If the billionaires are upset it’s a good sign you’re doing something right.
Exactly. Most policies are in billionaire’s favors, since they fund lobbying groups and super pacs. They mostly stay quiet about everything because they’re getting their way behind the scenes. If they’re complaining outright, it’s an absolute win for everyone else
Or, as is often the case with Biden, promising to do something right with the odds of actually going through with it being slim 🤷
Don’t break their bubble, it’s the only thing holding this thing together.
Yeah feels like every weekend he has promised to make Israel cease-fire by Monday since “Genociding with Biden” became a meme and somehow hes never been called out on that huge glaring lie, in fact I am often told to quiet if I bring it up.
Crying billionaires are a sign of society healing.
A healthy society has zero billionaires.
Let’s go further with these taxes.
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The guillotine was mostly used after the revolution, to kill political opponents of the ruling party that took over. More of an animal farm type deal than a revolution.
This is the sort of pedantry that keeps me coming back to Lemmy.
The rule against advocating violence that removed this post kind of makes sense, from a CYA perspective, but also feels like it’s endorsing violence against everyone else.
Eh. I’m fine with my comment being removed. Fair call. But to also be fair, “eat the rich” is a sentiment as old as time.
Hey now, we can still do both
It’s nuts for them to rail against this because when Biden said 25% minimum, I was like, “that’s it‽”
I get taxed at 25% already and I’m making $125k.
25% is nowhere near enough. Anyone making over 400k individually should be taxed closer to 50%.
there should be a 100% tax for anyone who has a billion dollars or more.
That level of wealth is not compatible with existing in a society.
I think the biggest problem isn’t the tax rate, but the fact that the billionaire class can circumvent the tax system entirely.
Own billions of dollars in stock, don’t ever sell any, don’t pay any taxes on that growth. Maybe some dividends get taxed or something.
Need pocket money though. Take out a loan for $100 million using a little bit of your stock as collateral. You don’t get taxed on taking out debt.
People don’t realize that billionaires don’t have their billions sitting in a bank account somewhere like you or I might have our own life savings tucked away in a savings account. That would be foolish of them, obviously, the FDIC won’t insure them past a certain point, so a bank failure could cause them to lose everything.
Every single billionaire is only a billionaire “on paper”. It’s the sum total of all their assets, both liquid and non-liquid (like stocks, but also properties, etc.). They leverage their assets as collateral for a loan, and then use that loan to buy the stuff they want or just use it to make more investments. They leverage debt in a way that we can’t even begin to fathom.
It’s mad, but I can see the conundrum. How do you tax assets that aren’t worth anything until sold? Can you compel them to sell their assets to settle a tax bill? How do you go after rich folk who use loans to circumvent generating income through the sale of their assets without also harming regular people who need to take out loans to buy things like cars and houses?
Rich people have gotten too good at playing the system and we seriously need to look at how we can fix things before it’s too late. Right now, the wealthy have unprecedented control over the government, but it’s still not an oligarchy yet. There’s still time, though. Someone out there has to have a solution.
How do you tax assets that aren’t worth anything until sold?
I have to pay property taxes on my home and car each year. These are assets that I’m not selling, yet I’m still being taxed on their value. It’s amazing that they’ve figured out a way to do it for the working class but not for the ruling class.
I agree with what you’re saying but I’m curious. You have to pay taxes on the value of your car? Do car registration fees scale with car value in your area?
I live in an area with car taxes, and they are separate from vehicle registration fees.
Do car registration fees scale with car value in your area?
Kinda… it’s based on the age of the car and the original MSRP, so it isn’t exactly based on the car’s actual value, but an estimate of what the value might be.
Easy, tax net worth. Tax the value of all assets owned by an individual, trust, or corporation only in excess of some large number. Perhaps exceeding 5x the median net worth.
And only then might a corporation get tax incentives based on the number of people they employ. Because let’s be fair here, office buildings are really expensive and we don’t want to disincentivize company growth and job creation.
Just appropriate the assets for the people. Imagine what would happen if all that income came in to your government instead of a single asshole.
