this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
1018 points (99.0% liked)
Political Memes
10307 readers
2755 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That "theoretical value" is used as collateral to borrow money for billionaires expenses. Companies can even buy one another through shares exchange. So tell me:
Why is it theoretical only for taxes purpose, but very real when you talk to a bank?.
I didn't write it was all of them. I'm talking about the AI bubble and IPO scams.
Is that your opinion on properties taxes? Because that's something you own, and you pay a tax based on its value. That value is also theoretical, by the way: as long as you don't sell the house, who knows how much it's worth?
And... is that not the most expensive thing you own??
Or is it stealing only when we talk about billionaires wealth?
And at this scale, it's not "stuff you own". You may have an issue assessing what a billion is. Do you know the difference between a million and a billion? It's roughly a billion...
That 20M$ mansion gaining 10% is absolutely peanuts.
And unless the loan is defaulted on, it never stops being theoretical.
Loaded question, it's not any less theoretical in the latter case.
Also, it's entirely possible for some scandal to plummet the value of a stock overnight, such that the value that was used as collateral is now not worth nearly that much. But it is the lender's prerogative to decide to take that risk, it's no one's business other than the lender and the borrower, both private entities.
Yes, property taxes should not be a thing.
Hypocrisy detection failed, lol.
You may have an issue understanding the simple phrase "stuff you own", since you're here apparently arguing that beyond a certain valuation, assets are no longer assets.
1.Sure, I will take your risk assessment over these banks anytime (not). 2.If the value is so unstable it can plummet over night, then it was grossly overestimated initially, back to my previous point.
Neither should roads, schools, garbage collection, police, firefighters, etc, I guess.
You know, it was either hypocrisy or weird cult of the billonaires, as I fail to see why you so much want to protect them from paying any tax…
It's not "stuff" in the sense no one will come after a house, a car, a yacht, etc. It's not money they need to survive. You could still tax by hundreds of billions the ultra-rich class at the country level (I assume US here) and neither their lifestyle nor their long term prospective lifestyle would be impacted the slightest. That's the scale we're talking about.
Or alternatively, we can keep saying it's complicated and/or doesn't make sense, and you can enjoy record breaking wealths of a few that will make headlines while the life expectation, education level, overall population health keeps going down and poverty keeps going up… until one day, it catches you!
Again, none of your business, because you're not the lender.
Idiotic straw man which I will be ignoring.
This is you projecting your unwillingness to support anything that doesn't personally benefit you.
The principle of taxing people based on the value of what they already own is nonsensical, no matter how much or how little that value is. Objecting to both wealth taxes and property taxes just means I'm not a hypocrite.
Taxing based on 'you could do without it', especially when the definition of that excess is completely arbitrarily defined, is a horrendous precedent to set. Vibe taxation. Every wealth tax aimed at the 'ultra-rich' in other countries in the past has either been repealed outright, or was broadened so that it, surprise surprise, is no longer aimed only at the ultra-rich, and falls into the lap of of the middle class, once again.
Based on the failures already witnessed elsewhere in the world, yes. It objectively doesn't make sense.
Inflation is a thing, so those records will always be broken eventually. It only "makes headlines" to appeal to dullards who don't understand things like that. The same type of people who freak out over sensationalist "medical headlines" that are never as drastic as the clickbait article makes them out to be. The same type of people think the violent crime rate is constantly rising because they stare at 24-hour news networks who are incentivized to get your attention, not be accurate, while the actual rate has dropped steadily for decades and decades.
Liar:
Hopefully, one day, the facts will catch you.
Let's take a practical example: please find a decent DDR5 offer. No way it could have gone up because virtual money bought it all, couldn't it?
If you don't understand the relation between taxes and their use, yeah: better ignore it, for your sake…
Keep repeating it's "nonsensical" doesn't make it nonsensical.
Wrong. France had a wealth tax for decades. It was repealed by current President Macron, who was propped by… a billionaire. A proposal for a ultra-wealth tax (proposal was above 100M$ of wealth) was proposed by an economist in France, and he got support from a bench of Nobel Prize of Economy recipients (among a large support from economy experts).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLTP1246
From 2020 to 2025 Q1 to Q1, from 12T$ to 22T$, that's the equivalent 12.9% per year. "inflation", sure…
It didn't fail. Billionaires managed to get rid of it. They use their virtual non-real money to acquire as much news medias they could, so that they could prop their guy all the way up.
Indeed, my bad! It's a world class winning https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/increases-us-life-expectancy-forecasted-stall-2050-poorer-health
https://www.future-ed.org/what-the-new-pisa-results-really-say-about-u-s-schools/
https://www.cbo.gov/interactive/2025-reconciliation-act
It's not my repetition that makes it nonsensical, it's the fact that assets are purchased with already-taxed money. Having to pay the government for the 'privilege' of continuing to own what you've purchased, in perpetuity, is nonsensical, full stop.
And this was the result (emphasis added):
And it's very telling that linking to speculation about some arbitrary future date is your response to being called out on your lies re the trends of life expectancy, educational attainment, and poverty. Your inability to own up to any of your falsehoods makes you pointless to continue engaging with. The statistics are crystal clear—your assertions are demonstrably bunk.
This reply serves only to directly contradict the most obvious additional falsehoods, for others who may read this exchange, before I move on.
Tell me you don't have a damn clue how very large wealth works without telling me you don't have a damn clue how very large wealth works.
Unfortunately for you, he never could never prove the relation between taxes and wealthy people leaving, making this an interesting paper, but not a consensus, even today.
In addition, this has mitigations: bind the tax to the citizenship (what the US is already doing for income), and/or apply a 5 years term before you have "escaped" the tax. Again, both considered manageable by economists.
Not sure if you in denial or bad faith. Doesn't matter.
Well, since it starts with you explaining you had no idea what you talked about the whole time, yes, it's preferable.