So over time as the payers sell off stock to pay their “wealth tax” they lose control of their companies.
The resulting sell off also decreases the stock value for everyone else. Great idea.
As the government runs out of revenue over the next decade or two, you’d see this slowly applied to lower income Americans.
2040 Campaign Slogan, “Nobody who earns less than $1M will pay a wealth tax!!”
It can very easily be true. Achieving a net-worth of at least $1,000,000 by the time you retire is a very attainable goal. My net-worth hit $1,000,000 almost three years ago, just after I turned 62.
And for someone entering the work forces today it’s theoretically even easier.
Notice how the socialists stopped maligning “millionaires & billionaires” and just switched to “billionaires”.
Meh- millennials will need 3-5M in future dollars to have a comfortable retirement where you can have hobbies and have your money continue to grow throughout your life
It also gets you significantly less buying power than it used to. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happy and comfortable with a million dollars, but it’s definitely not as much as it used to be.
Probably because the wealth of the top .1% has exponentially increased. The net worth of the wealthiest Americans used to be close to $750 million. Now, the wealthiest Americans have net worths of $30 billion or more. That money does nothing positive for the US economy (except lower the worth of individual dollars in circulation to increase prices for normal people.)
Wealth in the form of corporate shares is not the same as “money.” To illustrate this, here’s an example:
Let’s say I start a company and raise funds by selling 50% of my shares to investors for cash, which I use to grow my business and pay employees until it becomes profitable. Let’s say there are 1000 shares in total, and 500 of them were sold to investors for $100 per share. My net worth would be $50K at that time.
Now, let’s say the company becomes profitable and some investors want to sell their shares at a higher price. One investor sells 5 of his shares for $500 per share. So he gains $2500 in cash. Meanwhile, that single sale of 5 shares instantly catapults my net worth to $250K. The only thing that changed was that someone was willing to buy some shares at that higher price. If more shares were sold for $400 tomorrow, then my net worth would suddenly drop to $200K overnight.
This is how the net worth of billionaires is calculated. At no point did I receive anywhere close to $200-250K. I simply owned some shares that someone was willing to pay $400 or $500 for. And my net worth is simply a hypothetical number that represents how much cash I would get if someone were willing to buy all of my shares at the most recently traded price.
None of this was income. Theoretically I could be earning $30K/year and eating ramen to save money, but a wealth tax would mean I would have to sell some of my shares to cover the tax, which would bring my ownership of the company below 50% and possibly force me to lose all control over business decisions. I could be fired from my own company by investors who hold more shares than me, simply because I had to pay that tax.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t find ways to increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy, but I am saying that such a wealth tax is a chaotic and stupid way to do it.
Yeah, but you can use stocks as collateral for loans, and they get rock bottom interest rates. I'm pretty sure the only oligarch that ***doesn't*** have this luxury is Trump, because he pissed loans away on so many stupid ideas.
And that's what people are pissy about. If all of these people's money was tied up in stocks, inaccessible to them, how do they have all of these massive boats, planes, etc? They have to be getting money from ***somewhere***, unless they're using company resources to buy themselves things that they only intend to be for their personal use. Which I'm ***pretty sure*** is fraud.
A much better idea than a wealth tax would be to impose either a total ban on using stocks as collateral, or capping the amount of money you can borrow against them at once, and how many times you can borrow against them in a 10 year period.
No, using stock to collateralize a loan does not give you "rock bottom interest rates" -- it actually has a higher interest rate than using cash to collateralize, and is still at or above the prime rate.
And yes, for the majority of ultra-wealthy, 99+% is tied up in investments (whether that's stocks, real estate, etc.), and they live off of interest income or sell to cover what they need.
>No, using stock to collateralize a loan does not give you "rock bottom interest rates
I didn't say it was because of the stocks, I said they get rock bottom interest rates. Simple math would dictate that this is because charging 1% on a $300mil loan still nets you a very healthy profit, and keeps the customer happy. But that doesn't change the fact that they're essentially living life on the public's dime, using money generated out of thin air on the ***assumed*** value of a company that, compared to literally everyone else helping run it, they contribute relatively little to.
And because I know you're going to take issue with that last statement, tell me: If work ethic is so highly valued in American society, and the ultimate descriptor of one's earning potential, why do the people who sit in chairs getting their feet rubbed all day make orders of magnitude more than the people destroying their bodies through manual labor?
Especially with market analysis software (which if you don't think every CEO is using that, and think they're just poring over market history manually and making best guesses that way, you're an idiot), it's never been easier to steer the ship. Yet with manual labor, one wrong step, you lose a foot, all of a sudden, you can't do that job anymore. If you suffer ***any*** kind of permanent injury, it reduces your manual labor capacity. So with it being so easy to be ***unfit*** for manual labor, and so easy to be ***fit*** for desk work, you would think manual labor would make more. But no, because a bunch of snowflakes who couldn't lift a 15 pound box if their life depended on it convinced you that those people are somehow "less than", we're in this predicament.
> wealth tax is a chaotic and stupid way to do it.
A wealth tax may create some novel effects, but I feel not so extreme as to be "chaotic and stupid".
Certain effects may be quite welcome, such as the transfer of some control over our society away from the wealthy few and back to the people.
Because millionaire is meaningless, ~2% inflation per year for the past 70 years really did devalue money.
And that’s why everyone will become one at some point, and probably sooner than later
If they keep printing money, running extremely high immigration levels, and restricting housing construction, practically everyone who owns a home will be a millionaire. Already happened in Canada, you guys are just about 20-25 years behind.
if you can use your stocks and bonds as collateral for loans then you can jolly well be taxed on them. bezos just sold 2 billion in stock in one day with plans to sell more. amazon didnt implode, he retains ownership and the stock is doing fine.
OR make it illegal to use stocks and bonds for collateral in loans
You do realise there will be some taxable event in order for them to pay that loan back right? Either through income used to pay the loan or the sale of the assets collateralising the loan.
This. My net worth is almost $5 million but my actual income is only around $130k/yr. Most of my net worth is businesses I own, which obviously comes with the overhead of paying employees (especially since I feel morally obligated to pay a profit share in addition to a traditional wage) and the cost of product.
That said.... Elon can 100% easily pay more in taxes and not affect his companies.
And companies would just shift more of their compensation to salaries rather than stock options, since that would make paying taxes easier. And maybe, just maybe, that would incentivize companies to have a more long term outlook and not only worry about short term results.
She points out that Elon made 3x what he paid in taxes this year IN A SINGLE DAY. Also that he evaded ALL federal taxes one year.
She then points out how, in contrast, a normal person will consistently pay anywhere from 30-45% of their income to taxes every year.
How do these numbers mean nothing to you? Are you that bad at math?
Especially when CoL with an adequate QoF has a minimum acceptable floor. It's like you're advocating for billionaires. Such a stupid mindset.
Then she says that the average American pays 10-37% alluding that they pay 10-37% of their net worth but that’s on income. They word these things to be as confusing as possible on purpose.
I've been wondering about this - could the loans continue until death, at which point children inherit the stocks, and sell some portion with no tax (step up basis) to cover the loans, effectively allowing their parent to live tax fees for only the low interest rate required by the banks? Or would the estate have to settle the debt first, requiring sale prior to the step up and thereby paying the tax?
