But it’s not real money! 😭👅💦🥾
Not sure I understand why America no longer encourages and celebrates folks being commercially successful. Instead folks are just jealous and complain all the time.
Do not feed the trolls.
Commercially successful for the individual, but what at cost for everyone else? No one becomes this wealthy without shortcuts. And those shortcuts affect us all, whether you care to look at it or not.
The root of the argument here is that billionaires are not a sign of economic success, even for the individual. It’s an enormous shortcoming, failure, and monument to greed.
Go home Elon, you’re drunk
Do you understand how wealth is made?
Just think about it for half a second.
You have resources, like money, stuff and time. That is your wealth. Now, how do you earn more wealth? Maybe by working? Let’s say 1 hour of your time is $100 worth, if you work 1 hr and get $100, You just change 1 resource for another. So if you trade your time for money, you didn’t earn wealth. But what if you don’t actually work a full hr but get paid $100 anyway, then you increased your wealth, but you also stole wealth from your employer after all, they paid you for 1 hr of work. Alternatively, you can work 1 hr but get paid $110, then you could argue that you don’t cheat your employer as they agreed to the deal but they still lose wealth as they get less than what it cost them. Let’s say, you don’t sell your time but your work. Well your time is still worth something but you don’t sell it anymore. Your time might still be $100 per hr but you sell your e.g. Software, not your time. To have that software, you have to get it first. So you write it. But writing software is a trade too, basically another time for stuff trade, juat with yourself. So if you don’t want to lose wealth, we need to calculate the cost of getting the software and sell it appropriately. Let’s say the software was 1200 hrs of work. So if you want to exchange the software for money now, you need to charge $120.000 otherwise you lost wealth. So you can sell the software for more but then you again took someone else’s wealth as they would be paying more for what it is worth. Selling stuff in general has that issue. Using money to buy stuff and selling more expensive included.
For you to earn wealth, someone needs to lose it.
So when a single person has a ridiculous amount of wealth, the question is “is their time worth that much?”
Elon musk is roughly 28,382,400 minutes old. Forbes estimated his wealth to 838 billions. For his wealth to be justifiable, 1 minute of his time would need to be worth $29.525.
A heart surgeon in the us earns roughly $1.200.000, they work 60-80hrs per week. A year has 52 weeks. So 52*60, 3210 hrs for $1.200.000, or 192,600 minutes. That means a heart surgeon times is worth $6,23 per minutes. 0.02% of what elon’s time would need to be worth.
4,724 heart surgeons working 1 minute would be worth the same as Elon work 1 minute.
And we are ignoring that Elon wasn’t working when he was 2 seconds after he was born. We are including the time Elon spend shitting his pants as a baby, and minutes of his day even when he is not working, and excluding all the time that the surgeon is not working, like when they see their family or when they were studying or a baby. So the surgeon time is much less worth and Elon’s time is more worth if we would bother to make the perfect comparison.
So do you honestly and sincerely believe that elon’s time is worth the same as 4724 heart surgeons even in this poor comparison that is simple wealth divided by lifetime vs salary divided by working hours?
Or… is his wealth based on wealth that he took from others?
There is a difference of being successful and allowing the rich to create loopholes concentrating all the wealth into a few hands.
They pay a lower percentage of their income as taxes than the average middle class American. Absolutely nobody mentioned not being filthy fucking rich still. It’s boneheaded to rely on the generosity and humanitarianism of an individual who’s demonstrated they’re greedy as fuck.
Tax the rich, invest in infrastructure so China stops pulling away.
Because America got WOKE. WOKE VIRRUS CAUSES Trump derangement syndrome which is often associated with hating all kinds of benevolent and successful CHRISTIANS like Elon Musk.
Americans love bashing on the EU for not having that many uber rich dudes. You know why? Because - in general - the EU people who would’ve become uber rich tend to invest more back into the market and local communities, whereas the US uber-rich just hoard money.
For example: a tech millionaire in an EU country would be heavily investing in a local tech university to ensure they train people on the latest hardware and software. A US tech spends the same money to buy out competition increasing his own wealth.
US loves to bash the EU for its heavy regulations. It’s true. These are the regulations that prevent overrich to get richer faster by ruining the environment, treating workers like slaves, etc.
