A one-time 5% wealth tax would bring Silicon Valley’s billionaires’ wealth back to where it was just 31 days ago

3 days ago by livligkinkajou to c/workreform

A one-time 5% wealth tax would bring Silicon Valley’s billionaires’ wealth back to where it was just 31 days ago, on September 7.

When it was "just" 178% higher than on January 1, 2023.

They’d rather let 3 million people lose their health insurance than let that happen.

Graph here: https://cabillionairetracker.org/

Rather than paying their fair share of taxes, Sergey Brin, Pether Thiel, and Patrick Collison prefer to spend tens of millions to manipulate the vote.

Stupefying levels of greed and lack of civil-mindedness.

$45 million in a week: California’s wealthy aren’t holding back to try to stop ‘billionaire tax’

All credits to Gabriel Zucman

lIlIlIlIlIlIl 114 points 3 days ago

They freak out about this because their wealth is in holdings and isn’t liquid. They leverage debt and play these games to avoid paying their share the freeloading welfare queens that they are

This is probably more painful than “it’s just 5%.” And I love that for them

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fonix232 61 points 3 days ago

It also sets a precedent - why not an annual 5% tax? why not 50%?

That's why they're afraid of it. It's not just the liquidity, because 5% they can easily liquidate without affecting any of their hedged-leveraged debt coverage.

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Zachariah 27 points 3 days ago

yeah, I think it’s more about power than money

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impairedimperator 21 points 3 days ago

Money is more about power than money once you're over ten mil

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Zachariah 6 points 3 days ago

totally

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chocrates 7 points 3 days ago

Yeah we should tax billionaires until they become "only" millonaires

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Rivalarrival 4 points 2 days ago

They freak out about this because their wealth is in holdings and isn’t liquid.

This is a legitimate problem. Forcing a primary shareholder to sell their shares devalues the shares of workers holding them in retirement accounts. Forcing them to liquidate their shares is not at all feasible.

Which is why this tax should never be payable in dollars. It should be paid directly in shares. It doesn't have to be converted to cash first; the shares themselves go straight to the IRS.

The confiscated shares can be liquidated slowly over time. Every time 1000 shares are traded on the free market, the IRS gets to offer one of its taxed shares. The influence on the market price of the shares is minimized. If the shares become worthless, they just sit on the IRS books, collecting dust forever.

I'd only tax securities - investment holdings. Stocks, bonds, other fungible, intangible, financial assets. I want them spending their money on tangible products and personal services (as opposed to financial services) that are ultimately produced by workers. I want them pushing their money back into rotation, not setting up dollar farms to collect it from everything that moves.

But, if we want to go after general wealth, we can also do the same thing for deeded property or titled property. They don't have to sell the land or the car/boat/plane; we just put a tax lien on it now, and collect later.

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MBech 1 point 2 days ago

I like it, but I would prefer if the government kept the share of the companies, transitioning the companies into government run entities over time, thereby having the production be owned by the people.

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Rivalarrival 1 point a day ago

Absolutely not: Trump, Trump, Bush, Bush, Bush, Reagan, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Nixon.

We've seen what these bastards did to the postal service and everything else they've touched. We're not putting every major industry in the country under the direct control of men like these. The idea of government-run commercial entities is simply a non-starter. That's one of the few qualms I have about the IRS holding these shares for any length of time. I would strip control and voting rights from these taxed shares, restoring them only once they have been transferred to a market buyer.

I agree that ownership of production needs to be in the hands of the people, but that ownership needs to be directly in the hands of the people, not through a stake in a government that is, more often than not, overtly hostile and malicious to the interests of the people.

The tax would apply to ALL stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments. Natural US persons can exempt up to $10 million worth from their portfolio, but they will owe an equal proportion of every issue in their portfolio: They don't get to pick and choose what issues they will keep and what they transfer to the IRS: The IRS gets the same percentage of everything.

The artificial persons owe the full tax: no exemptions. If you own $100 million in stocks, you can't split it up among 10 companies. You can split it up among friends and family to avoid the tax, but they each control their own shares.

