5/22/2026 at 3:57:11 PM
> To convert between wealth and income tax rates, you have to divide by the rate of return on capital. The conversion rate of 20 comes from assuming that the risk-free rate of return is 5%.This seems to only be true for people whose income entirely comes from their wealth, rather than their labor. The math doesn't math for someone on the other extreme end of the spectrum who has zero savings or investments and obtains all his income from labor: To him, a N% wealth tax = 0% income tax for all N. Those with -some- savings are somewhere in the middle.
It is a very sneaky way to argue that a wealth tax should be as across-the-board unpopular as a large income tax increase. But Graham's math is only applicable to those flush with investments and with relatively small salaries from labor, so a wealth tax is only unpopular to that particular group.
by ryandrake
5/22/2026 at 6:11:06 PM
I can't tell what's worse: intentionally obscuring the fact that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax or unintentionally forgetting that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax.by colinmarc
5/22/2026 at 7:07:29 PM
On the other hand, almost a majority of people already pay no federal income tax anyways. Mitt Romney mentioned a number of 47% during his presidential campaign and that number was mostly true. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/sep/18/mitt-romne...People love to talk about the marginal tax rates but not the average tax rates. And I think that’s right because the conversation should be focused on the wealthiest people.
by kccqzy
5/22/2026 at 8:56:58 PM
> On the other hand, almost a majority of people already pay no federal income tax anyways.That's an irrelevant diversion though, because the measure that matters when discussing the fairness of taxes is how much people are left with at the end after paying whatever taxes they pay, including sales tax, income tax, and any other kind of tax. And for those particular people you're talking about the answer is very little, next to none, and for the people for whom a wealth tax would even apply the answer is unimaginable amounts.
by BugsJustFindMe
5/22/2026 at 10:39:31 PM
That's not all that matters. The main reason to have taxes is to fund the government, not to make society a more just society. And thinking that billionaires will just take a wealth tax as served, and perhaps will ask "can I have some more" is one way to think about this, but probably not the best way. A better way to think is that action might be followed by reaction. There is no manifest destiny for California to be the epicenter of tech.by credit_guy
5/23/2026 at 12:10:04 AM
California already has very high taxes. I think marginal tax rates are higher in California than for UK tax residents, certainly for CGT, and roughly similar for income tax.I'd say the fact that California remains the epicenter of tech despite its high taxes suggests concentration of talent matters far more than tax rates.
by m11a
5/23/2026 at 7:16:46 AM
Yeah, the marginal rates for California are approximately the same as I pay in Ireland. The capital gains taxes are way lower though.by disgruntledphd2
5/22/2026 at 10:53:41 PM
Does the government not have the goal to make society a more just society? When did that stop being a priority of government? Even a teeny, tiny one?by mannanj
5/22/2026 at 11:33:56 PM
Sure, the government has that goal too. But the government has many tools, and using taxes for that is using the wrong tool. Or maybe you think that billionaires owe us not only to pay taxes, but also to play nice, and pay those taxes with a smile on their face?by credit_guy
5/23/2026 at 2:21:12 AM
Billionares shouldn't exist. We shouldn't just tax them for the revenue. We should tax them to limit the undemocratic power that comes with excessive wealth.by breakyerself
5/23/2026 at 7:38:08 PM
Agreed. Humans evolved in a tribal, local community leadership system. To have as much wealth as millions of people that you never interact with should not exist as a person. It is against the system principles of humanity; either create a new species and turn the billionaires into them, or balance the system.by mannanj
5/22/2026 at 11:44:02 PM
> pay those taxes with a smile on their faceThe government's monopoly on punitive violence isn't only intended for the peasantry...
by ethbr1
5/23/2026 at 7:40:43 PM
Funding the government, which has the goal to create a more just society, means taxes should support that.If you're not using your funding to support your goals, thats corruption.
by mannanj
5/23/2026 at 8:38:14 PM
This is wishful thinking. Billionaires can vote with their feet, or can pay expensive lawyers and accountants to find all the possible loopholes to not pay those taxes. California wants to tax Elon Musk for his trillion dollars. But how much of that trillion dollars was generated in California? He has a very valid claim that a lot of it was generated in Texas, and he'll go all the way to the Supreme Court with that.People can vote that a new tax should be levied on billionaires, but can't vote how those billionaires will react to the tax. Moving out of state is one option (see Larry Page, Sergey Brin, etc). Hiring armies of lawyers to challenge any wealth assessment is another. Litigating to the Supreme Court yet another. I'm not a billionaire and never will be, but if I can think of these few ideas, they can think of 100 times more.
by credit_guy
5/24/2026 at 1:15:34 AM
It's wishful to ask the system designed for a goal, to do the goal?by mannanj
5/24/2026 at 12:47:51 PM
Exactly. You can ask many things, like you can ask for world peace, and you can ask for universal brotherly love. If the ask has no chance to result in the outcome you desire, it's purely wishful thinking.It feels to me you are asking "why can't we just eliminate billionaires". Well, they have a vote in that decision.
by credit_guy
5/23/2026 at 3:10:44 AM
What are those other tools?by lovelearning
5/23/2026 at 10:51:32 AM
>and pay those taxes with a smile on their face?Considering the alternative for them over the past millennia has been, inevitably that they get caught, hanged, quartered, beaten and other various violent methods: yes, they should smile, they're buying their lives with all that money :)
by well_ackshually
5/24/2026 at 6:42:24 AM
> they're buying their livesExtortion is the word that summarizes your point.
by robocat
5/24/2026 at 7:18:47 AM
Ah yes, extortion is not the part where their disproportionate centralisation of wealth threatens your very livelihood with every action they take. Extortion isn't when they happily tell you they're going to replace you with AI. Extortion isn't when they steal your money with unpaid hours, it isn't when they threaten to fire you if you don't shut the fuck up and do as they say, when they act as a state within the state, corrupting institutions and polluting the very ground you, your children and your food grow on, it's when they're being held accountable for their actions and told that if they're going to have a personal wealth equal to that of millions, they also have the sum of responsibilities of these millions.Just so you know, careers as a bootlicker are kind of a dead end.