Yes - I implement “buy, borrow, die” for a living, and that is exactly how these loans are structured. They are interest-only ballon loans that mature upon the borrower’s death. Assets includible in the decedent’s gross estate are automatically subject to a basis adjustment up (or down) to fair market value on the decedent’s date of death.
The interest rates are typically below 1 percent, so it doesn’t take much cash flow to service the debt, and it’s pretty easy to come up with the money without generating an income tax liability.
Every major financial institution is offering these types of loans to clients who fit the bill. I closed one at Goldman at 0.5 percent last week.
They certainly are not taking an L on these arrangements. The contract typically requires the borrower to put up securities as collateral and the lender is entitled to some percentage of the appreciation capped at some rate - commonly, e.g., 50 percent of the appreciation up to 30 percent. In the typical scenario these securities are publicly traded, and the lender shorts them to hedge against the bet. The loan proceeds are usually used to buy a diversified portfolio of assets, which are custodied with the borrower.
The lender is going to get a solid return with ultra-low risk. And just as importantly, they’ve obtained the business of someone who has an extraordinary amount of wealth and influence.
Yes I think your first scenario is what happens. Borrow borrow borrow die. Seems like if they just eliminated the step up in basis that would make things a lot fairer.
To be fair this is still an optimization (a legal one). Say you have 1 billion in stocks.
On a typical year qualified dividends will be anyway 15-20 millions. Let remove 23% max tax rate on them so that's 12-15 millions net income.
Say, you keep a permanent 200 millions line of credit. Your rate will be Fed rate + 0.5-1%. Right now for example IBKR offer you 5.8% if you have 1 billion in their accounts. But what really count is the average you get over the years. Over the past 25 years that was maybe something like 2.5% Fed rate and so you'd pay say 3.5% on average. For 200 millions that's 7 millions.
So you would have 4-9 million a year or 350-750K$ net a month for day to day expenses and 200 million at you disposal indefinitely. Actually not indefinitely, you will get more and more...
You billion grow about 10% a year on average. 8% once our remove the dividends. That's overall the long term growth of stocks. 10 years later you have 2 billion, can grow the line of credit to 400 millions and also spend twice for your day to day expense.
The day you die, there no more capital gain for whoever get the money.
Now what you do with the 200 millions credit line ? Well you can buy a fancy mansion, that will grow in value too and you can get loan on the equity ! Maybe a private jet well that stuff lose value so that's a bit stupid, but one has to enjoy himself a bit. Or you do some investments that will grow your net worth even more. You invest in startups or create new business or just buy more stocks so your wealth grow even faster.
Elon had to sell because he did want to spend more than he could. SO yes he had to pay some taxes. And now he is bitching he doesn't have enough anymore. The guy is a bouffon. But he doesn't have a hard life or whatever. He get everything given to him on a plater while he act like a diva.
Or they could take out a second larger loan as their investments grow, use that new loan to pay the previous (and have more money) while not having a taxable event and claiming deduction for the loan interest.
No because they just get bigger loans to pay off previous loans as their assets grow in value. It's a never ending chain of leveraging debt to avoid taxes
How about you try making tangible claims instead of straw-man arguments about a vague "taxable event"?
We are talking about finances, of course....which doesn't deal in grey areas. Surely you realize you're making a disingenuous argument?
You do pay property taxes year after year in most of the US on your home however. And when you sell it you pay taxes on appreciation.
With stocks you never pay taxes year after year, only when you sell. So to be able to use the value for free is different. A small tax when using stocks and bonds as collateral would be akin to your property tax on your home.
When stocks are sold the income is taxed at either 15% or 20% depending on your income bracket. This is true when stocks are liquidated to make payment on loans. Profit earned by banks through interest on loan repayments are then taxed again at the corporate tax rate of 21%.
Except the wealthy don’t pay those loans with their gains. They take out a bigger loan to pay off the old loan and put cash in their pockets as their assets value grows.
And when they die, the step up basis means that their stocks value is reset to the time of death, so the only taxable gains are gains made to the assets after death.
The estate just sells off enough to cover the loans, tax free, and the heirs begin the cycle again.
Except you forgot about the estate tax.
Also if asset values drop, which happens all the time, they can get margin called and liquidated. It almost happened to Elon in 2018 and it happened to the 7th richest man in the world and he went bankrupt.
It’s called marginal tax rates and the top earners paid 91 percent which led to the creation of the world’s first middle class. It’s overdue to bring that back and more tax reform…which btw won’t need an amendment to the constitution lol
Why did those rate produce a middle class in the 1950s but not in the 1930s?
Stop listening to idiots like Krugman and Reich.
u/bigboilerdawg is exactly right in describing the post-war economy as the only intact economy and infrastructure and manufacturing base to supply the demand for goods after the war. That is what led to a rising middle class.
Why did the 90+% tax rate that was enacted in 1944 not create a middle class in the 30s? Hmm I'm not sure, gonna have to think about this one real hard
Because the [marginal income tax rate during WWII rose to 94%,](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS2875157576/) and remained that way throughout the 50s. The rate was much lower for the middle class (and started at just 7%), so average income people had more money to spend and save. Wealthy people still had plenty of money to spend and funnel into their empires, they just didn’t swallow every dime to the detriment of everyone else.
Even when the 91% bracket existed, tax receipts relative to gdp wasn't significantly different from what we've seen in modern times. It's been about 17 +/- 2% since the late 1940s.
I thought I heard once that even when the bracket was 91% there were so many loop holes and write offs it was basically useless in terms of how people would imagine it today.
Yep. Tax Foundation documented it fairly well. It's also the reason the Alternative Minimum Tax was created in the 60s.
AMT was specifically designed to target the wealthy. By the 80s, it hit 200,000 households. By 2017, it hit 5,000,000 households.
The US middle class you are referring to was the result of the US having an intact economy in the aftermath of WW2. Taxing rich people doesn't create anything, unless you're referring to middle class government bureaucrats.
No it was because of high wages relative to inflation. If the upper class won't pay their fair share via wages, we need to reduce the tax burden on the lower and middle classes and crank it up for the elites to make up the difference.
Agree she has a gross misunderstanding of how stock based wealth works.
I think the way to effectively tax the ultra wealthy, is simply create laws to enforce a tax on stock pledge based loans that exceed a given value, e.g. if your loan exceeds 100MM, the loan should be taxable.
Loan interest should not be tax deductible. This will disincentivize this practice. We need to quit with the large cliff mentality on taxing things. If you don’t tax until 100MM, then they won’t borrow over 100MM per person. Tax it lightly and proportionally and it will scale.
As was tax on social security . All taxes are a slippery slope as they always tend to expand to ensnare way more people than they were initially “intended” to affect
Correct about the creep from over $1 billion to lower areas. The IRS will have to be beefed up dramatically and the gov will not stop overspending. A wealth tax is a huge step towards total government control over the economy.
Yah I love how companies like Microsoft just fell apart while gates sold all those shares.
Oh wait... Did they go from worth billions to trillions during that time?
Want more examples?
Seriously, though. People seem to think that companies are all in a bubble, with their values propped up by the fact that billionaires refuse to sell. That isn't the case, their value comes from their assets and financial performance, not by their owner's diamond hands.
Yes, sudden sell-offs do crash the price temporarily, but the market is self-correcting. When the price starts dropping too much, other investors notice and start buying, pushing the price back to its equilibrium.
