I have no problem with billionaires personally. I do have a problem with people being billionaires if the "value" they've created is negative (obviously this is my opinion).

Consider two billionaries:

- One creates a cold nuclear fusion device the size of a 10" x 10" x 10" cube. You can plug anything to this device and it will power it, indefinitely.

- Another gets little boys and girls addicted to some sort of super candy, irresistible for those under 13.

Surely one of these people is more valuable

This may be unpopular, but the hard thing in this discussion is to differentiate between consumption and investment. It does not help much to take wealth in terms of equity paper money away from people who know how to invest it efficiently and distribute it. On the other hand, there are minimum basic needs for consumption of food, health services, shelter, education etc. I agree that the system to finance those services is broken. But then fix the system and don't only focus on punishing people when they build economically viable organisations that even help to support the economy in such a crisis.

The problem, as always, is implementation. Millionaires, especially those on the low end of that spectrum, tend to be fairly easy to tax. Their income sources are mostly regular and standard forms of income tax work pretty well.

Billionaires are a very different animal. They have armies of lawyers and financial managers that help them navigate the movement of wealth through the global system to avoid taxation. They avoid recognizing income at all opportunities and strategically use debt to provide for themselves without exposing themselves to tax consequences that would come from getting the money they want to spend. They can traverse the globe looking for the most favorable taxation rates to maximize their wealth.

There’s been a lot of “tax billionaires” and “billionaires shouldn’t exist” rhetoric without much substance to how to actually achieve that goal. Billionaires aren’t just going to say “aww, shucks, guess we’ve got to pay up” when governments decide to up their taxes. They’re going to react in ways that are both hard to predict and harder to stop. Capital flight is a real threat and will require a massive, coordinated effort on the parts of all the nations that comprise the global financial system to curtail. The efforts towards a minimum corporate tax rate are a good start, but that’s only one step of many that are necessary before “tax billionaires” becomes a realistic target.

Does anyone seriously believe that if the US gov levied this tax that it would actually use the revenue in an efficient way? Remember when they "lost" 2.3 trillion dollars? $2,300,000,000,000. Whoops!

As an aside, this [1] was extremely depressing to read. I was aware of the 2.3 trillion around 9/11 (what a coincidence!), but had no idea about the more recent discrepancies.

[1]: https://www.city-journal.org/html/americas-missing-money-157...

edit: i forgot some zeroes!

Billionaires have power for two reasons:

* there is an enormous need for capital in modern economies

* everyone else refuses to actually keep any capital. Individuals max out their credit cards instead of saving. Voters demand tax cuts so governments are borrowers instead of lenders.

You can tax back the capital, but there are 2 issues doing so: as long as it's spent and not saved, it will rapidly end up back in billionaire's accounts AND in the mean time, the loss of investment when billionaires pull out capital to pay the tax will mean fewer jobs and higher prices.

These are the reasons no politician is willing to pull the trigger and go after the uber wealthy: you'll be celebrated for a week and then lynched when the economy falters.

You want to get out of this position? Require people to save and balance governmental budgets. But people don't want higher taxes, less services and lower spending power. At least they dislike it more than they like equality and opportunity.

If you really think billionaires have undue influence (and i do), cut your spending, invest and pay down debt and vote for higher taxes and lower state spending.

While likely legal since the US Constitution only prohibits ex post facto criminal statutes, retroactive wealth confiscation is probably not a good precedent to set. A universal wealth tax would be much more palatable than a tax on wealth gained by certain people during a certain period of time.

_Some_ millionaires call for...

Another topic where people seem to ignore Thomas Sowell's research: https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/09/12/the-fallac...

"The obscene levels of wealth gained from the pandemic by a handful of mega-rich individuals should immediately be taxed at 99%"

Surely they should. Every sane being with a hint of a sense of justice and empathy surely agree.

But they won't. Because they pay a lot less to just the right people so it will never happen.

The wealth distribution hockey stick is getting so extreme pretty soon it's going to be "workers... and upper middle class professionals... and millionaires... of the world unite!" Anyone with less than a billion dollars is the proletariat.

Until there's a wealth floor -- until everyone is fed, sheltered and has access to education, there needs to be a wealth cap.

We, as a collective humanity, should not allow anyone to have more than, say, $20 million, until the basic needs of others have been met.

Seems like they are proposing a wealth growth tax rather than a wealth tax.

This tax should be retroactive, and it should be a wealth tax, not an income tax, as the ultra-wealthy often make very little income compared to their vast wealth.

Same as it ever was.

Who needs to pay more taxes? Those people over there.

Honestly so much time is spent on taxes. In terms of avoiding, discussing and modifying. Will there ever be a simple and easy solution?

These millionaires are useful idiots, it will be fun to see how their houses get confiscated in the name of further down equality one day. Everyone must be equal, and the most equal place on earth is a collective graveyard, a thing that collectivists are so succesful at replicating every single time they try to bring equality into your lives.

If i got taxed at the same rate as millionaire and billionaires did, i'd be rich too.

Just tax them at the same rate you tax Johnny Average.

edit: and tax their companies at the same rate local mom-and-pop stores/bakeries/... get taxed.

I'm no more a fan of billionaires than the next guy, but is this argument not extremely hypocritical:

“Billionaire Jeff Bezos could personally pay for enough vaccines for the whole world, yet he would rather spend his wealth on a thrill ride to space. COVID-19 is turning the gap between rich and poor into an unbridgeable chasm” - millionaires.

Millionaires could personally alleviate so much suffering in the world, yet they would rather buy... Nice houses, cars, and whatever else millionaires buy. You could extrapolate this argument all the way down even to those in objectively unfortunate circumstances. It's turtles all the way down.

These pleas seem motivated more out of virtue signaling than anything else.

Why is there no extremely high VAT on luxury goods?

Lol. First they create a wealth gap with inflation and then all private property should be sold overseas to feed the poor. Sounds like a good plan.