I always clarify that I don’t actually want to consume them for nourishment. That’s not a good idea as you’re far too likely to get a parasite infection that way, even assuming the rich get better healthcare. I do, however, want to see them stripped of their wealth, that wealth redistributed in such a way as to help reduce the harm they’ve caused in accumulating it, and … well, a third thing that varies a bit depending on how I’m feeling that day.
If I’m feeling more sympathetic for their existence as human beings, I think removing all of their wealth except say $500K and turning them loose with nothing else except the clothes on their back seems fair. (I’ll allow an ID and enough other paperwork to access the bank account with their remaining wealth, but nothing else.) After all, they got rich under their own merits, right? Surely they can just do it again.
The other 99 out of 100 days, I say just chop them up to fertilize the nearest community garden. That way they at least return something to the world.
How serious am I about either of those is left as an exercise to the reader.
If people were executing billionaires, but they could stop the process and go free at any time simply by giving away most of the money that they will never have anything to spend on anyway, how many do you think would actually take that option? My guess is most would die.
That would be an excellent solution! Most would die?
I like Piketty’s proposal for a worldwide tax on capital above €1 million, but instead of 10% per year over a billion, make it 100%. Make billionaires impossible.
10% tax over a billion?!?! Wtf is that supposed to be? I pay twice that much and I’m unemployed! Wasn’t it 90% over a million in the 50’s?
90% over a mil, at a billion YOU GET THE FUCKING CHOP. Nobody ever “made” a billion dollars accidentally or innocently.
ETA - actually it’s five times that. With sales tax on food and everything else most of us USians pay 50%
This is a wealth tax, not an income tax – the US (as with most countries) has no wealth tax currently. Thomas Piketty proposed this in his book “Capital in the 21st Century” but admits it’s kind of a utopian idea.
This is basically: if someone has 10 billion dollars in assets (of any kind), they are going to pay 900 million of it in taxes (completely separate from any income taxes). Doesn’t matter if that money was inherited from one’s wealth blood-diamond-exploiting parents. Doesn’t matter if it was “earned” (nobody really earns that much) and income tax on it was already paid.
If that applies also to corporations, Meta is worth about $1.84T, so they would have to pay $184B in taxes this year.
This is purely a tax for being rich. Nobody with less than $1m in assets pays anything into it (just regular income tax, although that could probably be lowered as a result). Slightly-rich people pay 1%, richer pay 2%, the ultra-rich pay the 10%.
It’s still not as much redistribution as should actually happen, but that money plugs a lot of holes.
I see. So this wealth tax would be on top of the income tax - that these assholes don’t pay
Yeah, that’s something else that would have to be fixed.
People who never read about “Wildcat Banking” be like: