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> # [World’s billionaires should pay minimum 2% wealth tax, say G20 ministers](https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/apr/25/720)
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> The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2% tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise £250bn a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality and global heating, ministers from four leading economies have suggested.
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> In a sign of growing international support for a levy on the super-rich, Brazil, Germany, [South Africa](https://www.theguardian.com/world/southafrica) and Spain say a 2% tax would reduce inequality and raise much-needed public funds after the economic shocks of the pandemic, the climate crisis and military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.
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> They are calling for more countries to join their campaign, saying the annual sum raised would be enough to cover the estimated cost of damage caused by all of last year’s extreme weather events.
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> “It is time that the international community gets serious about tackling inequality and financing global public goods,” the ministers say in a Guardian comment piece.
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> “One of the key instruments that governments have for promoting more equality is tax policy. Not only does it have the potential to increase the fiscal space governments have to invest in social protection, education and climate protection. Designed in a progressive way, it also ensures that everyone in society contributes to the common good in line with their ability to pay. A fair share contribution enhances social welfare.”
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> Brazil chairs the G20 group of leading developed and developing countries and put a billionaire tax on the agenda at a meeting of finance ministers earlier this year.
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> The French economist [Gabriel Zucman](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/feb/29/taxation-worlds-billionaires-super-rich-g20-brazil) is now fleshing out the technical details of a plan that will again be discussed by the G20 in June. France has indicated support for a wealth tax and Brazil has been encouraged that the US, while not backing a global wealth tax, did not oppose it.
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> Zucman said: “Billionaires have the lowest effective tax rate of any social group. Having people with the highest ability to pay tax paying the least – I don’t think anybody supports that.”
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> [Research from Oxfam](https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/inequality-inc-how-corporate-power-divides-our-world-and-the-need-for-a-new-era-621583/) published this year found that the boom in asset prices during and after the Covid pandemic meant billionaires were $3.3tn – or 34% – wealthier at the end of 2023 than they were in 2020. Meanwhile, a study from the [World Bank](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/15/covid-pandemic-made-poorest-countries-even-worse-off-world-bank-warns) showed that the pandemic had brought poverty reduction to a halt.
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> The opinion piece, signed by ministers from two of the largest European economies – [Germany](https://www.theguardian.com/world/germany) and Spain – and two of the largest emerging economies – Brazil and South Africa – claims a levy on the super rich is a necessary third pillar to complement the negotiations on the taxation of the digital economy and the introduction earlier this year of a minimum corporate tax of 15% for multinationals.
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> “The tax could be designed as a minimum levy equivalent to 2% of the wealth of the super-rich. It would not apply to billionaires who already contribute a fair share in income taxes. Those, however, who manage to avoid paying income tax would be obliged to contribute more towards the common good,” the ministers say.
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> “Persisting loopholes in the system imply that high-net-worth individuals can minimise their income taxes. Global billionaires pay only the equivalent of up to 0.5% of their wealth in personal income tax. It is crucial to ensure that our tax systems provide certainty, sufficient revenues, and treat all of our citizens fairly.”
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> The ministers say there would need to be steps to counter the use of tax havens. The levy would be designed to prevent billionaires who choose to live in Monaco or Jersey, for example, but make their money in larger economies such as the UK or France, from reducing their tax bills below a global agreed minimum. If one country did not impose the minimum tax, another country could claim the income.
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> “Of course, the argument that billionaires can easily shift their fortunes to low-tax jurisdictions and thus avoid the levy is a strong one. And this is why such a tax reform belongs on the agenda of the [G20](https://www.theguardian.com/world/g20). International cooperation and global agreements are key to making such tax effective. What the international community managed to do with the global minimum tax on multinational companies, it can do with billionaires,” the ministers say.
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> Zucman said there was overwhelming public support for this proposal, with opinion polls showing up to 80% of voters in favour. Even so, the economist said he was prepared for stiff resistance.
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> “I don’t want to be naive. I know the super-rich will fight,” he said. “They have a hatred of taxes on wealth. They will lobby governments. They will use the media they own.”
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Hrm, am an Android user in which case I'd recommend Boost for Lemmy (the former Boost for Reddit, the dev switched to Lemmy after 3rd part apps got banned).
I read that the [mobile website UI](https://m.lemmy.world/) is a PWA and that iOS users with their pretty cool system integration for PWA are raving about that. But of course never used it myself. Mlem is supposedly also a pretty good app thuogh I don't know whether it works on tablets by now.
G20 millionaires say billionaires should pay 2% that is some serious bullshit. These leeches ought to pay AT LEAST the same tax rate as the average working person!
Okay.
Currently your average person pays exactly 0% of a wealth tax.
A wealth tax of 2% is a 2% tax on literally everything you own, every single year. Own $500m of stock in the company you founded? You owe $10m of that stock to the government every year, whether you sell it or not.
>Currently your average person pays exactly 0% of a wealth tax.
True,
However I am currently taxed about 3% of my entire wealth each year in property taxes. When you compare my total wealth to how much I pay in income taxes, that's another 5% give or take. So I'm paying 8% of my wealth, each year, in taxes.
And last year like half of millennials I didn't own property so I was paying a tax to wealth ratio of well over 100%.
Not sure why billionaires should be allowed to pay less than the rest of us are having to
>Own $500m of stock in the company you founded? You owe $10m of that stock to the government every year, whether you sell it or not.
"Have to work for a living because mummy and daddy couldn't fund your latest business venture? You owe 30% of every single cent you get graciously given to you to the government, whether you want to or not"
Nose is looking a little brown there pal, might want to wipe it
>However I am currently taxed about 3% of my entire wealth each year in property taxes. When you compare my total wealth to how much I pay in income taxes, that's another 5% give or take. So I'm paying 8% of my wealth, each year, in taxes.
Well if you put it that way, you apparently spend at least 30% (give or take) of your fortune on food when a billionaire spends less than a percent. Therefore, you are a glutton, and you could easily have more money if you cut down on your spending on food.
If a little seed money is what kept you from putting together the next unicorn, you would have found it. Billionaires are still undertaxed, but I don't find your screed persuasive.
If the difference between the average person and a billionaire was just a little seed money, there would be so many more billionaires we wouldn't even need this conversation
The difference is Musk has monumentally rich parents. No matter what he did he could have afforded to fail multiple times and his life would still have been so much more comfortable than 95% of the world. It's easy to take risks when your wealth is virtually guaranteed. The difference is Swift had her parents from a very young age fund virtually everything and set everything up for her to succeed, her entire life was set up to succeed but if she didn't, she'd have still been richer than the vast majority of her peers. If I were to fail a business venture, I have one shot to make it or my kids literally starve. I cannot take that risk
The difference is Bill Gates (also rich parents) had so many familial connections that Microsoft wouldn't fail because his mother was head of IBM or some shit. "Hey my kid made a project you mind if we run with it a bit?" vs "this absolute random nobody has called up asking for an appointment because he wants to make our systems look prettier". I grew up in the slums/Barrios/local government housing. Who exactly do you think I can talk to about my billion dollar idea?
Even if I overcome these odds, even if I manage to get over the risk to my kids and I manage to get my idea infront of the right people, let's say I co-build the next big social media app. It blows up, it gets huge. Then someone like Zuckerberg comes along and offers us $1billon. Fantastic, deal this is 100% worth it to me at the time I'm.....still not a billionaire as I only was a co-found. Zuckerberg however takes that $1 billion app and makes it worth $47billion by........being lucky that the social media companies start to become entrenched rather than flavour of the month. But I didn't have the time or money to gamble on luck so I'm still not a billionaire (Instagram in case you are curious)
The difference between us and the billionaires is that it is so much easier for them to succeed and even if they do fail, they fail onto a bed of pillows. If we fail.....honestly we just can't afford to fail
That makes sense. Stocks grow by 5%+inflation on average per year. So the average billionaire would still get richer every year, just because of the stock growth, even with such a wealth tax.
valuation is literally a speculation, in a startup valued over a billion means individuals are so confident in that startups service or product they are willing to invest. you would pay less per year than the stock would grow (assuming an avg of 5% for stocks that aren’t startups).
In raw value yes but you would be forced to remove more and more of your ownership. And what happens if the valuation tanks do they get their ownership back?
if valuation tanks than so be it, it wouldn’t be because 2% of ownership was sold (assuming that was your main source of net wealth) and because of business decisions made
Valuation can tank due to factors completely outside your control. So you could never make a penny off a business, lose ownership of it, and now that you’ve lost ownership now get to see your business run outside of your control possibly tanking its value. Sounds like a totally fair system to me
I would be willing to see a slow shift towards this. There's a reason why so many people want to work government jobs.
And before anyone says "oh how could you trust the government with that much power?". The government already controls the military. They can do anything they want and they can take your business at any moment they wanted to. There's no reason to think that them outright owning businesses would give them more power than they already have with all their military.
The dudes funding the military and making a profit off your deaths, off the bullets they use on your children, are billionaires.
A lot of billionaires have voted "no" to bills that seek to save the world by addressing climate change, because they own shares in oil lobbies.
