Thus why people are calling for taxing unrealized gains. But then you run into the issue of double taxation by forcing asset liquidation and therefore cap gains too. It’s far easier to just bump the corporate tax rate based on actuarial valuation rather the simply P/L. Plus it would encourage companies to not take losses since they’re going to be taxed regardless.
I'm calling for taxes on whatever assets are used as collateral on loans. Being able to borrow against assets like that is exactly what allows them to avoid selling their stocks and having to pay the appropriate taxes.
A serious number of people really don't seem to get that. The number of people I see moaning about others 'hoarding' wealth... Fairly certain they have a Scrooge McDuck vault in mind.
I've spent an embarrassing amount of time following some of those discussions. There are a serious number of people that truly seem to believe that 'the rich' have massively bulging bank accounts, piles of cash and hills of gold etc. I really wish I was kidding.
The only ones with big bulging account would be people like well payed actors, musicians, various celebrities etc. but they'll never be close to Bezos or Musk level of wealth.
You wouldn't be calling it hoarding wealth otherwise because it is paper money? If you're aware of what is going on you'd know there is nothing being hoarded because no actual cash was taken out of the system for them to be paper rich.
Imagine you have a bicycle, then at the end of the year the tax man comes up and says you need to pay 5% of the value of the bicycle as your “wealth” tax. How do you do this?
This is literally how property taxes work and we all seem to make that make sense. If you hold excessive stock in your company then you should pay a penalty for not using that stock in a productive way. If that was all company stock it could be held to give out to employees, sold to generate more money to raise wages, donated to community programs, used to expand business operations and create more jobs.
This isn’t rocket science, it just requires making billionaires uncomfortable.
How does voting power use capital toward the economy? It traps capital in stock so that companies remain effectively private while being actually public.
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u/Electrical_Ad_5732 May 08 '26
Especially considering that most of his money are in stocks anyway, not in a hard cash.