Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke, whose company commands a market capitalization near $154 billion, told his social media followers this week that a tax-tiered voting system—one that would strip voting rights from anyone who pays no income tax—would be a “good system.”
That two-word endorsement, dropped into a viral thread, has reignited a debate over wealth, power, and democracy that most Americans thought was settled more than a century ago.
The proposal would invert the founding American principle of “no taxation without representation” into something closer to “no representation without taxation”—and specifically, high taxation. Reactions online split sharply: Some framed it as a provocative thought experiment about aligning fiscal responsibility with political voice, while others called it a naked attempt to legitimize plutocracy by giving billionaires and multimillionaires a formal, multiplied vote over the laws that govern everyone else.
But it also revealed that America is grappling with a political economy debate, as a frozen housing market and an entrenched wealthy baby boomer demographic have many, not just Lütke, arguing that something big needs to change
At this point, their necks practically beg for the guillotine’s blade. They keep reminding us:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of . . . tyrants.
-Thomas Jefferson in November 13, 1787, letter to William Stephens Smith.
Tobias Lütke is a German born Canadian. Why is he commenting about US elections at all? He has never voted in the US.
Because he makes money from it, capitalism and fascism have no borders.
Edit: and I’m sure he’s voted with his dollars.
Never having a history of voting in an election is insufficient to the determination of excluding a voter for ineligibility.
That’s literally the problem, United Statesians just believe money is the only thing that matters. Rape children, bomb civilians, pollute water and air — no, that’s not a problem, we can look past that. If you make lots of money you are a good person, the more the better. That’s just very literally how our society aligns itself.
Like it’s so absurd, oh you took a sabbatical and had zero income, no vote for you! Like did the renaissance NOT happen? What is going on in our country??
I think he may be onto something.
Perhaps there’s some way to tie the weight of your vote to the ratio of taxes paid divided by wealth?
So, if you have billions in assets+wages, but pay less taxes than a guy earning minimum wage, your vote would essentially be completely ignored.
The problem is that combines with progressive taxation to fuck over the poor. It would prioritize high income low investment people
I’d just cap the voting power bonus at ~1.5
If you pay taxes you should’ve higher voting power but not tremendously higher
Even simpler for me. Everyone gets one vote. You paying into social security? You get one more vote. We could break this down further to “is more than X% compensation social security payments”, but let’s keep it simple.
As much as we gripe, billionaires don’t influence votes as much as we think (they simply lobby whoever gets in later). Politicians influence votes and focus on the demographic who votes the most. Who happen to be the people who don’t need to plan around 8 hours of work in order to get to the polls. And those who won’t be around to see the fruits of their labors 20+ years later. Let’s reward those who work and need to face their future.
Under that idea, what happens to the vote of people who make too little to pay taxes? What if they don’t have taxes because they don’t have a job? What if you don’t pay taxes because you’re homeless and don’t have an address?
Well clearly, for those people the only fair way to handle it is to default to a vote weight of 1.0
The shopify CEO wants to strip voting rights from people that don’t pay taxes. So, 18-20 something year olds that don’t have income and get claimed as a dependent. SAH mom’s that get claimed as a dependent.
Fuck Tobias Lütke with a barbed wire wrapped dildo. Germany, Canada, please come pick up your trash.
Yeah the highly notable people Germany has been sending our way lately have largely sucked. The appreciation for Kim Petras can only go so far when we’re also getting this guy and Thiel from them.
Nobody here sent them to you. They came because they could get away with such behaviour and even get rewarded for it in the US.
A “good system” would never allow billionaires to exist, and would entail a solution for the ones that already do.
Because he’s a Fascist worth $154B. Mystery solved.
Because the rich think they’re better than us and have stopped fearing us
This leads to the old “lead based voting system”.
that blood tank needs tyrant blood refilling
But everyone pays taxes, even the unemployed. Every purchase has taxes on it. For this proposal to work as he wants, the entire tax burden will have to be transferred to the income tax. Enjoy the tax hike and labor crisis.
captain logical you got em.