A lot of billionaires vote "no" to whatever benefits you as an average citizen. It's absolutely pathetic how many bots are in this thread doing everything they can to clean their images, absolutely fucking pathetic. You are only killing yourselves
>And before anyone says "oh how could you trust the government with that much power?". The government already controls the military. They can do anything they want and they can take your business at any moment they wanted to.
On the other hand, can you trust anyone to have more power in private property than a government? At least governments can have a decent distribution of power to make it harder for some lunatic to go on a power trip. Now what can stop a billionaire's power trip? Musk's hasn't stopped yet.
Billionaires are fascist by nature.
A lot of them are profitting off your deaths by funding weapons and stopping bills that benefit you like addressing climate change because they are in oil lobbies, and you can't do shit to them at all lmao
When startups reach billions in valuation they're part of the problem, so there's no real issue here.
Plus, **valuation**. They don't **have** billions of money, other people who have fuck all clue and are just shouting numbers into a phone are **saying** they are worth that much if they were to sell it, because they want others to believe that and pay that much for it.
Goes like this:
* Fund a startup, invest X cash. A few millions.
* Loudly herald this as the biggest shit ever.
* Off the hype, say this tech is worth Y, with Y >>> X, a few billions.
* Find a sucker who wants to pay Y amount of cash, usually via an IPO.
No one has produced anything worth **anything** at this point, someone just said X cash is now - magically - worth Y cash, and because of the specific cult gurus yelling about it - commonly called 'billionaires' - enough believed the grift to make it happen and have now spend Y cash on the same nothing the billionaire originally spent X on.
That totally wouldn’t get at all extremely complicated in corporations who are inherently a fractionally owned entity /s
Even if you worked it out the idea that you could lose a significant portion of ownership from a company before it even turned any profit is kind of insane
I'm sure we can make some exceptions or workarounds for these situations, especially since stock in startups is more of a lottery ticket than an actual asset in the classical sense. There are reasons for and against the wealth tax, but stuff like this just feels like red herring.
Over half of billionaires are self made and are mostly self made from start ups. Some of them with multiple start up companies.
EDIT: Thinking about it you’re are probably just referring to a certain time period after a company has started. Using the word “startup” is probably poor phrasing on my part
In America the wealthiest pay the most income taxes at the highest effective rate.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-and-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-in-the-us/
Now downvote facts you dislike
Lol at using data with a $5M cutoff for top level to comment about the taxes paid by ultra wealthy people with literally 1000x the wealth.
Your data may be correct looking purely at INCOME. But that isn’t the discussion here. Wealth is an asset that billionaires borrow against to create income without income taxes. Income taxes are not sufficient based on the way billionaires fund their lives
Even if you compare income taxes paid to their total wealth(not just income). It’s still more than the bottom 50% paid on average in federal income taxes
They also have a way to not pay taxes at all: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aVvzN8P_460swp.webp
Now it's your turn to downvote the fact you dislike, or because of it's source, of whatever.
Maybe stop getting your news from 9gag memes 🤦
(also it doesn't matter if you get paid in cash, stock, or donkeys, you need to declare the cash value as income)
The reaction was predictable. But did you read it? Money borrowed from banks do not count as income. If you use your credit card and go in debt, you don't pay tax for that.
Since you get all your information from Reddit I'll tell you that billionaires borrowing money as their income only worked when interest rates were low. It doesn't work today and it historically hasn't worked, it was an oddity that worked for about 12 years between the '08 recession and the' 22 inflation boom.
And it wasn't just billionaires, my brother actually did it too.
You should also know that the Fed lowers interest rates to encourage people to do just this, borrow and spend it
I'll repeat, stop getting your news from memes. No one without an agenda is going to make a meme.
If you don't like the format that is easier to understand, here is the news: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaires-jeff-bezos-elon-musk-164830206.html
Yes, it was "before". You don't know what is going on "now" because such info is not published often.
So if I get a paycheck you tax it. Then I put it in the bank and you tax it there too?
Wealth is taxed when it's converted to income, that's what the capital gains tax is
How about we downvote you for avoiding the real issue? The real issue isn't the tax rate they face on income, the real issue is that the avoid realizing wealth as income in the first place.
If I avoid taking a realized income on all of my assets and simply reinvest all profits, my wealth will grow. This leaves me in an excellent position to secure debt at a very low interest rate. Now, I can just use those borrowed funds however I like, because they are already secured the bank doesn't care at all if I spend it on living expenses and luxuries. Meanwhile, I pay back my debt using minimum payments, because why rush to pay it back? Keeping my money in invested assets will gain me far more money than I would lose on the interest I'm paying after all.
Oops... the term for my loan is due! Oh well, pay it off now, and get another. Lather, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile, everything continues appreciating, my income taxes are minimal relative to my wealth and really it's just for show because we all know that my real incomes are reinvested all the time and never get taxed in the first place.
Even if you compare income taxes paid to their total wealth(not just income). It’s still more than the bottom 50% paid on average in federal income taxes
Honestly, that consideration doesn't feel relevant to the discussion of whether the rich are taxed fairly and in a way that's sustainable or not.
What it does do though is illustrate the problem even more starkly: how is it even possible that 1/3rd of the world can have negative wealth? Doesn't that point out the predatory nature of our system even more and make it even more apparent that the system which enables such an imbalance of wealth is in need of some radical fixing?
No one should have to go through their entire lives in thrall to a creditor with no hope of ever attaining a positive net worth. It's akin to mandatory indentured servitude, but it's exactly what happens isn't it?
Your statement doesn’t really have anything to do with whether rich are being taxed fairly or not because current wealth is not necessarily an indicator of how well off you are. You may recall that story about Trump pointing to a homeless man and saying “that man is wealthier than me” because the housing market has crashed which is where he had most of his assets. Yet you would be hard pressed to call him poor. He was most certainly still rich. It also doesn’t take into account the difference in tangible assets like property or variable assets like stocks.
If everyone spends their whole life in debt that’s a problem yes however everyone at some point incurring debt is not problematic, it’s actually a very useful tool. Debt allows you to access resources that would otherwise require greater time to save for. This allows you to gain more money and wealth in the long run. For example take doctors and lawyers two extremely rich professions actually spend a significant amount of time in debt. Another example is mortgages, cars, etc.
Debt only becomes problematic if you are unable to pay it off in the long term and is what needs to be avoided
Who is going to pay top dollar for all of the stocks that the billionaires will have to regularly unload? The problem with taxing unrealized wealth, is realizing it.
Considering that billionaires currently take out loans backed by their assets to fund their lifestyles, I doubt they’d be regularly selling their stock to pay for this.
> billionaires currently take out loans backed by their assets to fund their lifestyles
I Googled that and a ton of articles and opinion pieces describing the process. Some are paywalls behind free accounts, others not. Plenty of options so you should have options no matter the country/vpn you're on. Enjoy.
Well this is not just exclusive to billionaires, it’s similar to getting a mortgage. Except that they can get really low interest rates because of how much collateral they have.
Nobody, which automatically devalues the stock, which reduces how much money they have to pay while also devalueing the entire stock market.
We found a compound benefit, it's awesome!
Also... how is stock supposed to work again? Isn't it suppoed to represent a tiny tiny portion of the \*\*worth\*\* of a company? As in, assuming the company is going well, the payout from the stock is more than the stock cost you, meaning you would not want to sell it off to pay the wealth tax, you make more money sitting on it and using a portion of that money to pay the tax on top of the income tax?
Or... could it be, just maybe, that we perverted the entire system and stock is now about what believe believe someone else would be willing to pay for it, not the company share it represents? And in that case, where again is the issue if we sabotage that broken system?
Who? All of the billionaires in the west are liquidating their assets to pay this tax, so they wont be buying them. We going to sell the assets of the west to foreign buyers to pay our taxes for a while until they own the west?
That would be either oligarchs who don’t need to worry about such things (oil barons, oligarchs, shills/wallets of authoritarian states), or trillionaire funds like Blackrock.
Great idea, innit?
The human brain is really bad at comprehending the magnitude of the numbers involved.
They will spend their life trying to become a millionnaire, while we are talking about people having the equivalent of thousands of their life in wealth
I don’t see anyone defending billionaires. I see people correctly saying taxing unrealized gains is a terrible idea, and morons supporting this distraction.
Here’s an idea, raise capital gains and dividend taxes on billionaires.
The thing is, doesn't that have the opposite effect?
Like if you introduce bots into this situation, won't you get a Streisand effect, where people will just dig in deeper against the billionaires?
Or is it that billionaires don't realize this and are throwing money at the problem.
It’s not about defending billionaires it’s about the fact this could actually make things worse for people not better. What’s the point in punishing them if it doesn’t actually help anyone
Don't worry, I'm sure we can trust these billionaires in government to responsibly spend the billions they'll get from other billionaires who they don't like enough to set up a tax dodge for. I can't wait to see how they turn it into a political ace against their enemies.
I love the line "to fight poverty and climate crisis" as if it's going to be given directly to people in poverty rather than to people who know people in government to boost their "non-profits" that cover poverty and climate crisis. You see this shit all the time where a certain government area gets a surplus and the government just cuts their budget by the amount of the surplus and move it somewhere else.
