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World’s five richest men double their money as poorest get poorer
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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This is such a good visualization of big numbers and big bank accounts.
It's also a good way to really see the bull shit argument that it's unfair to tax the wealthy at a higher rate. Even if they get taxed at 90% (which I don't think will happen in my lifetime) they still will have enough money for them and their decedents to live a lavish lifestyle. And that extra money could really make America into the country that it pretends to be.
Also, the "taxed at 90%" is a red herring too, since that's not how progressive tax brackets work. Nobody's effective tax rate would be close to 90%, even if we raised the top marginal rate to nearly 100%.
If tax brackets were sensibly set, with a >90% rate for the top bracket, these people would still be very wealthy but the amount given to tax would be almost all of their wealth, since the highest tax bracket would kick in just a few pixels into the giant boxes on that diagram. And there would be nothing wrong with that.
Right. If they were sensible. But I'm OK with taking it one step at a time and ease into it so it doesn't immediately get shut down.
That’s why taxing net worth is our next step. Make it a sigmoid curve that starts out at $10M and hits 100% taxation at $100M.
And yes, plenty of things can be “valued”. The Insurance industry has plenty of experience at this, as do branches of the government that estimate property values so cities can levy property taxes, and banks that extend loans to billionaires on the basis of securities being held.
If companies can attach dollar values to the lives that they destroyed due to OSHA/labour violations, then a taxable value can be assigned to pretty much anything a card-carrying member or the Parasite Class might own, or holds through a shell corp, holding company, or trust.
But, they would really hate it.