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/
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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Of course but I go further and want to outlaw anyone to "earn" a billion dollars. Think wealth should be capped at 100 million everything after that seize and used for the greater good.
And if a corporation gains a value cap of billion it is broken the fuck up into smaller companies.
$100m is still far more than one person could ever need. Why draw an arbitrary line at all? Why not use what's required to have a fair society as the starting point, and let the inability to accumulate such absurd levels of wealth derive naturally from that?
I agree but first we need to start somewhere. To do what you are suggesting we need to destroy all billionaires and capitalism. That will take violence that the left just cant grasp unfortunately.
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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.
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I think 99% of people agree with this - that Bernie Sanders wants to do it. Do they support it, though?
What's with the obsession for each side to promise a big check for everyone? Surely the money is better spent on public services rather than bribery...
Conceptually, from a crapitalism standpoint, it'll jump-start spending. It'd be 'good' for the economy. Realistically, they'll just raise the price on all big ticket items by 6k.
And it's a one time short term "boom" (for billionaires) that they will happily take credit for (as if it helped your average joe schmoe), even though, if you invest it in useful infrastructure (as an example) instead, you'd see the dividends for decades.
No, it should be 10% at least.
We could tax a billionaire 95% of their wealth, and they would still have more money than you or I could reasonably spend in a lifetime.
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It's so crazy to me that people eat stuff like this up. Pages like this make BANK slapping some text on a bunch of image while adding absolutely nothing to the conversation.
Everything they make exists not to make a difference but to drive page views to their stupid accounts. It's so, so transparent.
And in this house, we hate all ads
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
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I have the same amount of power to make this happen as Bernie Sanders has.
I hate using this term because I don't think he's stupid but the phrase is "useful idiot"
If you think of the machine that is politics he serves a purpose. Allowing him to vocalize this message essentially is a pressure release valve. His existence and beliefs although not wrong are keeping more aggressive views at bay. He's basically keeping a segment of the population docile by making them think "he speaks for me. I don't have to do anything"
Hate to say it but AOC as well. They're part of the machinery. They are not disruptors at all.
They keep the left in the Democratic Party so that a viable alternative doesn't form.
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Only 5%? Mine is approaching 30% and I can't afford shit.
Also sending out checks is fucking stupid. Just lower our taxes.
It's 5% of wealth, not income. But still, anything short of 100% will not stop the parasites. But its a nice gesture, if nothing else
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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..
I get your misgivings but... Changing it for the better has gotta start somewhere.
Even this idea is way too "progressive" to have any chance of coming to pass
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That's a hyperbolic take, because it's taxes that everyone else is already paying he wants to remove the cap from.
Other than that yeah, sounds like a great plan to me.
Yes.
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.
Polish government decided to send check to all parents as a way to promote having kids.
You know what happened? All the products needed by young kids suddenly rose in price. Sending checks to americans will do the same - all necessities will just become expensive exactly by amount of money they got.
Want to change the world? Tax the debt machine (5 or 10% of every transaction involving stocks and obligations, including using them as a loan security) and treat companies like people (as in - tax them on income, not on profit).
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It’s pulling the money back where it belongs. You cannot have the “American Dream” without subsidizing a middle class. There is no middle class in capitalism without subsidies. FDR created the middle class.
Reagan and post Reagan congress have spent the last 40yrs disenfranchising the middle class by feeding their money to the billionaire creation endeavor.
This is a problem created by Congress. They could fix it. They choose not to.
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He's not going to do it once he gets into office, these posts are just made to keep people trusting in two party system where both parties are against socialism and for bombing a new middle east country
It's not going to happen and by the time americans realize it they'll be distracted by invasion of bolivia and accepting that you can't punish people for lying by ousting them like said bolivia
The fact they had to ask says a lot.
why would I not agree with this?
I will never become a billionaire, so I have zero risk to support it.
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No more “tax”, only “take”. Take their fucking money away. They got so much money, it’s literally an existential threat to humanity.
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.
I'll pass on the check and stick with student loan forgiveness, Medicare for all, well funded public schools, housing for the homeless, etc...
Sounds affordable.
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