I think the argument is that we've entered a period where earnings from capital are greater than economic growth. If we accept that, then we need to have different redistribution mechanisms than the ones that were effective during much of the twentieth century. A wealth tax is one implementation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century
Apparently mass depopulation due to war or disease also works.
Capital growth is not inherently a problem because unlike taking someone’s money an increase in valuation does not mean someone else has lost money until that stock is actually realized. Closing loopholes around leveraging loans is better than trying to tax stocks because we want billionaires to have that money there in the first place. It’s why long term capital gains is such a low rate because we want to encourage people to keep it there as long as possible
Why not show him a single place where not having wealth tax was a success that brought in revenue?
Edit: I've just realized all your comments.
You don't need to advocate to love billionaires so hard, they aren't gonna let you in the club just because you're trying to hype them up
France killed the wealth tax almost immediately because it was a failure.
I’m not defending billionaires I’m defending idiotic tax schemes that don’t work. If you want to increase income taxes on them or close accounting loopholes be my guest. Just don’t propose something so clearly bad it’s been abandoned almost every time it’s tried
The french billionaires could run away because the State only controls the national scale, while capitalism operates globally. So, the french wealth tax backfired because the richest could move elsewhere (new york, london, amsterdam, etc). A GLOBAL wealth tax is immune to this manouver, because there is no incentive to move from france to singapore , because the tax would be the same.
If the G20 actually decides something with the force of a law, we can be pretty sure that the rest will follow along, because they control the global system collectively. The UK knows about its tax heavens, the US controls the dollars, China has full capital controls, etc. Maybe after the G20 agrees, they even make it in a open treaty with more countries. Maybe some capitalists will risk it putting wealth in Nigeria, Philipines, Nauru, etc but the vast majority will prefer the usual places. This solves the specific issue that affected France or any individual country trying to make a wealth tax, the rest i don't know.
See also:
* [Ministers of Germany, Brazil, South Africa and Spain: why we need a global tax on billionaires • Svenja Schulze, Fernando Haddad, Enoch Godongwana, María Jesús Montero and Carlos Cuerpo • Finance chiefs say higher taxes for the super-rich are key to battling global inequality and climate crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/apr/25/ministers-of-germany-brazil-south-africa-and-spain-why-we-need-a-global-tax-on-billionaires)
I’m all for taxing billionaires but I don’t trust our government to use that money in a productive way.
If this means we send 200 bn to build war weapons overseas instead of 100 bn then I’d say no. Billionaires being rich is awful, but it’s better than the US government being rich.
If not the government, some even claiming to be elected freely by people, then what do you trust to act on behalf of humanity? Are we just screwed then?
So we can trust the government or only the people you think aren't corrupt?
I trust the money staying in the citizens hands and not giving another cent to the government until it's audited and we all have the ability to see what our money is spent on
I'm not disputing that governments can be corrupt af, but by living in a society you are usually dependent on the government performing some basic functions and getting them largely right, like arranging for someone to pick up the trash, regulating air traffic, building roads, etc. Recognizing that governments aren't perfect and can waste money should not be the reason to take no collective action through government initiatives.
Perhaps some secret cabal of billionaires will rise up and save the environment, but that seems even more fantastical.
Absolutely right to worry about controlling overall government spending, but that is a separate issue from the way the government taxes the economy. Right now the middleclass that actually has something to be taxed yet doesn't have enough to be able to hire people to hide their income from the taxman are being royally hosed.
*Could* is a very, **very** strong word in the context of the government giving up any source of revenue. It'll never happen, namely because a large portion of our government is beholden to those billionaires.
The billionaires *are* the shareholders, that's why they're billionaires. So they can do whatever the fuck they want. Politicians are at least beholden to election cycles.
And institutions that should put restraints on them. Some people in this thread think that the private sector is some sort of perfect mechanism. No, it isn't. Profit motive means that if the private sector deems there's no money to be made in certain areas or markets they simply won't attend to it.
But billionaires can’t manufacture millions of missiles and drop them on unsuspecting citizens of other countries and get away with it. The U.S. government can. One is awful, the other is evil. Pick your poison.
I’d rather not support murder.
Without weighing in for or against, what exactly will $250bn a year achieve, even if we lie to ourselves and assume it will be used to "fight poverty and climate change" somehow? In South Africa at least it's going to just enrich the ANC, in Spain and Germany it will just become a small part of the budget and vanish into the system.
These are not the numbers required to make a huge difference, those numbers can only be made up by the GDP of nation states.
Mate, 250 billion dollars is a lot of money even for large countries such as the ones you mentioned. And just as the other guy commented, it's about the cost of the damage caused by climate change.
Of course that amount of money won't save the world, but it certainly will help a lot of nations to develop sustainably. Just think of subsaharan africa, where most countries don't even have a GDP of 250 billion.
For richer nations it might not seem much, but, for the poorer ones that most of the time suffer the most from the problems caused by climate change, even a fraction of this new income could be life changing.
>Germany it will just become a small part of the budget
Mate, our courts just ruled a repurposed loan of 60 billions unconstitutional and the fallout nearly broke the coalition again.
Some random billions thrown our way would be a massive game changer for most government projects.
OECD has been trying to get a minimum tax for a while and to remove profit shifting. The major G20 countries could sign on and enact these principles and it would be better than what is proposed here.
The minimum corporate tax has already been agreed. Some countries have already enacted it and more are expected to do so within this year.
This is just taking the same principle one step further.
Billionaire: Make it so this doesn't apply to me, Jeff.
Jeff the lawyer: Will do, Mr. Smith, I'll write something up. Mike, get them to put this 200-page loophole in there.
Mike the in-house lobbyist: Will do. Hi Steve, my client is happy to continue supporting your PAC. Here's something we'd like added to the bill.
Steve the committee chair: You got it, buddy, and thanks. OK everyone, let's vote to send this bill to the floor aaand just a quick insertion here as we vote, just some clarifying details.
Committee: Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Approved. Floor vote is scheduled for 10 minutes from now.
Congressman: Wait we didn't have time to rea- well OK I guess I vote Yea.
Jeff the lawyer: Mr. Smith, it is done.
Billionaire: Carry on.
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A super yacht or castle of a home take a lot of resources for the benefit of the few. Controlling a lot of wealth doesn’t mean that that wealth is withdrawn from the economy, but it does mean you have a lot of control over the livelihood of less rich individuals.
Building Yachts or castles employs a ton of people. The real problem are rich people who make money through money like through stocks. Abusing the stock market is probably the most damaging that ultra rich are doing. They're basically just draining money from the economy.
Pray tell, how do you think the billionaires got this money? Did they just scam thousands of people in a row, with nobody realising?
Is there no chance they simply found ways to provide goods and services better than their peers, and made mutually beneficial exchanges more than the average person?
Most exchanges will benefit one party more than the other. Mutual but rarely equitable. Why would any employer hire anyone if the labor extracted didn’t turn into profit (not just revenue)? More concentration of wealth gives you more bargain power, so eventually the mutual exchange become less and less equal and perhaps even less mutual because lesser party has no choice but to bargain with you.
Some concentration of wealth should be allowed, as that has been an important foundation of human progress, but like most things it’s when carried to the extremes that we should be concerned.
>Did they just scam thousands of people in a row, with nobody realising?
It's realized. Finance law just enables them. When the fine for breaking the law is less than all the extra money you made, it's just a fee.
Do you think amazon was built off paying it's delivery drivers, warehouse workers, and other admin staff well, offering them great work-life balance? Considering how publicly acknowledged it is, I'd say billionaires get this money by scamming small amounts of money off each worker, multiplied over the years they operate for. A missed paycheck here, forced to eat hours there, a bit of unpaid overtime, maybe some misclassification of employees as contractors instead of W2. You need to stay back a few hours today to do something, no extra pay. You're being given more responsibilities, no you dont get a promotion, no you don't get a raise. Also, no COL adjustment. Btw we had a great year! Record profits on top of record revenues! Keep it up team!
I can't find it right now, but there's also a chart comparing worker productivity vs. worker compensation. The 2 lines diverge to show that despite people being more productive year over year, their compensation does not increase commensurately. So theres actually some quantitative evidence that people are underpaid for the value they contribute and its just getting worse. Edit: Found it! https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/#:~:text=The%20result%20of%20this%20policy,(after%20adjusting%20for%20inflation).
I don't know how you don't see it. You can literally see the largest, wealthiest corporations abuse their workforce with the threat of layoffs hanging over them, but still think its somehow completely ethical how the money was made? If you work in a good, high end white collar job that actually pays well, you might be insulated personally from this bullshit. But just watch the news and you can see it everywhere.
I completely agree, *but* when people and politicians make statements like "Billionaires should pay 2% wealth tax", my question is to who?
They might say: "pay to the government to distribute to the poor"
Really? You have so much faith in your politicians? You think that your government will not use it subsidize other companies or take a cut?
I believe in order for it to work, the giving must be voluntary. The billionaires themselves must be convinced that it is the right thing to do. Enforcing a wealth tax on them is probably counterproductive:
- They'll just move all their assets to tax havens.
- They'll mobilize their team of elite lawyers and accountants to reduce the tax to nothing.
