100% agree with all the people saying it’s not enough, but it could be a start, which potentially forces interesting changes at the company level even if it doesn’t do much with the economic system.
I would rather see no shareholder influence, but weakened shareholder influence and less incentive for CEOs and execs to be douchebags can still be meaningful (though perhaps not alone). Unfortunately, since people who want to lead others tend to be empathetically challenged, they still need explicit incentives for them not to just go through the same old exploitative and abusive patterns. Say this went through, the people who replace the spoiled CEOs who decide to leave would just end up being corrupt as well if some kind of positive reinforcement doesn’t also exist.
Not necessary. Just tax the fuck out of them.
Specifically, tax the fuck out of the massive earnings they rake in from investments while claiming the have next to nothing on their taxes.
Stock buy backs should be quadruple taxed too. Or banned.
Not sure why comments like this get so many upvotes. What kind of fantasy world are you living in where rich people pay taxes? There are entire industries formed around helping people to avoid paying as much tax as possible.
Upvoted for what we want, not what we think is likely to happen, I assume.
Even smaller farm businesses spend $5k in lawyer/accountant fees to save $7k in taxes through dividends. It doesn’t matter how small the return is at the end of the day, it’s essentially free money for the client at the end of it.
That’s the same thing. The default implementation for this is a tax bracket for the ultra-rich that uses 100% marginal tax rates.
I’d be satisfied with 90% for a top tax bracket.
Problem is that once you are wealthy enough you can move around the world. Similar to how Microsoft Ireland is somehow where most of Microsoft’s profits occur. I think there is a big role for international treaties here.
Well count me in for 90% if we can get there, don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of good.
Wealth moving around isn’t that big of a problem really, people keep touting “wealth exodus” is a huge economic risk but rarely has that really outweighed whatever the benefits that caused it.
Fair enough, if the wealth isn’t benefiting anyone, than it’s exodus won’t hurt anyone.
And new, more contributing wealth will move in to take its place even if the old wealth moves
I’d be satisfied with 90% for a top tax bracket.
worked for Eisenhower.
yeah ireland restructured as a tax haven like the atlantic island nations a few years back; i have no idea how it’s going for them but it hasn’t worked out in any direction resembling autonomy for the rest of them
No, the problem is that most of the truly wealthy peoples’ wealth is not in the form of income. A high income tax bracket does nothing.
It needs to be a property tax, and it needs to be on everything they own, not just real-estate. Once that happens, it doesn’t need to be 90%, or anywhere near it.
There’s a reason why the PR-friendly rich people keep talking about wanting high income taxes, but no one’s talking about a total property tax.
A high income tax bracket does nothing.
This is nonsense. Wealthy people do tend to have high income, though of course most of it comes from invested wealth income and capital gains instead of wages. Taxing these is known to be effective.
I do think governments should explore taxing unrealized capital gains too, though.
I do think governments should explore taxing unrealized capital gains too, though.
Oh, boy do they ever.
One big issue is that they can take out loans with stock as collateral. Yes, they eventually have to pay the loan back (and sell stock to do so, thus paying some capital gains), but they can still get around paying their fair share of captial gains (eg: sell the underperforming stocks to minimize capital gains, or just take out a new loan to repay the old one). While I can see the benefit of being able to use your stock as collateral for a loan, there needs to be changes to how capital gains are calculated in this case.
Another issue is that when they die, the inheritor of their stocks gets them with the cost basis reset (stepped-up basis). Let’s say I have stock that I purchased for $10/share. I die when the price is $100 and leave it to my sister, and she sells it when the price is $110. She only has to pay capital gains on $10/share, not $100/share. If you combine this with a cycle of taking out a loan to repay your previous loan until you die, this means that your estate can settle the final outstanding loan with virtually no capital gains tax at all, since the stepped-up basis for your stock goes into effect once it goes to probate (ie: before being distributed to creditors and beneficiaries).
maximum wage? maybe it works for ceos and such but most billionaires are way beyond their wages. lets start by employing preventative measurements that prevent billionaire charities to be used for money laundering or agenda pushing. then we continue by forcing strict regulations on tax havens. what else? we can also limit the number of estates a person can own and don’t allow companies to buy estates. finally, limit operational size of the media conglomerates and how much a single group can have influence on media. Support the hell out of small independent media operations. I know all very vague but very critical problems imo.
