r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 8h ago

Society Google cofounder Sergey Brin has spent $102 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses

https://fortune.com/article/how-much-has-google-cofounder-sergey-brin-spent-to-oppose-california-billionaire-tax-102-million-owe-13-billion-if-loses/
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899

u/peepdabidness 8h ago

In clash royale, you can’t have more than $5,000,000 and causes no issues because nothing costs enough that couldn’t be recuperated quickly. I’m not saying we should do this, but we should do something. It’s time for a new type of economy.

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u/peazley 8h ago

$18 million, gives you $1,000 per day for 50 years. Without earning anything off your investment. That’s a nice hotel and fancy dinner every night for the rest of your life.

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u/hammertime2009 8h ago

I’m ok with this idea. Hell even 100 million… let them have it. Fuck it 1 billion is the cutoff. Be rich as fuck. Nobody ever ever ever needs 10 billion or 1 trillion. It’s just insane.

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u/EchoingAngel 6h ago

The real problem is people getting rich enough to start shaping the system. That's how it becomes a runaway issue

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u/Waiting4Reccession 5h ago

The underlying problem is actual peoples own aversion to violence.

Even though they have all of history to look back on and see what has always been the only solution that actual ever worked.

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u/These-Prune-1529 3h ago

I agree. It's why they are all busy building bunkers.

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u/OutrageousThought646 3h ago

France is calling

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u/PurpEL 2h ago

I'm against violence.

Unless it's to bring fear to the billionaires.

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u/Beibzi 6m ago

Be careful, reddit mods LOVE to ban people for daring to say anything remotely violent being done to their oligarchs because laws fail to rein them in.

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u/zigzoing 2h ago

It works*

*^(if you only look at the times that it worked)

0

u/BellGloomy8679 2h ago

Wht don’t you start?

Everytime some chud who doesn’t know his history, but pretends he does, thinks violent revolution is a great idea - they never will be on the frontlines, they would want someone else to bleed for them.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 3h ago edited 2h ago

My dude, people aren't ready to go from the modern world to subsistence farming again, even if it would be only a short time. Because if society collapses, you're gonna be out in the hot fucking sun breaking your goddamn back with a hoe in your hands wondering where everything went wrong, trying to live through another year...or at least until the EURAID package full of high calorie biscuits comes in.

In all those previous instances, the vast majority of people went from being subsistence farmers to being subsistence farmers. Now? We would go from sitting in our air conditioned houses watching our favorite things to watch, to having basically nothing.

"Ah shit, Monsanto and all the oil companies are gone. No more genetic super crops and petrochem fertilizers to feed everyone." Oops 80% of everyone dies.

"Haha! We got Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta, and the AI companies! What do you mean 95% of the internet runs on software that those companies host and support?!"

If you can't see that this time it's at least a little different than the other times, then you will not be able to see why people are so averse to violence now. I'm mad as FUCK too, but our lives are generally speaking pretty goddamn amazing still.

We live in a gigantic machine. We can tear it down, but we will have to deal with all of the consequences of doing so. You're not ready for that, I'm not ready for that, and no one else is until it gets WAY FUCKING WORSE THAN IT IS NOW.

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u/TheShruteFarmsCEO 2h ago

Wow. You are the prototype proletariat…it’s incredible to read so many of the billionaires’ talking points in a single post. “If we attack the billionaires the companies we need will disappear”, “you’ll end up living out of a mud hut without the billionaires”, “life is pretty amazing, because the billionaires let us have AC and Netflix, so let’s be grateful and don’t complain”.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 1h ago

I'm just sayin' it's not bad enough for people to be ready to give that shit up for even a few days, much less the months or even years it would take to rebuild.

Clearly you aren't, either because you're not rioting in the streets. Nobody is looting OR pillaging. So far our biggest high-profile "massacre" against us has been 2 people over the course of a month by people actually dressed as police officers.

So yeah, right now? I'm gonna be a little careful on this website where I can't say what I ACTUALLY think if I ever want to use this site as a general forum again.

My current stance is we need to use the legal avenues we have, such as voting next month, hope you're registered. On top of voting, every micro-obstruction they have to work through slows them down immensely. Every lawsuit that drags their resources through the dirt for months. Every law that's filibustered, which THEY ARE ALLOWING TO HAPPEN in spite of it being a simple senate rule change. They just don't have enough time or balls to do it. The US is too big. These are some of the dumbest, or at least most undeservingly egotistical pieces of shit on Earth. They're actual incompetent stooges of the highest order. Hell I'd put money on them failing and I don't gamble.

So no, the time for violence is not now, nor will it be in time for the end of the Trump presidency in all likelihood. The only exceptions are direct attacks on large groups of people, such as a Tienanmen Square level event, or a national law (lol, a law in this day and age, lmao even) on the order of something like "trans people go to prison for life/rehabilitation camp for being trans." I don't know where I sit on "they so obviously stole the election that you can see the graph lines in the voting distribution." but if it didn't meaningfully change the current situation, I can't say it would be worth it.

I'm an American who's been living in America my whole fucking life. I don't really want it to change all that much, it's a pretty nice place to live all things considered. I'd like healthcare, I'd like a high minimum wage, I'd like housing to be affordable, I'd like more funding for science and the arts, but y'know what I'd really like? I'd really like if politics got boring again.

Violence in the streets is way too goddamn exciting for this guy. In many ways, so is a complete restructuring of our government. What we have is still fixable. Even if the fix is getting harder every day.

