cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47196787
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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I was having a chat with a friend recently about the cost of living in the UK. I mentioned one issue is the wealth inequality and billionaires are the problem.
"If we do a wealth tax they'll leave!"
Sent this link https://equalitytrust.org.uk/evidence-base/billionaire-britain-2025/ to explain how a large proportion of billionaires just extract wealth.
Not entirely sure they were convinced. They have the mentality that billionaires create jobs for everyone and are super hard workers that worked their way up.
I don't want to just sit back and call people who look up to billionaires idiots. I want to be able to have strong compelling points to make them change their mind.
If you do a wealth tax, they would absolutely leave.
Dude...just google it, it's a myth. The people that want you to believe it are the ones thaf benefit from you believing it.
Heck, look at the interview Bezos just did. Notice how there wasn't even the possibility in his worldview of him being taxed more. Meanwhile, he lies about how much he pays and parrots the cherrypicked statistic of 40% of income taxes are paid by the top 1% of income earners. Guess what Bezos is? Not one of those. He takes an income of 80K, a little above average in terms if income earners. His wealth isn't taxed while he does fuck all and his employees toil away and he generates wealth off of their labor.
Shit, in America alone the top marginal rate was over 90%. They're still here.
This also misses the point that the level of wealth consolidation is a failure of the system to provide for its people. They shouldn't exist in the first place.
And they should be happy that most people are saying to tax them more. But these dipshits equate that to terrorism and racial slurs, so yeah, let's see just how deluded they are and just how much pain the people can put up with.
Let them.
Good.
How?
They are a menace to society and there existence is an embarrassment.
Does kicking them out of the country cause them to cease to exist?
If everyone does it, yeah. Kinda.
Agreed. Capitalism cannot be brought down without global unity.
I don't want them here, ideally they would pay a crap ton of taxes or rot in a cell, and stop buying out the legal systems.
Agreed but unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world
Yes, so leaving or paying taxes is a win. They can wreck and topple a country that I'm not stuck surviving in.
How is kicking them out a win?
How is it not?
Well, think about what "wealth" is. Their wealth isn't a big pile of money in the living room that they swim in, it's in an international web of banks that all do business together, and all profit off of this wealth themselves. This is a very simple explanation and it's much more complex than that, I'd recommend the Panama and Pandora Papers as a primer.
You're not going to get to seize anything but a small fraction in assets that they can't quickly liquidate. The moment you do seize those assets, every one else will move their wealth out of your country, also, for fear of losing their own bank accounts. The more you seize assets, the more assets will flee your country, even small investors will abandon you.
Ok, that really doesn’t answer the question, but so what? Let them all flee, who cares? Theres absolutely zero real loss at this point. Not like any of that hoarded wealth is currently accessible to the country/community they live in anyway. That’s sort of the point. It’s a black hole either way, that money isn't coming out of their pockets if they don't want it to, so why allow them to keep getting more at the expense of 99% of the population, many of whom can’t even properly support themselves because all the profits end up in a few pockets, and workers get peanuts.
They don't contribute anything if they can help it, they just take everything they can at the expense of literally everyone else, so why would it be bad if they left? If all the takers left, because they couldn't just take everything from everyone else anymore, how is that in any way bad for the country they flee? Or the people left behind who actually do contribute their fair share? It wouldn’t even take very long for things to readjust, because they provide next to nothing we can’t live without, and spreading the wealth out means more in taxes.
If the selfish rich assholes who don't want to give anything back abandon in droves, it opens the field for smaller business and local investment, or investment from people who aren't so selfish as to see paying a fair portion in taxes as an insufferable barrier. Thats a good thing you are trying to present as a bad thing. Nobody actually needs obscenely rich people to invest in stuff, thats just a ridiculous lie they want us to believe. Good ideas and good businesses can find other avenues, like organic growth or co-op models of mutual investment for mutual profit. Frankly we need far far fewer things owned or controlled by the same few obscenely rich people who are ruining everything everywhere for only their own benefit.
So what? So you lose all of your investors, from billionaires to small investors of pensions, and everyone in between.
That's a massive part of any economy... and you won't get any more money from any of them, all will invest elsewhere where their money won't be seized.
