I couldn't imagine spending $1 billion in my entire life, let alone 3-4.

If they are self-made millionaires/billionaires as they claim, take everything they have/own and tell them to start the quest again, no glitches, DLC, or saved progress.

It's really insane that we legally treat the tenth billion dollars at the same level as a working persons house or car.

Everything is legally just "property".

No, fuck that.

The law should protect the first million of every citizen with ferver. (and when we tackle wealth inequality, most people will have this level of wealth at the end of their working life. The fact that most currently don't is due to inequality. )

Up until 100 million, it should be taxed at a reasonable level. Because at some level, it's fair that people prefer watching Taylor Swift instead of me sing on a stage.

Above that it should be taxed heavily.

And above a billion, it should be just confiscated. As in, oopsie, our system malfunctioned, you weren't supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a whole lifetime of work, so we are taking it back.

Nobody keeps that amount of cash. Even below a million, most people have most of their wealth in either real estate (their own house) or financial securities (stocks, ETFs, bonds).

Yet, we all gotta pay property tax and capital gains.

The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds.

That is actually the case. Billionaires aren't swimming in a room full of cash and they don't some some secret mega vault that holds $100 billion. Most of these guys are founders of very successful corporations, and so they naturally have a larger than average share. Bezos has most of his wealth in Amazon stocks, Zuckerberg in Meta, Musk in Tesla and SpaceX, Gates in Microsoft, and so on. Their wealth goes up and down depending on how well the company they're most tied to is doing. In the US and most other places, stocks aren't taxed until they're sold. Once a transaction happens, there will be a tax. Usually tax rates go up with profits and income, and there are deductions for losses (to a degree). It's an okay system, the issue is that it isn't being enforced. Our system is full of loopholes that these billionaires exploit to pay way less than they should. But billionaires not paying taxes are nothing compared to corporations not paying ANY taxes on billions in annual profits. That's what we should go after.

I agree, no one should be able to hold such an obscene amount of wealth. Right now they do, though. How do you propose this be remedied?

Right, let's go back in time and fix it.

Fuck it, I'm willing to die if it came down to it to ensure the safety and prosperity of my countrymen. And I actually hate most of my countrymen.

If we ask and freely give such sacrifices from the working class, then asking the elite to stop hoarding gold like a dragon really shouldn't be a big deal.

I do respect Warren Buffet for being honest about it. It's up to us (the public) and the politicians who work for us to change the system to make it more fair.

There was also another billionaire who gave his money away and is no longer a billionaire. Mad respect for the guy, but he is a rare breed. We have to fix the system, not depend on charity.

There are so many ways to avoid paying income taxes in a country. Perhaps the easiest is taking a loan with security in stock. Wealth tax and taxing stock in general is practiced in my country with great success (should be much higher still) and is in fact great for the economy: it forces people to invest or see their fortunes diminish. Your statement shows lack of knowledge and imagination that other systems than the one you preside in could exist.

None of these guys has income anywhere near a billion in yearly income. They have stock and other assets that are worth billions but it is not income per se. If anything they go to extreme lengths to minimize their income.

3% annually would be really huge, and probably shrink a lot of personal wealth out there. 3% one time is not as big of a deal, but it also doesn't raise so much revenue. The problem with a one time wealth tax is it incentivizes a future government to try a second one-time wealth tax, and then maybe a third. Soon enough it's not really a one-time tax any more.

In the United States there would also be a serious question on whether wealth tax was constitutional. The income tax was not raised until the 16th amendment explicitly gave Congress the power. It's possible the court will say there's no power to levy a national wealth tax absent an amendment.

This is a wealth tax, not an income tax.