by well_ackshually
5/25/2026 at 3:03:00 PM
Careers of insulting people are also kind of a dead end.by ycdeebs
5/26/2026 at 6:48:27 AM
Oh no, don't worry, that's a hobby. Never monetize your hobbies, it takes all the joy away from it.by well_ackshually
5/24/2026 at 12:27:10 AM
You clearly don't understand psychology at all. Rule by fear has a major downside that Machivelli warned about. If you keep people under threat all the time, as soon as the threat fails and you can no longer point a gun at your head they preemptively kill you and feel good about it.Threatening violence to get what you want always ends with you being out-violenced by a bigger thug.
by Nasrudith
5/24/2026 at 1:20:21 AM
This is how alpha chimps function in their tribe. They resort to war and violence to prolong their rule, and it works for long enough, thats all they need for the cost-benefits to be worth it on their side.In humanity, being the alpha chimp, you can actually just run away from the tribe with all your wealth instead of outright die and form a new identity and start a life elsewhere and change your last name and go somewhere not well known, and if you and your family does this for enough generations you are forgotten.
I think this might explain the rotten apples at the tip-top of our industrial/societal wealth classes. I think they are these people, played out over generations, having somehow survived the system that used to make it impossible to do this when at the chimp level (or even medieval maybe, maybe this new form of evasion only arose in the industrial age).
by mannanj
5/24/2026 at 5:22:39 AM
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alpha-male-a...by BugsJustFindMe
5/25/2026 at 1:48:46 PM
Okay sure. What other concept or label would you recommend I use to describe a leader in a tribe?by mannanj
5/24/2026 at 2:26:45 AM
It's only by fear if they don't understand how to restrain themselves. Behave well with all your wealth, and nothing will happen: it's the same reason why wealthy patrons of art and craftsmen were at least respected, and why things ended poorly for robber barons.And no, I do not believe that Musk's flabby arms or Bezos' shiny head are a threat of bigger violence to me anyways.
by well_ackshually
5/23/2026 at 2:05:00 PM
> The main reason to have taxes is to fund the government, not to make society a more just society.Both are important reasons for taxes.
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both." (often attributed to Louis Brandeis, though he probably never said exactly the quote)
Taxation is one of the primary tools for avoiding destructive levels of wealth concentration.
Of course, the wealthy decry this as unfair wealth redistribution but all governments engage in constant wealth redistribution.
In the US we happen to have decided (since the Reagan era) that through increasingly regressive taxes the redistribution will almost always function upwards, ultimately resulting in the oligarchical dismantling of our government that we find ourselves in today.
by georgemcbay
5/22/2026 at 10:55:30 PM
There is no consensus on what is "fair" to tax, you can find people arguing from 0% to 100%. And if we're talking about measures of fairness. A much better measure is something like trying to maximise the median living standard without sacrificing any one demographic.> And for those particular people you're talking about the answer is very little, next to none...
So... where are the real resources coming from then? Because if these people aren't using them to support their living standards they must be doing something else. If we give one person enough money out of the tax pot to pay rent, that means the resources were redeployed from somewhere else that was about 1-rentworth of something.
Because I agree that the taxes aren't going to come out of the wealthy's living standards, but the implications of that in practice are not good.
by roenxi
5/22/2026 at 11:41:42 PM
> If we give one person enough money out of the tax pot to pay rent, that means the resources were redeployed from somewhere else that was about 1-rentworth of something.Yes, and that "somewhere else" is others' excess profit.
That excess profit comes from (a) inventing or investing capital with a return or (b) paying less for goods / labor than they can be sold for.
Capitalist profit has always been equal parts ingenuity and fucking other people over, and as most often implemented makes no discrimination between the two.
The bargain by which this has traditionally been squared is "the person who made the profit gets to keep some of it" + "they pay the rest in taxes to support the society they're successful in and depend on."
Unfortunately over the years this has continually been eroded by capital's invasion into democracy, with the express purpose of neutering the latter part of that bargain.
Those who would be hit with a wealth tax are incensed by it precisely because it would be less avoidable than the myriad of loopholes that have been engineered into income taxes.
by ethbr1
5/23/2026 at 4:53:59 AM
And in terms of real resources - who do you expect to have less and what do you expect them to have less of? Because "excess profit" is an economic concept, not a real thing.by roenxi
5/23/2026 at 2:49:24 PM
By using progressive taxes, either wealth or income, those who benefited from the current system get to keep some of those excess benefits, while keeping less than they would under a no tax system.by ethbr1
5/23/2026 at 11:49:51 PM
No, I mean real resources as in tangible ones. Although in this case I'd also be interested in redirected labour even though that isn't really a tangible asset. Like if you were explaining to someone who didn't speak english and you had to point at the things that the wealthy control that you want to tax away from them, what real objects do you point at?[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource#Tangible_versus_intan...
by roenxi
5/24/2026 at 2:57:22 PM
Why does tangible vs intangible matter?For the last ~3000 years of human history, wealth has been liquid via some form of money.
by ethbr1
5/24/2026 at 12:33:54 AM
Excess profit is a stupid fairy tale told by the bearded idiot. It is literally impossible to not retroactively 'exploit' somebody. Not just in the practical 'need to know what the end user will do with it to avoid them making an excess profit' but if the value changes over time they need to somehow predict that perfectly or else be guilty of exploitation. The notion itself always assumes that the capitalist should get absolutely nothing because he isn't doing "real work" and then ignores how things fall apart without them, or how much that the worker would have to do to substitute for them.Ironically the communists have managed to out-greed the capitalists through this one fantastical concepts. Capitalists accept that they need to pay people to get their inputs and try to make the most of it one way or another. Communists are kept up at night at by the thought that somebody else may have made a penny off of their labor, and think that they need to murder them for it.
by Nasrudith
5/24/2026 at 3:09:36 PM
The "excess" in "excess profits" means profits greater than what a fully-competitive, perfect market would allow.No one would be paying Apple or Google 30% of their revenue if there were infinite alternative app distribution options.