To the working class, securities remain a valuable asset. To the ultra-rich, a sufficiently-high tax converts these same securities into an expensive liability. With these conditions, an ownership stake in a worker's company will become a significant component of their compensation. Ownership of production will be driven away from the ultra-wealthy and to the people.

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cecilkorik 76 points 3 days ago

I posted this comment on another topic but it's relevant here too:

The sick part is that what is being asked is actually so inconsequential to the billionaires that not only will their line still go up, if we change nothing else but this, even wealth inequality itself will still keep going up, it will just go up at a slightly less supersonic speed. They don’t even care about the amount of money we’re asking for, they care about the precedent that if we can take this from them, what’s stopping us from taking everything from them.

That’s what they’re actually scared of. That’s why they resist this so hard. That’s why they don’t bend. They think that once the people slip out of their stranglehold they will get a taste of billionaire blood and they will like it.

And they might be right.

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bashibazouk 19 points 3 days ago

It's not the money, it's control of their companies. To pay the tax they have to sell stock which reduces control. They, rightly I think, also believe it's a one time tax until the next time the tax gets passed. Maybe this a good thing but it should also be addressed by those pushing the wealth tax...

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yakko 10 points 3 days ago

Would much rather make their worst nightmares come true. Anything less feels like leaving money on the table, ya know?

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bashibazouk 6 points 3 days ago

I noticed that in 2024, when Bernie was pushing the wealth tax, billionaires funneled a lot of money toward Trump. "Worst nightmares" is a double edged sword...

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yakko 10 points 3 days ago

They're gonna destroy our world, and we're just going to tut-tut each other while they do it.

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explodicle 1 point 2 days ago

The tax rate on billionaires might be so important that it requires everyone's attention every year until the problem is solved.

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zbyte64 31 points 3 days ago

I would rather have 1000 millionaires than 1 billionaire

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MalReynolds 29 points 3 days ago

They remember (or have schools that teach) the 90+% wealth tax back when accountants hadn't hidden it all. You know, in the 1950s and before 'boomer golden age', which, along with strong unions, made the middle class happen. and what shall never again happen if the parasite class can help it.

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boonhet 10 points 3 days ago

That wasn't a wealth tax though? That was an income tax and only on the top bracket. Very, very different things.

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bitjunkie 15 points 3 days ago

There's a pretty straightforward solution to that, as well: tax unrealized capital gains as income the moment they're used as collateral. If you can spend it, it's income, you fucking cheaters.

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MalReynolds 4 points 3 days ago

Sure, simpler times back when accountants hadn’t hidden it all

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arrow74 2 points 3 days ago

And before the laws hadn't been changed to make it so easy to hide it all

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shittydwarf 28 points 3 days ago

So we can hit them with 5% every month

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BillyClark 27 points 3 days ago

Just hit all billionaires, worldwide, with 100% tax of all wealth over a billion dollars every year. A billion dollars is really an inconceivable amount of money for one person to have. Far more than one person could ever legitimately earn in a lifetime.

Letting them retain one billion dollars is probably far more charity than they deserve, but what can I say? I'm just a softie.

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bitjunkie 7 points 3 days ago

Like your card's not getting declined for anything, ever. Why keep running up a high score when it makes many others suffer? It's entirely unrelatable to me that anyone could be so fortunate and yet so callous.

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NEZ27 7 points 3 days ago

Spreading that out would likely create more businesses, art, shows, and everything for them to try. They could spend a life time and not run out of new experiences as is, but they like staring at a chart that looks like it says they are winning.

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uriel238 6 points 3 days ago

$30 million is generous and plenty to live on. Everything above that is capital that is only to be used to get even more.

Moreover even at $30 million, it's difficult not to fall upwards. You can make really bad decisions, whether cruel, ignorant, reckless, or offensive to the public, and still turn a profit. It's actually an argument against hiring upper management who are already well-to-do.

