Ask Lemmy

Locking as the reports for the comments in this post are just enormous.

Tax the income of corporations not the profit. The same way you get taxed your VAT. That means that corporations can't tax evade: if they make income in a country, they get taxed. They can't go an declare the profit in the Netherlands or Ireland and skip paying taxes.

Create and use parallel institutions to allow society to thrive without needing to play the billionares economy game. Example: communication tools outside of a market involvement such as Lemmy, Element (matrix). Economy tools. Association tools. See the application of Dual Power by socialists, which is what you are proposing here, a redistribution of power and wealth.

Vote for those pushing for these.

Step 1: Slay the dragon.

Step 2: Redistribute its mountain of gold back into the community.

A wealth tax does seem warranted for billionaires. I don't like the idea of taxing something inert but honestly that's how they make money. They borrow against thousands of shares at a time and pay zero taxes on the loan.

"billionaires" wouldn't be so bad if they just:

• paid the taxes expected, with no shenanigans

• were obligated to activate their cash in the economy. No hording, get that cash moving through the economy.

Through force.

The system is well and truly rigged, that there is no option for “democratic” means to counter it.

You don't need to do anything fancy, just make them pay taxes. No loopholes, no moving your money to tax havens, accurate income calculations taxed correctly, gangs of auditors making sure it happens.

we should just Go aroUnd acting lIke they are the best ever Landlords on the pLanet and there is nOthing unusual abouT them beIng the oNly people on earth familiar with thE concept of happiness, right fellow captive serfs?

Education. Until the masses realize the tricks being used on them, we can redistribute all we want and it will still all funnel up to the top again.

Nearly all billionaires have unrealized wealth, meaning they own a large percentage of a giant corporation (ie Bezos, Musk). So taxing them for money they don’t really own won’t work. But there is a better solution.

There are 38 companies in the US whose yearly revenue is greater than 100 BILLION dollars. In fact, the total amount of revenue over 100 billion for these companies combined is a bit shy of the US government yearly budget.

No company needs to revenue that much. Tax the revenue (ie 5%) over 100 billion revenue. This has the added benefit of helping to prevent monopolies and “too big to fail”.

Here is the list and revenue in case you think these companies don’t need to be taxed lol. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_the_United_States_by_revenue

Edit: Extra easter egg: The tax rate that you set could be changed each year to meet the amount of the federal deficit (ie the amount the government "overspends"). This would have the added advantage of limiting excessive government spending because politicians would have to explain to the largest corporations why they are spending their money. And you get a guaranteed balanced budget every year!

Eat them

Shop local.

Oh, yeah...and guillotines.

So many thoughts on this. I'll try to parse some out, one post at a time.

Part of the problem is the standard of legality. Late-stage capitalism is defined by the state serving the ownership class rather than the public. It's why the state cares very little about wage theft, or addicts dropping dead from opioid overdose, or homeless freezing to death in sub-zero Minnesota but are arresting immigrants who are otherwise well-behaved (and paying their taxes) or raiding repair shops that fix iPhones without an Apple authorization. It's why media agencies are so worried about piracy even as they try to lay off their development teams if they can be replaced with AI software.

Laws and the legal system work for the ownership class, not the public. Any legal efforts to strip billionaires of their wealth, or even reduce their profits is going to quickly get neutered. This is why the protections afforded by the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments of the Constitution of the United States have been thoroughly gutted with carve-outs. It's why asset forfeiture is not only a thing, but takes more from Americans than burglaries.

And this is why law enforcement is already attacking mutual aid organizations based on licensing issues, because it's not actually illegal but facilitates other threats to the ownership class, such as labor actions. There is no rule of law in the US. Your rights go only as far as your lawyer's means to enforce them, and if you're depending on a public defender, they just don't have the time or funding.

The ownership class will (according to Marx) tremble before a communist revolution because we will have ruled out all other alternatives, though we may try a fascist autocracy and a massive genocide machine to dispose of all the underclasses, first.