The essence of post-capitalism is that a lack of market intervention allows monopolies to not just grow (probably fine in limited niches with regulatory bounds) but also to rent seek without investing and adding value.
So yes, profit is a motivational force that has outperformed all others to date in aligning individual action with market desires.
But the excess profit era the US has been sliding towards for decades is not a free market.
When was the last time a large corporation was forcibly broken up?
by ethbr1
5/23/2026 at 11:36:30 AM
> A much better measure is something like...Yes. Focus on outcomes.
Pick a target amount of inequity. Act to hit that goal. Adjust as needed.
For example, I advocate restoring our gini coefficient from the current 0.48 (?) back to 1970s era 0.35. People smarter than me will figure out how to best measure inequity, ideal targets, and implementation details.
Arguing about all the misc tax rates, purposefully ignoring the macro, is an obfuscation strategy to prevent taking any action at all. Straight out of the CIA's field guide on sabotage.
by specialist
5/23/2026 at 2:36:15 AM
There is very little debate that you should be taxed proportionally to your total wealth; I.e. that the rich should pay more than the poor. In fact the only people trying to debate this are the rich who want to avoid paying back towards the society that enabled their success.by cherry_tree
5/23/2026 at 4:49:47 AM
> I.e. that the rich should pay more than the poorHow else could it work? The poor don't have enough money to tax them. That's why they're poor. Schemes where the rich don't get taxed are systems that tend towards the 0% tax for everyone end of the spectrum.
by roenxi
5/22/2026 at 11:20:05 PM
Pretty cool that the taxes high earners stop paying are not considered income taxes.(Social security and Medicare)
by maxerickson
5/23/2026 at 1:38:37 AM
Social Security tax is the only tax that has a limit. Medicare tax applies to all wages and high earners even pay an extra percentage.SS tax has a limit because benefits are also limited. It is a forced retirement plan where if you live long enough, you might get back what you paid in.
by didgetmaster
5/22/2026 at 8:29:52 PM
i hate when people bring it up. everybody that works pays payroll taxes which is around 25% when you count both sides.by naijaboiler
5/22/2026 at 8:37:15 PM
It’s 15.3% counting both sides, and capped. And it’s the only “tax” that is paid back, at progressive rates, because it’s a retirement annuity not an income tax.by votepaunchy
5/22/2026 at 8:53:24 PM
It’s an income tax wearing the trenchcoat of a retirement annuity- it’s not one for any practical purpose.by bombcar
5/22/2026 at 8:36:59 PM
Federal payroll taxes in the US are 15.3% (7.65% for each side).by relium
5/22/2026 at 9:44:36 PM
Social security and Medicare are also payroll "taxes" in that they're not optional and are automatically deducted.by prasadjoglekar
5/22/2026 at 10:06:25 PM
This is called insurance, not tax.by auggierose
5/22/2026 at 10:39:18 PM
If the government mandates it under threat of violence, it’s called a tax.It could also be classified as an insurance premium, but a government mandating it is the key characteristic of a tax.
But the fact that the government reduces the annuity amount by increasing retirement age and benefit purchasing power means it is not insurance either. It is wealth redistribution from the working to the non working.
by lotsofpulp
5/22/2026 at 11:18:48 PM
Yeah, that's how insurance works: it is wealth distribution from those who have not become (yet) an insurance case to those who have not.If you have a car, you need to pay car insurance. Is that also a tax?
The concept of insurance is independent of mandatory or not. That should be obvious, I wonder why it isn't to you. Maybe your ideology prohibits clear thinking and makes you vote Trump?
by auggierose
5/23/2026 at 5:38:42 AM
>Yeah, that's how insurance works: it is wealth distribution from those who have not become (yet) an insurance case to those who have not.In the context of differentiating between wealth redistribution and insurance, insurance does not redistribute wealth, insurance redistributes risk since underwriting in a competitive marketplace ensures you only a premium commensurate to your risks.
For example, the government mandates only liability insurance up to $x, for which the premium for the same coverage can be vastly different depending on each person's driving history. While this can be considered a tax because the government mandates it, one can see how this is not wealth redistribution since the "tax" being paid is at least partly dependent on one's risk profile.
Contrast this with a government mandated defined benefit pension contribution equal to a percentage of one's earned income, with a known fact that one's contributions will reflect their benefit less and less as the years go on. That is far more "wealth redistribution" than "insurance".
Another example is in the US, health insurance premiums are more tax than an actuarially calculated premium based on health risk. This is because health insurers are not allowed to price health insurance based on health risks. It is explicitly a redistribution of wealth from the young and healthy to the old and sick, due to the maximum age rating factor and inability to underwrite based on pre-existing health conditions.
by lotsofpulp
5/22/2026 at 11:46:25 PM
Something can be mandatory insurance AND a tax.by ethbr1
5/22/2026 at 10:38:55 PM
Homeowners already pay a wealth tax.by bagels
5/22/2026 at 11:10:47 PM
> Homeowners already pay a wealth tax.If you're talking about property taxes, then renters pay that as well through their rent (which passes through the landlord before getting to the city/county).
* https://realestatemagazine.ca/do-residential-tenants-pay-pro...
And is some (many?) cases higher rates than owners:
* https://www.renx.ca/renters-often-pay-higher-municipal-taxes...
by throw0101a
5/23/2026 at 1:49:09 AM
Renters will always pay one way or another. You can name it wealth tax or property tax or house tax. It doesn't matter -- the result will be higher rent.by raincole
5/23/2026 at 12:36:55 PM
Economy's doing good? Rent increases because people can afford to pay more, and demand is always very high.Economy's doing badly? Rent increases because costs and taxes for the landlord are higher.
UBI? Rent increases because people have more disposable income.
