The fact they had to ask says a lot.
I don’t know… why is medical care so expensive in the first place? Why are teachers wages so low? Why is there such a huge wealth disparity?
Seems like these are systematic problems which need to be solved with a full system restructuring rather than throwing money at it. Not to dunk on Bernie, but If I were American, I’d be hoping for more concrete solutions.
5% tax sounds nice (imo, its no where near nice enough lol) but what are we taxing here exactly? Billionaires don’t actually have any money. There’s a systematic problem to solve right there… how can people be filthy rich, yet have no actual money to tax?Like this, a very ‘American idea’ to me is ‘student loan forgiveness’. You borrow money from a bank (for profit institution), you pay it to get educated at a university (for profit institution) and get the loan forgiven by the government (tax payers). Systematic problem. Just make universities public and they get funded by the tax payers directly.
Feels like a band aid on a dismembered limb imo…
Yeah the underlying problems have to do with market power granted by certain laws and the systemic prevention of competition. In land markets there’s massive amounts of money going into keeping us from building more housing so that owners in scarce locations can stay rich. Land value taxes would solve that.
Just want to point out that would be more than enough money for Universal Healthcare, something which might very well make more money than it costs since Healthcare in the US at 13% - 14% of GDP is using twice as much a fraction of the resources created in American as countries with Universal Healthcare use in theirs, so Universal Healthcare would free up a big chunk of the country’s GDP for other uses.
The other thing that also needs fixing (and that’s not just in the US) is house prices, which means Public Housing, though I suspect that would be “crazy Communism” for the average American given how stupidly brainwashed and undereducated they are in average.
America is deeply, heavily in debt
Normally when this happens the rich are forced to take a haircut
25% of the global assets of anyone worth over 250 million
If they do much as complain seize their entire global assets and imprison them and their families
That’s America’s money take it back
Dont even need to give the familys the 12,000… just use it to pay down the debt
I’d like the billionaires to be put in prison as well. Is this on the table?
Only if it’s one of the ones that make commercial products, that way they can show us how good they are at earning money, they can start at 30 cents an hour and build back their wealth.
That check would be life changing for me, a billionaire somewhere just made the same amount in less time than it took me to type this out.
Usually memes like this, the math doesn’t math. But it’s a nice idea.
No more “tax”, only “take”. Take their fucking money away. They got so much money, it’s literally an existential threat to humanity.
I think that percentage should be much higher. Like once you’ve hit a million, 100% of anything more goes right back to the community. Social programs, housing, healthcare, etc.
I actually like really high (but sub 100%) numbers instead. It still gives a little incentive for the complete unhinged to earn money and hopefully society does much better with the 90% they collect than the 10% the billionaire does whatever with
While I’m dreaming I’d like a magical pizza tree.
Ew, think of the birds, get your self a magical pizza box, all the benefits but less bugs and stuff.
I mean, they’re not going to increase my pay, ever, so fuck yeah, that sounds good
I want someone to run on the platform of simply… “Donald Trump hisself cost this country X” then calculate how much the taxpayers have spent on non-Presidential standard crap that Mr Cheetos has gotten, find a way to reverse all that money back into the pockets of teachers.
That’s the entire platform
No. I dont. It should be 20%.
Realistically like 60%
I know we’re all virtue signaling here, but historically the country’s economy did the best when the top income tax bracket was 90% to 95%.
That’ll never pass. 5% probably won’t either but it’s more likely.
You can’t always be the enemy of incremental progress
This is the argument which took Obamacare from being a big bold progressive transformation to the American medical system and made it worthless; the same framework that led Obama to make only incremental reforms when Americans were demanding sweeping changes: this argument of incrementalism is why fascism got a toehold in the US, and the insistence on the idealogically of incrementalism on the part of alleged allies is why fascism has taken over almost entirely.
The politics of half a loaf is why the American system is falling apart. It’s not a way forwards.
