Somebody's Facebook sphincter-scrapings aren't a very good source. Here's an article on the subject: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5764783-bernie-sanders-ro-khanna-tax-billionaires/
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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Of course but I go further and want to outlaw anyone to "earn" a billion dollars. Think wealth should be capped at 100 million everything after that seize and used for the greater good.
And if a corporation gains a value cap of billion it is broken the fuck up into smaller companies.
$100m is still far more than one person could ever need. Why draw an arbitrary line at all? Why not use what's required to have a fair society as the starting point, and let the inability to accumulate such absurd levels of wealth derive naturally from that?
I agree but first we need to start somewhere. To do what you are suggesting we need to destroy all billionaires and capitalism. That will take violence that the left just cant grasp unfortunately.
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100 million is a bit low. There are privately held companies worth more than that because of infrustructure cost alone.
To bad to goddamn bad 100 million is being generous.
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No. I don't agree. I don't want a wealth tax. I want a wealth CAP. 1000x the median household income should be the maximum allowable fortune. That would be something like $80 million today.
I like that number because 1000x the median income is a good approximation for the largest honest fortune a person can earn by their own work. Imagine you had a married couple:
- Both were brain surgeons and highly paid.
- Both attended school young and worked til old age.
- Both lived like absolute paupers, saved and invested every penny they could.
Even in such an extreme scenario, two people in a couple working highly paid jobs and saving and investing nearly everything they could. Even then, they would struggle to die with a fortune 1000x the median income. The only way you can earn more money than this is if you inherit it or if you arbitrage the labor of others. You need to start a business, be an executive, or have other means of scalping the surplus off of other people's labor.
1000x the median income is the largest honest fortune. It's the largest fortune you can earn through an ordinary salary and prudent individual investing. And it's well below the level where you have so much money you're becoming a threat to society. No one should have an individual fortune so large that they can sway nations through their own wealth. That is just too much power for one individual to have. We don't let people own nuclear bombs. We shouldn't let people be billionaires.
I don't want to tax billionaires. I want to eliminate them entirely. I would make all fortunes over 1000x the median income taxed at 100%. And if you secretly amass a larger fortune? There would be escalating criminal penalties. To the point where having a fortune 10x the legal limit would get you in as much legal trouble as if you tried to acquire your own nuclear bomb.
Equating mass wealth to weapons of mass destruction is not the metaphor I thought I'd be agreeing with today but it is extremely apt.
Yeah, it does make sense if you think about it. Imagine if Bezos or Musk decided to use their fortune to do as much damage to a city as possible. Musk could go to a city of hundreds of thousands and absolutely decimate if he wanted. Buy up all the big employers in town and shut them down. Fund local politicians who will screw things up as much as possible. Buy up residences by the thousand and pay to have them demolished. A billionaire like Musk or Bezos could, if they chose to, absolutely do as much damage to a city as a nuclear bomb. And countless people would die deaths of despair as a result.
Bezos could literally destroy a city if he wanted to. Let's say a city of 100k people has 33,000 residences. Let's say the average cost of buying and demolishing one is $500k. For about $16 billion, Bezos could literally buy up every residence in a city and tear them all down. Hell, they could afford to literally level a city that is home to millions of people, forcing the city to be abandoned.
One person should simply not have that much power. We don't let people own nuclear bomb, period. We don't say "only really ethical people get to own nukes." We don't say "only people with an expensive permit and license can own a nuke." No. There we recognize that no person, no matter how sane or moral, gets to own a nuke. Mr. Rogers wasn't allowed to own a nuke, even if he wanted one. Because even Mr. Rogers with a nuke isn't safe. There's always a chance of one individual going nuts and killing millions. There are simply levels of power that only large groups of people should have. Some things just should never be trusted to individuals.
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That's a hyperbolic take, because it's taxes that everyone else is already paying he wants to remove the cap from.
Other than that yeah, sounds like a great plan to me.
America is deeply, heavily in debt
Normally when this happens the rich are forced to take a haircut
25% of the global assets of anyone worth over 250 million
If they do much as complain seize their entire global assets and imprison them and their families
That's America's money take it back
Dont even need to give the familys the 12,000.. just use it to pay down the debt
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I don't know.. why is medical care so expensive in the first place? Why are teachers wages so low? Why is there such a huge wealth disparity?
Seems like these are systematic problems which need to be solved with a full system restructuring rather than throwing money at it. Not to dunk on Bernie, but If I were American, I'd be hoping for more concrete solutions.
5% tax sounds nice (imo, its no where near nice enough lol) but what are we taxing here exactly? Billionaires don't actually have any money. There's a systematic problem to solve right there.. how can people be filthy rich, yet have no actual money to tax?
Like this, a very 'American idea' to me is 'student loan forgiveness'. You borrow money from a bank (for profit institution), you pay it to get educated at a university (for profit institution) and get the loan forgiven by the government (tax payers). Systematic problem. Just make universities public and they get funded by the tax payers directly.
I get your misgivings but... Changing it for the better has gotta start somewhere.
Even this idea is way too "progressive" to have any chance of coming to pass
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That check would be life changing for me, a billionaire somewhere just made the same amount in less time than it took me to type this out.
I have the same amount of power to make this happen as Bernie Sanders has.
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why would I not agree with this?
I will never become a billionaire, so I have zero risk to support it.
I'd also support it if I thought it might affect me at some point. 5% isn't much and I'd still have well more than enough money for a lavish lifestyle.
I will never become a billionaire, so I have zero risk to support it.
You'll find it's okay to help our neighbours even when it costs us a little bit. In fact, that's often the case; and using that "I'll choose what can't possibly harm me" criteria could deny someone a lot just because it would cost you a little.
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No more “tax”, only “take”. Take their fucking money away. They got so much money, it’s literally an existential threat to humanity.
What's with the obsession for each side to promise a big check for everyone? Surely the money is better spent on public services rather than bribery...
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It’s pulling the money back where it belongs. You cannot have the “American Dream” without subsidizing a middle class. There is no middle class in capitalism without subsidies. FDR created the middle class.
Reagan and post Reagan congress have spent the last 40yrs disenfranchising the middle class by feeding their money to the billionaire creation endeavor.
This is a problem created by Congress. They could fix it. They choose not to.
Taxing billionaires at 1950s levels could virtually eliminate the lower class.
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Only 5%? Mine is approaching 30% and I can't afford shit.
Also sending out checks is fucking stupid. Just lower our taxes.
It's 5% of wealth, not income. But still, anything short of 100% will not stop the parasites. But its a nice gesture, if nothing else
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The fact they had to ask says a lot.
It's so crazy to me that people eat stuff like this up. Pages like this make BANK slapping some text on a bunch of image while adding absolutely nothing to the conversation.
Everything they make exists not to make a difference but to drive page views to their stupid accounts. It's so, so transparent.
And in this house, we hate all ads
Yes.
I think that percentage should be much higher. Like once you've hit a million, 100% of anything more goes right back to the community. Social programs, housing, healthcare, etc.
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I literally see no downsides. I’m in full support.
I want someone to run on the platform of simply... "Donald Trump hisself cost this country X" then calculate how much the taxpayers have spent on non-Presidential standard crap that Mr Cheetos has gotten, find a way to reverse all that money back into the pockets of teachers.
That's the entire platform
Tax them how?
It’s complicated but depending on how they’re taxed you might not get shit out of them.
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I mean, they're not going to increase my pay, ever, so fuck yeah, that sounds good
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