It's hard to say what the best solution to this is, because you're absolutely right, many billionaires don't spend "money" - they leverage their assets to get stuff. If they need to liquidate anything, someone that monitors some portfolio at some wealth management firm will do that with a few clicks and some signatures.

Perhaps the best option is regulation of a banks ability to finance against leveraged assets above a certain threshold? I'd also be for a cap on CEO salaries and bonuses, perhaps with both shareholder and employee approval needed to execute executive bonuses. I imagine that alone would mean most CEO's would lose a fuck-ton of money.

I'd love for a wealth tax to be viable, but it would require balls of steel from the president, and a central tax authority that won't be coerced into accepting loopholes. Even then, it would be hilariously easy to get around by moving wealth elsewhere.

[–] MareOfNights@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 7 months ago

I don't think salary caps are necessary. Just having steeper tax brackets will eventually lead to a soft cap, while not feeling like a punishment. Maybe even a simple function instead of brackets, its more dynamic and easier to calculate.

Wealth tax is kinda weird, since first someone needs to estimate the wealth, which is not easy. Then the amount to be paid probably needs to be cash, since 20% of e.g. a house is pretty useless. But actually liquefying enough wealth can have wild effects. For example Tesla stock plummeted for a while due to elon needing twitter-money.

In a sense it could prevent companies from growing. If I own a company imma make sure it stays below the threshold, since I don't want to sell my shares and loose voting-rights.

Or if you look at countries trying to seize Russian oligarchs' property: A lot failed, due to no one knowing who actually was the owner.