---
The secret to the infinite money glitch is to maintain a much lower supply than the demand, and to concentrate jobs within a small area
by sph
5/23/2026 at 11:21:31 AM
The point of my post was to indicate that just because you're a home owner (rather than a renter) does not make you special.Property taxes are not wealth taxes, but fees for services rendered by the local government. Both home owners and renters (may) benefit from those fees.
by throw0101a
5/25/2026 at 3:26:18 PM
It's a wealth tax. You're just describing what the funds are used for. Other types of wealth tax can pay for those things too.by bagels
5/23/2026 at 10:57:10 AM
This isn’t true. Plenty of landlords don’t cover their monthly expenses for providing the housing.by refurb
5/23/2026 at 6:00:32 PM
In what sense are landlords "providing" housing? Is there an argument around like, stabilizing a demand floor for new construction or something, or is this one of those weird in-group terms that cover over what might otherwise be seen as a relationship of power or dominance?Either way, if I rent out my house and pull in $5k/mo but spend $2k/mo on principal, $2k/mo on interest, and $1.5k/mo on miscellaneous costs, that $500 "loss" translates into me paying $500 for $2k in principal value, all while gaining the benefits of solid inflation-indexed real estate growth AND assistance up the amortization schedule. So even cash-flow negative rentals are usually pretty long-run lucrative.
by WaxProlix
5/24/2026 at 1:29:37 PM
Providing housing is exactly how the word is defined - giving something - in this case a place to live.Go and ask all the landlords in Toronto how the finances are working out.
Tons of landlords were cash flow negative against fully loaded costs. Then the market flipped and house prices dropped 30%.
Now they’re shelling out $2000 of their own cash per month, gaining $500 in equity, while they pay down a $700,000 mortgage on a home worth $500,000.
by refurb
5/24/2026 at 4:28:41 PM
This sounds like an investment that didn't pan out - I've had one or two of those myself, never pleasant. But are they providing housing? I guess in my mind the builders, equity incentive assistors, re-zoning advocates, etc might be 'providing housing'. How is a landlord providing housing?by WaxProlix
5/23/2026 at 11:19:19 AM
> This isn’t true. Plenty of landlords don’t cover their monthly expenses for providing the housing.Just because landlords don't clear their monthly expenses does not mean that the tenant's rent is not going to cover (a portion of) property taxes.
by throw0101a
5/23/2026 at 12:43:29 PM
Sure but it’s not a direct one for one.It like me buying a laptop and saying I pay for the electricity in the factory in China.
While it’s true the money helps pay for it, it’s not a pss through expense.
by refurb
5/23/2026 at 11:10:15 AM
Then they should get out of that business, right?I assume that rising property values make the endeavor worthwhile?
tone: I am not being snarky here. Genuine question.
by consumer451
5/22/2026 at 10:58:38 PM
And even if the house represents negative wealth - same property taxes apply to a house regardless of whether the owner owns it outright with no mortgage (wealthy) or if they're paying 8% interest on an underwater mortgage (negative wealth). And, unlike VCs, property taxes are paid - often for decades - before one even sees if they'll even realize any wealth from the estimated value of their home that they pay tax on.by theodpHN
5/22/2026 at 8:01:52 PM
> intentionally obscuring the fact that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax or unintentionally forgetting that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax.I consider this fine, because proponents of a wealth tax consistently omit that it will ultimately be the middle class who pays the tax... the ultra-wealthy and wealthy can afford sophisticated strategies to render a wealth tax ineffective against them, and if that doesn't work they can just move somewhere else. Income tax was the same.
by jppope
5/22/2026 at 11:08:10 PM
If you paid attention to proponents of a wealth tax in the US, you would be aware that they only ever suggest it for vast wealths of like $10 million+.by BosunoB
5/23/2026 at 2:58:31 AM
That’s like 2 pretty good houses in the bay area. Hardly “vast wealth”, and these sorts of things are rarely inflation adjusted over time.by pfannkuchen
5/23/2026 at 11:43:02 AM
The Bay Area is one of the most expensive parts of the United States and $10M still means you own half a dozen houses. I’d say that’s reasonably “wealthy” from the perspective of the majority of the population who struggle to afford even one.by acdha
5/23/2026 at 5:39:56 PM
Sure, I’d agree with “reasonably wealthy”, just not “vast” wealth.by pfannkuchen
5/23/2026 at 12:45:48 PM
Anyone who owns two $500k houses is wealthy in 2026. I used to own two worth less than that and didn’t consider myself wealthy, but I was by the statistics.by mathgeek
5/22/2026 at 9:00:13 PM
Them moving somewhere else is an easy fix. Just put an exit tax on the ultra wealthy.by harimau777
5/22/2026 at 10:30:04 PM
Even that is subject to shenanigans... above a certain level of wealth the overhead of establishing companies, tax residencies, and complex debt arrangements become a rounding error.Some of the mechanisms are loopholes, that might be closed l. But many start to interact with international business regulations that exist for considered reasons, and are harder to change even if it is serving as a loophole.
You end up with only the small wealth (one lifetime as a skilled professional) group getting caught
by servo_sausage
5/23/2026 at 2:46:08 AM
Sanction them and their companies. Sanction countries that accept these anti-society misanthropes. Bar them from the US and any territories, encourage our allies to bar them as well. Investigate those companies for crimes to the full extent of the law.Nobody needs these billionaires; we can create new billionaires and new products. They think they bring some sort of ultra speciality but in reality they are doing something millions want to do and their monopolistic success is preventing others from succeeding; knocking these giants down makes rooms for new businesses and products. This is the entire thrust of a capitalistic economy.
by cherry_tree
5/23/2026 at 9:58:12 AM
I don't have any more to fear from politically-influential private-sector billionaires than I do from the government enforcing a sanctions regime.by JuniperMesos
5/22/2026 at 8:59:54 PM
As has happened in nearly every European state with wealth taxes. But the elephant in the room is that these policies give the same ineffective, corrupt and entirely worthless politicians even more money to "manage". The very definition of delusional wishful thinking.by armitron
5/22/2026 at 9:37:50 PM
this is the key fact. If a wealth tax were enacted and a responsible group were endowed with the money we might reap some value from a wealth tax. Giving American Politicians more tax money is like giving a heroine addict more heroine.by jppope
5/22/2026 at 9:32:57 PM
If the ultra wealthy move out a few people will lose their jobs (their family office, some accountants, some property managers will work the same job for someone else). But overall people will not be worse off.We have been doing this exact experiment in Seattle sine 2024 when Bozos moved out. And last month Howard Schultz moved out as well. The sky did not fall.
