There are a lot of billionaires on this app who are obviously quite adept at making money, yet pretend they don't understand finance when it comes to the topic of a wealth tax.
It's impossible! It's too complicated! We'd love to do it but it's unworkable!
This is silly. Our financial industry has figured out how to turn the most abstract concepts into concrete financial products that can be traded in markets. We can obviously do this.
Let's say we have an annual 1% wealth tax. It could easily work like this:
Your shares in SpaceX or whatever are locked up and illiquid? Fine, just pay with 1% of those shares. No need to sell. You can easily create a financial product that is tied to those shares. Billionaires say they are afraid that they will have to pay a wealth tax on their assets and then their asset prices will go down, and they'll have paid a tax on wealth they no longer have. Fair enough! Just pay the tax with the shares themselves. If the price goes down, the government eats it, and you're no worse off.
What about an asset like a Picasso? Easy. You create a derivative product that is worth 1% of your Picasso when it is eventually sold. Before it's sold, the government can sell that product into a market and exchange it for cash, or hold it. What the govt would obviously do is create Billionaire Asset Backed Securities and sell them as financial products just like we do with mortgage-backed securities or any other asset-backed securities. Derivatives are not new.
The current problem we have is that billionaires own way too many assets in terms of homes and everything else. Because those assets themselves produce new income, they have to then buy more assets with that new income, which increases their price and endlessly crowds out the ability of normal people to own anything ever. That's why they tell you you will own nothing and be happy. They're certain of the former, don't care about the latter.
If regular people are ever going to get back into owning homes or other assets, billionaires cannot continue hoarding them all.
Quite obviously, a wealth tax is quite workable. The problem is billionaires just don't like it.
I seriously don't understand people who don't want more diversity in types of characters and stories. This is why I could never get deep into One Piece. It's great but it's kinda just more of the same. At least different Marvel/DC things have different tones between them.
@smargopargo I don't think you're wrong to read it that way but I think it's more touching on the social upbringings and how they shape adolescent development.
@kitchen_derek I didn't say Nazi. I said reactionary, which accurately describes his political ideology. I didn't ascribe authoritarianism or bigotry. But it's telling that you filled in the blank yourself.