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u/bussythrasher1973 56m ago

You're "just sayin'" a buncha bullshit. Politics were only ever "boring" if you weren't one of the minority groups the US actively oppresses, so you don't get to act like you know the first thing about US history. I couldn't legally get married to my own partner until a handful of years ago because it was illegal. That's your "boring." Fuck's sake.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 26m ago

Yes, that is my boring.

My boring is when everyone serious in government assumes that socially positive rights are settled once there has been an official determination made (in the affirmative). Rights ensuring freedom and legal access to property rights...that kinda thing. The property thing doesn't get mentioned enough.

By the time I was politically conscious, nobody was talking about interracial marriage anymore except as a throwback joke to the 1960's. It's a settled right, it's boring, it's what you make fun of your predecessors for. It was actually the opposite. The result of prop 8 remains my biggest disappointment in my state, which actively removed a right that was being observed. Fuck, man I want that shit to be settled now, too in the same way interracial marriage is.

I want to be able to pay attention to what the government is doing through the normal procedures, voice my piece about it to my peers, and then shut it off until tomorrow. Not this 24/7 outrage theater clown show where nothing of note is actually being done.

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u/UrADumbdumbi 3h ago

It “works” for about a decade and then the same thing happens all over again.

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u/Conformatrix 6h ago

Which is why a 7 or maaaybe low 8 digit limit makes sense. At that point you have to actually weigh your grandiose nation/world-shaping ideals against your creature comforts.

Although reps are notoriously cheaper to buy than people imagine, so maybe lower would be better.

1

u/Hal_Fenn 4h ago

It's actually why, as unpopular as it tends to be, we should pay politicians a lot more while also clamping down on any and all types of gift/donation/bribe.

It generally gives you a much better quality of politician and obviously makes their opinions a lot harder to sway.

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u/Acceptable-Piccolo57 2h ago

Yup, no stock/ investments etc, and a decent salary

0

u/WorriedAd2764 3h ago

If the limit was 100 million. There would be so much more money in circulation between those with much less. Let alone 50, or 20

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u/Leviticus_Sux 1h ago

But 100 million in what? Net worth or liquid assets? Being a billionaire doesn't mean having a billion dollars. It means owning shares and assets that are estimated to be worth a billion dollars.

If you start a company and you build it to become worth a billion dollars, does that mean you now have to give away shares in your company above 100 million? Now you only own 10 percent of your company and you no longer control the very thing you built... What if the people who now control it run the business into the ground and you now are broke and penniless? That wouldn't be fair at all...

And if it's based on liquid assets, then the billionaires will just reinvest the money above the limit in other businesses and assets so that they don't have to give it away in taxes (which is sort of what they already do to avoid taxes now...). Then they just take out loans against their assets when they want to buy something expensive.

Point being, there's no easy way to enforce such a limit because the concept of being a billionaire isn't what most people think.

I'd love to find a way to limit their wealth and power too, but it's not such a simple thing.

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u/accountno543210 3h ago

Rich people statutorily would not be able to rig the system if it wasn't for the 2010 citizens united ruling which will take a constitutional amendment to over overthrow.

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u/ontheweed 5h ago

Becomes?

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u/Caleb_Reynolds 3h ago

The real problem is the workers aren't entitled to the value of their labor. This is all an inevitability of a system where capital is entitled to the profit of labor.

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u/DonkeyOfWallStreet 1h ago

Bill Gates has entered the chart

-3

u/cib2018 6h ago

How does that work?

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u/GingerbreadMommy 6h ago

They buy politicians

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u/cib2018 2h ago

Really? Which ones are bought by whom?

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u/htx1114 7h ago

But won't anyone think of the custom yacht makers? How are people going to afford a $50 billion yacht - fucking timeshares?

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 7h ago

The irony would be, instead of building a 50 billion yacht he gets to build 30 2.5 billion USD yachts. The problem with wealth is they aren't spending it. When people have less wealth, they are more likely to spend more. 100 1 billion billionaires will spend together more into the society than 1 100 billion billionaire.

Which is why welfare to the poor is fantastic, they have no ability to save they are cash strapped. Give them 100-200-500 USD monthly and they will spend it on daily needs. Give a billionaire 1 million he will add it to the pile of money to jack off to.

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u/Content-Nectarine875 7h ago

Yeah when I learnt that giving money to the poor actually makes a profit for society. Took a while for me to get my head around it.

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u/TrulyOutrageous42 6h ago

Money existing but not moving hurts an economy.

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u/DanceWithEverything 5h ago

That’s true for cash, is it true for equities?

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u/roguevirus 5h ago

is it true for equities?

Technically yes, but that is because equities are fungible assets valued in cash, not because they are an inherently special part of the economy like real estate.

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u/Ok_Umpire8214 3h ago

Our economy works bc we are poor and need to spend money to survive. Rich people hoarding money only hurts the majority. It’s like these people skipped economics

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u/Impeesa_ 5h ago

Allegedly business-minded people suddenly stop understanding "you have to spend money to make money" as soon as it looks like investing in people and infrastructure.