This would be very, very bad for your economy for many years (at least).
That's so what. Don't get me wrong, this would be hilarious and you should do it as soon as possible.
Why would small investors pull out? They wouldn't be impacted by this stuff in any meaningful way.
Thats just an absurd slippery slope argument. It just doesn't follow reality at all, but let’s assume it did, and that you are right.
So you lose out on selfish people who want to be the takers, but aren't yet.. you lose out on them investing in crap that only or largely benefits them, because anyone who isn't just out for themselves would not be deterred by this sort of thing. So what? Where’s the loss here? You miss out on making more billionaires. Oh no.
Not if you have a 38% exit tax like Norway.
Damn! I didn't know there was actually a solution to the Marxist problem of capital flight!
The obvious solution is to simply not allow the capitalists to take anything but the clothes on their backs as they flee for their wretched lives
Unfortunately that's not possible unless the state seizes their assets.
Yes, that's sort of what I was getting at. Historically speaking there's no good examples of asking capitalists nicely for things being a productive strategy.
Oh nooo.....
The last time a country seized the assets of the wealthy, half the world declared war against it. Be careful what you wish for.
Do you mean the Soviet union?
Yes
God damn, if we got the Soviet Union 2: electric boogaloo here in the states, the only people trying to topple us would be Europe and I doubt they would be all that interested. We were the main driving force of destructive capitalist imperialism throughout the last century and if we suddenly threw an uno reverse card down and shouted sike, there would be little interest in opposing us.
Literally everyone would be trying to topple you. This has happened both to France and the Soviet Union.
America and england both times.
Which is good, as they would then not be extracting wealth from where they left and money can once again circulate how it should.
Lol billionaires extract wealth from every single nation.
Then maybe we should tax the fuck out of them across the board.
And then what? If they want to take their wealth with them they'd need to sell up, so the job creation would remain, the assets would remain, possibly the currency would be slightly weaker, and so importa would be slightly more expensive, which would encourage the local economy... What is the awful outcomes you're imagining from the ultra rich leaving?
Did you not read the comment you're responding to? Them leaving would be a good thing dumbass
Explain how, smartass.
Try reading the article linked in the comment you were responding to you fucking moron
The article doesn't explain how kicking them out would be a good thing you fucking imbecile.
It explains in great mathematical detail how they cost more than they're worth, fucking duh, learn to read
You can't blame billionaires for people continuing to think that GDP benefits them.
I absolutely can blame them, those billionaires have gone well out of their way to buy up every single major media platform and my goddamned government so they can dismantle what's left of the the US education system and spread their propaganda unopposed. Anyone who doesn't blame them for that is either an incurable fucking moron or morally compromised.
I would rather blame those who reject the evidence of their eyes and ears and choose to believe news over what they see in front of them.
So...the billionaires?
They reject reality and they surround themselves with yes men and delude themselves into believing they're better and smarter than everyone else when they simply were lucky. Lucky to have parents to invest in them, lucky to have generational wealth, lucky to in the right time and right place to profit off of certain ideas before others did.
Instead, they impose their will upon us because they reject reality, like taxing the fuck out of them and redistributing to the workforce, lifting people up out of hunger, our of poverty, and educating them provides a stronger, more robust workforce and a better society.
They reject that not everything needs a profit motive and are subsumed by that one principle, making more profit at all costs. As such, they lambast public services, which are a SERVICE, they do not seek to make profit, they provide. Parasites like Bezos only exist because the government subsidizes them. Private companies like UPS and FedEx don't guarantee to deliver to rural and more distant/out of the way locations because it's not proditable. USPS does. Sam Walton subsidizes his workforce by hiring those who qualify for benefits, to which his company recieves tax breaks from the government shifting tax burden down to you, and then pays them poverty wages so they still rely on benefits like snap while not being able to find another job because walmart, in their small towm, drove out all the competition.
So yes. Drive these deluded fucks out. At least then it would open more opportunity for other smaller, more passionate businesses, creators, and people to fill the space they leave behind. And stop closing your eyes to the system that they parasitize. Excise the tumor that's draining all the resources from the host or the host will eventually die.
Lol good luck with that