Somebody’s Facebook sphincter-scrapings aren’t a very good source. Here’s an article on the subject: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5764783-bernie-sanders-ro-khanna-tax-billionaires/
Now that’s a band name: sphincter scrapings
It shall be thrash metal
At that age, it’s splash-metal
K-pop
K-thrash
A boy band
No. I don’t agree. I don’t want a wealth tax. I want a wealth CAP. 1000x the median household income should be the maximum allowable fortune. That would be something like $80 million today.
I like that number because 1000x the median income is a good approximation for the largest honest fortune a person can earn by their own work. Imagine you had a married couple:
- Both were brain surgeons and highly paid.
- Both attended school young and worked til old age.
- Both lived like absolute paupers, saved and invested every penny they could.
Even in such an extreme scenario, two people in a couple working highly paid jobs and saving and investing nearly everything they could. Even then, they would struggle to die with a fortune 1000x the median income. The only way you can earn more money than this is if you inherit it or if you arbitrage the labor of others. You need to start a business, be an executive, or have other means of scalping the surplus off of other people’s labor.
1000x the median income is the largest honest fortune. It’s the largest fortune you can earn through an ordinary salary and prudent individual investing. And it’s well below the level where you have so much money you’re becoming a threat to society. No one should have an individual fortune so large that they can sway nations through their own wealth. That is just too much power for one individual to have. We don’t let people own nuclear bombs. We shouldn’t let people be billionaires.
I don’t want to tax billionaires. I want to eliminate them entirely. I would make all fortunes over 1000x the median income taxed at 100%. And if you secretly amass a larger fortune? There would be escalating criminal penalties. To the point where having a fortune 10x the legal limit would get you in as much legal trouble as if you tried to acquire your own nuclear bomb.
Equating mass wealth to weapons of mass destruction is not the metaphor I thought I’d be agreeing with today but it is extremely apt.
Yeah, it does make sense if you think about it. Imagine if Bezos or Musk decided to use their fortune to do as much damage to a city as possible. Musk could go to a city of hundreds of thousands and absolutely decimate if he wanted. Buy up all the big employers in town and shut them down. Fund local politicians who will screw things up as much as possible. Buy up residences by the thousand and pay to have them demolished. A billionaire like Musk or Bezos could, if they chose to, absolutely do as much damage to a city as a nuclear bomb. And countless people would die deaths of despair as a result.
Bezos could literally destroy a city if he wanted to. Let’s say a city of 100k people has 33,000 residences. Let’s say the average cost of buying and demolishing one is $500k. For about $16 billion, Bezos could literally buy up every residence in a city and tear them all down. Hell, they could afford to literally level a city that is home to millions of people, forcing the city to be abandoned.
One person should simply not have that much power. We don’t let people own nuclear bomb, period. We don’t say “only really ethical people get to own nukes.” We don’t say “only people with an expensive permit and license can own a nuke.” No. There we recognize that no person, no matter how sane or moral, gets to own a nuke. Mr. Rogers wasn’t allowed to own a nuke, even if he wanted one. Because even Mr. Rogers with a nuke isn’t safe. There’s always a chance of one individual going nuts and killing millions. There are simply levels of power that only large groups of people should have. Some things just should never be trusted to individuals.
i… just don’t get the point of billionaires. what is the point of amassing so much wealth? you’re never going to be able to spend all those billions in multiple lifetimes. Why does someone need more a few million to live comfortably? Just enough that you can buy ONE house, eat, pay your bills etc. Why the fuck does someone need a TRILLION FUCKING DOLLARS.
It’s about power. It’s just about power. Extreme wealth is a way for someone in democratic society to exercise the power of high office without actually having to convince the people to vote for you.
You hand me a few million? I’m never going to work again. I’ll spend the rest of my days happily hanging with friends and family, pursuing my hobbies, and volunteering for causes I support. But then again, I’m not a psychopath bent on amassing as much power as possible.
sad but true. This is why people like us will never be billionaires or trillionaires. You don’t get to that amount of wealth by being a good person. You get there by exploiting people and cheating and whatever. Fuck.
