What happens when something already owned grows in value past the arbitrary maximum? Net worth is, after all, a function of how valuable everyone else thinks the stuff you own is. It’s a price tag.
If you buy a rookie baseball card for $5, and he has a great year and now your card is worth $100, did you deprive anyone of $95 by continuing to own it?
could solve a lot of world issues and still have enough money left over to not know what to do with it.
There is no world issue that can be solved by just throwing money at it. Those issues have had MUCH more money thrown at them than all of the net worth of all billionaires on Earth combined, without being solved.
It’s just not that simple.
The guy who founded Costco and was its CEO up until a few years ago is this, if not very close. A business lauded for both how it treated its workforce, and its customers. Basically no turnover unless someone retires.
All of your points involved putting words in my mouth, and evading the simple facts:
All you’ve done here is straw man me and accuse me of being condescending, while desperately evading the above.
Do you really think all those countries that implemented and then later repealed their wealth taxes, got rid of them because they were effective? Use your brain.
You aren’t the god of econ 101
Yeah, it doesn’t take a god to understand that something we already know doesn’t work shouldn’t be attempted again.
There is a reason that the could of countries that still have wealth taxes (read: didn’t repeal them outright) changed them so that they’re no longer aimed at the wealthiest, and they’ve become just another tax primarily shouldered by the middle class, defeating the whole stated purpose of getting more tax revenue out of the ultra-wealthy.
a false point, that being a wealth tax doesn’t help just because it can be done poorly.
You say this as if what’s being proposed in the US is materially different from the previously-failed implementations around the world.
It isn’t. There has been no good answer to the question ‘how do we keep this from being the catastrophic failure it was elsewhere?’ from its proponents. They’re just doing the infamous definition of insanity, just try the exact same thing and expect a better result, because reasons.
If I refer to the negative outcome of something already attempted multiple times, while people insist we should try doing the exact same thing in ignorance of those attempts and they outcomes, there is no “feigning” going on; I actually do know more.
And my analogy is directed at the people who have demonstrated their ignorance/naivete by insisting that raising taxes always leads to an increase in tax revenue, even though, again, knowledge of that history makes it clear that not only is that not a given, but that it literally caused the opposite every time previously attempted.
You need to stop feigning competence when you’re insisting we repeat others’ mistakes. Learn some history.
No, they abandon it because the total tax revenue after implementation literally goes down instead of up, lol.
Just because 100 people will buy your product X at $10 and you make $1000, doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to make $2000 if you sell X for $20 instead. That’s basically the same principle–raising taxes doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase in revenue. People react to changes in policy.
This is not speculation, it literally already happened. Stop speaking about this from your assumed expectations and learn the actual history.
No. Leave my IRA and 401k alone.
There is a reason every country that’s tried a wealth tax has abandoned it (or neutered it to the point that it’s primarily the burden of the middle class, completely defeating the ostensibly-stated purpose of getting more money from the wealthiest), learn some world history.
The premise that merely having more than you need is inherently unethical is completely arbitrary, doubly so when only applied to those who have the most.
I live a fairly simple and frugal lifestyle. The amount of money where I am living at the standard of living and want, and my “savings are enough to ride out life in comfort”, is likely a much lower number than most others in the US.
Does that make me more ethical than those others? I don’t believe so.