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What really pisses me off is liberals yelling “TAX THE RICH!!” and when you propose a wealth tax they start screaming about how unsold stocks aren’t wealth and isnt money but wait someone who has lots of stock is the richest man in the world…
Here’s a radical idea: seize stocks and redistribute them among the citizenry. Eveyone is a stockholder! Now, who are the wealthiest?
Edit: and there it is right below me
I think the biggest problem isn’t the tax rate, but the fact that the billionaire class can circumvent the tax system entirely
That’s only possible because they’re allowed to buy influence in the system to make it allow for that. In reality, the other threats (they’ll take their wealth to other countries and leave us poor) are bluffing; most of their wealth isn’t portable. Also in reality, most of the policies they demand (and get) aren’t democratically popular, they’re only viable because they spend so much collective money on propaganda and think tanks to get people thinking the money will trickle down or that without them as ‘job creators’ all will be spoiled or lost.
It’s bullshit, and it only works because we let it work. Apparently we need to move in hundred-year cycles between letting the titans of industry squeeze everyone dry before we remember to assert public power to prevent that
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Oh, its you again.
Showing up yet again to reply to imaginary comments instead of the topic at hand.
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Such a boomer reply.
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You mean like the price caps on medication so Medicare can save the government money? Or like the increase in IRS funding so they can focus on the previously “too difficult” task of navigating the web of interactions the wealthy use to avoid paying the taxes they already owe?
They’re trying that too, but it’s not just about taking money from the ultra rich just for our healthcare, it’s like others have stated: it’s about fairness to all. 25% of a billion doesn’t mean the same to them as ~25% of ~60k means to us. Yeah it’s a much larger dollar amount, but they aren’t nearly as affected as we are from what we currently pay and we still do it and are ok with it.
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Raising tax revenue and funding some variation of single payer health care or socialised medicine are not mutually exclusive.
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Huh, in Australia you would be taxed 37 percent and anything over $180k is 45%
So I’m sure closer to 50% coulr come down
The US has a similar graduated system (32% for incomes over $192k for single fillers, plus whatever your state income tax is), but billionaires have access to a lot of loopholes that prevent their wealth from being counted that way.
400k is rich in some areas but certainly not everywhere, that’s way too sharp of a curve. Someone making 400k is already taxed at 35% federally plus whatever state and local so probably close to 50. The real issue is that after 500k the rates don’t change where it should be increasing logarithmically. But really after a certain point there are way too many things that the rich do to reduce their tax burden that just aren’t available to everyone else, that 100k or 400k person is in reality paying a much higher percentage than someone making a million a year much less billionaires.
Why did you copy and paste this exact comment from someone else elsewhere in this thread…?
What? I didn’t
Hmm, I don’t see it anymore. There was another post from another user that was word for word the same as yours, but slightly newer. My apologies, my client must have bugged out.
Lemmy is a little wonky, no biggie :)
Where I’m at it’s like anything over 95k is close to 50%. 25? Must be nice.
It is in most places outside the US. But it is still the same problem: regardless how high the official rate is, there are way to many loopholes to avoid paying them. It does not help if the tax rate is 80, 90, or even 99% if they get around paying it altogether.
Agreed, but I guess you’ve got to start somewhere.
Don’t like it? Fuck you. Your greed is unconscionable and your hoarding of wealth is amoral and disgusting. In conclusion, fuck you.
Yeah, but what if they find the right commercials to throw at us during election time?
Billionaires can suck my dick and fuck right off into the sun. This shit has GOT to fucking stop! 100% tax on anything over $200M, and I am being real generous with that.
Revoke “Citizen United vs FEC” would be step 1
And when was this? Looks like 2014? What happened to that bill? Who voted against it? Was it reintroduced when Dems took control again?
He has done it every year since 2013. We all have to contact our congressperson every year about it.
And what was the holdup in 2020-2022? Why is it not a news item every year? Everyone wants money out of politics, so what is keeping this from being a popular bill?
Well, it won’t. At some point, personal capital stops being a number and starts to equal influence. These people can form the public opinion as they wish and anybody stepping on their toes more than they allow will find themselves on the pointy end of a career ending smearing campaign.
