Taxes on everyday Europeans bring in 13 times more revenue than taxes on wealth
oxfam.org
oxfam.org
But I think what this reasoning misses is the minor effect increasing taxes on the wealthy would actually have. I think the proportion of people who are wealthy is so exceedingly small (in proportion) that even if they were to pay tax at 90%, the majority of tax revenue would still come from the average income masses. There are too few of them to move the needle.
Therefore, the argument that we should tax the wealthy more because of this statistic doesn't hold water.
And no more QE for asset acquisition, only for productive activities.
If we seized 100% of every billionaire's net worth and managed to liquidate their stock at market rates without causing a shock (impossible), we would theoretically gain $14.2 trillion. Note that this is for all billionaires worldwide, not just the US.
$14.2 trillion is a mountain of money. On the other hand, it's only enough to pay for US government operations for a little over 2 years.
A. Let's not kill the golden goose. A little return every year for the next 5 decades is a much more desirable outcome than a huge return that lasts 5 years.
B. A ridiculous percentage of billionaire's wealth (~89%) is in the stock market. This leads to huge on-paper valuations, but is impossible to liquidate at the paper valuation. Any attempt to collect that money would destroy the value; almost making it Schrödinger's wealth.
C. The rest of the world is still competing for our business. If you somehow passed a 90% tax rate, there would be no advantages to staying in the US. Even the serious limitations and government issues of different countries (China, Australia, Europe) would be preferable.
this is what it read like to the average american that was paying attention to it at all. It doesn't matter if the above "isn't what really happened" - that's what was presented, in the rough order it was presented.
When you have "a billion dollars on paper", you can manipulate a large amount of perception, laws, policies - basically whatever you want. My point is, Musk was one of the only billionaires to use their wealth in the open in this way, and it eliminates the "only on paper" argument.
There are 3,194 billionaires; only one is worth $250B+. To compare all billionaires to Elon Musk is by itself fallacious.
> He then somehow came up with the 40-50 billion to buy twitter.
No, he didn't. He got a loan from 7 banks, in combination with his own funds, and using Tesla stock as collateral. This allowed him to avoid selling too much stock, while placing repayment obligations for that loan on X as a company. He also was able to reuse a Twitter stake that he purchased earlier.
>this is what it read like to the average american that was paying attention to it at all. It doesn't matter if the above "isn't what really happened" - that's what was presented, in the rough order it was presented.
Also you did the thing whereby Musk's "net worth" somehow matters when this thread has folks talking about how that is all "just on paper".
Musk really does control billions of dollars in value of real companies, but even he found it difficult to get $40 billion in cash quickly.
Banks, on the other hand, can produce billions in cash pretty quickly - if they feel the collateral is good for it, even if they have to wait. They make money turning time into money and money into time, after all.
Taxing great wealth to finance the ecological and social transition https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/20...