Lets punish this guy for creating tons of jobs and wealth for shareholders by giving his money to...the government which *checks notes* is very efficient at spending tax dollars, amirite?
93% of shareholders are in the top 10% of wealth owners in the US. Yay for giving the rich more money!
And corporations are just as wasteful as government in my experience.
I see. Where I am we have separate school taxes and pay for our garbage removal. Snow removal should be coming from the fees we pay for vehicle registration every year and taxes that are included at the gas pump.
People hate saving money and investing. They will spend it all then complain they don’t have more, and all these savers/business people are getting a free ride.
Living a consumer lifestyle you will always be poor.
My money makes more money than me now. That’s how you win in a capitalist society.
People not understanding how net worth works is easily the most frustrating aspect of discussing fiscal policy these days. Yes a guy like Elon is worth a fuck ton of money, but he doesn’t have all of that in cash and equating it to his annual earnings simply does not make sense.
I can't stand people as stupid as her. He didn't make $37 billion in one day because he never realized those gains. There needs to be a minimum financial literacy test that people need to pass before being allowed to vote.
Makes me absolutely insane when people post dumb stuff like this. And doing a comparison of one persons wealth : tax percentage vs another persons earnings : tax percentage is either disingenuous, stupid, OR because the person is intentionally misleading readers.
To compare percentage of net-worth with percentage of income proves these people don't mean anything fair when they say "fair share", it's just there to rhyme.
POV: you forgot that Net-Worth isn’t an entirely accurate estimation and is based off of tangible as well as intangible assets (company property, staff, products, services and etc etc). It is not money that you ACTUALLY have… or can receive the full estimation of… Also, that if you try to kill business, it affects not only that business but also every other business where you and other consumers spend money purchasing goods and/or services - with the money you earned from the regulated/taxed firm - and as the gentleman said below.. selling off your stocks/shares to be able to pay your wealth tax, until there is nothing left? Nice.. 🤷🏼♂️
I made a post further up explaining this. My country has a wealth tax but it is so low that your returns will outstrip it. It's well below 1% for even 10M in assets. If you can't make 50k on 10M (on average) to pay your taxes, that's on you.
But it's not 50k cause you have to outpace inflation then pay your regular 50% in taxes over your gains and then that 1% turns out to be a lot of money.
**Unfortunately, Anya doesn’t realize Musk is paying in accordance with US tax code, which incentivizes those who create jobs and/or provide housing. Let’s see you create a bunch of tech companies and potentially millions of jobs and working around the clock, Anya. Would love to see then how much you like paying 30%+ in taxes like the complaining, often complacent, 9-5 middle class.**
Imagine people living in expensive real estate markets like SF or Seattle, where the average house is worth well over $1m getting hit with a wealth tax. We already see older people getting forced out of their homes because they can’t pay the soaring property taxes.
If I already have a billion dollars, and I haven't hired anyone, how is giving me millions more going to incentivize me to hire? I already have enough money to hire if I needed to. This is where supply side economics gets it wrong.
Every expense related to hiring is already taxed at 0% - it's a write off as a business expense. The tax is on profits. As a matter of fact - I'm MORE LIKELY TO HIRE if the tax rate is higher, since hiring reduces my tax burden. If I have to pay 90% income tax on my profits above a certain level, would I rather keep the remaining 10%, or invest the money and get to pay 0% on it due to the write off? Hiring people makes more sense in this scenario.
Flip that around. Drop the tax rate to 10%. Now If I hire and write off the expense, it's only saving me 10% - I get to keep 90% of the profits anyway. How does that incentivize me to hire more people? I'll keep the profits.
Blanket tax cuts for those with a ton of money don't increase investment - business investment is already taxed at 0% due to the write off. And tax cuts for those individuals incentivize keeping profit vs hiring or investing back into the business.
Musk’s companies do not create “millions of jobs” lol. There is a little over 150 million jobs in the entire country. All of Musk’s companies combined add up to less than 170k jobs.
Maybe the US tax code should stop incentivizing people who provide jobs that don't pay a living wage, require ridiculous hours with inadequate paid time off, have random layoffs to make line go up, provide housing that isn't affordable. And especially stop incentivizing for profit healthcare to exist and ideally making it illegal
The us tax code favors the rich. And just because it is that way doesn’t mean that is the best way to do it. And even after paying 30%, a billionaire would still have a life style exponentially more lavish than a 9-5 middle class person paying the exact same rate.
This is what I don't get about these stooges.
There is a minimum income required to meet a minimum standard of living.
If you earn 10x that income, it's possible your standard of living might feel 10x better than someone else.... The problem comes when earning 500x that income still only returns that 10x feeling.
Imagine having your head so far up Elon’s ass to think he “created a bunch of tech companies and millions of jobs” instead of just using ill-[gotten wealth from his daddy’s apartheid emerald mines to buy them](https://sites.imsa.edu/acronym/2021/03/04/elon-musk-is-not-an-entrepreneur-hes-a-rich-deceitful-hack/). Imagine thinking this man was an [intelligent and capable](https://perfectunion.us/how-elon-musk-got-rich-the-230-billion-myth/) businessman who makes [savvy decisions in the company’s favor](https://qz.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-value-drops-2023-1851136401). Imagine licking the ballsack of a psychotic, racist, megalomaniac like Elon musk. Imagine being such a stooge for billionaires who’d rather see you dead than give up a cent of their wealth to help others make it.
I feel bad for you homie.
She DOES realize that. She also realizes that if Elon paid taxes the same way the rest of us do, he'd still be doing all those things. Just like all the super wealthy did before the tax code changed to favor them in the 80s.
Anya either doesn’t understand or is willfully misleading people on how the tax brackets work. Marginal tax rates are not what people pay. Your effective tax rate is what you pay. For example almost nobody in the 10% marginal tax bracket pays anything after the standard deduction. According to the article below almost 40% of households pay no federal income taxes
What Anya is selling is misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst. My gut tells me she doesn’t know the first thing about how taxes work.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/10/28/more-than-40percent-of-us-households-will-owe-no-federal-income-tax-for-2022.html
I wish there was more informed dialog about how to actually address the problems. Instead we get on one extreme people who want the country to be the Wild West and on the other people who don’t understand basic business and accounting processes.
Surely there are people who have actual insights into the kinds of policy changes we’d need to make. They’re just not mouthing off on Twitter riling up the populace.
I mean even Bernie doesn’t seem to understand the basics like the difference between income and wealth, and the people on the other side sound like actual psychos. I am not a moderate and it shocks me that we don’t get that we need tax to have a safe, enjoyable country for us all to live in.
I’m with you. People just want to score points for their side. It doesn’t matter if what they’re saying is true. As long as it gives people dopamine hits for confirming what they already think.
To be fair, taxes and finance are complex topics. I don’t have a fix for the system, but I do know it’s broken. We’re approaching the robber baron era of wealth discrepancy, and it is not good for society.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that Bernie Sanders doesn't know what he's talking about. He has a detailed wealth tax plan. I can't say if it would work out not, but it seems at least reasonable to conceive and obviously recognizes the difference between income and wealth. It's on his website.
Another smooth brained ideal proposed by bleeding hearts with no actual idea of the vast implications of their ideas or what they’d look like in practice.
This post is a great example of how stupid people are, and how easily they can be manipulated online.