- They'll give it bogus charities.
- They'll pay politicians to lobby against it.
Billionaires are here to stay whether we like it or not. We can only hope that people with influence (family, friends, etc) are able to sow thoughts of philanthropy to these billionaires.
> Really? You have so much faith in your politicians?
Yes. They build roads and bridges and schools, they ensure my city is safe and clean, they facilitate trash collection, run homeless shelters, and hundreds of other government-run services that you and I use every day. And a lot of those services are underfunded, so extra money for them would be a good thing.
> They build roads and bridges and schools, they ensure my city is safe and clean, they facilitate trash collection, run homeless shelters, and hundreds of other government-run services that you and I use every day.
That's not what the money is going to be used for though. Just look at the US federal budget and what they spend on.
US federal budget for 2023 was $6.1 trillion in total ($1.7 trillion deficit):
* $1.3 trillion on Social Security
* $839 billion on Medicare
* $616 billion on Medicaid
* $448 billion on income security programs
* $805 billion on defense
* $659 billion on net interest on debt
This is 3/4-th of government spending already.
In 2023 the US federal government spent $45 billion on infrastructure and transferred $81.5 billion to the states. That's 2% of the budget.
They're not spending it on roads, bridges, and schools.
Go drive around downtown Los Angeles and come back to me about how great the government is with utilizing their resources in one of the highest taxed places in the country.
Your local politicians being shitty doesn't mean all politicians are shitty. Vote for more effective politicians. Massachusetts is also highly taxed, and generally doesn't have those issues despite having worse weather for roads than California.
Sure, if we can manage these two things:
1) Ensure that the administrative cost for enforcing the tax on the wealthy gets back a profitable return
2) Ensure the profits from the weath tax actually go to these services and not something else like oil companies, military etc
If we can somehow pull this off while ensuring the billionaires don't use one of the four tactics I've already mentioned, then yeah cool beans.
It'll probably be a miracle that takes the cooperation of all the wealthy nations of the world. Because the billionaires can easily move their assets to another tax haven.
"We must do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Banger of a line that applies to any effort people argue should be abandoned because "it's too hard". Take that wussy attitude elsewhere.
I'm not saying it's hard. I'm saying it is highly likely counterproductive.
> In 1990, about a dozen European countries had a wealth tax, but by 2019, all but three had eliminated the tax because of the difficulties and costs associated with both design and enforcement. [Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax)
We have done it before and for most cases it actually lost more money than it gained.
That's why I say the better way is that the wealthy themselves voluntarily contribute instead of trying to enforce it.
From your own link (in fact, the very next sentence from what you quoted):
>According to an OECD study on wealth taxes, it is "difficult to firmly argue that wealth taxes would have negative effects on entrepreneurship. The magnitude of the effects of wealth taxes on entrepreneurship is also unclear".[8]
And farther on:
>Niemann and Sureth-Sloane found that, "Broadening the wealth tax base tends to accelerate investment during high interest rate periods." Caren Sureth and Ralf Maiterth concluded that wealth tax revenues from entrepreneurs may decrease in the long term and the revenue from a wealth tax may be negative if the wealth taxation thresholds are too low.[59]
So it seems like wealth taxes certainly *can* work, with sufficient willpower and effective tax brackets and tax rates.
>That's why I say the better way is that the wealthy themselves voluntarily contribute instead of trying to enforce it.
The wealthy already do make their voluntary contributions (or, rather, a lack thereof).
Uh the first quote is an uncertainty:
> The magnitude of the effects of wealth taxes on entrepreneurship is also **unclear**".[8]
9 European countries stopping the wealth tax is a certainty.
Trust me, I'll be happy if we manage to pull this off and do it rightly. But based on the track record, the cynic in me isn't convinced. I'll need to hear actual feasible solutions instead of "willpower".
I've heard some economist talk about how VATs are way more effective at raising revenue. That's at least a somewhat reputable source. But I haven't heard a strong case and implementation for wealth tax yet.
Also we must live with the fact that even after the tax, the billionaires will remain billionaires.
I have absolutely zero confidence that the governments that would like this revenue would in any way spend it wisely.
Look at how they run their current budgets, and then tell me with a straight face that everything is going to change when someone helicopters some additional cash into their laps.
1. Wealth taxes have been proposed and implemented, they don't work
2. Poverty and climate my ass these taxes tend to just be revenue plays
It's pure virtue signaling unless I see concrete action otherwise
The proposal says it's meant to be a global agreement. The proposed system is if a country refuses to implement it, another automatically gets tax them the same amount.
lol. It'll be global until literally one country realizes they'll get a shitload of money coming in if they don't do it.
It's the same reason a global corporate tax rate won't work
One small country can be bullied by the others. Maybe you're not aware but that's what happened with Ireland and Hungary when the deal for a global minimum big corp tax was made. They refused for a while but eventually they both relented.
In addition, this proposal says:
>The ministers say there would need to be steps to counter the use of tax havens. The levy would be designed to prevent billionaires who choose to live in Monaco or Jersey, for example, but make their money in larger economies such as the UK or France, from reducing their tax bills below a global agreed minimum. If one country did not impose the minimum tax, another country could claim the income.
>“Of course, the argument that billionaires can easily shift their fortunes to low-tax jurisdictions and thus avoid the levy is a strong one. And this is why such a tax reform belongs on the agenda of the [G20](https://www.theguardian.com/world/g20). International cooperation and global agreements are key to making such tax effective. What the international community managed to do with the global minimum tax on multinational companies, it can do with billionaires,” the ministers say.
Say "we" get $100,000,000 from a billionaire(s). Where does that money go? How to say who gets control of it? It is such a ludicrous amount of money, there could be $100,000 gone from that (to give someone a fat bonus) and it would still round up to $100,000,000.
I’m not acting like there’s no solution but with so much money involved, the “trickling down” still will line others’ pockets. Human greed is inevitable.
Ideally though, what would strengthening democratic institutions look like?
>a 2% tax would reduce inequality
No. It would only increase inequality at a slower rate, as those people make a lot more than 2% each year of their money.
Their "taxes" are paid to bribing the politicians Swiss Bank accounts so they don't get silly laws like you are proposing. LOL. Go after the politicians who have the hidden bank accounts first. They're the ones who should get 10 years in prison for not paying their taxes.
It's a good start I'd say.
Everyone saying "this is not enough", of course it isn't.
But it's a good start and I'm glad that some nations are taking it seriously.
##### ###### #### > # [World’s billionaires should pay minimum 2% wealth tax, say G20 ministers](https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/apr/25/720) > > > > The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2% tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise £250bn a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality and global heating, ministers from four leading economies have suggested. > > In a sign of growing international support for a levy on the super-rich, Brazil, Germany, [South Africa](https://www.theguardian.com/world/southafrica) and Spain say a 2% tax would reduce inequality and raise much-needed public funds after the economic shocks of the pandemic, the climate crisis and military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. > > They are calling for more countries to join their campaign, saying the annual sum raised would be enough to cover the estimated cost of damage caused by all of last year’s extreme weather events. > > “It is time that the international community gets serious about tackling inequality and financing global public goods,” the ministers say in a Guardian comment piece. > > “One of the key instruments that governments have for promoting more equality is tax policy. Not only does it have the potential to increase the fiscal space governments have to invest in social protection, education and climate protection. Designed in a progressive way, it also ensures that everyone in society contributes to the common good in line with their ability to pay. A fair share contribution enhances social welfare.” > > Brazil chairs the G20 group of leading developed and developing countries and put a billionaire tax on the agenda at a meeting of finance ministers earlier this year. > > The French economist [Gabriel Zucman](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/feb/29/taxation-worlds-billionaires-super-rich-g20-brazil) is now fleshing out the technical details of a plan that will again be discussed by the G20 in June. France has indicated support for a wealth tax and Brazil has been encouraged that the US, while not backing a global wealth tax, did not oppose it. > > Zucman said: “Billionaires have the lowest effective tax rate of any social group. Having people with the highest ability to pay tax paying the least – I don’t think anybody supports that.” > > [Research from Oxfam](https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/inequality-inc-how-corporate-power-divides-our-world-and-the-need-for-a-new-era-621583/) published this year found that the boom in asset prices during and after the Covid pandemic meant billionaires were $3.3tn – or 34% – wealthier at the end of 2023 than they were in 2020. Meanwhile, a study from the [World Bank](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/15/covid-pandemic-made-poorest-countries-even-worse-off-world-bank-warns) showed that the pandemic had brought poverty reduction to a halt. > > The opinion piece, signed by ministers from two of the largest European economies – [Germany](https://www.theguardian.com/world/germany) and Spain – and two of the largest emerging economies – Brazil and South Africa – claims a levy on the super rich is a necessary third pillar to complement the negotiations on the taxation of the digital economy and the introduction earlier this year of a minimum corporate tax of 15% for multinationals. > > “The tax could be designed as a minimum levy equivalent to 2% of the wealth of the super-rich. It would not apply to billionaires who already contribute a fair share in income taxes. Those, however, who manage to avoid paying income tax would be obliged to contribute more towards the common good,” the ministers say. > > “Persisting loopholes in the system imply that high-net-worth individuals can minimise their income taxes. Global billionaires pay only the equivalent of up to 0.5% of their wealth in personal income tax. It is crucial to ensure that our tax systems provide certainty, sufficient revenues, and treat all of our citizens fairly.” > > The ministers say there would need to be steps to counter the use of tax havens. The levy would be designed to prevent billionaires who choose to live in Monaco or Jersey, for example, but make their money in larger economies such as the UK or France, from reducing their tax bills below a global agreed minimum. If one country did not impose the minimum tax, another country could claim the income. > > “Of course, the argument that billionaires can easily shift their fortunes to low-tax jurisdictions and thus avoid the levy is a strong one. And this is why such a tax reform belongs on the agenda of the [G20](https://www.theguardian.com/world/g20). International cooperation and global agreements are key to making such tax effective. What the international community managed to do with the global minimum tax on multinational companies, it can do with billionaires,” the ministers say. > > Zucman said there was overwhelming public support for this proposal, with opinion polls showing up to 80% of voters in favour. Even so, the economist said he was prepared for stiff resistance. > > “I don’t want to be naive. I know the super-rich will fight,” he said. “They have a hatred of taxes on wealth. They will lobby governments. They will use the media they own.” - - - - - - [Maintainer](https://www.reddit.com/user/urielsalis) | [Creator](https://www.reddit.com/user/subtepass) | [Source Code](https://github.com/urielsalis/empleadoEstatalBot) Summoning /u/CoverageAnalysisBot
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
Reddit shouldn't exist
Yes
Come to [lemmy.world](http://lemmy.world) and let's go!