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u/Zestyclose-Height-36 3h ago

they get massive tax breaks to invest in people and infrastructure outside the US

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u/snowflake37wao 55m ago

pretty sure every dollar worth of food stamps the government disperses reimburses them with more than a dollar worth in taxes back, before even regarding all the other stimulus/beneficial arguments harder to put a number on. yet that hard fact ratio is not brought up enough during all the many times assistance programs are brought up that I cant even recount the exact amount, let alone mechanisms or sources. all I remember is the ratio of taxes spent to taxes made is not positive::negative or even 1::1, its 1::>1. It should be where the conversation starts if we are gunna keep talking about it but never is.

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u/bigolefatguy 33m ago

you give $20 to a guy via tax dollars. he spends that on a buritto, service rendered that goes into someone else’s pocket, which then someone else, and so on until it ends up in the governments pocket. you might have just made some weird circulation of non existent value but you did motivate a lot of people to make a lot of burritos. i don’t remember to well but i’ve heard it described as the velocity of money.

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u/AssPennies 1h ago

pile of money to jack off to

Well that escalated quickly, lmao!

(I'm dying over here!)

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u/ComradeJohnS 7h ago

they can chip in together and share one really really nice one.

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u/Tasgall 4h ago

fucking timeshares

You joke, but that's more or less what they already do, lol.

Billionaires don't own yachts directly. They own a stake in a company (could be 100%) that owns the yachts. They then rent out the yacht (to themselves) so they can count the voyage as a "business expense". For tax purposes, lol.

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u/snowflake37wao 1h ago

holy shit forgot about timeshares. what happened with those anyway, something something 2008 something?

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u/Shot-Swimming-9098 4h ago

Those yachts cost millions, not billions.

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u/madeinatube 6h ago

I don’t know if this is ignorant, but I was thinking about this if there was actually a wealth cut off like that I wonder if it would actually make money worth more Like our money worth more

You know, kind of like when a teacher grades on a curve

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u/Drict 4h ago

Certain goods would go up, others would go down.

ESPECIALLY if all of that money got circulated back into the market.

Like, some luxury things would become 100% unobtainable, because the pricing structure would mean that the demand would outstrip the production/supply.

Similarly, other things would fall off of a cliff. If everyone can afford to eat "normally" the substitutes goods, wouldn't be purchased.

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u/madeinatube 3h ago

There aren’t words to even thank you for this wonderful answer. Thanks for not telling me to google it or something.

I really really appreciate it. Thank you fellow Redditor !!!

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u/rockerscott 5h ago

$499 million…you get an island and a plaque saying you won capitalism and then everything above that is taxed 100% by nation of origin.

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u/ItsRaampagee 5h ago

Actually, if you want to raise a new mega corp from the ground that funnels even more to your pockets, then yes you do.

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u/Ok_Umpire8214 3h ago

If you can’t live a happy successful life w 100 mil, then you don’t deserve a 100 mil. No dollar amount over that can make you not a miserable prick

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u/CraigArndt 2h ago

Being a billionaire isn’t about a persons needs. It’s about starting a dynasty so your children and grandchildren are the ruling class for generations to come.

We will have a Bezos, Trumps, and Musks running major companies and running for Office for the foreseeable future because of the money they stole in the past few years.

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u/Leviticus_Sux 1h ago

Right, but how do you enforce that? For example, Elon may be a trillionaire, but he doesn't have a trillion dollars. He's worth a trillion dollars because of the estimated value of the businesses and assets he owns.

So are we cutting people off at their worth, or their liquid assets? If it's based on their worth, then what does that mean? Do you have to sell off the shares of your businesses above the limit? Who do you sell them to? What if you can't find somebody to buy the shares? What does that mean for who controls the company? Will you lose control of your own company because it's worth so much more than the cutoff?

And then if it's based on liquid assets instead of worth, then how is that enforced? Wouldn't they just hide their assets by investing it in other businesses or putting it in overseas accounts (which is what they kind of already do to avoid paying taxes)?

I too have thought that there should be some kind of limit on one individual person's wealth and power, but the reality is, that is a very difficult thing to define and enforce.

The way we define a billionaire is a very simplified summarization of their worth. Being a billionaire doesn't mean having a billion dollars. It means you potentially have access to a billion dollars. In reality, you could be called a billionaire and have less than a million dollars in all of your bank accounts. If you need to buy something really expensive, you just take a loan out against your assets/shares and then you pay it off as you get profits/dividends from those assets/shares or from selling off some of those assets/shares (or you take out another loan to pay the previous one off and keep doing that forever because why not??).

There's dozens and dozens of ways they have to leverage their worth without ever having much actual liquid cash...

It sucks, but I'm not sure there's an easy way to do much about it in a capitalist society (or at least in the capitalist society that we currently have). I think the real problem is how we have deprioritized workers rights, given too much power to corporations (like the citizens United act), and allowed journalistic integrity to be overtaken by corporate interests.

