A one-time 5% wealth tax would bring Silicon Valley’s billionaires’ wealth back to where it was just 31 days ago, on September 7.
When it was “just” 178% higher than on January 1, 2023.
They’d rather let 3 million people lose their health insurance than let that happen.
Graph here: cabillionairetracker.org
Rather than paying their fair share of taxes, Sergey Brin, Pether Thiel, and Patrick Collison prefer to spend tens of millions to manipulate the vote.
Stupefying levels of greed and lack of civil-mindedness.
$45 million in a week: California’s wealthy aren’t holding back to try to stop ‘billionaire tax’
All credits to Gabriel Zucman
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They freak out about this because their wealth is in holdings and isn’t liquid. They leverage debt and play these games to avoid paying their share the freeloading welfare queens that they are
This is probably more painful than “it’s just 5%.” And I love that for them
fonix232@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
It also sets a precedent - why not an annual 5% tax? why not 50%?
That's why they're afraid of it. It's not just the liquidity, because 5% they can easily liquidate without affecting any of their hedged-leveraged debt coverage.
Zachariah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
yeah, I think it’s more about power than money
chocrates@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah we should tax billionaires until they become “only” millonaires
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
This is a legitimate problem. Forcing a primary shareholder to sell their shares devalues the shares of workers holding them in retirement accounts. Forcing them to liquidate their shares is not at all feasible.
Which is why this tax should never be payable in dollars. It should be paid directly in shares. It doesn’t have to be converted to cash first; the shares themselves go straight to the IRS.
The confiscated shares can be liquidated slowly over time. Every time 1000 shares are traded on the free market, the IRS gets to offer one of its taxed shares. The influence on the market price of the shares is minimized. If the shares become worthless, they just sit on the IRS books, collecting dust forever.
I’d only tax securities - investment holdings. Stocks, bonds, other fungible, intangible, financial assets. I want them spending their money on tangible products and personal services (as opposed to financial services) that are ultimately produced by workers. I want them pushing their money back into rotation, not setting up dollar farms to collect it from everything that moves.
But, if we want to go after general wealth, we can also do the same thing for deeded property or titled property. They don’t have to sell the land or the car/boat/plane; we just put a tax lien on it now, and collect later.
MBech@feddit.dk 2 weeks ago
I like it, but I would prefer if the government kept the share of the companies, transitioning the companies into government run entities over time, thereby having the production be owned by the people.