Comment by spwa4
18 days ago
I wonder what people actually think of this result. "tax-the-rich" makes very limited sense unless applied internationally. Many of the super rich are super rich because they have serious influence over, or outright control of foreign states (US rich are a large exception worldwide). Nobody in the US is even 1% as rich as Putin, or Xi, or frankly even just as rich as the grand duke of Luxembourg is.
You cannot tax these people directly, because they'll leave.
You cannot have international cooperation on tax treaties because these people control states.
In other words: you can only tax them either through war, or by totally blowing up trade relationships.
One of these rich persons you mentioned is very unlikely to decide he's going to leave Moska-Oblast and retire in Monaco or anywhere else that's doesn't have a thick bunker at the ready for him.
> Nobody in the US is even 1% as rich as Putin
Putin is estimated to be up to $200 billion in wealth.
The top 4 Americans are all more wealthy: Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Ellison.
There are other kinds of wealth, like the ability to have your enemies accidentally fall out of windows.
Putin controls the entire Russian economy. In other words, by today's valuations for companies his net worth would be something like 40*GDP(Russia). Which works out to about 80 Trillion USD.
You could say that number is artificial. But you could say the same about any stock market valuation. Even that ignores that even 80 Trillion wouldn't buy the power Putin has. It would, for example, not buy 8000 nukes. I'm 100% sure that if Elon Musk threatened to nuke Washington he'd be in prison within the hour, and if his wealth was 1600 times bigger than it is (which would bring him near Putin), that wouldn't change things. Reality is not a superman movie.
The grand duke of Luxembourg is worth about 400 billion USD by the same measure, or a bit more than Elon Musk (although that ignores that the risk to Luxenburg as a country is MUCH less than the risk to Elon Musks' companies)
Are people with certain personality disorders more likely to become billionaires? Or do you inevitably develop a personality disorder once you become?
You need to be a sociopath or worse to be filthy rich and feel ok with yourself, imho