Why is theft inhereintly wrong? Would you see Robin Hood as the villain of his story? It's not a matter of whether you like them or not, their exorbitant wealth is a bad thing in of itself. Why should they sit on so much wealth when most have so little?
The difference is between private property and personal property. Private property is the means of production that produce wealth by extracting a profit margin from the labor of the workers that operate that means. Seizing private property is just democratizing the ownership of it between all the workers that use it, because you can't really steal a corporation or a factory, just change ownership. Seizing personal property is taking someone's toothbrush or car or books.
Stealing ownership is still stealing though. You are suggesting we steal personal ownership in a company, ownership which is only worth a certain amount because the stock market says it is.
It's not like they're going to just give it up. Do you think that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people is a good thing? Is it a good thing that billionaires get to waste money shooting off rockets while so many people go without a roof over their head?
Wealth in this case is ownership in companies that have a massive worldwide presence. If wealth is ownership in the companies you own, then yes, I don't think they should be forced to give that up. What they decide to spend their wealth on is up to them.
What they decide to spend their wealth on is up to them
The only acceptable way to use that much money is to reinvest it in the society that enabled you to become a billionaire.
It would cost around 20 billion dollars to end homelessness in the US, why should people be allowed to have net worths of 100 billion+ when it would only cost 1/5th of that to provide everyone with a home? Is stealing from one man to house hundreds of thousands of people a bad thing to do? Is personal ownership of wealth worth more than human life to you?
The only acceptable way to use that much money is to reinvest it in the society that enabled you to become a billionaire.
Bill Gates seems to be doing a decent job of that, I'm glad he made the choices he has to redistribute his wealth, and I'm also glad it's his choice.
It would cost around 20 billion dollars to end homelessness in the US, why should people be allowed to have net worths of 100 billion+ when it would only cost 1/5th of that to provide everyone with a home?
I really doubt it's that simple. Where are these houses being built, in the middle of nowhere I suspect? How many homeless people want to move there? Will there be jobs out there? What about electricity, gas, and Internet?
Why would they need to be built in the middle of nowhere? We can build high density apartments if we need to, a roof over your head in a small apartment is better than the sidewalk.
ownership which is only worth a certain amount because the stock market says it is.
Market value and use value are not the same thing. Cases like Musk obviously display wild overvaluing, but the practical use a repatriated asset can provide is not the same as its price tag unless your only use for it is to sell it.
So how do we calculate wealth if it isn't based on what the market says it's worth? If we are going to tax Musk on his wealth, most of which is stock, how do you figure out the "real" wealth to tax?
In the case of stock, when we say it is "overvalued", that is implicitly based on the idea that there is a better evaluation that we can at least estimate, wherein (using more Marxist terms) the use value and market value are more correlated.
How a wealth tax should be implemented depends a lot on the society in which it is implemented. If we are assuming it is just the US but with a wealth tax, then I think ignoring what I said and taxing people more when their stock is higher makes sense, because market-dictated wealth represents really the ultimate ability to direct society within the US. In other countries with more checks against the wealthy, another approach may be more justified.
Really, I don't like wealth taxes compared to other models like a higher capital gains tax, but anything that takes money disproportionately from all billionaires is probably going to have my support merely for that fact, because anything that mainly hurts them is likely to be a good thing relative to the nothing we have.
What about the middle class that relies on stocks to retire? If you aren't aware, retirement accounts are usually mostly stocks, do we tax the middle class retirement money?
I think your last paragraph is pretty telling, just blindly supporting anything that hurts billionaires simply because they are billionaires, no matter how unfair or unjust it is, or even his bad the consequences would be for the country.
I think there is a reason the most successful companies are from the US, you would have them move their bushes elsewhere that's more supportive of their size?
Obviously I don't want to fuck over retirees, so it should be a progressive tax, since those retirement accounts don't reach 8 figures, let alone 10 to 12.
I was pretty careful in my phrasing about it hurting billionaires specifically rather than hurting a larger swath of the population that included billionaires. Given that, I don't think it would hurt "the country" very much at all, and indeed benefit the country because billionaires are a perpetual malus on us.
I think there is a reason the most successful companies are from the US,
There are several reasons, and I think you probably aren't adequately accounting for the US being the global hegemon and engaging in brutal imperial exploitation as being chief among them. The US literally goes to war using the most over-funded military in the world for the sake of oil companies. It backs juntas to get cheap deals on lithium. It authors puppet governments for fucking bananas.