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nonentity 23 points 3 days ago

Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

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MonkderVierte -1 points 2 days ago

I do not agree with the 2. sentence.

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nonentity 3 points 2 days ago

Why?

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MonkderVierte 1 point 2 days ago

You don't become a billionaire with a intact moral code. Those sort of people must feel the consequences of their wrong doings or it escalates always further.

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nonentity 4 points 2 days ago

Removing their wealth isn’t the end goal, I see it as a necessary first step that can inform further corrections should they be necessary.

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joecitizen 22 points 3 days ago

Billionaires should be illegal. That's wages stolen from the workers.

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architect 18 points 3 days ago

It’s literally impossible to allow this to continue. Something will give.

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khannie 12 points 3 days ago

We are far, far beyond the wealth inequality that spurned the French Revolution and yet, here we sit.

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whalesnrainbows 15 points 3 days ago

I’d attribute this to two main factors:

The wealth inequality we’re dealing with has a higher ceiling (and higher floor) than the wealth inequality in pre-revolution France. We’re poor and hurting financially, but most of us are still able survive day-to-day without viscerally feeling the effects of our poverty.
The internet keeps us apart. Pre-internet, people built communities, coalitions, and armies much more effectively because they weren’t so isolated in their homes, and so paralyzed by screens.

EDIT: the advent of suburbanism & carcentric infrastructure is another factor that keeps us more isolated than past populations have been. People used to live right alongside each other and their communities used to be walkable. The most disadvantaged among us (and therefore the most personally motivated to mobilize) are also the most limited by carcentric infrastructure.

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Surp 8 points 2 days ago

They also had the advantage of surprise which you can't really have with everything being tracked

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whalesnrainbows 7 points 2 days ago

True, it is much harder than it used to be to catch the oppressor class off guard.

But given how hard they work to discourage us from even nonviolently protesting, I suspect that they understand that once we truly collectively achieve class consciousness, it’s over for them.

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 1 point 2 days ago

And ruthless efficiency

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ayyy 6 points 2 days ago

Two people in my extended social network have died of curable health issues in the last 30 days.

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whalesnrainbows 5 points 2 days ago

I’m very sorry for your losses. I suspect that my own quality of life has been severely affected by undiagnosed curable health issues, and I’ll be genuinely surprised if I make it into old age.

Capitalism has murdered and continues to murder countless human lives.

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Soggy 6 points 2 days ago

The French Revolution was not a peasant revolt, it was a movement of the upper-middle class. Nobody with money is interested in changing the government right now.

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nullspace 6 points 3 days ago

Newsom's prepared to give his life defending the billionaires.

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jdr 17 points 3 days ago

People who are cool with not having the maximum amount of money possible don't end up billionaires

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sepi 12 points 3 days ago

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arrow74 6 points 3 days ago

5% off the top!

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ArmchairAce1944 10 points 3 days ago

I misread it as 31 years ago. But when I saw 31 days I was like... And of course they are opposed to it!

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jaybone 10 points 3 days ago

Sadly I predict this won’t pass. The traditional media like tv commercials is flooded with propaganda to vote no on this. Newsom, Becerra and Hilton are all saying to vote no (that should be the biggest clue that you should vote yes) The commercials offer different and conflicting narratives as to why you should vote no (another clue you should vote yes) And there are NO commercials telling you to vote yes. (That should be another clue, those who control the media do not want this.) The only news available telling you to vote yes is Bernie Sanders visiting California for some sort of rally. But those supporters also tied in props 41 and 42, pushing for a “no” vote on those, which I think might have been a mistake and hurts their message.

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Tiger666 9 points 2 days ago

In our next lives we should all strive to make sure THAT NO ONE HUMAN HOLDS THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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Kazumara 8 points 3 days ago

The math is a bit counter intuitive, but increasing by 5% then decreasing by 5% of the new value does not get you back to the start exactly.

You take a value v, increase it by 5% to 105% of the previous you now have 105% * v. Now you take that new values as the basis for the next calculation, and decrease by 5% to 95% of the previous, you now have 95% * 105% * v which is actually 99.75% * v.