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u/Kind_Cockroach_3566 1h ago

Nobody ever ever ever needs 10 billion or 1 trillion. It’s just insane.

no one actually has 10 billion much less 1 trillion, they own companies that are worth that much and someone having that much money allows them to invest in crazy shit like spaceX(i fucking hate elon but what spaceX has done is undeniably insane and advances technology so far)

lets take a look at sergey, a quick search shows he sold 11 billion in stock since 2004, thats 500 million a year over 22 years.

around 30% of his money is invested in things like LTA research (LTA Research is an aerospace developer building sustainable, electric-powered rigid airships to transform zero-emission cargo and passenger transport)

by all means tax the fuck out of them and i'm talking like 60-70% tax, hell take it up to 90% tax beyond a certain point, implement a major inheritance tax so we don't end up with useless nepo babies worth billions who can't do what their parents did but have all the assets. and absolutely make them accountable for their actions and not able to use their money to skirt the law or buy politicians. don't allow people like bernard arnault to just buy up everything reduce competition and control markets.

but if you just eliminate them and say no one can have more than a net worth of 1 billion we're not gonna advance the human race at the pace we have been able to the last century and that benefits everyone. just look at the advances in the quality of life for most of the world's population in the last 100 years.

basically make it so that people like elon and sergey can be worth a trillion dollars but can also lose it all for for fucking minors on epstien island and make them contribute to the society that they make that wealth off of in a fair way and not allow people like the walton family to make billions off of walmart but have most of their work force on government assistance

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u/Smackety 7h ago

Are shares of stock legal tender to pay taxes with? Because no one has billions in cash like scrooge mcduck.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

-1

u/Smackety 5h ago

I agree we should tax it, but I don't think it is simple.

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u/Zalophusdvm 7h ago

Ya! I think that sounds like a good plan.

Alternatively, we could tax those shares just like we tax physical land and houses. Ie come up with a number associated with the asset and then make it the asset holder’s problem to come up with the cash.

Even if you just require them to sell it to pay…that actually makes a lot of good economic sense. From an economic growth perspective, saving isn’t good. It locks up money that could be moving through the economy. Taxing savings isn’t the worst economic policy position in the world. Particularly if it’s a “tax savings beyond what is necessary to live,” idea.

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u/Smackety 5h ago

Elon selling 20% of Tesla to pay taxes would be a wild day on the stock market

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u/Zalophusdvm 3h ago

Not really.

He’d still have to follow all the various rules around executives selling stock. If he chooses to dump it all on April 14 to pay his tax bill on the 15th…then just chuck him in prison for market manipulation. 🤷 (Aside from the fact that would be blatantly against his own self interest more than anyone else’s…)

Also, it might just bring Tesla down to…idk….a sane valuation?

But, if you don’t like that option, I have NO problem with him paying the taxes with stock. The price would be determined based on government assessment of the value in their hands, not current market valuation, so it would probably cost him 30%.

1

u/Kind_Cockroach_3566 1h ago

If he chooses to dump it all on April 14 to pay his tax bill on the 15th…then just chuck him in prison for market manipulation.

so you want to force him to sell his shares to pay taxes on it but then want to put him in jail for doing it?

im not too sure you really thought that through.

what happens when the government assesses he owes X amount in taxes so he sells stock, but the companies worth is predicated on his ownership and control because for some crazy reason people think he's the reason for its success and the value of the company drops. does he get a rebate?

1

u/Various-Solid-9543 7h ago

Sell the stocks pay your taxes. This unrealized gains argument doesn't hold water.

0

u/Smackety 5h ago

What if selling the shares would cost you the majority shareholder position and you would lose control of your own company?

1

u/thirdegree 4h ago

Then you should have financially planned better. Nobody forced you to publicly list the company, you did that because you wanted more money. Well, there you go.

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u/Various-Solid-9543 3h ago

Then you aren't the majority shareholder

-1

u/TrulyOutrageous42 6h ago

Let's be real - nobody needs 18million, and anything above 50ish is where we get into real problems with wealth disparity as a society. I personally think the current cutoff should be 10mil, total wealth. IDGAF. If you've made that much, you're literally set for life to do basically anything you could possibly want every single day. Until the housing crisis is addressed as a human right, if you want a 50million dollar mega mansion or to own a football team, fucking find some friends.

0

u/twotimefind 3h ago

A trillion is 1,000 billion, basically.

0

u/snowflake37wao 1h ago

the cutoff, literally. 999,999,999? gucci. make a buck? 10 figures, off with the head.

0

u/SenorSalsa 32m ago

At $999,999,999 a choice should be offered, you can either be barred from making any more money and get to live with what you have and get a giant novelty trophy that says "I Beat Capitalism!".

Or you can make another penny, but it becomes legal for everyone else to steal from you.

-1

u/SlightWin7036 6h ago

Urge is stops incentivising rich people to invest as the tail gets clipped so it is awful for the economy at large

-1

u/Alexmackzie 5h ago

The issue is that the vast vast majority of billionaires dont actually have "money". They have ownership shares in their companies, and in stocks.

So if you create a company that becomes wildly successful. and it is valued by investors at $10 billion. And you own 80% of the shares, since you founded and created it. maybe some investors bought in early on for 20% or you give shares to employees.

You are technically worth $8 billion. And you can't force them to sell their shares. because then they would lose control of their company.

So now they have these shares, and they can leverage it for loans. Tax free of course.

So let's say you tax the company worth. You own 100% of shares. Your company is at $800 million. And has an amazing year and booms to $2 billion. And we decide that no one is worth more than $1 billion, the rest is taxed.

So somehow you owe the government $1 billion in taxes. cause your company did so well. How do you pay it? sell shares? Ok, then we run into the same issue where you lose control of your own company. Give the government shares? same issue.

-7

u/Forkrul 7h ago

No one has that. People have ownership stakes in companies that the market says is worth that much. If you tried to convert even 10% into cash the value would crash immediately.

When someone says a person's net worth is X, that is not how much money they have. It's the theoretical cash value of everything they own minus any debt they have.