US also loves to bash the EU for its heavy taxes, but this tax money funds public services, and limit the trickling up of wealth.
But there are still wealth hoarding billionaires in the EU, and they’re getting richer faster these last years, because neo-liberalism has the same result everywhere.
the EU people who would’ve become uber rich tend to invest more back into the market and local communities, whereas the US uber-rich just hoard money.
Is this evidence based, or feels based?
That’s what higher taxes do. And that’s pretty evident, taxes in EU are generally higher and it’s harder to loophole out of paying them.
Property is theft.
Dumbass should have invested.
Compound interest is your friend.
We are beyond tax, burn the fuckers at the stake
These memes and their funny numbers. Saving that long only gets you about 300 billion.
Musk has 3x that.
That was 2021 money. Since then he worked hard and made so much good, his net worth tripled. Just like any sane and fair system would have.
I highly doubt the USA will copy 1789 France.
No, it’ll likely be worse, if
Thankfully we don’t need to as we don’t have a autocratic government
We are so far past “taxing” them. They need to be stripped of their wealth completely, not lose some extra 5% on the next haul.
I’m for consumption
I say kill them, especially the billionaires who are also chuds, then tax the surviving billionaires
It’s going to come to that sooner than we think.
I thought this years events would have done it, but people are still waiting
Or nothing will change for the better because we engage in this childish and now apparently murderous nonsense online instead of doing anything practical.
Fantasizing about killing billionaires is cringe because it almost never leads to anything practical. Actions speak louder than words
The people who talk openly about murdering us with their policies, budget proposals, and lunatic campaign funding are having people talk about murdering them!
O’ the humanity!
You can tax their existing wealth. For example an annual tax for the average wealth you held for the past year for people whose wealth exceeds a total 250 million in all assets
At this point we need to tax their wealth at a rate of like 90% or higher. Any laws that pass with the word “tax” in it is not going to go close to that number. We need to use harsher vocabulary and treat it as the crime it is imo.
Agreed. From ~1930 to the mid 60s, we were taxing almost everything over a certain amount (90+ %). In addition, corporate tax rates were significantly higher.
Besides the point really, we need a plutocrat tax/wealth tax, not income tax reform. It’s one of the few direct methods to redistribute the wealth theyve extracted from the 99% and decrease inequality.
Tax wealth, not workers!
This was actually the norm during the so-called “golden age of capitalism” in the US funnily enough. The higher margins of the wealthy were taxed upwards of 90% and what do you know, it led to prosperity.
This is an international problem.
The more you tax them, the more will flee to countries willing to make concessions for them. But, taxation is preferable to seizing the assets; after seizure, you will lose a massive amount of business for obvious reasons, it will cost more than you seize.
I think that corporate control would be preferable. Shell companies and their machinations are at an absurd level today, see Panama and Pandora papers for more details.
How would you fix this without international solutions? What would those be? Can’t we make a deal?
Too bad we don’t have a diplomatic deal maker in office
Yes, it’s an international problem.
How would you fix this without international solutions? What would those be? Can’t we make a deal?
Can’t be fixed locally unless you got an incorruptible government -> refuse to do any business with problematic individuals and their corporations. As long as no one holds a monopoly on something you need to survive, that’s viable.
If the USA taxes Amazon, do you think Amazon will stop doing business in the USA? Do you think Amazon will do less business in the USA? No, of course not, there’s a billion warehouses and distribution centers in the USA, it would be impossible to move.
If the USA taxes Jeff Bezos, do you think Jeff Bezos will go live in Panama? Do you think he will move to Africa? No, of course not, he has all his stuff in the USA that he cannot move, he would never leave.
As long as corporations/billionaires have their stuff in a country, that country can tax their stuff. It’s the other side of the coin Trump is having trouble with. Trump slaps a tarrif on everything to encourage manufactuing in the USA, but corpoations don’t have many manufacturing capabilities in the USA so the end result is lost jobs and raised prices for nothing. There’s no manufacturing stuff in the USA and it would take a decade to make the stuff if they started now.