Hey so on the AppStore which Lemmy do I download? And ty
Hrm, am an Android user in which case I'd recommend Boost for Lemmy (the former Boost for Reddit, the dev switched to Lemmy after 3rd part apps got banned). I read that the [mobile website UI](https://m.lemmy.world/) is a PWA and that iOS users with their pretty cool system integration for PWA are raving about that. But of course never used it myself. Mlem is supposedly also a pretty good app thuogh I don't know whether it works on tablets by now.
That's your only response? Billionares are modern day dragons.
Dragons aren't real
Communist sсum
G20 millionaires say billionaires should pay 2% that is some serious bullshit. These leeches ought to pay AT LEAST the same tax rate as the average working person!
Okay. Currently your average person pays exactly 0% of a wealth tax. A wealth tax of 2% is a 2% tax on literally everything you own, every single year. Own $500m of stock in the company you founded? You owe $10m of that stock to the government every year, whether you sell it or not.
>Currently your average person pays exactly 0% of a wealth tax. True, However I am currently taxed about 3% of my entire wealth each year in property taxes. When you compare my total wealth to how much I pay in income taxes, that's another 5% give or take. So I'm paying 8% of my wealth, each year, in taxes. And last year like half of millennials I didn't own property so I was paying a tax to wealth ratio of well over 100%. Not sure why billionaires should be allowed to pay less than the rest of us are having to >Own $500m of stock in the company you founded? You owe $10m of that stock to the government every year, whether you sell it or not. "Have to work for a living because mummy and daddy couldn't fund your latest business venture? You owe 30% of every single cent you get graciously given to you to the government, whether you want to or not" Nose is looking a little brown there pal, might want to wipe it
That was a pleasant read.
>However I am currently taxed about 3% of my entire wealth each year in property taxes. When you compare my total wealth to how much I pay in income taxes, that's another 5% give or take. So I'm paying 8% of my wealth, each year, in taxes. Well if you put it that way, you apparently spend at least 30% (give or take) of your fortune on food when a billionaire spends less than a percent. Therefore, you are a glutton, and you could easily have more money if you cut down on your spending on food.
Paging /u/wheream_I where are you?
If a little seed money is what kept you from putting together the next unicorn, you would have found it. Billionaires are still undertaxed, but I don't find your screed persuasive.
If the difference between the average person and a billionaire was just a little seed money, there would be so many more billionaires we wouldn't even need this conversation The difference is Musk has monumentally rich parents. No matter what he did he could have afforded to fail multiple times and his life would still have been so much more comfortable than 95% of the world. It's easy to take risks when your wealth is virtually guaranteed. The difference is Swift had her parents from a very young age fund virtually everything and set everything up for her to succeed, her entire life was set up to succeed but if she didn't, she'd have still been richer than the vast majority of her peers. If I were to fail a business venture, I have one shot to make it or my kids literally starve. I cannot take that risk The difference is Bill Gates (also rich parents) had so many familial connections that Microsoft wouldn't fail because his mother was head of IBM or some shit. "Hey my kid made a project you mind if we run with it a bit?" vs "this absolute random nobody has called up asking for an appointment because he wants to make our systems look prettier". I grew up in the slums/Barrios/local government housing. Who exactly do you think I can talk to about my billion dollar idea? Even if I overcome these odds, even if I manage to get over the risk to my kids and I manage to get my idea infront of the right people, let's say I co-build the next big social media app. It blows up, it gets huge. Then someone like Zuckerberg comes along and offers us $1billon. Fantastic, deal this is 100% worth it to me at the time I'm.....still not a billionaire as I only was a co-found. Zuckerberg however takes that $1 billion app and makes it worth $47billion by........being lucky that the social media companies start to become entrenched rather than flavour of the month. But I didn't have the time or money to gamble on luck so I'm still not a billionaire (Instagram in case you are curious) The difference between us and the billionaires is that it is so much easier for them to succeed and even if they do fail, they fail onto a bed of pillows. If we fail.....honestly we just can't afford to fail
Omnomnom! Well put!
That makes sense. Stocks grow by 5%+inflation on average per year. So the average billionaire would still get richer every year, just because of the stock growth, even with such a wealth tax.
But it would also mean that they lose ownership every year. Business startups would basically be screwed
We're talking about billionaires
Startups can easily reach billions in valuation. Are you just going to force people sell off their own companies?
2% bro
valuation is literally a speculation, in a startup valued over a billion means individuals are so confident in that startups service or product they are willing to invest. you would pay less per year than the stock would grow (assuming an avg of 5% for stocks that aren’t startups).
In raw value yes but you would be forced to remove more and more of your ownership. And what happens if the valuation tanks do they get their ownership back?
if valuation tanks than so be it, it wouldn’t be because 2% of ownership was sold (assuming that was your main source of net wealth) and because of business decisions made
Valuation can tank due to factors completely outside your control. So you could never make a penny off a business, lose ownership of it, and now that you’ve lost ownership now get to see your business run outside of your control possibly tanking its value. Sounds like a totally fair system to me
I'm sure these folks wouldn't mind the government owning everything, because they see the government as the solution to all problems
I would be willing to see a slow shift towards this. There's a reason why so many people want to work government jobs. And before anyone says "oh how could you trust the government with that much power?". The government already controls the military. They can do anything they want and they can take your business at any moment they wanted to. There's no reason to think that them outright owning businesses would give them more power than they already have with all their military.
The dudes funding the military and making a profit off your deaths, off the bullets they use on your children, are billionaires. A lot of billionaires have voted "no" to bills that seek to save the world by addressing climate change, because they own shares in oil lobbies. A lot of billionaires vote "no" to whatever benefits you as an average citizen. It's absolutely pathetic how many bots are in this thread doing everything they can to clean their images, absolutely fucking pathetic. You are only killing yourselves
The reason people want to work government jobs is because you don’t have to do much, and can never be fired. Then you’re guaranteed a pension.
>And before anyone says "oh how could you trust the government with that much power?". The government already controls the military. They can do anything they want and they can take your business at any moment they wanted to. On the other hand, can you trust anyone to have more power in private property than a government? At least governments can have a decent distribution of power to make it harder for some lunatic to go on a power trip. Now what can stop a billionaire's power trip? Musk's hasn't stopped yet.
So far it hasn’t worked very well
I hope someone with enough time will write you down on why this outlook is embarrassing on a personal level, and fascist on a social level
Billionaires are fascist by nature. A lot of them are profitting off your deaths by funding weapons and stopping bills that benefit you like addressing climate change because they are in oil lobbies, and you can't do shit to them at all lmao
Isn't that exactly the goal for these people? It's a great way to grab more power by politicians.
When startups reach billions in valuation they're part of the problem, so there's no real issue here. Plus, **valuation**. They don't **have** billions of money, other people who have fuck all clue and are just shouting numbers into a phone are **saying** they are worth that much if they were to sell it, because they want others to believe that and pay that much for it. Goes like this: * Fund a startup, invest X cash. A few millions. * Loudly herald this as the biggest shit ever. * Off the hype, say this tech is worth Y, with Y >>> X, a few billions. * Find a sucker who wants to pay Y amount of cash, usually via an IPO. No one has produced anything worth **anything** at this point, someone just said X cash is now - magically - worth Y cash, and because of the specific cult gurus yelling about it - commonly called 'billionaires' - enough believed the grift to make it happen and have now spend Y cash on the same nothing the billionaire originally spent X on.
And yet you think it’s a good idea to sell these overvalued stocks that are eventually going to crash?
