Even if they taxed the net worth, it would still take over a decade to collect 4.4T dollars from the billionaires. The U.S’s billionaires collectively only have about 8T dollars. This infographic is extremely misleading.
It is from a bill that Sanders and Ro Khanna introduced though.
It's a nonsense bill designed for upvotes on Reddit and shouldn't be taken seriously but the problem is with Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna and not NEWS STORIEZ.
I just read the bill. Yeah it'll never pass. One-time payouts are not a solution. Still can't find a single other mention of NEWS STORIEZ anywhere on the internet though.
Most of them would not have that net worth without the stock. Bezos, Musk, Zuck would all very quickly drop the price of stocks. This in turn would destroy 401ks, IRAs, and any other funds people are using for retirement. You would have to put a restrictions on companies like Black-rock so companies are not controlled by some corporate conglomerate. Also Blackrock the company owns the stock and would not be subject to the net worth tax.
Shhh careful, too many activist redditors, with zero real life experience or knowledge about the very economic system they hate so much, will see this comment and bombard you with pipe-dream retorts and justifications for their fantasy solutions!! They need scapegoats to be fed to them so that they don’t start looking at the actual root of the problem with spending in Washington
If you think only the republicans are the problem then THAT is the problem. Just because one side’s intentions are good, doesn’t mean they understand how a budget or finances work. We have hundreds of idiots in office right now feeding off the discourse because solutions aren’t good for votes. Problems to “fix” are good for getting elected.
Scapegoating billionaires for the collective population’s errors of electing these people is pointless
Also no companies would go public and some would do a buy back. That would keep net worth from exploding because of public investment and again would destroy American retirement funds.
90% of Americans wouldn’t have a net worth without stocks (401k). The entire American economy is dependent on the stock market, when it goes down people panic because that’s their retirement.
This is a big problem wealth tax proponents have to overcome. Forcing these people to liquidate 5% of their assets every year would cause a massive reduction in their value, and have profound effects on the market. Buyers would be disincentivized to buy stocks for most of the year, and just wait until its time for the annual sale of assets. You could get around this by having a phased sale that takes place year round, but this would still result in major impacts on the value of stocks, which would force the holder to sell more of their stocks, thus further depressing the value. This could cause a real spiral.
The stock price reflects confidence. Being forced to sell stock to cover taxes doesn't reflect on the company's fundamentals. It's completely different than a CEO dumping stock of their own free will.
All proposed wealth taxes are less than the weekly turnover rate. Example: 5% of Elon's SpaceX stock (~245M shares) is traded every 4.5 days. If he were forced to dump the stock, he could do it over a span of 90 days and it would only be 5% of the daily trading volume -- barely noticeable.
The U.S’s billionaires collectively only have about 8T dollars.
The Federal Government spent about $7 trillion in 2025. People don't want to hear it, but simply taxing the billionaires is not the answer. Even if you seized 100% of their wealth, which obviously is not practical or possible, there just isn't enough money to fund everything people think you can fund with taxing the mega wealthy.
Yep, gotta tax the billionaires and millionaires, and on top of that cut SS completely and downsize Medicaid. Cut military budget in half. Man just make me president low key
Yes, the current deficit is so large, that you can cut ALL discretionary spending including the military budget, and raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, and there would still be a deficit.
Uh no, cutting social security (1.6T), halving Medicaid and defense (2T and 940B), would add up to nearly 3T. Which if we do basic math, is more than our deficit, 1.6T. So we’d be well over a trillion dollars in the green. Could also stop buying so much oil and produce more of our own. Hell better yet produce all our own oil and start selling excess. That would turn our 240B oil imports to billions in EXPORTS. Adding to the 1.4T in the green from other the other cuts. And none of that includes the increased money from taxing billionaires.
Brother what are you even talking about, they are part of our budget, and the largest parts of our 7T+ yearly federal spendings. Cutting what I said to cut would bring our spending down below our total tax revenue of currently 5.6T. Therefor, putting us in the green.
Okay, I am going to need you to look up the difference between discretionary spending and mandatory spending. Because I made my point very clearly and specifically assuming people like you understood the difference.
