We need the 91% top-tier tax bracket.

We also need capital gains taxed at the same (or greater) rate as income tax.

We also need a 1-2% annual tax on registered securities, payable not in dollars, but in shares of the security. No more than 1% of total-traded volume will consist of liquidated shares. Up to $10 million worth of securities will be exempt from this tax, if held by a natural person.

Billionaires are the worst in so many ways

I would like to point out that this is broadly worse than what Deus Ex (2001) predicted 2052 would be like.

Leo Gold:

Number One: In 1945, corporations paid 50% of federal taxes; now they pay about 5%. Number Two: In 1900, 90% of Americans were self employed; now it's about 2%... It's called consolidation; strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time."

Also, obligatory:

That's terror.

EDIT:

Oh right, here are the last gas prices from a post apocalyptic California that was utterly destroyed some time before 2052 (and I guess after 2027), by the San Andreas fault just completely cutting loose.

Taxes are deflationary, taking money out of the economy. Billionaires avoid taxes, part of how they push up inflation.

Billionaires constantly try to consolidate power, to push profits up, and hence prices. Billionaires and the wealth disparity they create, are both inflationary. Helping the rich get richer at the cost of everyone else.

Every country which runs and has the sovereign right to print its own currency (eg. Their currency isn't pegged to another) has enough money (as long as inflation hasn't gone hyper). Taxes aren't where money comes from. We spend first, and collect taxes as an after thought (which is why deficits are possible)... "We spent money we don't have" doesn't actually make sense, of course we had it to spend... We control the supply of money, we have an infinite amount (inflation is the constraint on spending, so why are we helping billionaires raise inflation?).

The only reason for taxes is to track spending so we can keep Neoliberal rating agencies like S&P and Moodies happy. It's just to please international Neoliberals, so we can say "profits are up"... When we should be measuring outcomes of government. Not how well government pleasured the wealthy and thus, pubished the poor.

...and most of these ratings agencies are from countries who have fucked their economies anyways. It's all a hypocritical facade to pay the rich. We're at french revolution levels of wealth disparity.

The real economics are those of helping citizens to be and do more. What we have now is a sham and should be abolished, replaced with a fairer system and rules to keep it that way.

“Gee why was everything cheaper in the 50s, 60s, 70s? how could a family of 4 afford a single family home and two cars on a single income that only required a high school education? Why was XYZ product of a higher quality? Why did worker productivity keep up with wages?”

There’s the obvious answer to this question “we taxed the rich so hard they couldn’t use their wealth to consolidate power and influence, and preventing them for redirecting resources from improving people’s standard of living to deranged self aggrandizing projects.”

And the dumbass mental gymnastics answers “Guberment regulation infringing on the free market, women have some rights now, LGBTQ people aren’t oppressed enough anymore, people don’t go to church enough, THE DEEP STATE!, we used to be more racist, and (((international finance))).” Funny how all those arguments have a bunch of well funded think tanks and unprofitable privately owned media organizations making arguments for them.

because the new deal didn't actually address the root problem of billionaires owning the means of production.

that's where the real power is, and why just taxing them isn't fixing the issue long term.

So let's eat them?

Murder them?

Kill them?

I agree with the anti-billionaire sentiment.

But the headline is written in a misleading way. I don’t know why we’re sharing a low quality substack with 2 likes when there are plenty of higher quality pieces that come to this conclusion.

“Study:” in the headline implies that they are repeating what a single study said. It’s the journalistic convention for using university press releases. In this case they are not doing that. But compiling a bunch of sources (none of which are academic as far as I can tell) and coming to their own conclusions. Nothing wrong with that. But it makes the title misleading.

Secondly in their own first couple paragraphs they show that the 0% while existing in some cases is not what usually happens. The truer “in practice” average is 3.4% or 8.2% depending on how you calculate.

So we can all agree that’s shocking and needs to be changed. But no point in making misleading headlines because it just makes us seem less serious when arguing about this to people who need to be convinced.

We dont need to tax the rich its time for disembowelment, eating, guillotine and corpse wagons.

But all the money they donate to political campaigns totally doesn't influence policy.

This is a return to the 60s that I can get behind.

Fun fact: In 1966, the Beatles released "Taxman", protesting the 95% tax rate imposed by the Labour government. It was their first political song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxman

I know that Lemmy is always on the side of poor, starving artists. So when you demand higher taxes, bear in mind that only one of the four Beatles lived long enough to become a billionaire.

When the King of Rock, Elvis Presley, died in 1977, he only had a wealth of $5 million. Today, poor Taylor Swift is only a billionaire, and we're all appalled how little she gets from streaming. Think about how terrible it would be, if all that money went to taxes.

Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

And everyone with no hope takes the easily available addictive drugs indirectly supplied by the same billionaires.

I think it would take nothing less than a radical overhaul of society to fix this snowballing of power.

00000

Having it so that individuals can only run a single company within a niche, and capping annual income to an absolute amount would be a very basic start. It would take even more to make such restrictions stick.

Corporations having wealth and asset caps based on their employee headcount & incomes, requiring that leaders have to be annually voted into their positions by their workers, their income voted by said workers, and so on.

00000

Our economics are made out of inherited junk and bubblegum. A clean sheet redesign is needed.

hey, Bezos the Clown has nearly perfect teeth, how about that, my friend?

There is no reason regular human beings shouldn't be going FULL IRAN on all responsible.

I feel like the only reason it hasn't happened is because there is so much psychological manipulation and marketing that goes into keeping citizens passive and easy to lead.