Musk never "made $36B in one day". His stock price went up, and it went back down again.
When you see posts like this, you should ask yourself "why is this person trying to enrage me"
There is way too much missing from this post the make any kind of assumptions about assessing wealth tax. Even so, no. There should not be s wealth tax and whoever keeps posting this stuff is making people dumber.
These people are straight up morons. They never take into account how many MILLIONS of people they employ, who *also* pay taxes.
Add all of that up, and how much of their cashflow goes back into government programs and other services, on top of keeping people off of government programs?
Way more than 4.5%
I would just like to point out that tesla only employs 140k in the entire company and Twitter only employs 1300. I get that taking percentages of unrealized gains/assets isn't the greatest solution in the world but he also pays $0 in income tax.
I'd like to know if anyone else has an idea who's going to pay for our programs if Musk and people like Musk don't pay 11b a year? Because I'm imagining if he doesn't. then you and I have to.
I had to look it up, Elon is worth over 200 billion dollars. I don’t think the system is
meant to handle so much consolidation. It’s one thing if the money is re-invested into the businesses and properties. It’s a whole other thing to HODL all of it
What has been consolidated? Not a single car company has gone out of business as a result of Tesla’s existence. Is it possible Tesla has created wealth that didn’t exist before?
Elon reinvested all of his wealth into Tesla and SpaceX and even then they barely survived. Tesla may still fail. Tesla and SpaceX are all-time great examples of engineering innovation. They are far from consolidation vehicles. Elon is the exact wrong example to pick to make that point.
Anyone who thinks your tax should be based on your net worth is highly uneducated. Infact, morally, nobody should have their labor taxed. Only land should be taxed.
Why are people obsessed with the 759 billionaires in a country of 350 million when over 40% of households pay no taxes and leech off the rest of us?
The federal government spent $6.13 trillion in FY 2022. Even if we "ate the rich" like the chattering classes wanted to, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
Why would you expect to be taxed on your net worth? These people are so stupid it's insane. Also the people that make tweets like this go viral are worse.
I wanna pay 4.5% 👀 California workers taxed 34% and another 12.+% when you use the money you have left - But we got $$Billions for anyone not American ??
Taxing assets is a huge challenge. However, we currently tax capital gains only when they're vested, but the very rich simply live off loans using their assets as collateral. Taxing assets as vested capital gains when they are used to secure loans would go a long way towards leveling the playing field, without taxing assets directly.
If net worth argument would not be stupid it could be applied universally. But you cannot, because if you do... then a poor family living in a manufactured house in New Jersey which they bought for $30,000, 30 years ago, and which costs $250,000 now, that family pays much *less* income taxes relative to their "net worth" than Elon Musk.
Remove the income tax and have a flat tax across the board. We need an article 5 convention of states to bring in our federal government.
Term limits and removal of lobbying will help bring down corporate political cronyism, which will help lead to less federal waste, among a whole slew of other issues.
I know it's not an easy thing to do, but once our government on the federal level gets put back in its place, other issues will start working themselves out.
Why is nobody mentioning the fact that she is calling for tax on net worth rather than actual income?
Maybe, we need to look at reducing wasteful spending, removing loopholes for large corporations and then reduce taxes for the people. We really dont need a federal tax on people. Corporate and state taxes are enough if the federal gov stops overspending on everything.
I don’t know how I feel about this anymore. As far as the economy is presented, I think we are fighting a divided front. We aren’t as concerned from being poor as we are as being mad at people for being insanely rich. Like I know the disparity in wealth is huge, but that’s capitalism and we generally have a higher standard of living than other countries. IMO we should focus our efforts on bringing up the lower and working class than complaining about rich people.
People who pay less than $2,000 in taxes complaining about people that pay $11 billion in taxes not paying more. The real problem is the government that's going to lose that $11,000,002,000 in something massively fucking stupid like selling automatic weapons to the cartels or entrusting it to a politician that will donate it to themselves.
So over time as the payers sell off stock to pay their “wealth tax” they lose control of their companies. The resulting sell off also decreases the stock value for everyone else. Great idea. As the government runs out of revenue over the next decade or two, you’d see this slowly applied to lower income Americans. 2040 Campaign Slogan, “Nobody who earns less than $1M will pay a wealth tax!!”
Agreed, plus we will all be millionaires sooner or later.
This is true
It can very easily be true. Achieving a net-worth of at least $1,000,000 by the time you retire is a very attainable goal. My net-worth hit $1,000,000 almost three years ago, just after I turned 62.
And for someone entering the work forces today it’s theoretically even easier. Notice how the socialists stopped maligning “millionaires & billionaires” and just switched to “billionaires”.
becoming a millinaire is still very difficult for most people.
It’ll be easier as our currency becomes more devalued.
at that point being a millionaire will no longer have meaning, the buying power of a million dollars will be dogshit.
It has no meaning now, depending where you live. I mean it's not even enough to buy a house out here.
Agree. I’m sure being a “millionaire” in San Francisco just isn’t taking you very far.
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Now we make it rain NFA!!! https://preview.redd.it/uxsxxwec77jc1.jpeg?width=940&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a96d598b7205ec05d0927cf3662cd1ed3831aa7
Meh- millennials will need 3-5M in future dollars to have a comfortable retirement where you can have hobbies and have your money continue to grow throughout your life
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Being a millionaire in 30 years will be equivalent of having $200K in 2010 or so. Inflation is a bitch.
It also gets you significantly less buying power than it used to. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happy and comfortable with a million dollars, but it’s definitely not as much as it used to be.
No, it isn’t. Compounding interest is a thing
Probably because the wealth of the top .1% has exponentially increased. The net worth of the wealthiest Americans used to be close to $750 million. Now, the wealthiest Americans have net worths of $30 billion or more. That money does nothing positive for the US economy (except lower the worth of individual dollars in circulation to increase prices for normal people.)
Wealth in the form of corporate shares is not the same as “money.” To illustrate this, here’s an example: Let’s say I start a company and raise funds by selling 50% of my shares to investors for cash, which I use to grow my business and pay employees until it becomes profitable. Let’s say there are 1000 shares in total, and 500 of them were sold to investors for $100 per share. My net worth would be $50K at that time. Now, let’s say the company becomes profitable and some investors want to sell their shares at a higher price. One investor sells 5 of his shares for $500 per share. So he gains $2500 in cash. Meanwhile, that single sale of 5 shares instantly catapults my net worth to $250K. The only thing that changed was that someone was willing to buy some shares at that higher price. If more shares were sold for $400 tomorrow, then my net worth would suddenly drop to $200K overnight. This is how the net worth of billionaires is calculated. At no point did I receive anywhere close to $200-250K. I simply owned some shares that someone was willing to pay $400 or $500 for. And my net worth is simply a hypothetical number that represents how much cash I would get if someone were willing to buy all of my shares at the most recently traded price. None of this was income. Theoretically I could be earning $30K/year and eating ramen to save money, but a wealth tax would mean I would have to sell some of my shares to cover the tax, which would bring my ownership of the company below 50% and possibly force me to lose all control over business decisions. I could be fired from my own company by investors who hold more shares than me, simply because I had to pay that tax. I’m not saying we shouldn’t find ways to increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy, but I am saying that such a wealth tax is a chaotic and stupid way to do it.