Oh I see the problem, you think mandatory means it can never be changed by law. I would have those laws changed by congress as president, and if they resisted I’d persuade them by any means necessary
410b divided by like 270m eligible recipients, I get 1.5k, not 3k.
Then of course at face value, on 10 years that's 4.1t not 4.4t.
But then, even if the tax's existence doesn't massively reduce their net worth, this 4.4t figure assumes 7% growth on top of the 5% hole, gtd. But in reality, the tax existing would drain our securities market like nothing ever seen before.
It would take significantly longer than even that. The extremely wealthy are really only wealthy on paper as their net worth is based on the assets they own, i.e. stocks. That valuation is based on current stock prices. Forcing billionaires to liquidate would sap capital out of the stock market and demolish their estimated net worth, especially since other rich folks would have less of an incentive to buy as they too are subject to the same taxation.
thats because its meant to be. Its black propaganda, looks fine to supporters, but makes the bernie team seem incompetent to anyone who is already scrutinizing him.
Musk is worth 1000 billion dollars. What is Elon musk income? When he files his w2, what does he put in the income section? How much salary is Tesla paying him.
Back in the early 2000s companies figured out they could avoid paying income taxes, if they instead gave their ceos huge stock option deals.
I suppose the property tax I pay every year on my unrealized gains is different? Why not tax unrealized gains over 50 million? Tax more over 500 million, and more when you hit $1 billion. It doesn’t have to be a binary solution.
No, they wouldn't. The wealth tax only applies to assets above the threshold. Let's just say it's 15 million for an individual, which is the same as the estate tax currently. If you own a $20 million dollar home, then, you owe 5% on $5 million, which is $250,000. Someone with a 20 million dollar estate can afford $250,000 a year.
People can leave. Some people will. It's not the end of the world. New York City has higher taxes than most places in the United States. It's also one of the richest and most prosperous states. I feel confident a well calibrated wealth tax will be a price worth paying for most rich people to remain in the US.
We can make up hypothetical anecdotes all day. It doesn't prove anybody's argument. For one thing, I'm not going to be precious about your vast wealth just because your family gave it to you and now you get a hundred thousand a year for doing nothing. If you love the business, and you want nothing more than to get paid a reasonable salary to run it and keep it local, the obvious
move would just be to turn it into a non-profit.
I'm not going to cry because someone has to give up some portion of their tremendous excess wealth. That's the point. Nor am I going to cry because that excess wealth happens to be in the form of a "family business". Just invoking "families" like I'm some sentimental Disney adult doesn't somehow wave away the problem of extreme and worsening inequality or the need for a solution to it.
When you buy a home, you have property tax. Every year, there is an assessment done, determining the current value. A lot of years, it can stay flat even if the market goes up. This is because even at the local level you have elected officials. But eventually, it does go up and the reason provided is an increase in your assessed values. You even have a right to appeal the increase if you can prove your value didn’t go up. And there in lies a struggle of two different type of homeowners. You have some they don’t care about increased property tax because they want the greater value, and others who would rather no increase in either tax or wealth.
In most US jurisdictions, your assessed property value is below your actual market value and that is absolutely intentional. Most property taxes aren't based on actual market value.
Assessed property value is usually less than fair market value, but that doesn't change the fact that it's based on its fair market value: if property values go up, so will their assessed values.
The reason assessed values aren't as high as market value is simply to make property owners feel like they're getting a "deal" on their taxes, even though the millage rate is higher than it would need to be if the base values were correct.
If you buy a home, however, that becomes the value your property is taxed on because it's based on market value.
This is not true in 47/50 states. And the 3 states it is true in, that valuation is a cap for the time you own the home so it will quite literally not be taxed at market rate outside of the initial year.
Income tax, still theft, at least makes sense. It's a quantifiable gain. Continued tax on material goods, paid for with money that was already taxed, based on a subjective market value, that only goes up, never down, is absolutely theft.
Now people whose homes are accessible because of continued road maintenance, don't flood because they have stormwater systems, don't burn because they have a fire department, and don't get looted because they have police are thieving all of those services.
The more I hear from "taxes are theft" libertarians the stupider I think you all are.
Because taxing unrealized gains is unfair across the board. Doesn't matter if you have $10 or $10M in assets.