At a certain level of wealth, all the money is tied up in assets that are difficult to move. Those assets are assessed and used to borrow money to avoid income tax. We can use those same assessments and implement a wealth tax.
The deal should be, “Y’all have had it too good for too long. Pay your fair share immediately and indefintely.”
So much of what they own is the resources of this land and the labour of the people living here. If they leave, then we get all of that back for ourselves.
Wealth flight is a myth, it is not real.
A good video that sums it up in a nice way: https://youtu.be/6DXZMXZCY0I
You can tax them by demanding the tax regardless of domicile, as a tax for selling their shit in your country.
We can fairly quickly degoogle EU.
As for small, micro, or even SMEs, atm even municipalities are competing & bowing instead of showing solidarity to others. Simple eg EU level laws are needed.
Elon musk would be in jail and broke by now if the SEC could do its job
But that would hurt the earnings of the mega wealthy, clearly can never be allowed to happen.
Idk we’ll see what happens when the rich people start eating themselves. I’m actually excited for this stage of capitalism.
May be something like Russia after the fall of communism or like Mexico with all its cartels and private armies?
Ah yes famously wealthy countries, the Soviet Union and Mexico, who went to hell when they stopped catering to the ultra-rich…
Or the FBI (public emails where he begged Epstein to let him into the parties; also the election interference), or the FTC, or the EPA (Tesla plants piping battery waste into water supplies)…the list goes on
Which was the whole point of DOGE
Confiscate his wealth, and nationalize his companies. We paid for them, after all, they’re ours. They can be operated at the benefit of the citizens.
Some clarification. Those billionnaires don’t have that much money. It’s the “valuation” of their assets, so it’s even more fictional than actual money. Which means they can practically set to anything with enough hype, and not pay any tax, but can convert some (only some) of that fictional money to real money by getting a bank loan against it, again, tax free.
What I’m saying is, we need to get those funny number back to ground truth. Melon wants SpaceX valued at 1.25 Tn or something. Let him pay taxes over those valuations and see how valuable they really are. After all, anyone with a 800bn company should be able to afford some taxes on them, right? So fucking tax them.
You can’t tax valuation
Tell that to the property taxes I pay on my house every year. They manage to define a value even though I’m not selling and it’s still an “unrealized gain”.
That’s the thing about wealth taxes. People argue that they’re unworkable. The truth is that we already have wealth taxes. We just have the most useless style of wealth tax.
Instead of the ultra-wealthy paying the highest percentage in taxes, every home owner pays a similar rate. But, that means that the people who have most of their wealth tied up in their homes pay the highest effective rate. Even if it might be hard to come up with a perfect wealth tax, it would be extremely easy to come up with one that’s more progressive than property taxes.
That’s right, homeowners pay on unrealized gains, but not Sociopathic Oligarchs. We should flip that.
If they can tax your house based on its current valuation, they can sure tax their stocks based on their current fucking valuations.
Excuse my French, they are not my native language.
Nor are English.
“You can’t tax valuation”
Fine, the government gets 40% of your share options.
“You can’t tax valuation”
Yes you can. Capitalism just doesn’t want you.
If they are using the “unvested” assets for something, like getting a loan with them as collateral, then we should treat it as if they realized the gain.
If you use stock as collateral to get s $1mm loan, that should be treated as income.
If they then sell the stock and get taxed again… I don’t think I really care.
We tax valuation all the time! Property has a valuation and we levy taxes on how much it’s worth.
One time? Every year?
Just like Income tax. When they vest.
I think that doesn’t work well due to price fluctuations of the stocks and avoiding double taxing, but I don’t understand stock options and current tax laws enough to be confident about that.
price fluctuations of the stocks
Average price over the last 30 days.
avoiding double taxing,
Submit a claim for repayment.
Average price over the last 30 days.
There are so many issues with this idk where to start. Maybe with: not all stock given as compensation are publicly traded yet. There may be no average price yet when they vest.
PS: Also, the original comment proposes taking 40% of the shares, not monetary equivalent which I originally misunderstood as well. So neither of our comments is really rellevant.
not all stock given as compensation are publicly traded yet. There may be no average price yet when they vest.
