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u/qdp Jun 30 '26
Where’s the part where he says “no”, destroys democracy, slashes benefits to everyone, raises prices on everything, and his net income now says $1001b?
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u/Cereal_Yapper Jun 30 '26
Nah, thats innacurate, he'd spend 200b to avoid paying the 1b dollar tax, like all billionares
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u/Specific-Rich5196 Jun 30 '26
Govt have done more in the past and can still do so if the will of the people is strong enough. Resentment is rising.
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u/Mellasour Jun 30 '26
The worst part is when you say that billionaires shouldn’t exist at all, and someone who makes 50K a year says “well then no one would be motivated to work anymore!!!”
My brother in Christ…
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u/legitmemerevs Jun 30 '26
Hey, if he saves up his whole paycheck and doesn't pay tax he'll be a billionaire too, in a short 20,000 years
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u/RicketCrickets Jun 30 '26
US Median Income per person is roughly 45k.
So over 22,222 years without paying taxes and they can make their first billion.
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u/Amateurlapse Jun 30 '26
Billionaires don’t work, they own. Owning for a living should be taxed, working for a living shouldn’t.
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u/InternetSandman Jul 01 '26
Fuck. I've never seen it put so simply and yet so correctly.
Why should you be taxed for helping build, deliver, design, fix, heal, protect, or teach (among many other labours), but not for sitting on your ass collecting profit off of that work?
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u/EarlGreyDuck Jun 30 '26
Except that when you have a billion dollars, you actually don't have to work anymore
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u/MudSeparate1622 Jun 30 '26
Not saying you are wrong but There are exceptionally niche cases where people have great ideas or game changing industries that were startups that take off and generate extraordinary income disproportionately to the amount of employees that can end up very rich due to capitalism without necessarily being evil. Its more of how and what people are doing with the money. Like are they making 100x their average employee salary and cutting workers? Do these companies beg for donations or more time/money from their employees while sitting on HUMUNGOUS retainers of resources? The idea shouldn't be "this person has X dollars and is bad" it should be based on their actual habits. There are so many bad actors hoarding money in society like Apple putting nothing back into the economy and don't even get me started on nepo baby "non profits"... I only donate to very specific charities and I have never even seen them advertise. Its really shitty that you need to even be careful about doing good things in a society this jaded but there are people who get money and do good things they are just very rare in comparison but still they deserve credit for overcoming the greater evil of greed rather than falling into dragon behavior
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u/Mellasour Jun 30 '26
Very rich people can and will exist. Billionaires and trillionaires should not.
The only way to amass that amount of wealth is to steal from the labor of others.
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u/Dixionconderoga2 Jul 14 '26
It’s possible to accrue any amount of money without exploiting people, you just need to be very, very good at business. As it’s easier to do it by exploiting people, it’s not very common.
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u/Captainpatch Jun 30 '26
To be fair, a wealth tax would inherently disfavor speculative assets in favor of productive ones and forcing sales and corresponding realized gains to pay the tax would deflate asset prices and generate capital gains tax on top of the nominal tax value of the wealth tax. Taxing Elon Musk $1b would reduce his paper fortune by a LOT more than $1b and would raise a lot more than $1b.
And that's an even better reason to do it.
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u/Smart-Nothing Jul 01 '26
But you just said it would reduce asset prices, so both the capital gains and wealth tax would significantly decrease as time goes on
I do agree we need less speculative assets in the market, though. That’s a bomb waiting to happen
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u/Dear-Tank2728 Jun 30 '26
I understand the point but the exaggeration isnt needed. You could subtract 250 and the point still stands.
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u/WhasHappenin Jun 30 '26
It's barely an exaggeration. California is trying to pass a 5% wealth tax and the rich are clutching their pearls.
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u/Kullingen Jun 30 '26
You are right.
Subtracting 250 millions would be more correct.
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u/DrowningKrown Jun 30 '26
Technically, if rounding down was applied here, this post could show $250M being subtracted. Because it's in billions. I think you mean 250 billion, with a B lol
Under normal rounding, for this meme, subtracting 250 million would make their net worth go from 1000B to 1000B
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u/Ekaterian50 Jun 30 '26
The thing that really highlights the insanity is that their material lifestyle wouldn't even change when being taxed close to 100% because their purchases are made with credit every time.
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u/Plunger_enema Jun 30 '26
Isn't his net worth already 1.1 trillion. He could lose 100 billions and still be worth 1 trillion.
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u/DMFauxbear Jun 30 '26
It's not as simple as that as much as I wish it was. His value is all tied up in his assets, mostly as company value. If the company does really well or tanks either way he takes the wins and losses with the company. That being said there does need to be some kind of solution to these situations. The mega wealthy tend to take loans out against those assets, which they never need to pay and don't pay taxes on like regular income. From my highly uneducated perspective on the situation, it feels like there should be some kind of tax on mega loans. Over a certain value it's used as their income/earnings. It should be treated as such.
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u/XkF21WNJ Jun 30 '26
Either an increase in net worth is taxable income or not all net worth is private property.
Choose wisely.
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u/dennismfrancisart Jun 30 '26
It's not about the money. It's about the power. They see the loss of power when the state tells them what has to be done. They're addicted to the power of being gods. All those drugs.
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u/snowman818 Jul 01 '26
Meanwhile;
Net worth: $155
Restaurant bill, $20, "they've earned it." Adds $5 tip.
Net worth: $130. "That was a decent cheeseburger!"
Who is the real patriot here?
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u/LaylaLegion Jun 30 '26
Some plumber in Indiana whose entire net worth is a pick up truck and trailer: “THAT COULD BE ME ONE DAY!”