Another example- did the average Londoner get better off when Russian oligarch parked their money in London in early 2000s? And likewise - was the average Londoner worse off when that money was frozen in Jan 2022 when Ukrainian war started? Not really…
by dh2022
5/22/2026 at 10:52:44 PM
Starbucks is moving its headquarters from Seattle to Tennessee.Many other businesses that are not large enough to interest the newspaper are moving out as well.
by WalterBright
5/23/2026 at 1:51:26 AM
Like I said: the sky is not falling.by dh2022
5/23/2026 at 2:29:55 AM
I don’t think I understand your argument. If a wealth tax causes the wealthy to leave then you have even less tax revenue than before, right?by lambdaphagy
5/23/2026 at 3:07:36 AM
You also lose the jobs the wealthy were paying for, and the taxes those employees would have paid, and the sales tax the wealthy are no longer paying, and so on.by WalterBright
5/23/2026 at 3:58:21 AM
There was no tax revenue to begin with-nobody paid income taxes in WA before the millionaire tax. The jobs the rich will take with are few and very specialized: tax accountants, security people, some administrative assistants. When billionaires leave whoever mowed their lawn or cleaned their pool will do the same job - for the next owner.What the politicians will do with these taxes does not matter to me. The only thing I dispute is this sense of doom because, of my god, Bill Gates and Andy Jassy and Howard Schultz and Ballmer will pick up their toys and leave.
by dh2022
5/25/2026 at 2:49:59 AM
> Starbucks is moving its headquarters from Seattle to Tennessee.Starbucks announced they would open a large corporate office in Tennessee. It could be called a 2nd headquarters reasonably.
by pseudalopex
5/23/2026 at 10:00:19 AM
London is a highly housing-constrained city, so the most important way of answering this question is, what affect did freezing Russian oligarch money in Jan 2022 have on the London housing market? If it made housing cheaper or otherwise more available, it was good for the average Londoner; and if it did the opposite it was bad. I have no idea which effect dominated or if it even made an appreciable difference compared to everything else that affects the London housing market.by JuniperMesos
5/23/2026 at 4:04:47 PM
So I guess the influx , followed by the outflow, of the Russian billionaires did not have much bearing on ordinary Londoners . Which was my point.by dh2022
5/23/2026 at 1:51:55 AM
The level of delusional wishful thinking here defies belief. Seattle and all other US "left" strongholds are decomposing and falling apart, with parts of these cities worse off than the third world. Instead of realizing that it's ineffective, incompetent and detached from reality politicians that have brought ruin and misery, you want to hand them even more money.Brilliant.
by armitron
5/23/2026 at 11:47:19 AM
Parts of these cities worse off than the third world? Have you been to a third world country? Or Seattle, for that matter?The commonly scapegoated cities in the United States are not experiencing third world conditions. Appalachia is experiencing third world conditions. Hollowed out rust belt cities in the Midwest are experiencing third world conditions. These areas are not run by lefty politicians. The United States has a systemic problem, not a local one.
And yes, the systemic problem is that there are a tiny number of ultra wealthy people with wildly outsized influence on the government of the United States, doing everything they can to reduce the amount they need to pay in taxes while simultaneously ensuring they extract the maximum amount of profit from the US government's wildly excessive expenditures.
by digdugdirk
5/23/2026 at 11:45:17 AM
> Seattle and all other US "left" strongholds are decomposing and falling apart, with parts of these cities worse off than the third worldYou can tell this is true because property values have plummeted and nobody wants to live there any more, right? Or, since that’s not true at all, possibly the people who craft the media you consume are not being fully honest.
by acdha
5/23/2026 at 2:02:49 AM
I don’t really care about whatever taxes the politicians will heap on the rich. My point is that if the rich leave it will not the economic calamity so many pundits forecast. Life will go on without rich people.Just look at Oregon for example. It’s a lot like WA state but without the billionaires. And it is a really nice place to live. If WA state ends up like Oregon I won’t mind.
by dh2022
5/22/2026 at 7:04:35 PM
The ultra rich are desperate to maintain their exclusive access to essentially pay no taxes through their "Buy, Borrow, Die" strategy (if you don't understand what that is you should stop and read this: https://gemini.google.com/share/e230bcecaaeb) and so they are using scare tactics / gaslighting around wealth taxes because a wealth tax would disrupt this essentially zero tax strategy.by outside1234
5/22/2026 at 7:22:59 PM
"Buy, borrow, die" is a bit of a bogeyman of the Left; it's not a common strategy for HNW or UHNW individuals, and to the extent it is used, there are much better ways to close it than a wealth tax, which is coarse and rife with implementation issues.by scarmig
5/22/2026 at 8:22:53 PM
The main implementation issue with a wealth tax is that it doesn’t at all interact with the capital gains tax. It’s easy to fix the implementation issue by integrating the wealth tax into the capital gains tax (call it unrealized capital gains tax for starters), make the tax refundable when an asset loses value, and netting it against the actual capital gains tax.With this framing, the wealth tax isn’t a new tax; it is only prepaying the capital gains tax instead of allowing it to be deferred forever.
by kccqzy
5/22/2026 at 9:06:53 PM
Unrealised capital gains tax requires some way to assess the value of assets. This is a lot harder than it sounds.It already exists in the form of property taxes, which are quite unpopular.
by trollbridge
5/23/2026 at 1:57:02 AM
>It already exists in the form of property taxes, which are quite unpopular.For an unpopular tax, the property tax is remarkably ubiquitous. Are there really any popular taxes?
