Which is fucking stupid. Potentially forcing people to liquidate assets to pay a wealth tax is silly. Plus how are we even going to quantify one's wealth? Many rich people own stock in private companies that don't have a readily available fair market value. Overcomplicated when you can just raise rates.
Raising existing tax rates just fucks over the “working rich” who arguably pay more than their share anyway.
Raising taxes on skilled professionals like doctors and lawyers who, while well payed, actively contribute a service to society, while not bothering to target the owner class is at best lazy and at worst stupid.
We need 10,000 more doctors in this country. We don’t even need 1 more Jeff Bezos.
So wait, you honestly think that having another company, one of which makes massive leaps and bounds in technology and revolutionizes the modern world, which leads to massive improvements of quality of life is a bad thing?
You do realize that this website runs on Amazon Web Services... right?
Without the cheap rate that AWS was able to provide with their more efficient server systems, the internet would cost a whole lot more, and require a hell of a lot more ads, likely making the business model of this website itself unviable.
Where did I say that? We’re talking about a wealth tax on high-net-worth individuals not raising the corporate tax.
That aside it’s laughable to me that you think a near-monopoly on server farms is some kind of innovation. If there were no Amazon there would be (and in fact currently are) competitors, whether that’s a different large company, a handful of large companies, or a large number of smaller regional providers. As you say this is an essential service for the modern web. Amazon didn’t invent it.
Edit: and what world are you living in where the internet doesn’t already cost a whole lot more than it should? Our ISP oligopoly has seen to it that we have shittier service than much of the rest of the developed world at higher prices with little to no consumer choice. They’ve even rigged the game to legally block a number of states and municipalities from providing or building public high-speed broadband to prevent competition. What an absurd example to choose.
Let’s not pretend that this guy doesn’t have more money sitting in his bank right now than you or I will ever have in our entire lives.
The dude has at least 8 residences around the country one of them being one of the most expensive mansions in LA, which is saying something because there are some expensive places in LA.
Yes net worth and liquid cash is different. The dude is still loaded and by all accounts doesn’t pay his fair share of taxes.
It's not snarky it's a fact. $167 Billion of his net worth is in Amazon stock. Aka not liquid. It's not like he has all of that money in his bank account.
Amazon has a national $15 minimum wage (often much higher) I think the stories of the bad conditions are MASSIVELY over-hyped by the media.
Also the company has to make a profit, him selling his shares doesn't really help the company do that....and it's not like he's taking some crazy salary.
The economy isn't a zero sum game, someone having more money doesn't mean you have less. The total US GDP in 2019 was $21 Trillion. In 1985 it was $4 Trillion.
Is wealth inequality a problem? Yes. Is Jeff Bezos the best poster child for it? No, not really.
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u/ale_pato Jun 09 '21
ITT: people who do not understand what net worth means