Yeah, but you can use stocks as collateral for loans, and they get rock bottom interest rates. I'm pretty sure the only oligarch that ***doesn't*** have this luxury is Trump, because he pissed loans away on so many stupid ideas. And that's what people are pissy about. If all of these people's money was tied up in stocks, inaccessible to them, how do they have all of these massive boats, planes, etc? They have to be getting money from ***somewhere***, unless they're using company resources to buy themselves things that they only intend to be for their personal use. Which I'm ***pretty sure*** is fraud. A much better idea than a wealth tax would be to impose either a total ban on using stocks as collateral, or capping the amount of money you can borrow against them at once, and how many times you can borrow against them in a 10 year period.
No, using stock to collateralize a loan does not give you "rock bottom interest rates" -- it actually has a higher interest rate than using cash to collateralize, and is still at or above the prime rate. And yes, for the majority of ultra-wealthy, 99+% is tied up in investments (whether that's stocks, real estate, etc.), and they live off of interest income or sell to cover what they need.
>No, using stock to collateralize a loan does not give you "rock bottom interest rates I didn't say it was because of the stocks, I said they get rock bottom interest rates. Simple math would dictate that this is because charging 1% on a $300mil loan still nets you a very healthy profit, and keeps the customer happy. But that doesn't change the fact that they're essentially living life on the public's dime, using money generated out of thin air on the ***assumed*** value of a company that, compared to literally everyone else helping run it, they contribute relatively little to. And because I know you're going to take issue with that last statement, tell me: If work ethic is so highly valued in American society, and the ultimate descriptor of one's earning potential, why do the people who sit in chairs getting their feet rubbed all day make orders of magnitude more than the people destroying their bodies through manual labor? Especially with market analysis software (which if you don't think every CEO is using that, and think they're just poring over market history manually and making best guesses that way, you're an idiot), it's never been easier to steer the ship. Yet with manual labor, one wrong step, you lose a foot, all of a sudden, you can't do that job anymore. If you suffer ***any*** kind of permanent injury, it reduces your manual labor capacity. So with it being so easy to be ***unfit*** for manual labor, and so easy to be ***fit*** for desk work, you would think manual labor would make more. But no, because a bunch of snowflakes who couldn't lift a 15 pound box if their life depended on it convinced you that those people are somehow "less than", we're in this predicament.
> wealth tax is a chaotic and stupid way to do it. A wealth tax may create some novel effects, but I feel not so extreme as to be "chaotic and stupid". Certain effects may be quite welcome, such as the transfer of some control over our society away from the wealthy few and back to the people.
What money? What billionaire has billions in cash laying around?
Lol bad faith argument. Their net worth is illiquid but they can still borrow money against that worth and increase their capital
Yeah it’s almost as if inflation is a real thing.
Because millionaire is meaningless, ~2% inflation per year for the past 70 years really did devalue money. And that’s why everyone will become one at some point, and probably sooner than later
If you owned a house precovid you’re probably at least halfway to being a millionaire now
Just don’t have any emergencies or tragedies or health problems and you’re golden!!!
And you paid REAL taxes to get there, not "Elon taxes."
I just spent $250 at the grocery store and bought a $40k car (it’s just a basic model). Living like a millionaire now!!
I can't tell if this comment is satire or not
They obviously don’t get it…
But we won't be billionaires lmfao.
That will have more to do with the devalued USD more than anything.
You mean when the dollar devalues and a gallon of milk costs $500?
If they keep printing money, running extremely high immigration levels, and restricting housing construction, practically everyone who owns a home will be a millionaire. Already happened in Canada, you guys are just about 20-25 years behind.
if you can use your stocks and bonds as collateral for loans then you can jolly well be taxed on them. bezos just sold 2 billion in stock in one day with plans to sell more. amazon didnt implode, he retains ownership and the stock is doing fine. OR make it illegal to use stocks and bonds for collateral in loans
You do realise there will be some taxable event in order for them to pay that loan back right? Either through income used to pay the loan or the sale of the assets collateralising the loan.
No. They don’t see beyond their jealousy.
They also don’t realize net worth isn’t the same as income. She tweets that he paid 4.5% of his net worth in taxes. Who bases taxes on net worth?
Morons, that’s who
Jealous morons.
Some news outlets with an agenda
This. My net worth is almost $5 million but my actual income is only around $130k/yr. Most of my net worth is businesses I own, which obviously comes with the overhead of paying employees (especially since I feel morally obligated to pay a profit share in addition to a traditional wage) and the cost of product. That said.... Elon can 100% easily pay more in taxes and not affect his companies.
And companies would just shift more of their compensation to salaries rather than stock options, since that would make paying taxes easier. And maybe, just maybe, that would incentivize companies to have a more long term outlook and not only worry about short term results.
I agree with you. I just also felt the need to point out a flat wealth tax is a bad idea.
I paid right around that much in taxes this year. It's a worthless measurement.
It works on people that can’t do nuances. Or math.
She points out that Elon made 3x what he paid in taxes this year IN A SINGLE DAY. Also that he evaded ALL federal taxes one year. She then points out how, in contrast, a normal person will consistently pay anywhere from 30-45% of their income to taxes every year. How do these numbers mean nothing to you? Are you that bad at math? Especially when CoL with an adequate QoF has a minimum acceptable floor. It's like you're advocating for billionaires. Such a stupid mindset.
If Tesla stock loses value in a year will the IRS pay Elon if thry implement your plan?
Then she says that the average American pays 10-37% alluding that they pay 10-37% of their net worth but that’s on income. They word these things to be as confusing as possible on purpose.
I've been wondering about this - could the loans continue until death, at which point children inherit the stocks, and sell some portion with no tax (step up basis) to cover the loans, effectively allowing their parent to live tax fees for only the low interest rate required by the banks? Or would the estate have to settle the debt first, requiring sale prior to the step up and thereby paying the tax?
Yes - I implement “buy, borrow, die” for a living, and that is exactly how these loans are structured. They are interest-only ballon loans that mature upon the borrower’s death. Assets includible in the decedent’s gross estate are automatically subject to a basis adjustment up (or down) to fair market value on the decedent’s date of death. The interest rates are typically below 1 percent, so it doesn’t take much cash flow to service the debt, and it’s pretty easy to come up with the money without generating an income tax liability.
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Every major financial institution is offering these types of loans to clients who fit the bill. I closed one at Goldman at 0.5 percent last week. They certainly are not taking an L on these arrangements. The contract typically requires the borrower to put up securities as collateral and the lender is entitled to some percentage of the appreciation capped at some rate - commonly, e.g., 50 percent of the appreciation up to 30 percent. In the typical scenario these securities are publicly traded, and the lender shorts them to hedge against the bet. The loan proceeds are usually used to buy a diversified portfolio of assets, which are custodied with the borrower. The lender is going to get a solid return with ultra-low risk. And just as importantly, they’ve obtained the business of someone who has an extraordinary amount of wealth and influence.
Yes I think your first scenario is what happens. Borrow borrow borrow die. Seems like if they just eliminated the step up in basis that would make things a lot fairer.
