I’m going to have to agree with the third one down. The smartest way to get the rich to help society isn’t to tax them. It’s not. Honestly.
No, it’s guillotines. Guillotines are the smartest way to get them to help.
Think about it. If we were to get bozos, furckerberg, theil, and muskyboy in a big stadium then guillotined them all that would definitely make things better instantly. However if we then said, “Hey, all you other billionaires, you’ve got a year to actually do something decent… or we will be coming for you”, then the guillotining would be a gift that keeps on giving.
(Hell, I’ll even volunteer to pull the guillotine levers so no one else has to deal with that guilt)
I would pay 200 to pull one lever
I doubt you’d run out of volunteers for that lever tbh
Lots of people with dead relatives due to the healthcare situation, food prices and such
They need to be taxed 100% until they are no longer billionaires (or, even better, run out of the country because they want to dodge said taxes). Any country that values its autonomy better take fucking heed.
In a weird way, the person who wrote the headline “The smartest way to make the rich pay is not a wealth tax” might have a point.
a rapidly descending point, you mean?
Short drop, and a quick stop!
This is nice actually. You can tell the right course of action by doing the exact opposite of what his mouth piece tells you to do.
effective propaganda is usually correct in some ways.
I can’t think of a way to understand this type of billionaire as if they are a human. Paying new taxes or not paying new taxes will make very little difference to people like Bezos. He would continue to live the exact same lifestyle… maybe on a smaller yacht, but probably even that wouldn’t change.
It’s hard to even say that he wants to be richer than other billionaires, because they’d all be paying the same taxes, too. At least the American ones.
It’s literally just a number in a computer that he wants to be bigger. Yes, for him, that number getting bigger used to improve his life back when it was in the range of something that a person could spend in a lifetime, but now, it makes zero difference in the real world.
Bezos’s net worth is just a number. It makes no difference to him if he pays more taxes. Why would he go so far out of his way to fight against taxes? He could alternatively just fucking ignore the politics, pay whatever they say, and then at least people would only hate him for being rich, and not for being a piece of shit. It just seems like the choice of somebody who is not human.
They do care about that amount. It’s how they compare to eachother and how they get their status in those circles.
Also, look at America today. Are money being spent to improve society, to have great public transport or healthcare or other public services? No. Massive amounts of Americans are on happy pills just to fucking exist.
Bezos bought the Washington Post after he had already been the richest person in the world. What do you think you mean when you say “how they get their status in those circles”? He’s got the status. There are only two people who have more wealth than him today. You think he’s just embarrassed hanging out with those two guys? Give me a break.
His best move to close the gap right now with Musk is to advocate for a wealth tax. If Musk paid 1% of 800 billion and Bezos paid 1% of 280 billion, that’s actually closing the gap.
And what are you even saying about how taxes are spent? Everybody has to pay whatever they’re told, even if it’s spent poorly. But if the government could demonstrate that they were using the tax money well, do you think Bezos would change his mind? If not, then it’s not even the bare minimum criteria for a point and you shouldn’t have brought it up.
And whatever else you think of the American government, it at least enabled Bezos to become the richest person in the world. There are a lot of countries where that couldn’t have possibly happened. We’re talking about Bezos’s taxes here, not taxes in general.
I’m not sure why you are apologizing for the richest people in the world being bad citizens. It seems like an obviously losing argument, as well as counter-productive to me.
I agree with you, America is the best country if you want the opportunity to become extreamly rich. Its also a bad country if you are poor. Right? I think we can agree on that.
Im not making apologies for billionaires, I just try to see it objectively and rationally. The argument that billionaries should pay more taxes has the underlying meaning that it would benefit society right? I’m just saying I’m not sure it would.
If it’s just about taking their money away because it feels good, then sure, it would have that effect. But then we should also say that we want to do it because we feel it’s morally justified to take their money since they have too much, and because their amount of wealth is making them too powerful and controlling. I think thats a fine opinion to have.
I was only speaking about taxes. They are not improving America in my opinion.
Im not making apologies for billionaires, I just try to see it objectively and rationally.
And my point was that the motivation for these people is simply to see that little number go higher, and they really have no other motivation that holds up to objective scrutiny. Which is a perspective that lacks basic humanity in my opinion.
So, when you offered alternative reasons, I simply shot them down.
But then we should also say that we want to do it because we feel it’s morally justified to take their money since they have too much, and because their amount of wealth is making them too powerful and controlling.
That’s again a very strange perspective to me. These are two nearly separate things. One is collecting taxes, and the other is spending. As far as I’m concerned, government spending is completely off-topic.
We don’t need moral justification to raise taxes, and so I think this is also off-topic, since it’s really about what a billionaire thinks about paying taxes, but if you want one, here you go.
Our income tax system is supposed to be progressive, but the richest people pay about the same percentage as the poor. In 2018, there was big news that the richest Americans paid 23% income tax, while the bottom half paid 24% in income tax. So, the rich paid less than the poor in percentage of income. That’s the opposite of a progressive tax.
The richest people have been shirking their civic responsibility and paying less than poorer people. And they’ve used that immorally gained tax money to become even richer. The government needs to find a way to reclaim rich people’s ill-gotten gains, and simply raising income tax won’t do it anymore. The fair way is to make the richest people pay wealth tax.
Competition benefits everybody until there is a monopoly. Then the monopoly is the best since sliced bread.
Does it benefit the rest of us? Sure in some way it probably does. Could those billions of dollars benefit us much, much more if use in other ways? Absolutely.
