• Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    71
    ·
    2 months ago

    Tax.

    Tax them like there is no tomorrow.

    Billionaires should simply not exist. Put a cap on total net worth and if you pass that, income tax goes to 100. If your networth goes up anyway because of stocks or whatever, tax that too. Tax stocks, homes, boats, etc.

    Enormous wealth should be like the speed of light. The closer you get there, the heavier it becomes to stay there, you need to spend more and more energy to get less and less higher.

    This should not be a crazy idea.

    • abracaDavid@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      2 months ago

      Billionaires have such a heavy say in our government that it will never go that way unless it’s forced.

      • theherk@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 months ago

        I have been saying something slightly similar, but rather that laws should no longer protect them.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Bullshit

        Stop the calls for killing the rich. Don’t blame people for playing the game, just change the rules. Tax the rich for all they have until everyone lives in a tops 1-5 ratio of networth. All of the sudden, poverty gone, we can do universal healthcare easily, government will have boat loads for anything to make our lives better

        • pinkystew@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          2 months ago

          they’re so nice, so surely everybody else is too

          This right here.

          I think many poor people do not realize how deliberately cruel the rich are being. They cannot imagine someone looking at a whiteboard planning debilitating poverty and misery for millions of people. They think that the situation is unfortunate and unavoidable somehow, and not deliberately made.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        2 months ago

        I’d rather not become the monsters just to get rid of the monsters.

      • BigBenis@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        8
        ·
        2 months ago

        This violence-against-the-owning class rhetoric is going too far. Killing other humans is never justified. Tax them into oblivion and make them work for a living like the rest of us. There’s a massive difference between having disdain for billionaires and wanting to kill them.

          • BigBenis@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            I’d wager we have a much better shot at passing legislation for a billionaire tax than legalizing murder.

        • jaek@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          2 months ago

          Killing other humans is often justified. For instance, it would be completely justified to kill someone who was in the process of shooting up a school.

          In the same way, billionaires are guilty of causing the deaths of millions of people through their hoarding of necessities. Killing the billionaires would allow this wealth to be redistributed, saving potentially millions of lives.

          • BigBenis@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            I think the difference is that a school shooter is in the middle of a violent act and is an immediate threat to the lives of anybody around them. Usually the only way to put an end to the harm they’re causing is to meet that violence with the same level of violence. It’s not a just act, it’s a tragedy, but it’s ultimately necessary to prevent further injustice.

            Hoarding an incomprehensible amount of resources and lobbying for a system is easier to exploit is amoral and causes harm to our society but it is not a violent act and is not an immediate threat to anybody’s life.

            These memes spreading violent rhetoric against a class of people this community is at odds with is starting to feel like other corners of the internet that I don’t want to be involved in.

            • jaek@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 months ago

              It absolutely is a violent act. In the same way that locking a person in a cage is a violent act, depriving people of the things they need to live is a violent act.

              The fact is, simply asking these people to stop hoarding and polluting is not going to work (duh).

              Is there a non-violent solution?

    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      gilded age

      Reforming capitalism will only delay end stage, not prevent it.

      Imagine getting something like the early 20th century labor movement going these days. Seems impossible right? We we did do it once and guess what, we are back again. What was the point of spilling all that blood sweat and tears if we just go right back to where we started? We wasted those lives lost and ruined because we thought capitalism could be salvaged. It is not salvageable.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        We we did do it once and guess what, we are back again. What was the point of spilling all that blood sweat and tears if we just go right back to where we started?

        30 years of relative prosperity?

        Also, I don’t understand how you think we’d be able to abolish capitalism without much more blood, sweat, and tears than would be spent building a labor movement. I also think that a strong labor movement would be a necessary prerequisite to abolishing capitalism. I don’t see how you build a movement to abolish capitalism with millions of isolated, fractured consumers. By magic? Will AI or crypto solve this? 😄