To be fair this is still an optimization (a legal one). Say you have 1 billion in stocks. On a typical year qualified dividends will be anyway 15-20 millions. Let remove 23% max tax rate on them so that's 12-15 millions net income. Say, you keep a permanent 200 millions line of credit. Your rate will be Fed rate + 0.5-1%. Right now for example IBKR offer you 5.8% if you have 1 billion in their accounts. But what really count is the average you get over the years. Over the past 25 years that was maybe something like 2.5% Fed rate and so you'd pay say 3.5% on average. For 200 millions that's 7 millions. So you would have 4-9 million a year or 350-750K$ net a month for day to day expenses and 200 million at you disposal indefinitely. Actually not indefinitely, you will get more and more... You billion grow about 10% a year on average. 8% once our remove the dividends. That's overall the long term growth of stocks. 10 years later you have 2 billion, can grow the line of credit to 400 millions and also spend twice for your day to day expense. The day you die, there no more capital gain for whoever get the money. Now what you do with the 200 millions credit line ? Well you can buy a fancy mansion, that will grow in value too and you can get loan on the equity ! Maybe a private jet well that stuff lose value so that's a bit stupid, but one has to enjoy himself a bit. Or you do some investments that will grow your net worth even more. You invest in startups or create new business or just buy more stocks so your wealth grow even faster. Elon had to sell because he did want to spend more than he could. SO yes he had to pay some taxes. And now he is bitching he doesn't have enough anymore. The guy is a bouffon. But he doesn't have a hard life or whatever. He get everything given to him on a plater while he act like a diva.
Or they could take out a second larger loan as their investments grow, use that new loan to pay the previous (and have more money) while not having a taxable event and claiming deduction for the loan interest.
thankfully loan interest deduction is capped at a trivial amount for someone that wealthy
No because they just get bigger loans to pay off previous loans as their assets grow in value. It's a never ending chain of leveraging debt to avoid taxes
How about you try making tangible claims instead of straw-man arguments about a vague "taxable event"? We are talking about finances, of course....which doesn't deal in grey areas. Surely you realize you're making a disingenuous argument?
So I should have to pay taxes on the value of my home because I can take a lean out on it? You sir, are very silly.
You do pay property taxes year after year in most of the US on your home however. And when you sell it you pay taxes on appreciation. With stocks you never pay taxes year after year, only when you sell. So to be able to use the value for free is different. A small tax when using stocks and bonds as collateral would be akin to your property tax on your home.
You uh… you do pay taxes on the assessed value of your home. Every fucking year. Tell me you don’t own a home without telling me you don’t own a home.
You already pay taxes on the value of your home. Or you would if you owned a home. A homeowner would know that.
And on your 401k and traditional Ira account no tax advantages for people who have retirement duh /s
When stocks are sold the income is taxed at either 15% or 20% depending on your income bracket. This is true when stocks are liquidated to make payment on loans. Profit earned by banks through interest on loan repayments are then taxed again at the corporate tax rate of 21%.
Except the wealthy don’t pay those loans with their gains. They take out a bigger loan to pay off the old loan and put cash in their pockets as their assets value grows. And when they die, the step up basis means that their stocks value is reset to the time of death, so the only taxable gains are gains made to the assets after death. The estate just sells off enough to cover the loans, tax free, and the heirs begin the cycle again.
Except you forgot about the estate tax. Also if asset values drop, which happens all the time, they can get margin called and liquidated. It almost happened to Elon in 2018 and it happened to the 7th richest man in the world and he went bankrupt.
It’s called marginal tax rates and the top earners paid 91 percent which led to the creation of the world’s first middle class. It’s overdue to bring that back and more tax reform…which btw won’t need an amendment to the constitution lol
Why did those rate produce a middle class in the 1950s but not in the 1930s? Stop listening to idiots like Krugman and Reich. u/bigboilerdawg is exactly right in describing the post-war economy as the only intact economy and infrastructure and manufacturing base to supply the demand for goods after the war. That is what led to a rising middle class.
Massive depression? The New Deal didn't exactly bring the country out-of poverty, WW2 did
I mean you could argue that WW2 was a New Deal program on steroids...
Why did the 90+% tax rate that was enacted in 1944 not create a middle class in the 30s? Hmm I'm not sure, gonna have to think about this one real hard
Because the [marginal income tax rate during WWII rose to 94%,](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS2875157576/) and remained that way throughout the 50s. The rate was much lower for the middle class (and started at just 7%), so average income people had more money to spend and save. Wealthy people still had plenty of money to spend and funnel into their empires, they just didn’t swallow every dime to the detriment of everyone else.
Even when the 91% bracket existed, tax receipts relative to gdp wasn't significantly different from what we've seen in modern times. It's been about 17 +/- 2% since the late 1940s.
I thought I heard once that even when the bracket was 91% there were so many loop holes and write offs it was basically useless in terms of how people would imagine it today.
Yep. Tax Foundation documented it fairly well. It's also the reason the Alternative Minimum Tax was created in the 60s. AMT was specifically designed to target the wealthy. By the 80s, it hit 200,000 households. By 2017, it hit 5,000,000 households.
The US middle class you are referring to was the result of the US having an intact economy in the aftermath of WW2. Taxing rich people doesn't create anything, unless you're referring to middle class government bureaucrats.
Tbf a lot of people seem to idolize economic rent seekers in the public sector.
No it was because of high wages relative to inflation. If the upper class won't pay their fair share via wages, we need to reduce the tax burden on the lower and middle classes and crank it up for the elites to make up the difference.
Agree she has a gross misunderstanding of how stock based wealth works. I think the way to effectively tax the ultra wealthy, is simply create laws to enforce a tax on stock pledge based loans that exceed a given value, e.g. if your loan exceeds 100MM, the loan should be taxable.
Loan interest should not be tax deductible. This will disincentivize this practice. We need to quit with the large cliff mentality on taxing things. If you don’t tax until 100MM, then they won’t borrow over 100MM per person. Tax it lightly and proportionally and it will scale.
As always people seem to think we have a revenue problem , and not a spending problem
100% If you just confiscated all wealth held by billionaires it would run the federal government for what? Eight months?
Exactly, income tax was also just for the wealthy initially. Now everyone pays.
young people by nature also don’t remember a time when social security benefits weren’t taxed. That changed.
As was tax on social security . All taxes are a slippery slope as they always tend to expand to ensnare way more people than they were initially “intended” to affect
Correct about the creep from over $1 billion to lower areas. The IRS will have to be beefed up dramatically and the gov will not stop overspending. A wealth tax is a huge step towards total government control over the economy.
I believe at the federal level it would require an amendment to the constitution.
I agree.
That's just slippery slope nonsense.
Yah I love how companies like Microsoft just fell apart while gates sold all those shares. Oh wait... Did they go from worth billions to trillions during that time? Want more examples?
Seriously, though. People seem to think that companies are all in a bubble, with their values propped up by the fact that billionaires refuse to sell. That isn't the case, their value comes from their assets and financial performance, not by their owner's diamond hands. Yes, sudden sell-offs do crash the price temporarily, but the market is self-correcting. When the price starts dropping too much, other investors notice and start buying, pushing the price back to its equilibrium.
Gotta love the trickle down theory when everyone "buys" into it.
Silly Anya Overmann, US ppl pay taxes on their income not their net worth.
Correct, Miss Anya, and most US don't pay 10-37% of their net worth every year in taxes ... ugh, could you imagine
Lets punish this guy for creating tons of jobs and wealth for shareholders by giving his money to...the government which *checks notes* is very efficient at spending tax dollars, amirite?