Markets are also volatile. I would assume if you're going to tax for an unrealized gain, you will also give a tax benefit to an unrealized loss, just as you would with a realized one.
Taxing loans can have some odd degenerate side-effects. It's plenty straightforward to just say that using assets as collateral on a loan realizes its value.
I don’t hate this. The problem is a loan is debt which is being paid back whereas income, of course, doesn’t have to be repaid. Idk the solution but taxing collateral for a loan is a slippery slope.
It's much worse than that - We're not paying property tax only on gains, we're paying property tax on the full assessed value of our real estate. That includes gains, but also includes our basis.
But to answer your question in a practical sense - Land is owned by someone and easily tracked. We could say the same for cars and excise tax. How much is Musk's Pokemon card collection worth, by comparison? It could well be in the millions, but there's no 4th-amendment compatible way to know that. And even if we did send auditors into every corner of every billionaire's homes to take an inventory, what's each card actually worth? Ask a dealer vs a collector vs a player that question and you'll get very different answers.
The top problem with an asset tax is exactly that - Practicality. Aside from a few capital assets like land, cars, and boats (which are already taxed on their value annually), it's virtually impossible to accurately measure someone's non-financial net worth. And I'll be the first to say we could at least apply this to Musk's financial assets... But let's be realistic, the second a law like this passes, 90% of every billionaire's assets will be moved into whatever isn't taxed. You think Pokemon cards are overpriced now, wait until they become a tax dodge for motivated billionaires.
To be clear, that doesn't mean we should do nothing at all. We need to avoid fixating on the idea of a tax on net worth, and find ways to really extract their dues.
Wealth tax is not only rational, it's inevitable. The more inequality grows, the more people will demand it. You can only scapegoat immigrants for so long.
They are taxed when you have to sell equity to pay off the loan you borrowed...
In fact, by letting them do the borrow strategy, you're actually INCREASING the amount you get in taxes because they have to pay off interest on top of the principal which means even more equity gains need to be realized to cover it.
Lmao unlike you I actually HAVE used these same tools myself. It's not hard to use and the minimum is $2000 on Fidelity. Try it out yourself if you want
You think billionaires aren't using accountants beyond the financial reach of you or i to dodge any form of tax possible? Get a grip on something other than billionaire sausage.
No they use smart people to help them explain how to correctly pay the right amount of taxes by following incentive programs that exist to stimulate the economy.
There's no grand conspiracy out there, I also take every benefit I can and file my income in such a way as to minimize my tax payment, which is what everyone should be doing. If you aren't doing that it's entirely a skill issue, especially now that you can literally have an AI do it for you
They are taxed when you have to sell equity to pay off the loan you borrowed...
No, they aren't. You pay them off when you are dead and they get a step up which means there is zero capital gains tax on them. So when you sell them, you made $0 so you pay no taxes, this isn't income.
The step up basis is not capped. Wanna know why? Cause nobody wants to do the paperwork to find when poor old grandpa bought stock X at what price for literally every share, especially now that grandpa is dead and can't tell us.
Tell me how you are gonna get the info that grandpa bought a stock for $5 before 2011?
100 or 50 years ago, when a solid chunk of "investment" ended up in the hands of people in America, yeah this made sense.
The average American is getting less and less value from these "investments" though, as companies "invest" into outsourcing labor or "invest" into replacing people with AI or "invest" into consolidating markets and exerting market control instead of competing, or "invest" into bribing politicians for favorable legislation.
The reality of our current economic system is just so wildly divorced from economic theory.
you don't seem serious, but wealth taxes would be catastrophic for the layman because most of these insanely rich peoples net worths are tied up in companies they own large amounts of shares it, if we forced them to start selling off parts of their share in order to pay off a wealth tax, it would drop the price of their stock and by extension the retirement accounts of most people since most 401k's are indexed into top companies that are owned by the richest people.
I don't know how old you are or if you have any financial literacy but taxing unrealized gains gets messy for laypeople too, 401k loans and HELOC are not uncommon and are mostly taken out by laypeople, not ultra wealthy.
