totally right, thanks for not making me write this comment.

    Hey guys, the world’s smartest people are saying tax the multi-millionaires and some of them have spent their life working on this topic. There’s nothing you can bring up that the economists pioneering the modern version of this solution haven’t considered. If you think taxing the wealthy won’t work, for any reason besides they have a whole lot of power and will fight it, than you’re a part of the problem and being propagandized into an apathetic state.

    We can win, we will win, it’s not that hard of a problem to solve, we just have to fight for it.

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• derAbsender@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  One will die:

  Society or the billionaire.

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    This just isn’t true. Billionaires do very little that negatively affects society. Mostly they just pay all the tax and provide all the jobs.

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    • derAbsender@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Amazon in the past was often able to overcome threats from state governments by cutting ties with local partners or leaving the state in question. Amazon severed its relationships with affiliates in Colorado due to efforts by the state government to collect sales tax on internet purchases. Amazon has threatened similar action against affiliates in Illinois over the same issue.[47] In February 2011, Amazon announced that it would be closing its Dallas, Texas, distribution center over the sales-tax dispute[145]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_tax_avoidance

      Of course…

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      • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        That’s got nothing to do with billionaires though. Are you suggesting that businesses that don’t have a billionaire founder never have and can’t do things like that?

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    • Aria@lemmygrad.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      They don’t provide jobs, they tax jobs. The billionaire’s customers provide the jobs. The workers create the product, and the billionaire collects the money from the customer and pays a fraction of it to the worker. Without the billionaire, the worker could be earning the full value they provide to the customer.

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• Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Not false, but something has to give. Billionaires are a drain on society, the conditions that allowed their creation tanked the middle class. They centralize capital in their hand at the downfall of everyone else. A wealth tax is a step forward. Ideally, combined with international agreements with the biggest fiscal havens to not let them run away.

  I want to stress how the rise of billionaires is a global phenomenon. In an ideal world, all nations would slowly implement wealth taxes.

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Billionaires are generally the wealth creators, not drains. How many people do bezos and musk employ? How much tax do they, their companies, and their employees contribute?

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    • Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I want you to engage in good faith with this thought experiment.

      On one hand, you have Costco - many employees, no billionaires, all employees have good benefits, company pays its taxes. On the other you have Amazon - many employees, one billionaire, many employees are working poors, on snap or similar benefits. Amazon skirts its taxes as much as possible, while US subsidies its employees.

      Which one helps society the most as a whole?

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      • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Google Jim Sinegal mate lol

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• tburkhol@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The idea that billionaires would leave the economy that made them billions, the services and amenities that make being a billionaire worthwhille, and all their rich friends, all for a little tax break is pretty ridiculous. They already choose to live in California, New York, and London - expensive places with high taxes - rather than Cayman Islands or South Dakota.

  They’re definitely not uprooting the whole corporate campus, moving it away from the skilled workforce it needs, the housing that they need, and the good schools that they want.

  Billionaires’ personal wealth isn’t generating any taxable income, anyway, so there’s no income tax to lose if they do leave.

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Avoiding a “wealth tax” isn’t just a “little tax break”.

    Most wealth is on paper. Billionaires don’t just have a billion dollars of cash. I’m technically a multi-millionaire, but if I suddenly got hit with a 5% wealth tax I’d have too sell my house and be homeless to pay it. That’s not right or fair.

    Is basically a tax on unrealised gains, and I shouldn’t have to explain to you how that is terrible.

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    • tburkhol@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      1. no one’s talking about a 5% wealth tax, and few people are even talking about applying it to people with fortunes as paltry as $10,000,000.

      2. Us middle-class shlubs are already paying 1-2% wealth tax on our biggest asset, and that asset doesn’t even generate income. Why should billionaire stock portfolios be exempt?

      3. Asset taxes, whether real estate or equity, encourage those assets to be put to productive use. If you can’t figure out how to extract 1% economic value out of your $100,000,000 company to pay the wealth tax, then maybe you should sell that company to someone who can run it right.

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      • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Missed the point of the example.

        Unrealised gains should never be counted or taxed because of their very nature. So you even understand the difference between realised and unrealised gains?

        Just because someone has more money than you it doesn’t mean they should be unfairly charged with extra taxes. That’s pathetic.

        What 1-2% wealth tax are us shlubs already paying? Why are billionaires exempt from this?

        You fundamentally don’t understand the difference between the value of a company and the cash on hand of that company.

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• Cherry@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  They arnt paying anyway so it’s not a loss.

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That’s just not true. Elon musk paid the single highest tax bill anyone has ever paid, for example.

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• nodiratime@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Thry are a drain on society. If they leave, it’s a net positive. If they start to pay their fair share, it’s a net positive. Either way we win.

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They literally pay the majority of all tax in a society lol. They usually create tens of thousands of jobs, and pay those wages.

    There aren’t many billionaires that don’t own and run massive companies that contribute greatly to society.

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    • CriticalThought@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      They literally pay the majority of all tax in a society

      I’m going to have 1000 pizza pies, you’re going to have one. We each need to contribute to the group. You’ll give half of your pizza pie, I’ll give one whole pie. I’m a much bigger contributor than you. No one hungry should be upset with me, especially since I periodically give a slice to the people who bake all the pizzas for me. Enjoy your half pizza.

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      • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Only that’s not how it works. That’s not how the tax system works.

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    • Koarnine@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The top richest times list and the top taxpayers list don’t have any overlap. The majority of billionaires pay fuck all tax.

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      • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        nchstats.com/who-pays-most-taxes-in-america/

        You’re just wrong.

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• MolochHorridus@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Let millionaires leave every country to form their own utopia. Let them try and live without anyone making the life go around. Just millionaires eventually eating each other.

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    And what do you think happens to the countries that just lost 50% of their tax revenue because the 1% left?

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    • HexesofVexes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Hang on…

      So most assets are shares and structures. Shares you can sell, but someone still holds them, structures can be sold, but someone still owns them.

      If a billionaire left, a fortune in capital gains would be made, the wealth would remain to be taxed from other hands, and that precludes the destination not having a higher wealth tax.

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      • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Wealth taxes are never one off. They might get a big payday once, but then thousands of people have lost their jobs, 50% of the income tax is now gone from the books for the next year, along with all the other business related taxes.

        Most places would love billionaires to move in, because then they get enormous amounts of extra tax revenue and, typically, jobs.

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• tenebrisnox@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Let them live in their floating city states or in their underground bunkers like erzatz Bond villains. Let’s see how much wealth they create there.

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• iThinkDifferentThanU@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Come find me boot licker, I’ll show ya jealousy. Its damn near dinner time, I can’t wait I’m starvin

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  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    At least you admit it’s jealousy.

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• Aria@lemmygrad.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Do they take their British workforce with them? No, so those stay behind. Can they produce the products they produce in the UK without that workforce by themselves? No, then they wouldn’t need the workforce. Can the workers produce the product? They know how, and have successfully been doing it for the duration of their employment. The only thing stopping them is capital and IP.

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