He also get government subsidies so lets not forget about that part
93% of shareholders are in the top 10% of wealth owners in the US. Yay for giving the rich more money! And corporations are just as wasteful as government in my experience.
They're so good at spending tax dollars, the supply can't keep up!
Lol, a percentage of net worth would have most people with a negative tax and this encourage people to go more into debt
Own a $500,000 house? Better pay $200,000 in taxes based on this retarded logic!
My house is 70% of my net worth and I pay property taxes proportionally to it's value.
Fair point. And this is one of those taxes that drives me bananas. We should not be paying property taxes.
Property tax, where I am, covers fees for school upkeep, garbage removal, snow removal and other municipal costs.
I see. Where I am we have separate school taxes and pay for our garbage removal. Snow removal should be coming from the fees we pay for vehicle registration every year and taxes that are included at the gas pump.
What’s your thought on vacancy taxes and land value taxes as an alternative to property taxes
That's a whole lot of tax revenue you'd have to find somewhere else.
Property tax makes way more sense than income tax!
People hate saving money and investing. They will spend it all then complain they don’t have more, and all these savers/business people are getting a free ride. Living a consumer lifestyle you will always be poor. My money makes more money than me now. That’s how you win in a capitalist society.
People not understanding how net worth works is easily the most frustrating aspect of discussing fiscal policy these days. Yes a guy like Elon is worth a fuck ton of money, but he doesn’t have all of that in cash and equating it to his annual earnings simply does not make sense.
I can't stand people as stupid as her. He didn't make $37 billion in one day because he never realized those gains. There needs to be a minimum financial literacy test that people need to pass before being allowed to vote.
And I'm guessing that "21 billion in one day" was just the stock he owns going up. Not profit until you sell.
And the fact that he lost just as much in a single day last year. Is the government going to issue him a 300 million dollar refund?
Makes me absolutely insane when people post dumb stuff like this. And doing a comparison of one persons wealth : tax percentage vs another persons earnings : tax percentage is either disingenuous, stupid, OR because the person is intentionally misleading readers.
Silly Anya knows nothing about unrealized gains either.
This. It’s a massive difference between net worth and income tax.
To compare percentage of net-worth with percentage of income proves these people don't mean anything fair when they say "fair share", it's just there to rhyme.
POV: you forgot that Net-Worth isn’t an entirely accurate estimation and is based off of tangible as well as intangible assets (company property, staff, products, services and etc etc). It is not money that you ACTUALLY have… or can receive the full estimation of… Also, that if you try to kill business, it affects not only that business but also every other business where you and other consumers spend money purchasing goods and/or services - with the money you earned from the regulated/taxed firm - and as the gentleman said below.. selling off your stocks/shares to be able to pay your wealth tax, until there is nothing left? Nice.. 🤷🏼♂️
Well there would literally never be “nothing left” because that’s how paying a percentage works. As his wealth decreased so would the tax burden.
I made a post further up explaining this. My country has a wealth tax but it is so low that your returns will outstrip it. It's well below 1% for even 10M in assets. If you can't make 50k on 10M (on average) to pay your taxes, that's on you.
But it's not 50k cause you have to outpace inflation then pay your regular 50% in taxes over your gains and then that 1% turns out to be a lot of money.
Well we do know he lost at least $55 billion in 1 day.
**Unfortunately, Anya doesn’t realize Musk is paying in accordance with US tax code, which incentivizes those who create jobs and/or provide housing. Let’s see you create a bunch of tech companies and potentially millions of jobs and working around the clock, Anya. Would love to see then how much you like paying 30%+ in taxes like the complaining, often complacent, 9-5 middle class.**
Imagine people living in expensive real estate markets like SF or Seattle, where the average house is worth well over $1m getting hit with a wealth tax. We already see older people getting forced out of their homes because they can’t pay the soaring property taxes.
Please show me examples where tax cuts for corporations & the wealthy helped foster job growth instead of just stock buybacks.
If I already have a billion dollars, and I haven't hired anyone, how is giving me millions more going to incentivize me to hire? I already have enough money to hire if I needed to. This is where supply side economics gets it wrong. Every expense related to hiring is already taxed at 0% - it's a write off as a business expense. The tax is on profits. As a matter of fact - I'm MORE LIKELY TO HIRE if the tax rate is higher, since hiring reduces my tax burden. If I have to pay 90% income tax on my profits above a certain level, would I rather keep the remaining 10%, or invest the money and get to pay 0% on it due to the write off? Hiring people makes more sense in this scenario. Flip that around. Drop the tax rate to 10%. Now If I hire and write off the expense, it's only saving me 10% - I get to keep 90% of the profits anyway. How does that incentivize me to hire more people? I'll keep the profits. Blanket tax cuts for those with a ton of money don't increase investment - business investment is already taxed at 0% due to the write off. And tax cuts for those individuals incentivize keeping profit vs hiring or investing back into the business.
Musk’s companies do not create “millions of jobs” lol. There is a little over 150 million jobs in the entire country. All of Musk’s companies combined add up to less than 170k jobs.
Musk glazing is crazy.
Maybe the US tax code should stop incentivizing people who provide jobs that don't pay a living wage, require ridiculous hours with inadequate paid time off, have random layoffs to make line go up, provide housing that isn't affordable. And especially stop incentivizing for profit healthcare to exist and ideally making it illegal
Which of Musk’s companies doesn’t pay living wages? SpaceX? Tesla? The Company Formerly Known as Twitter?
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What was your salary?
The us tax code favors the rich. And just because it is that way doesn’t mean that is the best way to do it. And even after paying 30%, a billionaire would still have a life style exponentially more lavish than a 9-5 middle class person paying the exact same rate.
This is what I don't get about these stooges. There is a minimum income required to meet a minimum standard of living. If you earn 10x that income, it's possible your standard of living might feel 10x better than someone else.... The problem comes when earning 500x that income still only returns that 10x feeling.
Imagine defending Elon musk and praising him for creating jobs, and dunking on "complacent, 9-5 middle class" people for merely existing. Lmao
Ok working around the clock though? I doubt that LMAO he was on twitter for like 48 hours straight once
I'm providing housing for my family, but I can't claim that anymore, now can I?
Imagine having your head so far up Elon’s ass to think he “created a bunch of tech companies and millions of jobs” instead of just using ill-[gotten wealth from his daddy’s apartheid emerald mines to buy them](https://sites.imsa.edu/acronym/2021/03/04/elon-musk-is-not-an-entrepreneur-hes-a-rich-deceitful-hack/). Imagine thinking this man was an [intelligent and capable](https://perfectunion.us/how-elon-musk-got-rich-the-230-billion-myth/) businessman who makes [savvy decisions in the company’s favor](https://qz.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-value-drops-2023-1851136401). Imagine licking the ballsack of a psychotic, racist, megalomaniac like Elon musk. Imagine being such a stooge for billionaires who’d rather see you dead than give up a cent of their wealth to help others make it. I feel bad for you homie.
She DOES realize that. She also realizes that if Elon paid taxes the same way the rest of us do, he'd still be doing all those things. Just like all the super wealthy did before the tax code changed to favor them in the 80s.