Does anyone have tips for how to identify (and avoid) sites that use shopify?
How about no vote if your net worth is above 100m and you pay less than 25% in tax annually
I’ve always liked the idea of once you hit $999,999,999 net worth, everything above that is 100% taxed and you get a little trophy that says “Congratulations on Winning Capitalism” and you get your name of the wall of a local bar.
I don’t hate this, but my main concern has always been I don’t think people who own companies should be forced to sell their shares in what they built.
Maybe there are other fixes like taxing loans against equity as if the shares were sold (at whatever rate, like you propose)… That way you can hold more than a billion in net worth, but you can’t really access it.
Because they want to run the company towns of the 2000s.
Is he trying to radicalize people? Damn, that’s just comic book evil.
Universal suffrage was a mistake. Maybe a confederation of workers councils would be better.
Nah you’re think backwards. Who votes and influences policy the most? Old people. Why? They have time to go to townhalls (which are often scheduled during the work week times), they have time to line up at the polls. Politicians famously only listen to calls and many haven’t updated their communications for the 21st century to take in new forms of communication.
So there’s two clear solutions here.
- Mandatory voting. This includes making voting days holidays (to give people time) and removing any current obstacles that keep people from voting.
- Citizens need modern, local forums. We really shouldn’t be on a private social media where anyone can yell at a politician in order to get news on policy. Tie these forums to voter’s state ID and monitor them for feedback on proposals and bills.
That’s the bare minimum.
You are assuming that the outcome of American democracy reflects the will of the people and that voters react to politicians not meeting their needs by voting them out. That is absolutely not the case. Universal Healthcare is consistently the most important issue to voters, but no politician, not even the Democrats has ever lost their election for refusing to endorse Universal Healthcare. Additionally no politician has ever lost their job because they gave tax breaks to corporations even though there is no case where giving a tax break to Amazon, et al, improves any of their constituents lives.
Back to Healthcare, Obama Care made the insurance industry hugely rich, reduced the quality of care across all demographics, and caused the absolute healthcare crisis we are in today and yet every single idiot liberal will call it a win even if the outcomes were worse for everyone.
This goes a bit more into detail. https://www.politico.com/story/2009/12/liberals-why-didnt-obama-fight-030648
But the important part is that even though the bill did not do any of things it sought to do, Obama got to declare victory and the voters rewarded him for it. (not that they had a choice.)
voters react to politicians not meeting their needs by voting them out.
Yes, the old people do. You see the issue coming back up? If you piss off Gen Z, it doesn’t matter if they are 25% of the population (made up numbers) if only 20% of them vote. Boomers being 15% but voting 70% of the time has more numbers.
no politician, not even the Democrats has ever lost their election for refusing to endorse Universal Healthcare.
They don’t need to. Republicans can kick the can down the road and say “we’ll think of something” and that’s good enough for a campaign. They try to cut healthcare, and even this abomination of an administration gets flak.
But yes, I get what you’re saying. Campaign trails are rarely about the most eloquently explained policy plans. It’s much more superficial and that’s how we get Trump. There’s unfortunately this weird cognitive dissonance between what someone talks about and what someone in office does. And thars why approval ratings almost always start highest and slowly declines.
I suppose my most charitable interpretation here is that Boomers still think we live in a time where congress isn’t constantly in gridlock, and a time where politicians would occasionally try to run bills that help the people. But newer generations only see broken promises and compromised bribe holders.
yet every single idiot liberal will call it a win even if the outcomes were worse for everyone.
Because it was watered down by conservatives and lobbied further by Healthcare. Yes. It’s not a great plan, but it’s the most that could get passed in 30 years.
This goes beyond my point because I’m not talking about how well executed plans are. I’m talking about who those people got into the position to begin with. You’re complaining about policy makers and I’m saying “who put them there”
Do you honestly believe that if every millennial voted in the 2010s that no results (local, state, national) would have changed? And thus it would have changed the effectiveness of policy?
So long as there are councils for those unable to work for any number of reasons. At the very least a disabled council and a reserve labor force (unemployed but willing to work) council