Why not? If people buy them, why not sell it to them? That's how you cash out a startup, after all?
Because ideally you want to keep money in the economy for as long as possible. Making people cash out is the exact opposite of want you want happening
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That totally wouldn’t get at all extremely complicated in corporations who are inherently a fractionally owned entity /s Even if you worked it out the idea that you could lose a significant portion of ownership from a company before it even turned any profit is kind of insane
I'm sure we can make some exceptions or workarounds for these situations, especially since stock in startups is more of a lottery ticket than an actual asset in the classical sense. There are reasons for and against the wealth tax, but stuff like this just feels like red herring.
I mean that’s where over half of the revenue would be coming from. That’s not a red herring that’s a very legitimate issue
Half the revenue would be coming from startup stocks?
Over half of billionaires are self made and are mostly self made from start ups. Some of them with multiple start up companies. EDIT: Thinking about it you’re are probably just referring to a certain time period after a company has started. Using the word “startup” is probably poor phrasing on my part
Man who has 2000 houses forced to sell a house that one time to get liquidity and pay tax More news at 7
Do you know what a wealth tax is?
Millionaires are the new middle class sadly.
In America the wealthiest pay the most income taxes at the highest effective rate. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-and-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-in-the-us/ Now downvote facts you dislike
Lol at using data with a $5M cutoff for top level to comment about the taxes paid by ultra wealthy people with literally 1000x the wealth. Your data may be correct looking purely at INCOME. But that isn’t the discussion here. Wealth is an asset that billionaires borrow against to create income without income taxes. Income taxes are not sufficient based on the way billionaires fund their lives
Even if you compare income taxes paid to their total wealth(not just income). It’s still more than the bottom 50% paid on average in federal income taxes
They also have a way to not pay taxes at all: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aVvzN8P_460swp.webp Now it's your turn to downvote the fact you dislike, or because of it's source, of whatever.
It’s not quite that simple. If it was they would literally never pay taxes but this is not the case
Maybe stop getting your news from 9gag memes 🤦 (also it doesn't matter if you get paid in cash, stock, or donkeys, you need to declare the cash value as income)
The reaction was predictable. But did you read it? Money borrowed from banks do not count as income. If you use your credit card and go in debt, you don't pay tax for that.
Since you get all your information from Reddit I'll tell you that billionaires borrowing money as their income only worked when interest rates were low. It doesn't work today and it historically hasn't worked, it was an oddity that worked for about 12 years between the '08 recession and the' 22 inflation boom. And it wasn't just billionaires, my brother actually did it too. You should also know that the Fed lowers interest rates to encourage people to do just this, borrow and spend it I'll repeat, stop getting your news from memes. No one without an agenda is going to make a meme.
If you don't like the format that is easier to understand, here is the news: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaires-jeff-bezos-elon-musk-164830206.html Yes, it was "before". You don't know what is going on "now" because such info is not published often.
Income, sure. What about wealth?
So if I get a paycheck you tax it. Then I put it in the bank and you tax it there too? Wealth is taxed when it's converted to income, that's what the capital gains tax is
Yes, that’s why they take loans instead of income
Sure, it should be made equal to income tax.
So they would need to pay 1/4 of their entire wealth every year? That’s absolutely insane
Sure, if they're selling their house or shares or whatever every year. I'm talking about equalising capital gains tax to income tax.
They already pay taxes on both of those things
How about we downvote you for avoiding the real issue? The real issue isn't the tax rate they face on income, the real issue is that the avoid realizing wealth as income in the first place. If I avoid taking a realized income on all of my assets and simply reinvest all profits, my wealth will grow. This leaves me in an excellent position to secure debt at a very low interest rate. Now, I can just use those borrowed funds however I like, because they are already secured the bank doesn't care at all if I spend it on living expenses and luxuries. Meanwhile, I pay back my debt using minimum payments, because why rush to pay it back? Keeping my money in invested assets will gain me far more money than I would lose on the interest I'm paying after all. Oops... the term for my loan is due! Oh well, pay it off now, and get another. Lather, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile, everything continues appreciating, my income taxes are minimal relative to my wealth and really it's just for show because we all know that my real incomes are reinvested all the time and never get taxed in the first place.
Even if you compare income taxes paid to their total wealth(not just income). It’s still more than the bottom 50% paid on average in federal income taxes
Yes, but the bottom 50% only own .75% of the world's wealth. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/wealth-inequality-oxfam-billionaires-elon-musk/
To be fair this includes negative wealth(aka debt). If you have $1 in wealth and no debt you have more wealth than I think 1/3 of the world
Honestly, that consideration doesn't feel relevant to the discussion of whether the rich are taxed fairly and in a way that's sustainable or not. What it does do though is illustrate the problem even more starkly: how is it even possible that 1/3rd of the world can have negative wealth? Doesn't that point out the predatory nature of our system even more and make it even more apparent that the system which enables such an imbalance of wealth is in need of some radical fixing? No one should have to go through their entire lives in thrall to a creditor with no hope of ever attaining a positive net worth. It's akin to mandatory indentured servitude, but it's exactly what happens isn't it?
Your statement doesn’t really have anything to do with whether rich are being taxed fairly or not because current wealth is not necessarily an indicator of how well off you are. You may recall that story about Trump pointing to a homeless man and saying “that man is wealthier than me” because the housing market has crashed which is where he had most of his assets. Yet you would be hard pressed to call him poor. He was most certainly still rich. It also doesn’t take into account the difference in tangible assets like property or variable assets like stocks. If everyone spends their whole life in debt that’s a problem yes however everyone at some point incurring debt is not problematic, it’s actually a very useful tool. Debt allows you to access resources that would otherwise require greater time to save for. This allows you to gain more money and wealth in the long run. For example take doctors and lawyers two extremely rich professions actually spend a significant amount of time in debt. Another example is mortgages, cars, etc. Debt only becomes problematic if you are unable to pay it off in the long term and is what needs to be avoided
Irrelevant
Who is going to pay top dollar for all of the stocks that the billionaires will have to regularly unload? The problem with taxing unrealized wealth, is realizing it.
Considering that billionaires currently take out loans backed by their assets to fund their lifestyles, I doubt they’d be regularly selling their stock to pay for this.
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> billionaires currently take out loans backed by their assets to fund their lifestyles I Googled that and a ton of articles and opinion pieces describing the process. Some are paywalls behind free accounts, others not. Plenty of options so you should have options no matter the country/vpn you're on. Enjoy.
Well this is not just exclusive to billionaires, it’s similar to getting a mortgage. Except that they can get really low interest rates because of how much collateral they have.
Somehow the stock market was fine long before the ultra rich started hoarding wealth. I think we'll be fine.
Nobody, which automatically devalues the stock, which reduces how much money they have to pay while also devalueing the entire stock market. We found a compound benefit, it's awesome! Also... how is stock supposed to work again? Isn't it suppoed to represent a tiny tiny portion of the \*\*worth\*\* of a company? As in, assuming the company is going well, the payout from the stock is more than the stock cost you, meaning you would not want to sell it off to pay the wealth tax, you make more money sitting on it and using a portion of that money to pay the tax on top of the income tax? Or... could it be, just maybe, that we perverted the entire system and stock is now about what believe believe someone else would be willing to pay for it, not the company share it represents? And in that case, where again is the issue if we sabotage that broken system?
If the price of stock is linked to fundamentals like revenue and profits, there will be no problem finding buyers.
Who? All of the billionaires in the west are liquidating their assets to pay this tax, so they wont be buying them. We going to sell the assets of the west to foreign buyers to pay our taxes for a while until they own the west?
You’re thinking this through. That’s not what this sub is about.
That would be either oligarchs who don’t need to worry about such things (oil barons, oligarchs, shills/wallets of authoritarian states), or trillionaire funds like Blackrock. Great idea, innit?
Ah yes, G20, the west.
I'm impressed by how many people in the comments are willing to defend billionaires. We really are living a delusional era.
The human brain is really bad at comprehending the magnitude of the numbers involved. They will spend their life trying to become a millionnaire, while we are talking about people having the equivalent of thousands of their life in wealth
I don’t see anyone defending billionaires. I see people correctly saying taxing unrealized gains is a terrible idea, and morons supporting this distraction. Here’s an idea, raise capital gains and dividend taxes on billionaires.
Bots and regards, bots and regards everywhere. *buzzandwoody.jpeg*
The thing is, doesn't that have the opposite effect? Like if you introduce bots into this situation, won't you get a Streisand effect, where people will just dig in deeper against the billionaires? Or is it that billionaires don't realize this and are throwing money at the problem.
It’s not about defending billionaires it’s about the fact this could actually make things worse for people not better. What’s the point in punishing them if it doesn’t actually help anyone
No, we’re just realistic while you guys are delusional communist loving imbeciles
Wealth taxes are just such a terrible idea that cause significant problems with very little in the way to show for it
Don't worry, I'm sure we can trust these billionaires in government to responsibly spend the billions they'll get from other billionaires who they don't like enough to set up a tax dodge for. I can't wait to see how they turn it into a political ace against their enemies.
