Not promoting violence in any way. Just kind of a thought exercise.

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[–] 8 points 5 months ago (4 children)

It wouldn't. The wealth the billionaires have is imaginary, not a checking account with lots of zeros. It's in assets that people speculate is worth a specific amount.

That's why it's always estimated net worth. To get the wealth from their assets you'd have to find enough people to buy them.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    "Imaginary" is one way to put it.

    I like to think of it as a number reflecting how much of our labour they have reserved for themselves. When that wealth "disappears", it basically means that we get that labour back for ourselves. So in a way, it actually gets split evenly amongst all of us.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    You might see it that way, but it's not the way it works. A company's valuation isn't directly tied to labor output, and the wealth doesn't just disappear. It's not something that can be redistributed without nationalizing a publicly traded company (there are pros and cons to this).

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    i think this is a poor understanding of how it works in practice, but in theory this is nearly correct

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago*

    It's not a poor understanding, just simplified.

    The major problem is that banks will give them loans using speculative assets as collateral. Easy fix is to both tax the collateral as a realized gain, and the loan as income.

    But their wealth is mostly in non-liquid assets, not a bank account.

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