Tech pulled a great trick here: equity.
America as a whole pulled a similar trick: 401k
It’s hard to fight the billionaires when all your money depends on not fighting them.
Most of the unionize workers still left in America get a better share of the pie than the non-Union workers not even close. It’s always good to work together in a union had to be footloose and fancy free by yourself.
No not a gift but they sure do align incentives
First, the general public would have more disposable income if we shift more of the tax burden on the ultra rich.
Second, people like Elon Musk won't be able to give themselves massive bonuses that are essentially paid by diluting common stock.
Also, with regard to the U.S., the U.S. could wipe out its national debt with a one-time wealth tax, and also pass a balanced budget const. amendment so it never ends up deep in debt again.
Lastly, perverse and extremely greed-based exploitative businesses might become less common, since there aren't ultra fat executive paychecks. Although it might still happen if a large group of people are able to make a somewhat high salary off such schemes.
The other issue is the U.S. deficit is a feature not a bug. As long as the world buys the bonds, it’s “free” and no one will care until forced austerity happens.
Look into the end of the Gilded Age to see how this really gets fixed.
We'd largely be transferring shares in companies to the treasury bond holders, ie the people and orgs who hold US debt.
The federal government might for example force mega-sized private companies like Koch Industries to go public to get an accurate market valuation (or just sell it to private equity by starting a bidding war on it across many private equity investors).
The wealth tax cutoff would be determined by the national debt. It might fall to a relatively harsh / low threshold like 99.9% of assets over $20 million. Or maybe 99% of assets between $20 million to $1 billion, and 99.9% on assets above $1 billion.
Treasury bonds themselves would be subject to the wealth tax, so someone with $100 billion in T bonds might just see 99% of $80 million erased. So even the total number of T bonds payable will drop under this wealth tax.
But someone with $100 million in shares in private and public companies will see their shares transferred to the federal government, and then eventually sold.
Once every T bond has been paid off, Congress and the states could try to close the centuries-long chapter on debt by trying to pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment.
Would love to but I'm afraid you grossly misunderstand how the power law distribution works. Unfortunately the billionaires are running away from us exponentially faster than we are catching up.
Speaking as someone who will almost certainly become a multi millionaire in the next decade or two. (even if I stop adding more savings manually)
But crucially this only happens if there _isnt_ a big revolution in USA. If there is, I'm fucked.
Why does that matter? Who is trying to catch up with a billionaire? They are not even playing the same game as the rest of us.
This corresponds to the first stage of Marxs theorized progession from capitalism too communism
Done hate the messenger. I'm just taking what I read and applying it to observed reality and telling you it fit.
Self described commies are dumb because they are incapable of enacting the very system they claim to idealize.
My impression of all these communes is:
- idealistic people move in
- they realize 90% of the people that moved in are lazy and don't want to work
- the rest of the 10% run the show and the commune either breaks down here or kicks out many people
- kids are born, they grow up and by the time they get to university age they find the whole thing cringy and leave to go have normal lives
- commune ends
Other than some that also degenerate into sexual abuse between members and other weird power games. My impression of these outsider hippie / communist groups is that their failure rate is very high.
Maybe avoid opining on topics you have no idea in the future as not to make an ass of yourself in public.