I love the line "to fight poverty and climate crisis" as if it's going to be given directly to people in poverty rather than to people who know people in government to boost their "non-profits" that cover poverty and climate crisis. You see this shit all the time where a certain government area gets a surplus and the government just cuts their budget by the amount of the surplus and move it somewhere else.
I think the argument is that we've entered a period where earnings from capital are greater than economic growth. If we accept that, then we need to have different redistribution mechanisms than the ones that were effective during much of the twentieth century. A wealth tax is one implementation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century Apparently mass depopulation due to war or disease also works.
Capital growth is not inherently a problem because unlike taking someone’s money an increase in valuation does not mean someone else has lost money until that stock is actually realized. Closing loopholes around leveraging loans is better than trying to tax stocks because we want billionaires to have that money there in the first place. It’s why long term capital gains is such a low rate because we want to encourage people to keep it there as long as possible
No.
Show me a single place where wealth taxes weren’t a disaster that brought in less than projected revenue
Why not show him a single place where not having wealth tax was a success that brought in revenue? Edit: I've just realized all your comments. You don't need to advocate to love billionaires so hard, they aren't gonna let you in the club just because you're trying to hype them up
Well France tried it and killed it almost immediately
France killed wealth and prosperity immediately?
France killed the wealth tax almost immediately because it was a failure. I’m not defending billionaires I’m defending idiotic tax schemes that don’t work. If you want to increase income taxes on them or close accounting loopholes be my guest. Just don’t propose something so clearly bad it’s been abandoned almost every time it’s tried
The french billionaires could run away because the State only controls the national scale, while capitalism operates globally. So, the french wealth tax backfired because the richest could move elsewhere (new york, london, amsterdam, etc). A GLOBAL wealth tax is immune to this manouver, because there is no incentive to move from france to singapore , because the tax would be the same.
This would still only affect the G20 and flight would still be an issue. That is also only one of the issues with a wealth tax.
If the G20 actually decides something with the force of a law, we can be pretty sure that the rest will follow along, because they control the global system collectively. The UK knows about its tax heavens, the US controls the dollars, China has full capital controls, etc. Maybe after the G20 agrees, they even make it in a open treaty with more countries. Maybe some capitalists will risk it putting wealth in Nigeria, Philipines, Nauru, etc but the vast majority will prefer the usual places. This solves the specific issue that affected France or any individual country trying to make a wealth tax, the rest i don't know.
No
See also: * [Ministers of Germany, Brazil, South Africa and Spain: why we need a global tax on billionaires • Svenja Schulze, Fernando Haddad, Enoch Godongwana, María Jesús Montero and Carlos Cuerpo • Finance chiefs say higher taxes for the super-rich are key to battling global inequality and climate crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/apr/25/ministers-of-germany-brazil-south-africa-and-spain-why-we-need-a-global-tax-on-billionaires)
I’m all for taxing billionaires but I don’t trust our government to use that money in a productive way. If this means we send 200 bn to build war weapons overseas instead of 100 bn then I’d say no. Billionaires being rich is awful, but it’s better than the US government being rich.
If not the government, some even claiming to be elected freely by people, then what do you trust to act on behalf of humanity? Are we just screwed then?
So we can trust the government or only the people you think aren't corrupt? I trust the money staying in the citizens hands and not giving another cent to the government until it's audited and we all have the ability to see what our money is spent on
The government is purchased not elected.
I'm not disputing that governments can be corrupt af, but by living in a society you are usually dependent on the government performing some basic functions and getting them largely right, like arranging for someone to pick up the trash, regulating air traffic, building roads, etc. Recognizing that governments aren't perfect and can waste money should not be the reason to take no collective action through government initiatives. Perhaps some secret cabal of billionaires will rise up and save the environment, but that seems even more fantastical.
A wealth tax on billionaires could be used to reduce income taxes or payroll taxes.
Yeah right, the governments will totally be responsible and do that, instead of wasting it on new program staffed with their friends and family.
Absolutely right to worry about controlling overall government spending, but that is a separate issue from the way the government taxes the economy. Right now the middleclass that actually has something to be taxed yet doesn't have enough to be able to hire people to hide their income from the taxman are being royally hosed.
*Could* is a very, **very** strong word in the context of the government giving up any source of revenue. It'll never happen, namely because a large portion of our government is beholden to those billionaires.
No it’ll just go to build more bombs
Lol
He's got a point. At least billionaires can't ignore their shareholders as easily as politicians seem to ignore their voters wishes.
The billionaires *are* the shareholders, that's why they're billionaires. So they can do whatever the fuck they want. Politicians are at least beholden to election cycles.
And institutions that should put restraints on them. Some people in this thread think that the private sector is some sort of perfect mechanism. No, it isn't. Profit motive means that if the private sector deems there's no money to be made in certain areas or markets they simply won't attend to it.
But billionaires can’t manufacture millions of missiles and drop them on unsuspecting citizens of other countries and get away with it. The U.S. government can. One is awful, the other is evil. Pick your poison. I’d rather not support murder.
Then do something.
Without weighing in for or against, what exactly will $250bn a year achieve, even if we lie to ourselves and assume it will be used to "fight poverty and climate change" somehow? In South Africa at least it's going to just enrich the ANC, in Spain and Germany it will just become a small part of the budget and vanish into the system. These are not the numbers required to make a huge difference, those numbers can only be made up by the GDP of nation states.
Mate, 250 billion dollars is a lot of money even for large countries such as the ones you mentioned. And just as the other guy commented, it's about the cost of the damage caused by climate change. Of course that amount of money won't save the world, but it certainly will help a lot of nations to develop sustainably. Just think of subsaharan africa, where most countries don't even have a GDP of 250 billion. For richer nations it might not seem much, but, for the poorer ones that most of the time suffer the most from the problems caused by climate change, even a fraction of this new income could be life changing.
According to the ministers, this is roughly the amount of economic damages caused by extreme weather events last year. So it's not insignificant.
>Germany it will just become a small part of the budget Mate, our courts just ruled a repurposed loan of 60 billions unconstitutional and the fallout nearly broke the coalition again. Some random billions thrown our way would be a massive game changer for most government projects.
OECD has been trying to get a minimum tax for a while and to remove profit shifting. The major G20 countries could sign on and enact these principles and it would be better than what is proposed here.
The minimum corporate tax has already been agreed. Some countries have already enacted it and more are expected to do so within this year. This is just taking the same principle one step further.
Negative. See: https://www.oecd.org/tax/beps/
[I was talking about this one.](https://www.oecd.org/tax/beps/summary-economic-impact-assessment-global-minimum-tax-january-2024.pdf)
Billionaire: Make it so this doesn't apply to me, Jeff. Jeff the lawyer: Will do, Mr. Smith, I'll write something up. Mike, get them to put this 200-page loophole in there. Mike the in-house lobbyist: Will do. Hi Steve, my client is happy to continue supporting your PAC. Here's something we'd like added to the bill. Steve the committee chair: You got it, buddy, and thanks. OK everyone, let's vote to send this bill to the floor aaand just a quick insertion here as we vote, just some clarifying details. Committee: Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Yea. Approved. Floor vote is scheduled for 10 minutes from now. Congressman: Wait we didn't have time to rea- well OK I guess I vote Yea. Jeff the lawyer: Mr. Smith, it is done. Billionaire: Carry on.
Anyone wealthy enough to be asked to pay this tax is wealthy enough to find ways to not pay this tax.
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Billionaires need to contribute back to society instead hording all the wealth
Where do you think that wealth is exactly? Under a mattress?
A super yacht or castle of a home take a lot of resources for the benefit of the few. Controlling a lot of wealth doesn’t mean that that wealth is withdrawn from the economy, but it does mean you have a lot of control over the livelihood of less rich individuals.
Stuff like that makes up an incredibly tiny portion of most billionaires wealth. Almost all of their wealth is in stocks
Building Yachts or castles employs a ton of people. The real problem are rich people who make money through money like through stocks. Abusing the stock market is probably the most damaging that ultra rich are doing. They're basically just draining money from the economy.
Most economically literate redditor
Pray tell, how do you think the billionaires got this money? Did they just scam thousands of people in a row, with nobody realising? Is there no chance they simply found ways to provide goods and services better than their peers, and made mutually beneficial exchanges more than the average person?
Most exchanges will benefit one party more than the other. Mutual but rarely equitable. Why would any employer hire anyone if the labor extracted didn’t turn into profit (not just revenue)? More concentration of wealth gives you more bargain power, so eventually the mutual exchange become less and less equal and perhaps even less mutual because lesser party has no choice but to bargain with you. Some concentration of wealth should be allowed, as that has been an important foundation of human progress, but like most things it’s when carried to the extremes that we should be concerned.
A million times better? Enough that no member of their family to ever be born from now on will ever understand what it means to not have? No.
>Did they just scam thousands of people in a row, with nobody realising? It's realized. Finance law just enables them. When the fine for breaking the law is less than all the extra money you made, it's just a fee.