Billionaires: you should tax us more
Also billionaires: nooooo… Not more taxes!
Maybe not the same billionaires?
Granted, I only skimmed the tweet articles, but I didn’t see any names shared between them.
It’s almost like one subset of billionaires say one thing and that another subset said another thing.
“I don’t agree with the idea of just singling out people because of how much they have or don’t have,”
That’s literally how income tax works, you ignorant slut.
The ones being singled out are poor people and the middle class. The rich get preferential rates, deductions that only apply to them, the ability to have armies of accountants and lawyers to limit their liability, and are far less likely to be audited.
It SHOULD be that all income within different brackets should be taxed the same. The rich only pay more because they have more. We all should be taxed 50% on income over $500,000, it’s just that most of us don’t have any income over that.
He best start believing in being singled out to pay more taxes because the alternative is being singled out to have his head cut off.
The old old money knew this. Why do the nuveau rich not?
For the same reason the world is trying to pull 1920s fascism round 2. People don’t learn from history.
Maaaaan people is DUMB
I wonder if he feels the same about healthcare, housing, food, and clean water. Regardless of how much shit he has, he can live in the same apartment with the same public water and food deserts and a doctor that isn’t on his personal staff.
You have to leave incentives for people who are the ones who are going to create the jobs for all those people trying to climb the ladder.
Oh my god, FUCK OFF
b-b-but, nobody will want to do good work if they don’t have the extremely weak opportunity to enrich themselves by taking advantage of other’s labor!!!
“You’re trying to take away the incentives for people to work hard,” [Catsimatidis] said.
The working class is referred to as such for a reason.
He should stop pretending to be one of them.
Let’s be real: who would work hard to make ONLY millions instead of billions? Most people would obviously rather stay poor.
Also, said billionaire should stop gaslighting everyone. Most people I know will try to find better work if their basic needs are fulfilled. Nobody except a billionaire wants hand outs.
Nobody except a billionaire wants hand outs.
…and gets them, usually on demand.
Biden claimed in his State of the Union address that the 25 percent minimum tax on the ultra-rich will raise $500 billion over 10 years. “Imagine what that could do for America,” he said.
Maybe I’m not good at comprehending numbers at this scale but does this seem kind of low to anyone else? I mean, that’s a lot of money in absolute terms but the government spent $6.3 trillion in FY 2023 alone.
We should still do it obviously. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good and all that.
No, it sounds correct. Taxing billionaires’ income is fine, but the real money would come from actually taxing corporations more.
See, they only have income in certain circumstances, so the amount raised from an income tax would not be very high. You can raise corporate taxes by a little bit and get much more.
That way the income is taxed before it gets to anyone. It doesn’t matter if they have a billion dollars. Plus it encourages investment in the company (wages, new products, better quality, etc.) because business costs are tax write-offs.
I’m surprised it’s that high. The reason their effective rate goes down, is getting money by ways that are either special cases in the tax code or aren’t “income”. Until you fix those, wealthy people will still have the lowest tax rate.
…although apparently the tax rate for long term capital gains is already 20% for the wealthy. I didn’t know that
$500 billion is a sizable chunk of that $6.3 trillion, and it’s still only a 25% tax rate, and then only the “ultra-rich.”
If one considers something more reasonable, like a 70% tax of income over $100,000, then you’re talking about more substantial amounts to really start catching up to top economies.
500 billion over 10 years is not a sizeable chunk of a single year total.
They spend more than that a year on “defense”.
Boohoo
Thoughts and prayers
Billionaires should not exist. Honestly, I’d expropriate them.
I don’t get the desire to violently dispose of billionaires; it’s a status defined by wealth, we just gotta take their money and they stop being billionaires. Problem solved, right?
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Some people just inherit it. Still unjust, and should be taken away, but is it worth killing over? There’s bad people at every level of wealth, I don’t see how slaughtering the wealthy makes any more sense than the death penalty for anyone else. We need to take away their money and help them to be better people. Recovery from the disease of greed is possible and necessary.
To the moon!
Apparently it’s not just Billionaires who hate this, but also Russian trolls pretending to be leftists. Who would have guessed the two would be allied?!
???
