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Do you agree with this? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 4 days ago by favoredponcho@lemmy.zip to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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[–] krisevol@lemmus.org -3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Where would the money come from to tax the wealth? Are the billionaires going to have to offload assets? Then who is buying them?

[–] Leviathan@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They can go rim Johns behind the dumpster at their local McDonald's, or take a massive hit while offloading assets like everyone who ever had to pawn stuff to pay for food or rent has. Either way, they pay or face penalties, again, like everyone else.

[–] krisevol@lemmus.org 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You do realize "take a massive hit while off-loading" is exactly what would happen. The money didn't exist, and realizing it will basically pop the bubble. Nothing is value would be extracted for the average person, and the end result is everyone loses there 401k and pension during the collapse.

[–] Leviathan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So if they have a bunch of properties and have to sell them at a massive loss, you think homebuyers wouldn't snatch them up and be much better off?

[–] krisevol@lemmus.org 1 points 3 days ago

The ones that get them would. But those numbers would be nothing in the big picture.

[–] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Let's assume that you are genuinely asking the not a troll.

Do you really seriously think billionaires have issue finding money in general?
Let's assume they're some edge cases where someone is billionaire on paper but can't raise cash. There was a discussion in France recently when the Zucman taxe was being discussed. In this case the billionaires still have the option to pay their taxes with non-voting shares of their company rather than cash. At this level of wealth you can negotiate deals with the government directly.
Last thing, the median household in the US pay around 13% of their wealth in taxes. So a 5% tax on wealth for billionaire would still be much much lower than what everyone else is paying.

[–] krisevol@lemmus.org 0 points 3 days ago

But it's they pay in stocks, then the government still needs to offload them to gain cash for the programs. It would still pop the bubble, and best case it's our 401ks paying the tax.

But we know all these stocks are overvalued anyways, what happens when they come back down? So we refund them the stocks? And I'm that car we definitely paid the tax.

But for your first question, yes billionaires like elon do have problems getting cash at this level. He has to sell shares to pay 10 million in taxes, and he has to borrow the whole amount to buy Twitter. This is backed by 350 p/e Tesla stocks. If the stocks came down to 30 like most car companies he would be bankrupt because he owes 50 billion, and he would lose 90% wealth overnight with those evaluations. The money doesn't really exist, and it's we try to realize it, the whole bubble pops.

[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

They're conflating the plan to remove the cap on SS and Medicare taxes with a wealth tax.