Billionaires are parasites. All they do is take over governments to make themselves richer at your expense. There is nowhere in the world that wouldn't be a better place if their billionaires left.

send Elon back to africa

He'd never go back because if he did that would put a lie to his whole "south Africa is doing white genocide" narrative if he could easily move back

No, we do not want him back.

I say send him to Ascension Island, like Napoleon. That puts him the furthest away from any civilization available on this planet.

At least untill we can sens him to Venus.

How much of their wealth would they exchange for not being dragged into a public square and drawn and quartered, along with their friends and families?

That's where the conversation needs to start.

And a simple solution for tax havens would be to levy a trade tax against tax haven countries approximately equivalent to what the local revenue services imagine that the amount of deferred tax wealth is currently inhabiting their shores.

I'm pretty sure they could be well paid to be very imaginative.

Deport him to Equador.

That's smart. We do that to DOCTORS. They have to spend 2 here after residency. Or pay.

They actually believe all the propaganda that simply "having wealth" creates value.

Except it doesn't, not real tangeable value. So they can fuck off. Someone or someones, can fill the void. That is kind of the idea. You earned your zillion follars, go away and let someone else try. Many someone elsees.

I think it's pretty much a requirement to get that much wealth.

You have to have a pretty twisted sense of self-importance to accumulate that much wealth in the first place. If you have some shred of decency and/or humility, you will never get that far.

Exactly! My first thought was, "How is this an Onion headline?"

This has been my hang up for a while.

With real generic numbers.

Elon Musk is worth 1 trillion dollars.

But its all Tesla (or whatever) stock.

Is Elon woth 1 Trillion, or is Telsa, because it can't be both, someone is lying.

Companies have true value, so the stocks do hold real value, but the way they can be inflated skews what that worth really is. Companies have assets and revenue and profits which are measurable, but when you start looking forward things start to get murky as people try to predict future value.

Add onto that, just like people can borrow against their house, they can then borrow against these stocks, and our system is set up where they can do this tax free. So they have inflated values beyond the actual value of the stock which they can borrow against. Elon doesn't actually have a trillion dollars. If he actually tried to realize it all, he'd probably end up somewhere in the low hundreds of billions or even below that, as the market would crash as he flood it with new shares. He could try to do it over many years and he'd come out with more, but that'll take time. But he can borrow against his stock as if he had a trillion dollars which is a real problem.

I'm personally against taxing unrealized gains, but I believe at least past a certain threshold, we should figure out how to tax people borrowing against their stock indefinitely and never paying taxes. (edit: the borrowing itself also leaves a paper trail that can be used to audit and fine / jail people if they try to hide it) That's a big part of the problem were facing. They have this wealth AND they get to use it, without paying taxes. We need to tax their usage. If we tax their usage, that will alter their behaviour. They'll either keep spending and we tax it as they lose ownership, or they'll reduce spending, but keep the ownership in the companies that their shares bestow, but they can't do both.

E.g Someone worth billions will buy a house worth 10s of million of dollars, and just pledge some stock against it, and perpetually keep that loan alive until they die. Their house staff, paid the same way. They do have to pay interest on that loan, but they just can just pledge more stock against that as well.

Edit: This also works better with higher tax brackets. If they try to realize/borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, we need new tax brackets for that.

You don't understand.

If their "worth" might cause them an inconvenience like taxation, then you have to understand that it's merely a quirky feature of how stock is valued and totally fictional.

However, if they need to fund purchase of a yacht and need to borrow against that worth, then you have to understand it is a real and supremely meaningful thing.

See how perfectly reasonable it all is?

It would be hilarious if they taxed him into the US only for the US to shortly after undergo a huge political shift taxing him even further.