by vannevar
5/22/2026 at 10:08:53 PM
at least all financial assets (stocks, etc) are easy to assess value so why not start with that? same with gold, silver etc. Some minimal amount you can make it nontaxable to reduce administrative burden.by pzo
5/22/2026 at 10:48:03 PM
this a million times. Land easy, already being taxed. Any regulated financial instrument, also easy, take the minimum average yearly price of held assets. Tricky things like privately held companies, maybe we solve that one later, but even then there are valuations made at various points, anchor to those, be conservative in every case. If the gov primarily exists to enforce property rights... then people should pay in proportion to the rights that are being enforced on their behalf.by deeponey
5/22/2026 at 11:50:06 PM
> Tricky things like privately held companies, maybe we solve that one laterSo I spend 30 minutes to set up an LLC and then transfer my assets to that LLC. Now, I don't hold the assets; I hold a stake in a privately-held company.
Ultimately, the solution you come up with needs to be at least somewhat airtight; otherwise, it just penalizes people who spend less money on tax advisors. The generation of income is a fairly well-defined point where assets change hands and you can apply some quasi-clear rules. Ongoing taxes on the potential to make money are a lot harder. So I buy some gold bars or valuable paintings and stash them in the attic. Gold / Picasso appreciates. How do you tax me on that? Do I submit an inventory of everything I own to the government every year? How does the government check - do they get to rifle through my stuff every December?
And hey, here's a cool one: if my parent owns a company and puts it in their will that it's mine when they die, is that promise an asset I owe taxes on every year? It's clearly worth something: it's potential money down the line.
by lacewing
5/23/2026 at 5:37:05 AM
> So I spend 30 minutes to set up an LLC and then transfer my assets to that LLC. Now, I don't hold the assets; I hold a stake in a privately-held company.Beneficial ownership is a well established concept in law, and this strategy simply would not work. If those assets are easily valued and liquid (stocks or whatever) then the taxes will just end up being passed through as the entity won’t be relevant for tax purposes. Sure you could try to hide assets or offshore them or whatever but you’d be running headlong into outright tax fraud at that point.
You would probably instead see less new public companies, more companies/divisions being sold to various groups under opaque structures and taken private, and a lot more weird borderline legal transactions done between private parties to pretend valuation of private companies or other assets are lower than reality.
> Gold / Picasso appreciates. How do you tax me on that? Do I submit an inventory of everything I own to the government every year? How does the government check - do they get to rifle through my stuff every December?
Yes, of course you would owe taxes on such things assuming they were over whatever exemption limits and such. The government can’t realistically check everyone. They just throw the more obvious offenders in prison when found and keep enough background “random audits” to keep folks scared enough into compliance.
And obviously the government has been making “hiding” such assets harder every year with the ratcheting up of KYC/AML laws. Over time you’d see these requirements for pretty much every major on/offramp for such assets like gold bullion dealers, coin shops, or auctions. A lot already are required to verify your identity and even report transactions. There is no more showing up to a car dealer and paying for a new car with a duffel bag full of cash, much less anonymously. Such a transaction is reported and you’d see this simply expand.
Property taxes exist at least in part because the asset is impossible to hide and more difficult than most to play games with valuation.
> And hey, here's a cool one: if my parent owns a company and puts it in their will that it's mine when they die, is that promise an asset I owe taxes on every year? It's clearly worth something: it's potential money down the line.
Presumably your parents would already be paying the wealth taxes owed on the asset in question. That someone might loan you money against a future inheritance seems immaterial but perhaps I’m missing something here?
by phil21
5/23/2026 at 2:01:16 AM
If you properly taxed real estate in a progressive way, you wouldn't have to bother with taxing paper wealth at all---the collective value of paper is already reflected in the price of land. People with large paper fortunes inevitably buy real estate, and when they do, their paper wealth inflates the price. This is why median residential housing prices have dramatically outpaced median wage increases, along with anything else tied to real estate, like sports and concert tickets.by vannevar
5/24/2026 at 6:00:03 AM
What level of property tax are you proposing?Raising property taxes raises housing costs for everyone.
by trollbridge
5/28/2026 at 2:37:20 PM
A progressive property tax would actually lower housing costs, by reducing real estate prices. There would be a homestead exemption, so there would be no impact on taxes for individual homeowners. I think it would tend to stabilize rents, as larger landholders would be forced to shed properties, which would be snapped up by smaller ones. The overall effect would be a decentralization of real estate, which in turn means a decentralization of wealth.by vannevar
5/22/2026 at 11:21:04 PM
We already value private companies with a 409a valuation.by rileymat2
5/24/2026 at 6:01:59 AM
Most businesses in America are small and the owner has probably no idea what it is worth.They are illiquid assets, not traded anywhere.
by trollbridge
5/22/2026 at 10:54:59 PM
The value of stocks fluctuates every second. Sometimes wildly.by WalterBright
5/22/2026 at 11:30:37 PM
Weakest of the many weak arguments.Let’s do the bog-standard obvious and sane thing and pick a single point in time, once a year and use the value then. Maybe, i don’t know, close of market on the last trading day of the year. At which point it won’t fluctuate again until the new tax year. Then, we can call it “mark to market” because we’re marking the value to the market at a point in time.
Finally, we stop with silly bad faith arguments because fluctuations in stock have been successful taxed for decades. This is how day-traders pay taxes, and it’s not even a little challenging to do.
by vineyardmike
5/23/2026 at 6:33:35 PM
A friend of mine, a few years ago, had his stock options vest. He didn't sell the stocks. The stocks tanked a few months later. The IRS said he owed income tax on the value of the stocks when they vested.He owed more tax than his net worth, lost his house, everything, and wound up in a trailer.
He never saw the money he was taxed on.