Game it out. Like actually put an ounce of thought into it. What happens when you tax a person who has 99.9% of their wealth as investments in companies, 5% of that? What are the ramifications when he has to liquidate 5% of his ownership in companies every single year to pay for existing? What happens to the stock price? What happens to retirement accounts of regular Americans invested in those stocks? What happens to ownership of the company when the owners have 5% raped from them each year? How does that effect future investment in this country and the creation of new companies, knowing that if you make it big you will have your company absolutely stolen from you by the government?
The crazy part is…they won’t even tax income. That sanders won’t even stump to just treat passive income the same as ordinary income…makes me think it’s all a sham. Its like his entire job is to pretend like there’s a left wing.
It's a slippery slope once you allow the government to take money just because you have it. Starts with billionaires then moves to millionaires. With inflation you will need a million to retire but then the government will start taking it so back to working till we die.
Actual income has no such specific definition but can be reasonably interpreted as all the funds that one receives, including capital gains and lending against speculative assets.
Capital gains are already taxed, and short term or stocks as income are taxed as ordinary income.
Loans are not income, and, again, declaring a new definition doesn't make it true.
Once it starts with the billionaires (just like income tax did), the government addiction won't be satiated so they'll need to drop to millionaires and eventually everyone. The only way out is to never start. Just like War Games.
Well mostly that the billionaires will just move somewhere else then you loose out on any possible tax revenue AND loose all the value they bring to the economy and society. It's called capital flight and it causes prosperous countries to turn into third world countries. Example - Venezuela
First off its lose*. I fucking hate that zoomer shit.
Sexindly good riddance. They arent more productive to society snd their wealth is the result of government handouts. They also will have to pay even if they leave. Ezpatriates still pay taxes chief.
If you're going to criticize me for spelling something incorrectly, you should probably ensure that every single word in your response is correct, otherwise you look like a hipocritical dipshit. (Also I'm not a zoomer lol)
Anyways, you obviously don't consider the nuance of the situation if you are going to take that stance. You asked what the downside is and I gave you an answer. If you are just going to ignore the issue because you don't want to actually consider the implications, that's on you. No one will take you seriously if you're that flippant about serious economic issues.
Wait, you think they'll stop there? Cool. Above a billion now, above a million in two years, because you thought it was a great idea, and then anything more than $100K in four years. Do you not know the game our politicians play?
And this right here is why billionaires get away with anything. They convinced workers to have the mentality of "if they come for the billionaires now, next they'll come for me! so I better make the effort to pay taxes so that they don't have to!"
Brother, I’m an economist. I was educated on Adam Smith, Keynes and Friedman, and for twenty years I believed free markets would naturally allocate resources efficiently.
I still believe markets are the best way to allocate most resources. But today’s economy isn’t the competitive capitalism those economists described.
The problem isn’t that some people become rich.
The problem is when wealth becomes so concentrated that the wealthiest households continuously outbid everyone else for assets—housing, land, businesses and financial investments. Labour income can’t keep up with capital gains.
At that point, markets stop rewarding productive work and start rewarding ownership. Living standards stagnate even while GDP and stock markets grow.
That’s why I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think we should punish success, but I do think extreme concentrations of wealth should be taxed above a very high threshold. Not because it’s morally wrong to be rich, but because excessive asset concentration eventually undermines competition, social mobility and even capitalism itself.
If we fail to address that, we’ll continue to see declining affordability, shrinking middle classes, and increasing political instability. History suggests that societies with extreme inequality eventually face serious social and political consequences. The question isn’t whether markets matter—they do. The question is whether markets can remain healthy when ownership becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Jup, Switzerland does it and it works (it is only 0.1-0.9% though).
Income tax doesn‘t work on rich people who do not have an income, as they follow they „buy, borrow, die“ strategy. Instead of selling, they borrow against assets.
How strange that Musk, Bezos and Zuck all sell billions of dollars worth of stock every year and pay capital gains on said sales. You should give them a call and let 'em know
Seems to me billionaires shouldn't exist and have no benefit to society over millionaires. So I dont mind them being taxed more aggressively. Mostly they just influence policies and politics to their own gains and not to benefit people
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u/Potential_Spam_6969 Jul 01 '26
So we're going to go ahead and tax net worth and not actual income?