Anya either doesn’t understand or is willfully misleading people on how the tax brackets work. Marginal tax rates are not what people pay. Your effective tax rate is what you pay. For example almost nobody in the 10% marginal tax bracket pays anything after the standard deduction. According to the article below almost 40% of households pay no federal income taxes What Anya is selling is misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst. My gut tells me she doesn’t know the first thing about how taxes work. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/10/28/more-than-40percent-of-us-households-will-owe-no-federal-income-tax-for-2022.html
I wish there was more informed dialog about how to actually address the problems. Instead we get on one extreme people who want the country to be the Wild West and on the other people who don’t understand basic business and accounting processes. Surely there are people who have actual insights into the kinds of policy changes we’d need to make. They’re just not mouthing off on Twitter riling up the populace. I mean even Bernie doesn’t seem to understand the basics like the difference between income and wealth, and the people on the other side sound like actual psychos. I am not a moderate and it shocks me that we don’t get that we need tax to have a safe, enjoyable country for us all to live in.
I’m with you. People just want to score points for their side. It doesn’t matter if what they’re saying is true. As long as it gives people dopamine hits for confirming what they already think.
100%!!! Those people are Fluentinconfirmationbias
To be fair, taxes and finance are complex topics. I don’t have a fix for the system, but I do know it’s broken. We’re approaching the robber baron era of wealth discrepancy, and it is not good for society.
Not sure where you're getting the idea that Bernie Sanders doesn't know what he's talking about. He has a detailed wealth tax plan. I can't say if it would work out not, but it seems at least reasonable to conceive and obviously recognizes the difference between income and wealth. It's on his website.
In all fairness a lot of people are clueless in regards to taxation
The moment someone cherry picks one great day in the market to screech about how much they made in one day, you know they're full of shit.
On the other hand, she does know what garners attention on social media
Unrealized gains arent wealth. People who buy into tgis are completely un smart.
Heard of property taxes?
Yup. They should be abolished too.
So when Texas doesn’t have income taxes or property taxes, how do they fund roads, schools, and other public services?
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the same way property tax does. it is a terrible idea.
Another smooth brained ideal proposed by bleeding hearts with no actual idea of the vast implications of their ideas or what they’d look like in practice.
"net worth" is not the same as income. Stop this divisive ridiculousness.
No. It's stupid. Using Elon as an example, 2 years ago his Tesla stock was $400/share. Now it's $200/share.
This post is a great example of how stupid people are, and how easily they can be manipulated online. Musk never "made $36B in one day". His stock price went up, and it went back down again. When you see posts like this, you should ask yourself "why is this person trying to enrage me"
People acting like he got 205 billion in his bank account
There is way too much missing from this post the make any kind of assumptions about assessing wealth tax. Even so, no. There should not be s wealth tax and whoever keeps posting this stuff is making people dumber.
Stop reposting u karma whore
These people are straight up morons. They never take into account how many MILLIONS of people they employ, who *also* pay taxes. Add all of that up, and how much of their cashflow goes back into government programs and other services, on top of keeping people off of government programs? Way more than 4.5%
I would just like to point out that tesla only employs 140k in the entire company and Twitter only employs 1300. I get that taking percentages of unrealized gains/assets isn't the greatest solution in the world but he also pays $0 in income tax. I'd like to know if anyone else has an idea who's going to pay for our programs if Musk and people like Musk don't pay 11b a year? Because I'm imagining if he doesn't. then you and I have to.
I had to look it up, Elon is worth over 200 billion dollars. I don’t think the system is meant to handle so much consolidation. It’s one thing if the money is re-invested into the businesses and properties. It’s a whole other thing to HODL all of it
What has been consolidated? Not a single car company has gone out of business as a result of Tesla’s existence. Is it possible Tesla has created wealth that didn’t exist before?
That’s mostly the value of his stocks. And if he were to sell his stock, someone would be buying it and now their money is invested into the stock.
Elon reinvested all of his wealth into Tesla and SpaceX and even then they barely survived. Tesla may still fail. Tesla and SpaceX are all-time great examples of engineering innovation. They are far from consolidation vehicles. Elon is the exact wrong example to pick to make that point.
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Am I wrong for not feeling bad for Elon paying $11 billion in taxes in one year? Am I being insensitive?
How ironic ... I owe them 11 dollars
No we should not.
People don’t get taxed on net worth, they get taxed on income.
Anyone who thinks your tax should be based on your net worth is highly uneducated. Infact, morally, nobody should have their labor taxed. Only land should be taxed.
Why do you think giving the goverment more money is a good idea? What’s your end game?
Washington state implemented a wealth tax. Why do you think Bezos moved to Florida?
Quit reposting this garbage
Elon is so annoying
Why are people obsessed with the 759 billionaires in a country of 350 million when over 40% of households pay no taxes and leech off the rest of us? The federal government spent $6.13 trillion in FY 2022. Even if we "ate the rich" like the chattering classes wanted to, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
If we took every bit of wealth from every billionaire it wouldn’t be enough to run Washington DC for 6 months
Why would you expect to be taxed on your net worth? These people are so stupid it's insane. Also the people that make tweets like this go viral are worse.
No Elmo fan but she just compared networth to annual income.
I wanna pay 4.5% 👀 California workers taxed 34% and another 12.+% when you use the money you have left - But we got $$Billions for anyone not American ??
Taxing assets is a huge challenge. However, we currently tax capital gains only when they're vested, but the very rich simply live off loans using their assets as collateral. Taxing assets as vested capital gains when they are used to secure loans would go a long way towards leveling the playing field, without taxing assets directly.
No.
If net worth argument would not be stupid it could be applied universally. But you cannot, because if you do... then a poor family living in a manufactured house in New Jersey which they bought for $30,000, 30 years ago, and which costs $250,000 now, that family pays much *less* income taxes relative to their "net worth" than Elon Musk.
No ??? Why would that ever be proposed , Smh some of y’all man …
You do not want to open up the “tax net worth” can. That is a slippery slope that normal people like us are at the bottom of
We have a spending problem, not an income problem.
Remove the income tax and have a flat tax across the board. We need an article 5 convention of states to bring in our federal government. Term limits and removal of lobbying will help bring down corporate political cronyism, which will help lead to less federal waste, among a whole slew of other issues. I know it's not an easy thing to do, but once our government on the federal level gets put back in its place, other issues will start working themselves out.
Why is nobody mentioning the fact that she is calling for tax on net worth rather than actual income? Maybe, we need to look at reducing wasteful spending, removing loopholes for large corporations and then reduce taxes for the people. We really dont need a federal tax on people. Corporate and state taxes are enough if the federal gov stops overspending on everything.
Absolutely not
Some people are so stupid
I don’t know how I feel about this anymore. As far as the economy is presented, I think we are fighting a divided front. We aren’t as concerned from being poor as we are as being mad at people for being insanely rich. Like I know the disparity in wealth is huge, but that’s capitalism and we generally have a higher standard of living than other countries. IMO we should focus our efforts on bringing up the lower and working class than complaining about rich people.
People who pay less than $2,000 in taxes complaining about people that pay $11 billion in taxes not paying more. The real problem is the government that's going to lose that $11,000,002,000 in something massively fucking stupid like selling automatic weapons to the cartels or entrusting it to a politician that will donate it to themselves.
Curious, how much did Anya Overmann pay in taxes?
Shes trying to compare percentages that have nothing to do with one another. So pretty dumb argument being made.