And that's the problem. The Holocaust was legal too. Leaving workers hungry and cold to the elements during the Great Depression was totally legal, and at the time communism as per the Soviet Union was looking pretty good to those of our great grandparents who weren't Carnegie or Rockefeller. This is not our first rodeo. What the state likes (id est, what is legal ) is not a fair moral standard. Nor is what religious ministries like (id est, what is sin ). We have to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, and if we're willing to die for our pacifistic standards when law enforcement decides we are intrinsically unlawful

This is why some are arguing the climate crisis warrants resorting to violent sabotage (say, blowing up oil pipelines) since the alternative is to let industry pollute us to global catastrophic risk (of extinction). If you want a sustainable civilization, if you want wealth and power distributed fairly, if you want a public-serving government, then you're going to have to give up on lawful action. And if you want to stay within the confines of law, you'll have to give up on equality, a functional state or a future.

Guillotines

Tax any loans using stocks as collateral. If they try to hide their wealth through an LLC, subject that LLC to a high wealth/business tax as well. Go full scorched earth on all billionaires.

You know what's free?

SHAME. Shame these selfish fucks every fucking second they are in the public. I want to see a 4 year old give musk the finger. I want to hear a 7 year old shout "SELFISH CUNT" at bezos. I want everyone they interact with who's not on their payroll to roll their eyes and say "oh no everyone watch out, mr "I need to horde billions" is here. What do you fucking want?"

invective has always been a valuable tool against the arsehole polity.

Unions.

Anti trust enforcement.

Immediate impact:

• wealth tax.

Medium term:

• death tax.
• nonprofit land developments.
• redefinition of the goal of a public corporation from maximizing profit for shareholders to something that makes sense.

Long term:

• effective antitrust legislation, policy, and enforcement.
• worker owned co-ops
• civic education

Edit: I forgot unions and labour protection in immediate impact.

Convince them to take a trip to see the Titanic...

Taxation (also unlikely)

I think this is the most feasible way, and it work relatively well in other Western countries than the US. They still have billionaires, but fewer due to higher taxation. If put in place through referendum, it also creates a basis for societal approval of stripping very wealthy people of their excess wealth, lowing the risk of widespread revolt.

Voluntary donation or renunciation of wealth past a certain point (highly unlikely) Taxation (also unlikely) Seizing assets (illegal and would most likely set a poor precedent)

Part of the issue is that they see those as more or less the same thing.

As far as I'm concerned, taxation is the answer. Brackets seem to work pretty well. The issue is tax havens. Here in Norway, the current government raised taxes a bit on the wealthy, as one would expect going from a conservative liberal bunch to a center-left-ish one. A bunch of wealthy people promptly took their ball and fucked off to Switzerland, after bitching and posturing and whining in public, eagerly helped by the news media.

Unfortunately it seems that while I consider this obviously selfish parasitism, a lot of people... don't. After all if you're rich, surely you deserved it(!)

Remember that company that made the base pay $70,000 for everyone. News was predicting (hoping) they would fail in a year. They didn't, and big surprise, they have amazing staff retention. We need more companies like that. Places that pay well where people want to work. They would eventually pull away all the talent from the horde companies and shut them down. It would be a long fight, but glorious to see the workers sip tea and watch their old companies fail. This is how you beat the current system, by making egalitarian companies that can actually compete with them, where people are proud to work and get paid a living wage.

we need to change the parameters of success.

the current "world's richest persons" list is actually the "world's greediest persons" list. we need to all start calling it exactly that. we need to, as society, understand that having those levels of wealth is more a symptom of a sick and twisted mind rather than a consequence of "business acumen".

the world's richest persons list should be recalibrated to what percentage of one's income has been given away in taxes and donations. think about it, if you can indulge in all your necessities, comforts, and luxuries on 10% of your income and still afford to give away the other 90%, are you not 9 times "richer" than you need to be?

separately, any company that turns an obscene profit has done so only by overcharging their customers. these companies should be vilified therefore, and not celebrated.

The best steps would be the ones taking them to the guillotine

All the people saying taxes or caps on income are missing the point. Who should impose those taxes or caps? The government is basically controlled by billionaires, it doesn't matter what the ordinary citizens want.

Meat grinder

I don’t think the crazy taxes need to be on obscene wealth itself, but on the very lavish and wasteful things people do with that wealth, things that have a very real impact to the rest of society.

For example, private jets or even private chartered flights should have some very steep taxes to offset the cost of all the FAA employees and stuff at all the small airports, all the carbon emissions, and everything.

Yachts, and very large properties also come to mind. Like total square feet of living space of all real estate owned - once it crosses like 10,000 sq ft the annual taxes just get higher and higher. For example 10k-20k sq ft costs $1/sq ft annually, 20k-40k costs $5/sq ft, etc.