A 100% wealth tax on every dollar $1 billion and up would solve a lot of problems and doesn’t require guillotines.
Every year, your total assets are assessed and every red cent required to bring you to below 1 billion dollars is taken.
IF you ended up getting taxed at this rate, a bench gets installed in a public park with a small placard having your name on it. You get to pick the park.
NGL I would still totally want to be on that placard. Central Park, where all the other rich people can see it.
Who needs a billion though? Cut that down to like 100 mil, or even 50.
Inflation-adjusted or the monkey’s paw will curl a finger.
You don’t have to tax them directly. You can also tax things they enjoy.
This year, France increased taxes on private jets by 300%
https://www.fliteline.com/blog/understanding-frances-new-private-jet-passenger-tax
Billionaires didn’t even notice.
That’s not good enough because the vast majority of their wealth will never be spent. It will just be used to accumulate more wealth.
That’s why all of these billionaires have real tax rates in the low single digits (or less). Even with opulent spending habits they keep most of their gains unrealized, so they are never taxed.
Luxury taxes are bad because supply is less elastic than demand, so the tax incidence falls on suppliers. In other words, the working class people building the airplanes pay the tax because the rich can just not buy them.
K.I.S.S. Tax wealth. Tax the only thing they really care about. Making them notice isn’t just more satisfying; it’s better economics.
Note that the inflation adjusted average rate of return on the stock market over the long run is ~8% (https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1980)
That means a 2% wealth tax on billionaires would not make them lose a single penny. Instead, it would just slow down the rate at which their wealth grows (while still growing exponentially).
It should be much higher, and not just billionaires. Add in 100 millionaires to the mix, and a lot of 10 millionaires too.
I honestly find it hard to believe that there is a meaningful difference in lifestyle if you make over $10m a year vs over $100m. So you can afford a bigger boat faster? Save and seethe on your new money dingy.
I fully support a unavoidable progressive tax that taxes every dollar above $10m in a year at 100% and nobody that hits that will suffer or be less motivated in the slightest.
Take it all. The GOP has abused their time, funded by the rich. Do the same when it’s ours. Then the rich won’t have the same power to influence elections any more, and those who deserve a chance to thrive can finally have one.