This doesn’t stop real estate being valued for tax purposes. Use the same approach - proxy valuations.
taking 40% of the shares
Yeah, that would just be nationalisation. After 5 years the government would own 90% of all businesses.
avoiding double taxing
Who cares? Even double-taxing the billionaires is still the moderate compromise position, compared to the guillotine.
The guillotine is a dumbass fantasy that prevents people from having to think about real options while cosplaying on the internet.
Who cares? If the goal is the universal application of the law, that goal is not obtained when you use the law to apply to people you don’t like.
That’s the point. If you get paid $10 at 30% tax the government takes 3 of the dollars. If you get paid $10 and 10 options, the government takes 3 dollars and 3 shares (when they vest). Simple as that.
Deciding what to do with the shares as the government is a hairy problem though.
Ok, I see what you mean, but now you have government holding stocks with 0 idea if they should cash out or hold. Both cases could result in the government loosing out on tax money.
If government immediately sells, and you hold until the stocks are 10x the value, the governmwnt lost out on 90% of the money.
If government holds and you sell, the government stocks can become worthless (e.g. company goes bankrupt) and again lose out on tax money. Plus government needs money in the budget, not stocks.
This is why you usually tax the income when you sell the shares. The loophole is taking a loan against those shares, but if you ask me, the answer is to tax the loan money and make repayments tax deductible. The loan is basically getting the money from selling shares early, so it should be taxed when you get it.
Maybe the shares could go to a sovereign wealth fund with staff employed to try and maximize the value of the fund over the long term?
I pay increased taxes because my property goes up in value, even if I don’t sell. Same should apply to shares (to be fair there should also be tax credits when shares fall).
Personal loans against business assets should be taxed. The repayments can then be tax deductible so they are not double taxed. Without taxing these loans, it just creates a tax loophole where you avoid income tax.
As for company prices being inflated, to some extent, who cares? As long as they don’t get a bailuot when the bubble pops, it’s the investors issue.
We get tax deductions on interest paid on mortgages. They should not be getting tax deductions on their full repayment.
The tax deductions are meant to offset the tax on the loan. You don’t get your loans taxed as income so you don’t get full deduction on repayment. They wouldn’t pay less than you overall in my proposal.
Seems like this would be a good place to treat those stocks (and options) as real property and tax them accordingly. With a properly progressive rate on them, we could set the lower end such that normal retirement funds won’t be impacted, with the high end discouraging hording assets.
This is important. More than glib stuff like the meme. When the billionaires talk about “paying their share,” it’s important that journalists and public repeatedly call out that BS. That’s how the average person is going to realize that it’s BS. Simple stuff like not being taxes on the value of their wealth (like average people are taxed on the value of, e.g., their home), and using the “unrealized gains” of those investments to back massive low-interest loans to buy/sell companies, politicians, etc. and fund their lives effectively tax free. It’s absolutely maddening.
This is all ignoring the single simple face that no 1 person should ever have the power over society that these parasites have.
I agree taxing fughazi is difficult. How about taxing the banks when they offer a loan for billionaires against their assets? Then they can pass that down as interest
Removed by mod
we can’t say shit anymore on lemmy.world, it really is the alternative to reddit in every wrong way
Blood tax.
If the punishments of a universally applied system of law no longer apply to autocrats and oligarchs then neither should it’s protections.
You did not account for an inflation. How much todays $ is $1 from 80000y ago?
$0 because the concept of currency did not yet exist.
Are you saying getting in on the ground floor of seashells wasn’t smart?!
Bout tree fiddy.
Goddam it Loch Ness Monster, I ain’t giving you no tree fiddy!
Probably not as much as you’d think. The Gold Standard has not been repealed until 1971, which means inflation would only happen due to extraordinary events (like big wars). But the inflation since 1971 would still multiply your money eight-fold, which will put your saving of 82 millennia above Elon Musk’s net worth.
The returns on iron in that era would have been astronomical. But if you put all your money into a mastodon-powered ploughing business you could be belly up
You forgot that you could account for inflation yourself, IT’S TRUE
Missed that scene of “Man from Earth”
What an excellent little film.
Never expect a bottle episode movie would be so good
Really? How? It’s like the main subplot!
good luck getting an immortal to care about short-timers
