It does not bother me. But I think there should be a min/max for how much wealth a person has. No one suffers from taxing windfall profits. Windfall , by definition, being unexpectedly high profits.
1. This is objectively false. Shareholders of the bank suffer, because they get less profits. This may not be a crowd that solicits a lot of sympathy, but they still exist.
2. How do you feel about VCs and startups? Their entire business model is investing in 100 companies, knowing that 99 will fail but 1 will make astronomical returns. How would this work if there were windfall taxes?
Won't someone think of the poor bank shareholders? /s
"Go ahead BP and VW, keep polluting the world, we're not gonna touch you because we don't want your shares to go down and in turn the retirement funds of those tied to you."
Am I the one seeing the slippery slope here, or am I being crazy?
Nobody claims this. My initial comment was only pointing out that the claim that nobody will be harmed by the windfall tax was false.
In America anyway, the wealthiest 1% own 53% of the stock market. I highly doubt that the "your parents" would benefit more from funding of their investment accounts than they would benefit from the tax revenue generated. Of course my assumption is highly dependent on public policy.
>This may not be a crowd that solicits a lot of sympathy, but they still exist.
I'm not defending anyones point here but pointing out that you haven't quite grasped how the economy works or alternatively you like snarky little value add comments.
And about half of those stocks are held by the top 1%.
the same way it works now: counterbalance losses with gains.
To call it a loss means that money was taken from them. If someone promises to leave me $1 million when they die and then they decide to change their mind I do not suffer. Nothing was taken from me. I did miss out on having $1 million but have suffered no loss. I never had the $1 million to begin with.
1. You haven't heard of the saying "suffering a loss" in the context of finance?
2. see definition 3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suffer#Verb
> Those entities don't lose anything. It's not possible to lose something you don't have. In an alternate universe where the windfall tax did not occur those entities have more money. But in this universe they don't lose anything. They don't suffer.
That's a strange way of putting it. Suppose you were at the casino and won a few thousand dollars. When you decide to cash out they informed you there was a "winnings surcharge" (that they didn't previously tell you about) and took 50% of your winnings. Would you say that you didn't "lose anything"?
We live in a society and there aren winners/losers in a financial sense. But we all have to live together. That 10 people have as much wealth as 150 million people is obscene and immoral. Taxing such wealth to use for the betterment of us all is right, just, and sound policy. Obviously we disagree on this. I hope your view does not win out in the long run. It has won out in the U.S. in the present and the effects have been bad. Such is my view.
That sounds like zero-sum thinking.
I believe that if you think of the world using zero-sum thinking (that winners are balanced by losers), you will end up with a very skewed view.
Just because it's called a windfall tax does not mean it only effects windfalls. This is really just a "surprise extra tax". Plenty of people said that rising interest rates would mean more risk but also more profit for banks. Now they have taken the risk they're being told the profit is not theirs...
Surprise laws should bother you on general principles.
Tax unpredictability, high taxes, or capping profitability is a great way to scare off businesses from operating in your jurisdiction.
Windfall taxes don't bother me.