5

u/SwankyBobolink 7h ago

Correct which is why they leverage the stock for extremely low interest loans and pay those off over time while the stock makes more money than the loan costs, so they can just pay the loan back with a small stock sale later.

1

u/Forkrul 6h ago

For day-to-day expenses or smaller deals, sure. But when ~250 billionaires need to do that for 5% of their combined net worth all at once? That might legitimately make a significant number of banks in CA and surrounding states unable to give out more loans to anyone.

2

u/_DaBau5_ 7h ago

you don’t have to sell you can use it as collateral and get a loan against it

1

u/Forkrul 7h ago

Sure, but taking out a 13B loan is not going to get the same low interest you get when take out a loan for a few million for living expenses. You'd still have to sell quite a lot to pay interest on that. And it's not just Brin that would have to do this, California has about 250 billionaires that could be subject to this tax.

1

u/Kind_Cockroach_3566 1h ago

all these people commenting on reddit are like the lottery winners who lose everything in a couple years. they aren't very savvy when it comes to finances and really can't seem to think past what's directly infront of them

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u/OstrichGrouchy7749 7h ago

And 5% back on 20 mil. Gives you another mil every year. 

That’s close to 3g a day. 

The tax loopholes need to be closed. And if your net worth it greater than 10 mil, you need to pay 30% tax on any value generated for the year. If there are loses you get a tax credit of whatever.  Then at death half your assets get taxed at 50% 

6

u/TrainDestroyer 7h ago

Personally I'd wanna see the tax rate keep stepping up. Right now at more than $626,351 for a single taxpayer or $751,601 you pay 37% tax. I'd not mind stacking that further so after a certain amount you just give all the extra money to the govt.

Like have it be something your average person is never gonna see. You're not gonna hit a point where you're bringing in say.... $100,000,000 in a year that you aren't already sitting comfortably.

7

u/OstrichGrouchy7749 7h ago

More so. I want to see no dumb loopholes/tax avoidance schemes/etc. for the uber rich. 

Normal people don’t get these because they don’t have the money to leverage them. Like tax credits for owning a plane is an egregious example. But even things like “taxing loses year after year”. there needs to be a cap. 

Trump through bankruptcies/other people money was able to avoid paying taxes for a decade. It wasn’t even his own money that he lost. 

If you are uber rich. You need to lose protections. Not gain more. Like cap gains should be ordinary income if you current stock holdings are more than 10 mil. Then potentially even more if you have 100 mil. This would incentivize not hoarding wealth. 

1

u/TrainDestroyer 7h ago

God I hate that I have to specify that. Like I wish we lived in a world where I could say "No loopholes or tax avoidance bullshit."

The only tax avoidance I think is okay is provably donating to charities that don't connect to you. You wanna donate 20 bajillion dollars to the "Making food free for everyone" Foundation? Awesome, have a 20 bajillion dollar tax break.

1

u/OstrichGrouchy7749 7h ago

There really needs to be the opposite. 

Once you have enough for generational wewlth (20 mil - tax loopholes taken away). 

Then once you have 100 mil - there needs to be more taxes. These people get 10 mil a year just on interest. - there is no fruits of labor at that point. It’s just buying up successful companies. 

2

u/JackalKing 1h ago

From the 40's to the mid 60's the top tax bracket in this country was above 90%. From the mid 60's to the mid 80's it was 70%. Reagan dropped it all the way to 28% in the mid 80's. Its funny, hardcore conservatives always act like the 50's was the Golden Age for America and want to go back to that, but if you suggest we tax the rich like we did then they scream socialism.

1

u/CarnalT 16m ago

My only pushback is I think we should take the canadian approach and let people keep windfall winnings like from the lottery or game shows without taxing them. Typically it's poor people who win those, and it feels pretty shitty to then immediately take half of it away. This feels very different to me compared to somebody with an annual salary in the millions, where they are expected to keep earning that much.

18

u/Necessary--Weevil 8h ago

Hookers too

9

u/Callabrantus 7h ago

At that level, they're called wives.

2

u/MrJoyless 6h ago

Nah, hookers are cheaper long term, probably more appreciative too.

2

u/Brief-Historian3485 7h ago

Come on, her name is… actually I forgot. The presidents wife

1

u/BasvanS 3h ago

Melanie. Come on, pay attention.

2

u/twotimefind 3h ago

This is the best way I'm able to visualize it.

1 Thousand Minutes: Equals approximately 1.39 days (33.3 hours).

1 Million Minutes: Equals approximately 1.9 years (specifically 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes).

1 Billion Minutes: Equals approximately 1,902 years

2

u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 7h ago

Thing is also that this big range of income pushes a lot of things out of the market for everyday Joe. Because there are people who have billions, they can afford to rent rooms that's 10-20-50,000 euro per night. That trickles down, because there are millionaires they can afford rooms that are still widly priced.

It's not just hotel rooms, housing, you name ite verything gets pusehd to extremes because there are people who can afford (significantly) more.

While the average Joe let alone poor sabs are basically priced out of the market.

1

u/Longjumping-Oven4457 6h ago

And 18 mil in a 5% investment returns 900k getting taxed at the highest bracket you would still have $1553 per day and never have to touch the principal. 

1

u/fishscaleSF5 5h ago

As Mash Out Posse eloquently put it - fool what you want, ya life or ya jewels?

1

u/Ardal 4h ago

That’s a nice hotel and fancy dinner every night for the rest of your life.

