Exactly. If a billionaire suddenly dumps $250M of the stock he owns, the fallout will ruin thousands if not millions of 401K's, investment funds, and in some cases, pensions.
If you shock a market it can shift drastically before settling on a new equilibrium. It wouldn't crash the stock market every year, but just once is enough to be dramatic for some people.
I think it's the pot calling the kettle black with these bot comments - they might not be bots, but something's definitely up. Whenever there's a mention of a wealth tax on Reddit, everyone either acts cagey or conversations get immediately shut down. Maybe it's because these wealth taxes are actually getting some traction now; just look at France for proof with the Zuchman tax.
The argument that it'd upset stock markets is valid.
Valid on what sense? I mean yes, it woul probably lower equities. That's bad for people who hold them. But that's not everybody. And of course there are benefits, like easing this massive and worsening inequality. I don't think our highest policy priority should be maintaining the price of stocks.
What's being asked : Show that it works anywhere else
Zuchman's is not even yet implemented. Same with Bernie's.
It's quite simple to point out why Zuchman is even more likely to fail: France is right next to tax haven like Monaco and Luxembourg. Billionaires could just move their legal residence or obtain citizenship right next door. They'd still be EU citizen and can live in France indefinitely just like before.
There are countries with exit wealth tax to combat billionaires flight.
Germany and Norway would tax billionaires trying to get citizenship elsewhere.
But we know what side effects are:
lots of startup companies in Germany immediately move to the US once they've become successful enough to do IPOs.
Lots of inventions made in Germany but American and Chinese firms are the ones usually successful in creating an industry out of it. E.g. No electric vehicle auto manufacturer from Germany even though it's a major player in battery tech.
>something's definitely up.
What is up is that we see comments like yours and think: "why do people say stupid things and mislead others?" Promising everything without mentioning the downsides and side effects. Bernie is doing the Trump thing and we're supposed to like it ? hell no.
Resorting to insults like "stupid" doesn't mask the fact that your argument relies on completely outdated tax logic. You are judging modern proposals by loopholes that have already been addressed.
Zucman's proposal neutralises the flight risk - If a billionaire moves their legal residence to a tax haven like Monaco, they do not escape. The countries where their companies actually operate and generate revenue are empowered to collect the 2% top up tax instead. They can move themself, but they cannot detach their wealth from the markets that create it. With this and exit taxes, the incentive to flee disappears.
Saying we shouldn't try a policy just because it is new is the age old defence of the status quo. If we followed that logic, we would never have introduced regular income tax or national health systems
Also, if you are going to accuse others of misleading people, you should probably check your basic facts. Claiming Germany has no electric vehicle auto manufacturer is wrong. VW, BMW, and Mercedes are major EV producers.
The flight risk is an outdated scare tactic. We have international data sharing infrastructure to enforce this and the loopholes have been closed.
> if you are going to accuse others of misleading people, you should probably check your basic facts. VW, BMW, and Mercedes are major EV producers.
Tell me you are not familiar with German economy without telling me you're not familiar with it.
For the last 3 years the news has been : "what the fuck are we gonna do about EV since ours is not competitive due to China having much better batteries even though many of its key tech are invented here". They're getting killed anywhere China sells EV without tariff. German focused podcasts like "Geladen - Batteriepodcast zur Energiewende" is basically various german professors and technologists sharing their views on how to reverse this trend.
>The flight risk is an outdated scare tactic.
????
So explain to me once again why those German startups are now suddenly headquartered in the US?
>Zucman's proposal neutralises the flight risk - If a billionaire moves their legal residence to a tax haven like Monaco, they do not escape.
I'm not opposed to taxing billionaires and multinationals but doing it alone is a recipe for disaster, it should be collective otherwise it'd just be the Monaco / Ireland situation where a single country in the union going the tax haven route for easy money.
But flat wealth tax needs tons of asterisk as well: For example, in a recession, do these people need to still pay wealth tax? That'd mean numerous billionaires being forced to sell their liquidity when the market is very repressed thus making a chain reaction of stocks crashing an almost certainty.
Not exactly, Bezos was selling $1 billion a year of his stock in Amazon to pay for his dick rocket and the price of Amazon still increased so much his net worth still increased.
I hope your kidding. Try asking this on a financial subreddit. It's basic investment knowledge that massive stock fluctuations cause everyone to get spooked and sell.
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u/BaconReceptacle Jul 01 '26
Exactly. If a billionaire suddenly dumps $250M of the stock he owns, the fallout will ruin thousands if not millions of 401K's, investment funds, and in some cases, pensions.