I wouldn’t set it at $500M. I would set it at 1000x the median household income. Once you’ve hoarded enough wealth to last ten long lifetimes, we’re cutting you off. This would be about $80M in today’s money.
This is also roughly my best estimate for the largest possible “honest fortune,” one that can be obtained through wage labor and investment. This is the kind of money a married pair of neurosurgeons could amass if they both worked long careers, never had kids, lived like monks, and invested everything. To get more money than this, you have to own a company, be an executive, or otherwise exploit the labor of others.
make it a crime to have wealth over ＄500M. Anything over that and the government gets to seize assets until total wealth is ＄50M.
I say we just give them a medal and say “you won capitalism!”, give them a fancy card with a $5m a year stipend, and forbid them from ever touching money again
Let’s make it a status symbol, the interest on the money we take from them will pay for the program and more. Hell, we can give them a point system for whatever they don’t spend for cool prizes to compete with each other for
We need to change the incentives… Instead of letting their net worth act like a point total among their peers, we need to give them pro-social activities to compete through to keep them occupied
I also like the tax wealth not work approach, but taxing earnings would be like taxing work, wouldn’t it? With the wealth tax, if profit is re-invested, wouldn’t the stock price go up, hence getting the owners closer to the wealth gap? (Asking from a place of ignorance)
They’d have to relinquish stocks or other assets if it put them over the limit.
Although in my opinion it would be better to tax loans using investments as collateral (that cross a cumulative yearly threshold) as realized gains and income.
The threshold could be a variable like 50x the annual take home pay of the bottom 20% of earners. That way for cheaper loans, people need to be paid more.
I want:
To pay for this:
I wouldn’t set it at $500M. I would set it at 1000x the median household income. Once you’ve hoarded enough wealth to last ten long lifetimes, we’re cutting you off. This would be about $80M in today’s money.
This is also roughly my best estimate for the largest possible “honest fortune,” one that can be obtained through wage labor and investment. This is the kind of money a married pair of neurosurgeons could amass if they both worked long careers, never had kids, lived like monks, and invested everything. To get more money than this, you have to own a company, be an executive, or otherwise exploit the labor of others.
I say we just give them a medal and say “you won capitalism!”, give them a fancy card with a $5m a year stipend, and forbid them from ever touching money again
Let’s make it a status symbol, the interest on the money we take from them will pay for the program and more. Hell, we can give them a point system for whatever they don’t spend for cool prizes to compete with each other for
We need to change the incentives… Instead of letting their net worth act like a point total among their peers, we need to give them pro-social activities to compete through to keep them occupied
A pipe dream that will never happen 😮💨
Not with that attitude
Maybe not for us, but what about a future generation?
Let a man dream!!
I also like the tax wealth not work approach, but taxing earnings would be like taxing work, wouldn’t it? With the wealth tax, if profit is re-invested, wouldn’t the stock price go up, hence getting the owners closer to the wealth gap? (Asking from a place of ignorance)
They’d have to relinquish stocks or other assets if it put them over the limit.
Although in my opinion it would be better to tax loans using investments as collateral (that cross a cumulative yearly threshold) as realized gains and income.
The threshold could be a variable like 50x the annual take home pay of the bottom 20% of earners. That way for cheaper loans, people need to be paid more.