Comment by slowmovintarget
3 hours ago
You seem to forget that given the way taxes work, eventually, anyone, with any amount of money, will be considered "wealthy" because we'll keep running out of other people's money.
You're wealthy, or the definition will change to include you. The spice must flow.
>because we'll keep running out of other people's money.
that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, for two reasons. For one, as even Paul points out in the piece, a wealth tax below what's practically a risk free return on capital (~5%) doesn't eat into the capital stock, it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases.
Secondly, there's no monotonous historical direction towards higher wealth taxes, in fact the opposite. We're living in an age of low wealth taxation, with only half a dozen countries or so, if I'm not mistaken, imposing one at all.
> it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases
But what does this mean? If you have a load of money in some companies, that's helping to fund their activities, and the companies' share price goes up a bit, you haven't gained any money. And you won't gain any until you sell some shares, which is already taxed.
They never sell their shares. They borrow against them, write off the interest, and then when they die, their heirs get a stepped up cost basis.
Rich people have been borrowing with their stock as collateral to access their wealth tax free for decades.
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The risk free rate of return is usually only a point or two above inflation, and I’d argue that real wealth, rather than nominal wealth, is the true measure to look at to determine whether someone’s position has improved, stayed flat, or decreased.
Running out of billionaire's money would be a good thing[1].
If they don't have money then they can't buy elections and aren't insulated from the consequences of their actions.
[1] Note: I don't really think we should literally take all their money. Just enough to reduce some of the power imbalance.
All their "money" is in business ownership percentages. It's not money.
It's ok if they pay their taxes in shares, in case they ran out of money.
That's even better. You just transfer beneficial ownership and route dividends to a different bank account. And now you have a LOT more Americans literally invested in Amazon/X/Meta's success. But poor Jeff, he did have to sell his yacht (no, the other one).