You need to find the day from which their wealth increased by 5.263% so that a 5% tax would bring them back.

But yeah, whatever it doesn't make a material difference to the argument. A one time tax sounds a bit weird to me, but I don't live there, Californians should do whatever they can. Maybe a one time tax is a good first domino stone.

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lagg_mine 8 points 3 days ago

Great message, but that graph is horrible...

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givesomefucks 4 points 3 days ago

The Y axis starts at zero at least...

But yeah, not having consistent dots on the X axis fucks it up.

They should have started with Dec 2025 when they had more frequent data and left the rest off.

That's why it looks so off. Whoever made it was just trying to do too much, but as far as graphs that get posted on social media, sadly this is a pretty good one.

It's a very low bar

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Janx 3 points 3 days ago

I'm confused. It's not perfect, but it does have consistent dots for the X axis, every year.

And yeah, they could have started with Dec 2025 and left the rest off... but part of the point of the graph is showing how billionaires have almost tripled their wealth since 2022, at the expense of everyone else.

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givesomefucks 1 point 3 days ago

but it does have consistent dots for the X axis, every year.

I'm not sure what you mean by "consistent"...

It's one a year up to dec 2025, then after that do you notice how the lines goes up and down super fast?

That's because there's a shit ton more dots there, even if they're not large enough to see, any change in slope means there's a new data point.

Doing one a year and then one a week is not consistent.

but part of the point of the graph is showing how billionaires have almost tripled their wealth since 2022, at the expense of everyone else.

Right...

The person who made it likely just crammed two different graphs (or underlaying datasets) together, and most likely had a chatbot do it for them.

That's actually why I blocked the "data is beautiful" community here, it was just people who know nothing of statistics jamming two graphs together like that accomplishes anything except making the information harder to read, which making the information easier to read is the literal purpose of graphs.

Most people never take even a single stats class, and just don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Edit:

I'm also confused, why did you downvote me and ask me to explain?

It makes it look like you just want to argue instead of learn. I'm happy to help, but I really don't care what you learn, if you just want to argue find someone else.

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Equinox1289 8 points 2 days ago

Shareholder primacy is fundementally broken. We must tie ownership back to the direct stakeholder of each firm. Shareholders dont care about goods, services, or utilies; they only care about line go up.

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LodeMike -1 points 2 days ago

What the heck is a stakeholder??

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Tiger666 5 points 2 days ago

Direct ownership of the means of production and not thru proxy like with controlling shares. In other words if you are not the direct owner you cant own the company.

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psycholocomotor 1 point a day ago

Vlad Dracula Tsepesh

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Zedd_Prophecy 5 points 3 days ago

It's like a disease - dragon fever.

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jaybone 1 point 3 days ago

Is that what Charlie Sheen had?

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bitjunkie 2 points 3 days ago

Nah that was tiger blood

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schwifty_squanch 5 points 3 days ago

How about we make it an even 50%.

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Gpennyhigh 4 points 3 days ago

The wealthy and powerful want to keep their control over people with the "good insurance" that many still have financial issues and bankruptcies with it, which is wrong. Reducing this scarcity along with others like paid leave helps people live better lives, and the owners don't want that.

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fisch 2 points a day ago

Even a 2% ANNUAL wealth tax would not take anything away from them, it would just make their wealth grow SLIGHTLY SLOWER.

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CodingCarpenter 1 point 2 days ago

I like an echo chamber dogpile as much as the next guy. But doesn’t prop40 also use language that can be taken advantage of? Like to expand this tax to other areas?

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Snazz 1 point 20 hours ago

Its way cheaper for them to buy the politicians, and these people will never miss an opportunity to optimize the number in their bank account. The system won’t change without some serious turbulence.

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Radical_Socialist_t00t 0 points 3 days ago

They'll never do it. Uncle Sam has beaten capitalism too far into erican skulls.Theyare forever scared of Socialism/Communism

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