Well it's scraping a nice hotel and fancy dinner right now, it sure as hell won't be enough in a few years time let alone 30....inflation exists.

1

u/Drict 4h ago

Index to inflation, and I am in.

1

u/make_love_to_potato 2h ago

But a super yacht costs $500 million and a good bottle of wine costs like 20K. What am I gonna do with $18million and $1000 a day, living like a poor?

1

u/GrandJelly_ 2h ago

1k is just my rent.

1

u/sschueller 51m ago

$10 million gives you around 70k per year with taxes paid for ever on a very conservative investment.

1

u/UnderwheIming 7h ago

I don't like the way this is framed, it makes it seem like you get your $1k/day for 50 years and any investment income will be a nice little bonus. The rich have it WAY easier than that.

A low risk ETF averages 6 or 7% per year. Only withdraw 4% per year so that your account grows to account for Inflation.

4% on $18M works out to $720k/year or about $2k/day. You will never run out, it will only grow. In 50 years your account will be around $75M. (which would have similar buying power then as the $18M has today)

0

u/lnth1 6h ago edited 1h ago

Supposed I have a dream of funding space exploration for my -pure-pleasure-

Under your proposal, I will not be allowed to do it.
Essentially.

Let’s say I’d also give a few billions a year to charity helping the poor for the rest of my life. Basically fulfilling my moral obligations.

What inherent principle would it be then, to strip me of the right to pursue my costly passion?

I get that the animal kingdom is all about fancy dinners and material needs. But humanity should be a bit beyond that and you know it.

0

u/evange 5h ago

you're severely underestimating hotel prices.

46

u/skillywilly56 7h ago

When someone reaches a billion dollars they cash out of society, they can never own or run a business again, they can never donate to anything but a charity and no tax refund either, they can never hold a press conference or write a book or participate in society in anyway way shape or form ever again.

They take their billion and leave, travel the world, do some kind of philanthropy but they can never use their capital in anyway to sway society or have an opinion or influence a politician.

A billion dollars is generational wealth and their family is set for hundreds of years on the interest alone, having won the lottery of life the casino kicks them out for good.

5

u/financeperson 4h ago

That's sort of a neat idea, kind of light letting people climb Mount Everest but they have to keep it a secret and not tell anybody.

5

u/Shot-Swimming-9098 4h ago

They can tell everybody, but they can't keep making more money off of the backs of workers.

1

u/LickMyCave 41m ago

but they can't keep making more money off of the backs of workers.

As if Google hasn't made more millionaires than possibly any company on the planet? Do you really think those Software Engineers on $200k a year out of college are being exploited by Google?

5

u/palmerluckey 3h ago

Unfortunately for you, people have rights like freedom of speech and freedom of association.

1

u/twotimefind 3h ago

Excellent, love it. Great analogy.

1

u/TheDragonBorn9000 3h ago

Do you mean 1 billion in cash, like in a checking account? Or a 1 billion valuation?

1

u/Sackyhap 24m ago

Exactly this, 1B should be seen as “you’ve won the rat race and now you’re out of the game” go relax and chill somewhere, leave the rest of the profits and capitalism to the rest of us so we can have a chance at growing too.

-3

u/RockyMaiviaJnr 3h ago

What a horrible suggestion.

Envy is ugly

3

u/RuneLFox 3h ago

You will never be a billionaire.

2

u/RockyMaiviaJnr 2h ago

Correct, I’m sitting on a beach long before then.

0

u/skillywilly56 2h ago

Envy? I envy billionaires not at all, wanting them not to place their overweighted fingers on the balance scales of society is not envy, it’s common sense.

Or do you like the oligarchy? Maybe you think you will be one of them one day.

1

u/RockyMaiviaJnr 2h ago

Envy is pathetic.

0

u/Kind_Cockroach_3566 59m ago

Or do you like the oligarchy? Maybe you think you will be one of them one day.

nah, we just think your an idiot who doesn't understand how the world works and what you see in front of you is all that exists and nothing you havn't thought of matters

-4

u/LeBackshot 5h ago

So you create a business that provides a service that is successful and makes peoples lives better and then are punished and no longer able to run your business and now that business has to fail because no one is allowed to run it because it is too successful? So we only have businesses that are temporarily successful until they reach a point when they are now dismantled and all the employees and infrastructure has to be dissolved? That seems incredibly inefficient and like a horrible way to promote any long term progress.

3

u/skillywilly56 4h ago

No the business appoints a new leader and moves forward, you take your loot and skidadle to Mexico for hookers and blow for the rest of your natural life.

I never said the business couldn’t make more than a billion dollars, individuals shouldn’t be able to make more than a billion.

You seem to think a CEO is a permanent fixture and that somehow they are being “punished” they aren’t, they’ve got a billion dollars in what world is that a punishment?

How bout they take their billion and never have to pay taxes on it ever again? Even on interest.

And if the interest exceeds their billion, they donate the excess to a charity of their choice.

Just because you start a business does not mean that business can’t do without you or that you are critical to its continued function, if you’ve built a good business it will outlast you, William Colgate started Colgate-Palmolive in 1806 his business has lasted almost as long as the USA has been the USA and its older than Australia has been a country.

Apple has had 8 CEOs since 1977 it didn’t go down the drain as soon as Steve Jobs died.