> bad faith arguments
A person's net worth can have wild gyrations on a daily basis. It's not unusual for a stock to move 10% in a few hours. MSFT dropped something like a third of its value last year. What something is "worth" is an utterly arbitrary notion, and basing taxes on that is inevitably unfair an inequitable. (A lot of effort and handwaving is done by accountants trying to guess at what something is "worth".) Heck, what is your house "worth"? Do you agree with the tax assessor? I once told the assessor that if he believed my house was worth what he assessed it at, I'd sell it to him at a 10% discount and he can flip it for what he thought it was worth. He wouldn't take the deal.
With taxes on income, that is fairly well understood and can be accounted for to the dollar.
by WalterBright
5/23/2026 at 7:47:31 PM
So your friend had a large taxable event occur, ignored any advice that such tax event would persist over the tax year, and failed to act at any time to address his tax shortfall. Sounds like he had a shit tax/financial advisor. And to consume all of his net worth etc, the number of options that vested must have been quite large.Not going to be sympathetic to someone YOLO'ing their compensation/taxes.
by greedo
5/23/2026 at 8:30:02 PM
He didn't know about that tax rule, which was enacted that year. A lot of people were shattered by it.by WalterBright
5/23/2026 at 9:25:14 PM
I think he must have relayed the tale to you incorrectly. Stock options aren't taxed until you exercise them. Been this way since 1969.Restricted stock is taxed at vesting, unless you choose to be taxed when they're granted to you. Ditto since 1969.
RSUs are taxed at vesting/settlement as ordinary income. This was pretty much the case since 1969 as well, but fully confirmed in 2009.
by greedo
5/22/2026 at 11:25:09 PM
Not an issue. If you trade section 1256 contracts, the current tax code already requires you to report unrealized gains by calculating the gains as if they are sold on the last day of the tax year. Brokers have no issues calculating that and reporting that single number to the IRS.by kccqzy
5/23/2026 at 8:13:18 PM
Reporting them is not the same thing as paying taxes on them.The next day, the stock could tank.
BTW, do you think that a mortgage on a house should be taxed as "income"? How about credit card debt? Is that also "income"?
by WalterBright
5/26/2026 at 6:45:52 PM
Calling everything a bogeyman without providing evidence or justification is a bit of a common deflection tactic of billionaire bootlickers.by tinktank
5/22/2026 at 10:53:53 PM
There's a federal estate tax of 40%. WA state has an estate tax of 20%.by WalterBright
5/22/2026 at 9:19:52 PM
If most people you meet will pay a wealth tax how can you remember those who don'tby breppp
5/22/2026 at 8:41:03 PM
You seem to forget that given the way taxes work, eventually, anyone, with any amount of money, will be considered "wealthy" because we'll keep running out of other people's money.You're wealthy, or the definition will change to include you. The spice must flow.
by slowmovintarget
5/22/2026 at 8:56:18 PM
>because we'll keep running out of other people's money.that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, for two reasons. For one, as even Paul points out in the piece, a wealth tax below what's practically a risk free return on capital (~5%) doesn't eat into the capital stock, it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases.
Secondly, there's no monotonous historical direction towards higher wealth taxes, in fact the opposite. We're living in an age of low wealth taxation, with only half a dozen countries or so, if I'm not mistaken, imposing one at all.
by Barrin92
5/22/2026 at 9:41:34 PM
The risk free rate of return is usually only a point or two above inflation, and I’d argue that real wealth, rather than nominal wealth, is the true measure to look at to determine whether someone’s position has improved, stayed flat, or decreased.by sokoloff
5/22/2026 at 9:24:22 PM
> it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increasesBut what does this mean? If you have a load of money in some companies, that's helping to fund their activities, and the companies' share price goes up a bit, you haven't gained any money. And you won't gain any until you sell some shares, which is already taxed.
by philipallstar
5/22/2026 at 11:02:30 PM
They never sell their shares. They borrow against them, write off the interest, and then when they die, their heirs get a stepped up cost basis.by greedo
5/22/2026 at 10:24:52 PM
Rich people have been borrowing with their stock as collateral to access their wealth tax free for decades.by topaz0
5/22/2026 at 10:58:10 PM
The debt doesn't just go away, and interest is paid on it. It's not "free". Etrade's best rate is 10.45%. If your stocks go bust, you're still on the hook for the margin debt.by WalterBright
5/23/2026 at 6:24:38 AM
That’s not how it works, though. Buy, borrow, die doesn’t rely on retail margin rates. It’s closer to 3-5%.Assets are used as collateral for loans that don’t require any repayment until death. Generally the borrower can borrow up to 75% of their collateralized asset, and that loan is not taxed. When they die the assets are passed to heirs and stepped up to their current value as the new cost basis. They’re sold to repay the loan and interest. No taxes paid on the loan “income”, no taxes paid on the capital gains, 3-5% interest paid for the outstanding balance of the loan and I’m sure some of that gets taxed. Because the collateralized asset stays invested the entire time, it usually grows faster than the interest that will eventually be paid.
by jonhohle
5/23/2026 at 6:24:22 PM
The 10.4% margin rate is Etrade's best interest rate, and it's only for large amounts. I looked it up.> When they die the assets are passed to heirs and stepped up to their current value as the new cost basis...no taxes paid on the capital gains
And then your entire estate is taxed at 40%.
> and that loan is not taxed
Of course it is not taxed. A loan is not income, and is not an asset. It's a liability.
> Because the collateralized asset stays invested the entire time, it usually grows faster than the interest that will eventually be paid.
The higher the return, the higher the risk. It is normal practice to borrow money to invest it hoping for higher returns than the interest. It is not a scam.
by WalterBright
5/23/2026 at 8:28:32 PM
That’s not correct.Let’s say you put $20M as collateral for an SBLOC loan. The collateral amount and grows at ≥7%/year and you’re charged interest on your loan of 4%/year. You pull $1M/year that goes into the loan. This goes on for 40 years.
At death the cost basis is stepped up to the value at the time of death. All capital gains are erased.
Next, the loan is paid back before any distribution to heirs. This is done at 0% tax rate because it happens before any distribution to heirs.
Finally, the heirs get what remains and any inheritance tax applies to that.