How about we just execute the richest person every 3 months?
You can move to North Korea and enjoy life without rich people without killing anyone.
Make a threshold that if the relative wealth is equal between 100,000,000 million people no one is executed. That’s a hard cap right there.
Problem is the rich would start making death contracts. Scooping up some poor person to put them at the top with a contract saying if they go through with it they get certain privileges. The person would have to be too stupid to realize they can just distribute the wealth given to them and its win win win.
Also would hide their money off shore.
The process of determining who is most wealth would be problematic.
It would be difficult to have an accurate monthly system.
Reddit is shit-for-brains but one take that’s been living rent free is to have a law where you kill the richest person in the world. Won’t be long before people start scrambling to distribute their wealth so they’re not next on the chopping block 😄
lol imagine being so poor that you earn a wage
you dont need a max wage if you tax effectively. it would be 100% past a certain, massive amount.
How does that work when the super rich don’t pay any taxes to begin with? How do you tax wealth? How do you tax loans against shares?
Easy, make capital gains tax match income tax marginal rates.
But capital gains only execute when you sell.
Right. So when they sell, they’ll get taxed. You can’t spend shares.
The problem is that’s basically what billionaires do, though. They take out loans with their shares as collateral. So on paper they have huge debt, but it’s minuscule compared to their wealth.
all stock market trades should be taxed at 100% value. dont like it? dont
gamble‘invest’…or just abolish the stock market (at least that’s how I read this).
At this point, abolishing the stock market would require a restart on the United States as an entity. The stock market is quite closely linked to the banking system. Closing the stock market would crash the US economy into oblivion.
And no doubt every other closely-tied economy, as well.
Do they get a tax refund when they take a loss as well?
in the united states, there were all kinds of ‘wealth’ taxes that prevented the loop holes. all that was systematically deleted over the last 60 years as conservatives decided ‘me want money, fuck society’
The top marginal tax rate in the US peaked in 1951 at 92% on income in excess of $400k (joint filing two income), the equivalent of about $4.7M in today’s money. That should come back.
Make it illegal to use shares as collateral for a loan. If a person can pay back a loan, they can buy back the shares after they sell them because they need money. Now people are paying capital gains taxes.
Ok but how are you supposed to do that when the most powerful and influential people in the world are the very people who rely on that method to maintain their power and influence?
That’s exactly how the article suggests setting the maximum.
“Wage” is rather poor wording then.
Anyone with two brain cells can understand that it’s a wordplay on “minimum wage” and the implementation of this isn’t really going to rely on the narrow definition of wages.
It seems unwise to rely on the uneducated masses to interpret things correctly. Perhaps clearer communication would be helpful.
That’s why there’s a whole text with explanations right below the headline
As you can see, lots of people don’t read those explanations.
Perhaps clearer communication would be beneficial.
There are more words???
Wage is worthless wording. Most ultra rich don’t have wages - at least not relative to their change in worth. We need to change how taxes fundamentally work.
That just sounds like a maximum wage but with more steps.
its actually a max wage with less steps. no need to have a max wage definition at all, just extend current tax practices.
Plus it actually could be used to do something* crazy, like help people or the environment.
- Autocorrect awesome sauce
If the U.S. managed to do it, they’d use it to build up the military.
Take a listen to the recent Grey Area podcast episode with Ingrid Robeyns. Her book is “Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.” and they talk about this very subject.
As others have said, the problem isn’t wages, rich are rich because of returns, dividends and other stuff that, depending on the country or city, is tax exempt, precisely to avoid paying anything. A cynical asshole might even go so far as to say that it creates jobs for lawyers and accountants, which is technically true. It’s a win-win-lose for the rich-those ethically wrong workers-everyone else.