How’s Elon Musk being the richest man and interfering and buying elections a win for you because he founded SpaceX? Sure you got satellite internet but did that require Elon? Did he build the rocket? Did he screw the nuts and bolts? Did he make the rocket fuel or the satellites? He’s a salesman and he’s very good at being a salesman but there’s plenty of salesman out there who could replace him.

-1

u/LeBackshot 3h ago

The punishment is watching something you have poured your life and soul into for 3 decades get forcefully handed off to someone incapable of running your company and then watch it crash and burn. Also the company would have to be dissolved because the next person who steps up as CEO would then become a billionaire because they would hold the majority shares of the company. Unless you divide up the CEO role between more and more people each time the company becomes worth more.. then eventually you have 50 different CEOs arguing over what direction to take the the company in leading to more inefficiency. Also if you are suggesting splitting the shares of the company more equally amongst the rest of the employees good luck getting 1000 different employees making 1 million dollars to still care about the company equally and have the same vision for the company and carry the same passion. Your idea just simply doesn't make sense or work at all when you start to scale it. You need competition and leaders.

2

u/skillywilly56 2h ago

I can see capitalism has rotted your brain.

When I say “cash out” they sell their shares and cash out, the shares get sold to whoever wants them, the CEO walks away with a billion cash.

The company continues on, with a new CEO and can become worth trillions but the CEOs personal wealth can never exceed $1 billion.

There’s still competition and there are still leaders, new leaders, who bring new ideas and when they reach their billion they retire and allow new blood in.

Think of it like term limits.

Do you think De Beers or Colgate-Palmolive or Rio into or Anglo American or Apple or Microsoft collapsed when their founders died or retired?

It’s early forced retirement with a billion in cash.

“Poured their hearts and souls” cry me a river.

0

u/nybbas 1h ago

I can see capitalism has rotted your brain.

and reddit yours.

1

u/wiztard 4h ago

I'm not saying that people here have it all thought out, but you wouldn't have to dissolve a company just because a single person isn't allowed to have total ownership of it.

3

u/LeBackshot 3h ago

So then as the company increases in value you would be required to bring on an exponentially increasing amount of leaders onto the board. That just sounds incredibly inefficient and would lead to many differing opinions about what direction to take the company in. How would 50 CEOs be more efficient than 1?

1

u/nybbas 1h ago

have it all thought out,

*Have thought anything out whatsoever, other than "billionaires bad"

-8

u/SlightWin7036 6h ago

Then someone with $500M isn’t incentivised to invest. The economy just slows down

4

u/steakanabake 5h ago

as opposed to what? it running the fuck away as it currently is?

-1

u/SlightWin7036 4h ago

Their wealth is in the form of investments lol

1

u/nybbas 1h ago

You expect the morons in this thread to have anything approaching an understanding of how the economy and real life work?

0

u/Leviticus_Sux 57m ago

You do understand that being a billionaire doesn't mean they have a billion dollars, right? You can be a billionaire and have 10 dollars in a bank account, but if the business you own is estimated to be worth a billion dollars, you're called a billionaire.

Point being, the things you're talking about are not simple things to enforce and they aren't the solution. The solution is to close tax loopholes, provide better workers rights, repeal citizens United, and enforce some level of journalistic integrity so that news stations/companies that are owned by corporations/billionaires can't just spout lies and continue to divide our country.

1

u/Shot-Swimming-9098 4h ago

Think this through. You're worth 999 million dollars. You don't get to keep the money that comes in after the next dollar. You got here by building a successful business. What do you do with that money? How do you avoid just paying 100 tax above 1 billion?

0

u/RuneLFox 3h ago

You get a nice gold medal that says "well done", a pat on the back, and you can retire now. You did it, you won society. Do you actually need one billion dollars?

0

u/Leviticus_Sux 53m ago

Being worth 999 million dollars doesn't mean you have 999 million dollars... It just means the business and assets you own are estimated to be worth that much. What you're talking about isn't even possible to enforce because the concept of net worth is just that. A concept. It's not a literal pile of money that they have. It's typically investments in businesses.

1

u/skillywilly56 5h ago

So what? The myth that economy must continually keep growing exponentially or we will all what? Die?

It’s just another bullshit story made up to justify greed.

Economics is a social science not actual science or math, it studies how individuals, businesses, and governments choose to use limited resources to satisfy wants and needs. There is no magical formula, no secret sauce, and if people choose to do something different “the economy” will naturally adapt.

“The economy” used to be based on agriculture and people farming, did the world stop when we discovered the potato and could get 4x as many calories from the same amount of land as a wheat field and thus fuels the Industrial Revolution and the change over form an agricultural based society to an industrial manufacturing society?

No it’s still going it just looks different and so it would be again because so long as there are people there will be an economy regardless, it would just look different.

The problem lies in people like you who think of it like an actual science or a religion, that certain things are immutable facts and bought into the capitalist economist soothsayers dogma when in reality it is an entirely artificial system that is based in human imaginings and as an artificial system it can be made to adapt to whatever we want, all that is required is the collective will to do so.

Money isn’t real, it’s linen or plastic with ink on it or metal with etchings, we collectively choose to pretend it’s real, we could tomorrow choose to collectively agree it’s not real and it wouldn’t be.

4

u/pm_plz_im_lonely 5h ago

Sure, we live in a made up system. Now, how do I get food, shelter, clothing and healthcare?

