cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/50913906
Financial Times drops the bars
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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What about taxing wealth, while reducing mass taxes like the VAT to finally get people to spend again? Increasing peoples salaries would also help, and capping rent to what it costs to ensure upkeep and needed new construction - i think that would easly do the trick to fill the states coffers and get the economy out of this slump instead of filling the bank accounts of shameless, greedy people. Those will find other ways to enrich themselves, maybe through the defense industry.
And take money away from the hard working Epstein Class!?
We should have a 20% annual wealth tax on fortunes over a billion dollars. Staying a billionaire should be like trying to swim up a waterfall.
Under FDR in 1935, if you made more than $5 million, you paid a 79% tax rate.
Yeah but that's income, the billionaires don't do that any more (loopholes loopholes!)
Tax the compound wealth (too).
The other alternative is a 100% inheritance tax above a threshold, and make it impossible to transfer wealth to the next generation
I'm talking wealth, not income. If your total net worth is $1.2 billion, this year you owe the IRS $200 billion.
The idea is that we make being that rich an extremely temporary condition. It's like trying to run up a downward moving escalator or run against a moving sidewalk.
In fact, I would tune the tax structure to harness some of the competitive impulses of the wealthy. People that rich view their net worth as a high score. They literally view it like a personal life score. It's just a video game to them. When your net worth goes from $10 to 20 billion, your lifestyle changes very little. Past a certain point, it's just about bragging rights.
So I would harness this impulse. I would tune the tax rates so that it actually would be possible for a handful of the absolutely most skilled business owners to maintain wealth slightly above a billion (or whatever inflation-adjusted level we set) for a limited period of time. Those owning the world's most profitable companies will be able to stay a bit over the threshold for the years their company is at its peak.
If you did this, you could actually harness the competitive instincts of the rich. Remember, it's all about getting a high score. But instead of competing for the largest fortune, they would compete for how long they're able to stay on the treadmill. Instead of size, they compete for time. A year or two would be a feat. A decade above the threshold would be a once-in-a-generation achievement. You would know these people by name. They would be famous. Staying above the wealth cap for any prolonged period would make you as famous as Musk or Bezos today. The rich would still get to compete with each other for bragging rights. They still compete for a high score. We just change what the score measures.
I don't want to eat the rich. I want to harness their greed. Imagine a donkey being lead by a carrot. Except the donkey is on a treadmill, and the treadmill is powering an electric generator. I want to turn every billionaire into that for the public treasury.
Because these locusts leave and take everything that is taxable with them.
And i doubt a one time moving Tax is a good deterrent.
The only Thing the state could do is seizing the means of Produktion before Hand, but we can barely Imagine a wealth Tax. State capitalism is was of the Charts for Most peoples Imagination.
They can't take real estate with them, and there's no reason why a foreign owner of real estate can't be taxed more than a local owner. Dividends of stocks in local businesses can still be taxed, as can transfers of ownership of those stocks on the local stock exchange. They're also dependent on the state they left for any governments bonds they own as well as for enforcing any loans local legal persons owe them.
They can sell all those things, of course, but that just means other people have to start paying more taxes.