Unless the UN or really big blocks like the EU+BRICS start pressing every tax haven to stop pretending that they’re doing nothing wrong (which, let’s be honest, won’t happen, ever), the rich will just move around. They have that luxury, thanks to effectively infinite money.
they are rich because they own property other people depend own
LoL yeah as if they won’t put loopholes in there like they did with taxes.
And hide all their money in offshore accounts. Does no one remember the Panama Papers?
Let’s put aside the fact that the super rich don’t have a wage. How the fuck are you going to make and apply laws against the people who have the most power in the system you’re supporting?
Let’s just say if they have too much, we just put them in a big stew and eat them.
The same way they define and apply laws that determine, and maintain the poorest.
So without any media attention, when no one is paying attention?
Setting a maximum wage for them wouldn’t do a damn thing. They’ll just use the wealth they already have to hoover up more through things like insider trading or flat out stealing company money.
Adding a maximum wage for the rich would be like trying to drain the ocean using a toy bucket.
The author in the article talks about how most of the wealth is either coming from capital gains and/or inheritance. They know wage isn’t the thing to cap, the article is likely just trying to maximize clicks. The subject is still worth exploring and the author is very well informed.
In an ideal world anyone making more than, let’s say for an example, $1 million in a year would pay 100% tax on anything more.
No one needs more than $1,000,000 a year for anything. No one works hard enough to actually deserve that. It’s just pure luck and/or screwing over other people to get more than that.
Unfortunately if one country implements that, all the rich people leave and go live somewhere else that doesn’t tax that much.
On paper they don’t make anything a year and pay less tax than you or I. The only way that’s going to change is a massive world-wide effort to crack down on tax havens and to start taxing their assets fully.
That or they just don’t set their residency in Canada. Rich people can choose to move and reside anywhere they want
And tie it directly to the minimum wage…
You got work tomorrow morning at 8?
Earlier!
Damn ! Tax the Reeeeccchhh
I don’t mind working, I just want to be able to afford a reasonable life in exchange for… well, my life, basically.
Yea bruv. I feel ya
100% tax over 100 million or something?
I’d like to know more about how this is supposed to work.
What is considered a wage? Is it net worth, increase in worth from one year to the next? Liquid capital?
Are benefits (insurance, child care, etc) counted towards this wage cap? What about company cars or housing? What about profit sharing through bonuses and / or stock grants?
Would loans be counted towards the wage cap? If not, can you borrow more than the wage cap?
What happens if you own a home or business that is worth more than the wage cap? Would you only be able to sell that commodity for the wage cap or would any excess of the wage cap be spread over multiple years?
Would inheritance or “gifts” be tallied towards the wage cap? Would donations to charitable organizations offset the wage cap?
Would companies be subject to these caps? What if a person incorporated, had all of their wealth and earnings go through that incorporation which they had sole discretion and control over the use of those funds?
What about foreign entities? Would people, companies, or even governments from other countries who exceed the maximum wage be allowed to buy / sell goods, direct / manage corporate interests, invest in land or stocks, or even reside in a country with a maximum wage? What authority or oversight would exist to even identify such a wage of a foreign entity? Or
Every single one of those questions represents a potential loophole that could be exploited to circumvent a “maximum wage” and I’m sure that somebody who has studied or worked in finance could think of others.
To be fair, there are a number of countries that already have a wealth tax. So it wouldn’t be some insurmountable concept.
There are less and less of them because taxing wealth doesn’t work.
That’s a theory I suppose. Another theory might be the wealthy influencing policies to have the tax removed. No idea if either are true.
Wealth that’s just sitting there is hard to assess and therefore easy to game. What’s the value of a piece of art? It’s far more practical to tax transactions and realized gains, when money changes hands.
I have better idea: 100% tax
Better close tax loop holes while you’re at it.
Anything over a $500 million in asset value taxed at 100%.
Far above what anyone should own. And yet, you’ll get middle-class people defending the people with those riches, that they deserve to keep their billion dollars.
Yes, the world doesn't need billionaires And we can do it without guns No, we won't kill you and we won't lock you up On the contrary, you'll become millionaires!Knorkator - Die Welt braucht keine Milliardäre
