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Comment by wat10000

6 hours ago

I can't speak for others, but this doesn't match my thinking at all.

I want to heavily tax the ultra rich because money is power, and vast inequality in power is undemocratic and just plain dangerous.

I don't really care if somebody buys ten massive yachts. It's annoying and seems wasteful but it's not worth too much of my attention.

But it's another matter if somebody buys politicians, laws, social change. The issue with someone like Elon Musk isn't that he owns a private jet, or even that he owns a rocket company, it's that he bought his way to taking an axe to major parts of our government by pouring unimaginable amounts of money into buying a presidential election.

It's not about grabbing stuff, it's about preventing people from accumulating too much power. The ultra-wealthy should be heavily taxed for the same reason the President shouldn't be given unlimited power to do whatever they want.

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wat10000

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meta_gunslinger  6 hours ago

Easily solved, remove the power centers and then the billionaires will have no power to buy or influence with their money.

  • mrguyorama  4 hours ago

    There's no such thing as "Power centers".

    Money is that power.

    You cannot have billionaires and them not be immensely, structurally powerful.

    That's the entire point of capitalism, that resources, including labor, be directed by those with capital.

    Believing you can have a single human being in control of a non-negligible percentage of all resources of a country, and they wont somehow be actually powerful or influential is moronic.

    Taking the power away from billionaires literally IS taking their money.

    • meta_gunslinger  3 hours ago

      “Money is that power.”

      That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. Power is power. Members of the Communist Party in the USSR were as wealthy as their subjects, their power differential was enormous.

      1 reply →

  • wat10000  5 hours ago

    I know, that's why I want to tax them, to remove their power.

    Of course, you probably mean to remove their power centers without removing their money. But that doesn't make any sense. Money is power. You can't remove the power from a billionaire and leave them a billionaire.