A one-time 5% wealth tax would bring Silicon Valley’s billionaires’ wealth back to where it was just 31 days ago

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨livligkinkajou@slrpnk.net⁩ to ⁨workreform@lemmy.world⁩

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/0c7f99d9-de20-461c-96dd-0494124e9d0d.jpeg

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

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Comments

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Tiger666@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
In our next lives we should all strive to make sure THAT NO ONE HUMAN HOLDS THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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

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- fonix232@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.
  
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  - Zachariah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    yeah, I think it’s more about power than money
    
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  - chocrates@piefed.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah we should tax billionaires until they become “only” millonaires
    
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cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I posted this comment on another topic but it’s relevant here too:

The sick part is that what is being asked is actually so inconsequential to the billionaires that not only will their line still go up, if we change nothing else but this, even wealth inequality itself will still keep going up, it will just go up at a slightly less supersonic speed. They don’t even care about the amount of money we’re asking for, they care about the precedent that if we can take this from them, what’s stopping us from taking everything from them.

That’s what they’re actually scared of. That’s why they resist this so hard. That’s why they don’t bend. They think that once the people slip out of their stranglehold they will get a taste of billionaire blood and they will like it.

And they might be right.

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- bashibazouk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  It’s not the money, it’s control of their companies. To pay the tax they have to sell stock which reduces control. They, rightly I think, also believe it’s a one time tax until the next time the tax gets passed. Maybe this a good thing but it should also be addressed by those pushing the wealth tax…
  
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  - yakko@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Would much rather make their worst nightmares come true. Anything less feels like leaving money on the table, ya know?
    
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zbyte64@awful.systems ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I would rather have 1000 millionaires than 1 billionaire

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shittydwarf@piefed.ca ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So we can hit them with 5% every month

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- BillyClark@piefed.social ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Just hit all billionaires, worldwide, with 100% of all wealth over a billion dollars every year. A billion dollars is really an inconceivable amount of money for one person to have. Far more than one person could ever legitimately earn in a lifetime.
  
  Letting them retain one billion dollars is probably far more charity than they deserve, but what can I say? I’m just a softie.
  
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  - bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Like your card’s not getting declined for anything, ever. Why keep running up a high score when it makes many others suffer? It’s entirely unrelatable to me that anyone could be so fortunate and yet so callous.
    
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  - uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    $30 million is generous and plenty to live on. Everything above that is capital that is only to be used to get even more.
    
    Moreover even at $30 million, it’s difficult not to fall upwards. You can make really bad decisions, whether cruel, ignorant, reckless, or offensive to the public, and still turn a profit. It’s actually an argument against hiring upper management who are already well-to-do.
    
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architect@thelemmy.club ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s literally impossible to allow this to continue. Something will give.

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- khannie@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  We are far, far beyond the wealth inequality that spurned the French Revolution and yet, here we sit.
  
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  - whalesnrainbows@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’d attribute this to two main factors:
    
    The wealth inequality we’re dealing with has a higher ceiling (and higher floor) than the wealth inequality in pre-revolution France. We’re poor and hurting financially, but most of us are still able survive day-to-day without viscerally feeling the effects of our poverty.
    
    The internet keeps us apart. Pre-internet, people built communities, coalitions, and armies much more effectively because they weren’t so isolated in their homes, and so paralyzed by screens.
    
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  - Soggy@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The French Revolution was not a peasant revolt, it was a movement of the upper-middle class. Nobody with money is interested in changing the government right now.
    
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- nullspace@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Newsom’s prepared to give his life defending the billionaires.
  
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MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
They remember (or have schools that teach) 90+% wealth tax back when accountants hadn’t hidden it all. You know, along with strong unions, what made the middle class. and what shall; never again happen if the parasite class can help it.

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- boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That wasn’t a wealth tax though? That was an income tax and only on the top bracket. Very, very different things.
  
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  - bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There’s a pretty straightforward solution to that, as well: Tax unrealized capital gains as income the moment they’re used as collateral. If you can spend it, it’s income, you fucking cheater.
    
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  - MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Sure, simpler times back when accountants hadn’t hidden it all
    
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joecitizen@piefed.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Billionaires should be illegal. That’s wages stolen from the workers.

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ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I misread it as 31 years ago. But when I saw 31 days I was like… And of course they are opposed to it!

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sepi@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
jyQxLwi1xHpF6rt.png

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- arrow74@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  5% off the top!
  
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jdr@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
People who are cool with not having the maximum amount of money possible don’t end up billionaires

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jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sadly I predict this won’t pass. The traditional media like tv commercials is flooded with propaganda to vote no on this. Newsom, Becerra and Hilton are all saying to vote no (that should be the biggest clue that you should vote yes) The commercials offer different and conflicting narratives as to why you should vote no (another clue you should vote yes) And there are NO commercials telling you to vote yes. (That should be another clue, those who control the media do not want this.) The only news available telling you to vote yes is Bernie Sanders visiting California for some sort of rally. But those supporters also tied in props 41 and 42, pushing for a “no” vote on those, which I think might have been a mistake and hurts their message.

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lagg_mine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Great message, but that graph is horrible…

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- givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  The Y axis starts at zero at least…
  
  But yeah, not having consistent dots on the X axis fucks it up.
  
  They should have started with Dec 2025 when they had more frequent data and left the rest off.
  
  That’s why it looks so off. Whoever made it was just trying to do too much, but as far as graphs that get posted on social media, sadly this is a pretty good one.
  
  It’s a very low bar
  
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  - Janx@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I’m confused. It’s not perfect, but it does have consistent dots for the X axis, every year.
    
    And yeah, they could have started with Dec 2025 and left the rest off… but part of the point of the graph is showing how billionaires have almost tripled their wealth since 2022, at the expense of everyone else.
    
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Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The math is a bit counter intuitive, but increasing by 5% then decreasing by 5% of the new value does not get you back to the start exactly.

You take a value v, increase it by 5% to 105% of the previous you now have 105% * v. Now you take that new values as the basis for the next calculation, and decrease by 5% to 95% of the previous, you now have 95% * 105% * v which is actually 99.75% * v.

You need to find the day from which their wealth increased by 5.263% so that a 5% tax would bring them back.

But yeah, whatever it doesn’t make a material difference to the argument. A one time tax sounds a bit weird to me, but I don’t live there, Californians should do whatever they can. Maybe a one time tax is a good first domino stone.

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Gpennyhigh@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The wealthy and powerful want to keep their control over people with the “good insurance” that many still have financial issues and bankruptcies with it, which is wrong. Reducing this scarcity along with others like paid leave helps people live better lives, and the owners don’t want that.

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Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
It’s like a disease - dragon fever.

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- jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Is that what Charlie Sheen had?
  
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  - bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Nah that was tiger blood
    
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schwifty_squanch@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
How about we make it an even 50%.

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Radical_Socialist_t00t@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
They’ll never do it. Uncle Sam has beaten capitalism too far into erican skulls.Theyare forever scared of Socialism/Communism

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