The US government is sovereign, it can very much either take ownership of the stock, or estimate its value and construct a loan that the company owners needs to pay back because they owe this tax. Or probably 100s of more clever solutions as well.
It can definitely decide to tax wealth if it wanted to, it could also break up large companies to at least spread the wealth of these institutions wider. It mostly just doesn’t “want” to.
This argument is so unnecessary defeatist pretending the most militarised and police ridden country in the world has no power to enforce laws it could write.
Opposite to that notion I think if the US had any interest in fairness in taxation, especially on a more global scale, it could easily get all the common tax havens/financial secrecy jurisdictions, to fold to essentially whatever demands if has.
But again it seems like the US government strangely doesn’t really want that either.
Which is still the central issue the US government is more captured by the billionaire class than a lot of people like to think they are, and it’s never just the dem or just the reps, it’s large portions of both parties that are essentially captured in this way, or just fall into it because preserving the status quo is easy.
It’s also real money, otherwise Musk couldn’t have bought Twitter for $44 billion. He sure didn’t have that amount on his bank account but he still bought it all the same, thus giving him a substantial soft power through information.
Wealth is not money. There’s nothing to tax.
This is a very true statement.
Stocks won’t get taxed unless they get actioned on. That is where the majority of their preceeded wealth is.
The US government is sovereign, it can very much either take ownership of the stock, or estimate its value and construct a loan that the company owners needs to pay back because they owe this tax. Or probably 100s of more clever solutions as well.
It can definitely decide to tax wealth if it wanted to, it could also break up large companies to at least spread the wealth of these institutions wider. It mostly just doesn’t “want” to.
This argument is so unnecessary defeatist pretending the most militarised and police ridden country in the world has no power to enforce laws it could write.
Opposite to that notion I think if the US had any interest in fairness in taxation, especially on a more global scale, it could easily get all the common tax havens/financial secrecy jurisdictions, to fold to essentially whatever demands if has. But again it seems like the US government strangely doesn’t really want that either.
Which is still the central issue the US government is more captured by the billionaire class than a lot of people like to think they are, and it’s never just the dem or just the reps, it’s large portions of both parties that are essentially captured in this way, or just fall into it because preserving the status quo is easy.
It’s also real money, otherwise Musk couldn’t have bought Twitter for $44 billion. He sure didn’t have that amount on his bank account but he still bought it all the same, thus giving him a substantial soft power through information.
And now Twitter is down to $4b. Because wealth is not money.