Regarding capital flight: It's awesome if billionaires want to flee. If they try, seize everything from them. They play ball or fuck off, no need to accommodate them playing God.
Why is theft inhereintly wrong? Would you see Robin Hood as the villain of his story? It's not a matter of whether you like them or not, their exorbitant wealth is a bad thing in of itself. Why should they sit on so much wealth when most have so little?
Do you mind if I steal your property? Would that be wrong? Or is it fine as long as I'm poorer than you?
The difference is between private property and personal property. Private property is the means of production that produce wealth by extracting a profit margin from the labor of the workers that operate that means. Seizing private property is just democratizing the ownership of it between all the workers that use it, because you can't really steal a corporation or a factory, just change ownership. Seizing personal property is taking someone's toothbrush or car or books.
Stealing ownership is still stealing though. You are suggesting we steal personal ownership in a company, ownership which is only worth a certain amount because the stock market says it is.
It's not like they're going to just give it up. Do you think that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people is a good thing? Is it a good thing that billionaires get to waste money shooting off rockets while so many people go without a roof over their head?
Wealth in this case is ownership in companies that have a massive worldwide presence. If wealth is ownership in the companies you own, then yes, I don't think they should be forced to give that up. What they decide to spend their wealth on is up to them.
The only acceptable way to use that much money is to reinvest it in the society that enabled you to become a billionaire.
It would cost around 20 billion dollars to end homelessness in the US, why should people be allowed to have net worths of 100 billion+ when it would only cost 1/5th of that to provide everyone with a home? Is stealing from one man to house hundreds of thousands of people a bad thing to do? Is personal ownership of wealth worth more than human life to you?
Bill Gates seems to be doing a decent job of that, I'm glad he made the choices he has to redistribute his wealth, and I'm also glad it's his choice.
I really doubt it's that simple. Where are these houses being built, in the middle of nowhere I suspect? How many homeless people want to move there? Will there be jobs out there? What about electricity, gas, and Internet?
Why would they need to be built in the middle of nowhere? We can build high density apartments if we need to, a roof over your head in a small apartment is better than the sidewalk.
Market value and use value are not the same thing. Cases like Musk obviously display wild overvaluing, but the practical use a repatriated asset can provide is not the same as its price tag unless your only use for it is to sell it.
So how do we calculate wealth if it isn't based on what the market says it's worth? If we are going to tax Musk on his wealth, most of which is stock, how do you figure out the "real" wealth to tax?
In the case of stock, when we say it is "overvalued", that is implicitly based on the idea that there is a better evaluation that we can at least estimate, wherein (using more Marxist terms) the use value and market value are more correlated.
How a wealth tax should be implemented depends a lot on the society in which it is implemented. If we are assuming it is just the US but with a wealth tax, then I think ignoring what I said and taxing people more when their stock is higher makes sense, because market-dictated wealth represents really the ultimate ability to direct society within the US. In other countries with more checks against the wealthy, another approach may be more justified.
Really, I don't like wealth taxes compared to other models like a higher capital gains tax, but anything that takes money disproportionately from all billionaires is probably going to have my support merely for that fact, because anything that mainly hurts them is likely to be a good thing relative to the nothing we have.
What about the middle class that relies on stocks to retire? If you aren't aware, retirement accounts are usually mostly stocks, do we tax the middle class retirement money?
I think your last paragraph is pretty telling, just blindly supporting anything that hurts billionaires simply because they are billionaires, no matter how unfair or unjust it is, or even his bad the consequences would be for the country.
I think there is a reason the most successful companies are from the US, you would have them move their bushes elsewhere that's more supportive of their size?
Obviously I don't want to fuck over retirees, so it should be a progressive tax, since those retirement accounts don't reach 8 figures, let alone 10 to 12.
I was pretty careful in my phrasing about it hurting billionaires specifically rather than hurting a larger swath of the population that included billionaires. Given that, I don't think it would hurt "the country" very much at all, and indeed benefit the country because billionaires are a perpetual malus on us.
There are several reasons, and I think you probably aren't adequately accounting for the US being the global hegemon and engaging in brutal imperial exploitation as being chief among them. The US literally goes to war using the most over-funded military in the world for the sake of oil companies. It backs juntas to get cheap deals on lithium. It authors puppet governments for fucking bananas.
Regarding capital flight: It's awesome if billionaires want to flee. If they try, seize everything from them. They play ball or fuck off, no need to accommodate them playing God.