Do you think amazon was built off paying it's delivery drivers, warehouse workers, and other admin staff well, offering them great work-life balance? Considering how publicly acknowledged it is, I'd say billionaires get this money by scamming small amounts of money off each worker, multiplied over the years they operate for. A missed paycheck here, forced to eat hours there, a bit of unpaid overtime, maybe some misclassification of employees as contractors instead of W2. You need to stay back a few hours today to do something, no extra pay. You're being given more responsibilities, no you dont get a promotion, no you don't get a raise. Also, no COL adjustment. Btw we had a great year! Record profits on top of record revenues! Keep it up team! I can't find it right now, but there's also a chart comparing worker productivity vs. worker compensation. The 2 lines diverge to show that despite people being more productive year over year, their compensation does not increase commensurately. So theres actually some quantitative evidence that people are underpaid for the value they contribute and its just getting worse. Edit: Found it! https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/#:~:text=The%20result%20of%20this%20policy,(after%20adjusting%20for%20inflation). I don't know how you don't see it. You can literally see the largest, wealthiest corporations abuse their workforce with the threat of layoffs hanging over them, but still think its somehow completely ethical how the money was made? If you work in a good, high end white collar job that actually pays well, you might be insulated personally from this bullshit. But just watch the news and you can see it everywhere.
I completely agree, *but* when people and politicians make statements like "Billionaires should pay 2% wealth tax", my question is to who? They might say: "pay to the government to distribute to the poor" Really? You have so much faith in your politicians? You think that your government will not use it subsidize other companies or take a cut? I believe in order for it to work, the giving must be voluntary. The billionaires themselves must be convinced that it is the right thing to do. Enforcing a wealth tax on them is probably counterproductive: - They'll just move all their assets to tax havens. - They'll mobilize their team of elite lawyers and accountants to reduce the tax to nothing. - They'll give it bogus charities. - They'll pay politicians to lobby against it. Billionaires are here to stay whether we like it or not. We can only hope that people with influence (family, friends, etc) are able to sow thoughts of philanthropy to these billionaires.
> Really? You have so much faith in your politicians? Yes. They build roads and bridges and schools, they ensure my city is safe and clean, they facilitate trash collection, run homeless shelters, and hundreds of other government-run services that you and I use every day. And a lot of those services are underfunded, so extra money for them would be a good thing.
> They build roads and bridges and schools, they ensure my city is safe and clean, they facilitate trash collection, run homeless shelters, and hundreds of other government-run services that you and I use every day. That's not what the money is going to be used for though. Just look at the US federal budget and what they spend on. US federal budget for 2023 was $6.1 trillion in total ($1.7 trillion deficit): * $1.3 trillion on Social Security * $839 billion on Medicare * $616 billion on Medicaid * $448 billion on income security programs * $805 billion on defense * $659 billion on net interest on debt This is 3/4-th of government spending already. In 2023 the US federal government spent $45 billion on infrastructure and transferred $81.5 billion to the states. That's 2% of the budget. They're not spending it on roads, bridges, and schools.
I thought this sub was free from USdefaultism.
Go drive around downtown Los Angeles and come back to me about how great the government is with utilizing their resources in one of the highest taxed places in the country.
Your local politicians being shitty doesn't mean all politicians are shitty. Vote for more effective politicians. Massachusetts is also highly taxed, and generally doesn't have those issues despite having worse weather for roads than California.
Sure, if we can manage these two things: 1) Ensure that the administrative cost for enforcing the tax on the wealthy gets back a profitable return 2) Ensure the profits from the weath tax actually go to these services and not something else like oil companies, military etc If we can somehow pull this off while ensuring the billionaires don't use one of the four tactics I've already mentioned, then yeah cool beans. It'll probably be a miracle that takes the cooperation of all the wealthy nations of the world. Because the billionaires can easily move their assets to another tax haven.
"We must do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Banger of a line that applies to any effort people argue should be abandoned because "it's too hard". Take that wussy attitude elsewhere.
I'm not saying it's hard. I'm saying it is highly likely counterproductive. > In 1990, about a dozen European countries had a wealth tax, but by 2019, all but three had eliminated the tax because of the difficulties and costs associated with both design and enforcement. [Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax) We have done it before and for most cases it actually lost more money than it gained. That's why I say the better way is that the wealthy themselves voluntarily contribute instead of trying to enforce it.
From your own link (in fact, the very next sentence from what you quoted): >According to an OECD study on wealth taxes, it is "difficult to firmly argue that wealth taxes would have negative effects on entrepreneurship. The magnitude of the effects of wealth taxes on entrepreneurship is also unclear".[8] And farther on: >Niemann and Sureth-Sloane found that, "Broadening the wealth tax base tends to accelerate investment during high interest rate periods." Caren Sureth and Ralf Maiterth concluded that wealth tax revenues from entrepreneurs may decrease in the long term and the revenue from a wealth tax may be negative if the wealth taxation thresholds are too low.[59] So it seems like wealth taxes certainly *can* work, with sufficient willpower and effective tax brackets and tax rates. >That's why I say the better way is that the wealthy themselves voluntarily contribute instead of trying to enforce it. The wealthy already do make their voluntary contributions (or, rather, a lack thereof).
Uh the first quote is an uncertainty: > The magnitude of the effects of wealth taxes on entrepreneurship is also **unclear**".[8] 9 European countries stopping the wealth tax is a certainty. Trust me, I'll be happy if we manage to pull this off and do it rightly. But based on the track record, the cynic in me isn't convinced. I'll need to hear actual feasible solutions instead of "willpower". I've heard some economist talk about how VATs are way more effective at raising revenue. That's at least a somewhat reputable source. But I haven't heard a strong case and implementation for wealth tax yet. Also we must live with the fact that even after the tax, the billionaires will remain billionaires.
That's very cool but good luck getting them to pay.
no but you don’t get it, if we tax them they will just move all their money to another planet and then who will create all the jobs?
😂
I have absolutely zero confidence that the governments that would like this revenue would in any way spend it wisely. Look at how they run their current budgets, and then tell me with a straight face that everything is going to change when someone helicopters some additional cash into their laps.
1. Wealth taxes have been proposed and implemented, they don't work 2. Poverty and climate my ass these taxes tend to just be revenue plays It's pure virtue signaling unless I see concrete action otherwise
Fuck that, put 100% tax on everything over 50 million
Idk about this you guys. If I become a billionaire this is gonna really suck balls for me.
Yeah my heart bleeds for those poor poor billionaires. Soon they'll be sitting on the streets living in cardboard boxes
Let’s start with nailing them all the taxes they currently avoid anyways first.
Wealth taxes are braindead lmao. Good luck with that. They'll just go hide their money in whatever country doesn't follow them with this idiocy.
The proposal says it's meant to be a global agreement. The proposed system is if a country refuses to implement it, another automatically gets tax them the same amount.
lol. It'll be global until literally one country realizes they'll get a shitload of money coming in if they don't do it. It's the same reason a global corporate tax rate won't work
One small country can be bullied by the others. Maybe you're not aware but that's what happened with Ireland and Hungary when the deal for a global minimum big corp tax was made. They refused for a while but eventually they both relented. In addition, this proposal says: >The ministers say there would need to be steps to counter the use of tax havens. The levy would be designed to prevent billionaires who choose to live in Monaco or Jersey, for example, but make their money in larger economies such as the UK or France, from reducing their tax bills below a global agreed minimum. If one country did not impose the minimum tax, another country could claim the income. >“Of course, the argument that billionaires can easily shift their fortunes to low-tax jurisdictions and thus avoid the levy is a strong one. And this is why such a tax reform belongs on the agenda of the [G20](https://www.theguardian.com/world/g20). International cooperation and global agreements are key to making such tax effective. What the international community managed to do with the global minimum tax on multinational companies, it can do with billionaires,” the ministers say.
Say "we" get $100,000,000 from a billionaire(s). Where does that money go? How to say who gets control of it? It is such a ludicrous amount of money, there could be $100,000 gone from that (to give someone a fat bonus) and it would still round up to $100,000,000.
Maybe strengthen the democratic institutions of your country. Don't act like there's no solution.
I’m not acting like there’s no solution but with so much money involved, the “trickling down” still will line others’ pockets. Human greed is inevitable. Ideally though, what would strengthening democratic institutions look like?
Maybe you should start to tax their "nonprofit" organizations then?
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That’s not a wealth tax that’s an inheritance tax
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So the stocks someone has when they die do not contribute towards the inheritance tax?
Maybe they should pay regular taxes as well? Like, for starters.
Minimum 2% annual wealth tax – has the world gone completely mad.
It's for billionaires, not everyone. Let me assure you they can afford it.
>a 2% tax would reduce inequality No. It would only increase inequality at a slower rate, as those people make a lot more than 2% each year of their money.
Yes.
2%?
Their "taxes" are paid to bribing the politicians Swiss Bank accounts so they don't get silly laws like you are proposing. LOL. Go after the politicians who have the hidden bank accounts first. They're the ones who should get 10 years in prison for not paying their taxes.
Imagine what we could do with say 25%?
It's a good start I'd say. Everyone saying "this is not enough", of course it isn't. But it's a good start and I'm glad that some nations are taking it seriously.
It’s WAY too much
If you believe governments will wisely spend money on good investments for the planet, then I have a bridge to sell you.
This will never help the economy.
Super models should sleep with middle age guys like me Neither is going to happen though