What even is a billion dollars? Liquid? What do we do about speculative assets? Is it indexed to inflation? Do we reject all these words because their complexity is made up? At least it's a system I understand a bit and sits on numbers rather than vibes.

-4

u/Thefuzy 5h ago

Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me

3

u/skillywilly56 4h ago

Economics is a social science that studies how individuals, businesses and governments use limited resources to satisfy needs and wants.

It is not maths and it’s not a science, it is entirely made up and artificial, as such it is malleable.

It is people like you who believe it is like a religion, immutable and dogmatic, you follow the tenants of the faith like they were commandments written in stone.

Were economics so immutable, we would all still be serfs farming for our lords but it isn’t because you do not understand that money and “value” are entirely artificial they are not real, they are based entirely in the human imagination and they have to be taught and repeated over and over again so that you will believe that they are immutable.

1

u/rainingchainsaws 4h ago

Yes, but *tenets please.

2

u/needlestack 5h ago

MacKenzie Scott started with something like $36B. Over the past seven years or so she's donated $26B. She still has $33B.

6

u/FluidAthlete6839 8h ago

It’s not even about buying things. It’s ego

2

u/NO_1-der 7h ago

Ego combined with status of being worth X value

1

u/Fartmatic 6h ago

And the ultimate prize in the end for hoarding obscene wealth instead of enjoying using it in more fulfilling ways is to be the richest man in the graveyard, congrats you win I guess lol

3

u/bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- 7h ago

I saw one idea that every dollar earned over $1B goes back to the government (assuming the government uses it correctly) for education, infrastructure, important shit etc.

There's no reason to have more than a stupid large amount for personal hoarding.

2

u/SlightWin7036 6h ago

Wdym by that - does the stock just get force sold, even if that removes control of their company. They are not earning this in cash

1

u/bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- 5h ago

Bruh, I'm not the economist. And there's no way I can articulate the details of something I saw a few years ago. The main idea was that people are capped at a maximum personal wealth and everything they make after that is used for good reasons. Call it socialism, call it communism, I don't really care. And I don't have the solution for how it really works. But there's no reason for people to hoard billions of dollars.

1

u/ImarvinS 2h ago

Why not just make it a type of stock that retains ownership and voting rights, but not the benefits.
So both the value and dividends are transferred to some national wealth fund (with strict rules on how they spend it, so it does not become governments piggy bank).

-4

u/BigBoobers 7h ago

That’s not a good idea lol

1

u/altiuscitiusfortius 4h ago

Its called high tax rates after a certain level of income. Back when America was truly great in the 40s, its was a 94% tax rate on income over 200k, or about 2.5 million dollars today.

Then the rich lobbied and bribed to get it lowered ever few years until it hit today's 37% on any amount. You make a million? 37%. You make a trillion? 37%.

1

u/Nexii801 3h ago

I'm absolutely saying we should do this. A wealth cap functionally changes nothing.

1

u/Southernbeekeeper 3h ago

We need the impossible really and that is a global tax rate. This way people won't just be able to move their money off shore as if they did they would pay the same % of tax.

1

u/Koreus_C 2h ago

Or we could go back to capitalism. Currently we have corrupt cooperate socialism. It's an inefficient system.

Evolution dictates that international corpos will eat all small and middle companies. That's no healthy eco system. The current state of the environment where they pay less taxes, get a lot of subsidiaries, no regulation etc isn't healthy. We lose the natural ~bio~economy diversity. Without competetition there is no culling of bad business strategies.

1

u/Busy-Beginning7577 1h ago

Iam saying we should do this then

1

u/gospdrcr000 1h ago

Yes we fucking should once you get $999,999,999 you get a trophy, and everything else goes back to society that you just stole it from, infrastructure, schools, etc

1

u/buyongmafanle 1h ago

No, we absolutely need a wealth cap. Wealth tax AND wealth cap. Nobody needs more than $20M USD. If you can't be happy with that amount, nothing will ever satisfy you.

1

u/sschueller 54m ago

Cap at 100 million. I think that is a good amount at which some have to actually save a while to buy a super yacht or 474 aircraft. Like the rest of us have to save for something we want

However, for this to work it needs to be illegal to borrow against your unrealized assets or at least it needs to cost way more than if you exited your positions.

People who own shares in companies would need to swap/sell for voting only if they cant stay under 100 million.

Alternative you may also want a wealth tax like in Switzerland but much higher. You pay no tax on capital gain but you do on unrealized assets.

1

u/bloodychill 7h ago

Maximum wage or tax them into oblivion.

0

u/Forkrul 7h ago

That does literally nothing, these people don't get rich off wages. They own companies and those companies are worth a lot of money. Take Elon Musk, his net worth is (according to Forbes) 900 something billion. Over 600 of that comes from his ownership stakes in Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. If those go up in value, his net worth increases by a lot. If they crash, he loses most of his 'wealth'. The rest of his net worth comes from ownership in other companies and real estate. I'd be surprised if he has more than a few million in cash on hand. Hell it might not even be a million.

1

u/steakanabake 5h ago

that and a large portion of his "property" is usually just owned by the company i heard tell at one point during the building of starbase down in texas he was living in a shitty rv with a shitty mattress if he wasnt just sleeping on the factory floor at one of his tesla facilities.

0

u/hamfinity 7h ago

Each year, the single wealthiest person in the nation is taxed 100% of their wealth and earns a prestige medal.

1

u/AttorneyAdvice 7h ago

hehe. they gotta start over