So you got to live with no income tax related to capital gains. The capital gains are wiped out upon death.
Had you paid taxes along the way, you’d leave about $37M to your heirs (and none of that would be touched by inheritance tax).
If you did the SBLOC strategy, The portfolio grew to around $300M. The loan principal and interest are around $100M. Taxes are $64M. Your heirs get to keep $136M.
There’s less risk since there is never any sales over a longer period, so the returns approach the average.
There’s more tax paid by the SBLOC strategy, it just happens very acutely instead of over time. The heirs are also left with significantly more.
by jonhohle
5/23/2026 at 8:32:50 PM
> All capital gains are erased.Right. And then 40% estate taxes are applied.
All you're saying is that you can borrow money and invest it and hopefully you make more off of the investment than the interest on the money.
A loan is not income. After all, when you borrow a half million to buy a house, you aren't charged income tax on that. You also are not charged income tax on stuff you charged on your credit card.
Borrowing on margin is no different.
by WalterBright
5/22/2026 at 8:57:43 PM
Running out of billionaire's money would be a good thing[1].If they don't have money then they can't buy elections and aren't insulated from the consequences of their actions.
[1] Note: I don't really think we should literally take all their money. Just enough to reduce some of the power imbalance.
by harimau777
5/22/2026 at 9:19:48 PM
All their "money" is in business ownership percentages. It's not money.by philipallstar
5/22/2026 at 10:20:34 PM
It's ok if they pay their taxes in shares, in case they ran out of money.by wsng
5/22/2026 at 10:58:41 PM
That's even better. You just transfer beneficial ownership and route dividends to a different bank account. And now you have a LOT more Americans literally invested in Amazon/X/Meta's success. But poor Jeff, he did have to sell his yacht (no, the other one).by underlipton
5/22/2026 at 7:08:33 PM
Don't speak to loudly of this fact, otherwise some leftist politician could come to the conclusion that human capital – the discounted cash flow of one's future labor income – should be taxed as wealth, too.by nkmnz
5/22/2026 at 6:50:48 PM
On top of that it seems to imply that a 20% effective tax rate is outrageous even though that's totally normal for most. Maybe it's not what you're used to as really wealthy person who avoids realized income and has a 0 or 5 or 10 percent effective rate. But it's totally normal for most middle and median income folks who actually pay income taxes.by Glyptodon
5/22/2026 at 8:01:58 PM
It's 20% equivalent income tax rate if you have no conventionally taxable income. Otherwise it's 20% on top of your marginal rate. In his $100 example, you'd pay $1 in wealth tax on the $100 and $1 in tax on the $5 income earned, so your total tax is $2 on $5 of income, an effective tax rate of 40%.But any real wealth tax is going to have exemptions, only apply to wealth above some threshold, and for the wealthy who structure their finances so as to have little or no taxable income, well they end up paying 20% like all the rest of us do.
by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 8:18:59 PM
> an effective tax rate of 40%.It's not. That calculation would say that if you have $1000 of wealth and $5 of income your effective tax rate is 220%. It's bad math.
Your conventional income is taxed separately.
A wealth tax sort of stacks with capital gains, but capital gains is way too low anyway.
by Dylan16807
5/22/2026 at 8:31:33 PM
Yes it is.($1,000 * 1%) + ($5 * 20%) = $11 tax due on $5 income. They are separate taxes but he's expressing them both in terms of an effective income tax rate.
In this case, since you owe more taxes than income you've earned, you'll need to sell off some of your wealth to pay up.
If you have no income at all, but do have wealth, then you get a division by zero error so I do get that it's maybe absurd to frame it this way, but the premise of TFA was "how to convert between a wealth tax and an income tax" and the context is a presumed 5% return on capital.
by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 9:25:55 PM
But when you liquidate assets you... pay tax! Capital gains tax. So you liquidate, pay capital gains, and use the proceeds to pay a wealth tax?by philipallstar
5/22/2026 at 9:48:34 PM
In the contrived example, the 5% return was "risk free" so assume it was something like CDs, no capital gains.by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 11:22:42 PM
CDs generate interest, which is taxed as income, higher than capital gains. Just sayin ...by golem14
5/23/2026 at 3:56:24 PM
Right, but you don't trigger additional taxable income by redeeming them to pay your wealth tax, unlike e.g. selling stock shares.by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 9:29:17 PM
It's not an effective tax rate, it's an absurd parody of an effective tax rate.If that $5 of ""income"" is actually capital gains, then it won't be taxed very highly, and adding another 20% is fine. The discussion of 37% + 4.5% + 20% is misdirection.
If that $5 is honest to goodness income, then on average you're also getting $5 of unrealized capital gains, which means you're not paying $2 on $5, you're paying $2 on $10. Or maybe you realize part of the gains and you're paying somewhere between $2 and $3 on $10. A much smaller impact, and that's only if someone in a medium tax bracket with 20x their income in wealth is even affected by the wealth tax at all.
by Dylan16807
5/22/2026 at 10:58:00 PM
Yes, but more specifically, it's 20% on top of your marginal rate on your capital income which maxes out at 20% federal in the U.S. for long term gains However, it is much closer to 0% for the most wealthy Americans because they never realize their gains, which is the only time the U.S. taxes capital gains. They just fund their lifestyles with debt against their assets. Then when they die, their heirs get a basis step up at death.Graham gets this totally wrong, adding the 20% to 37%+4.75%, which are rates applicable to labor income (and short term capital gains, but those are very rare among the most wealthy Americans). That is such a major error it is hard to take any of the argument seriously.
Edit: Updated account for short term gains.
by scottmcmac
5/22/2026 at 6:56:26 PM
20% tax on wealth (aka the potentially liquidatable value of an asset) would absolutely destroy anyone using an asset. For a classic example, look at property taxes which are a classic wealth tax. Grandma’s, people on pensions, and even middle class folks who own a home but have relatively low rates of salary increases get destroyed (and have to sell and move out) in places like Texas where property taxes aren’t capped/controlled like California under prop 13 when property prices go up.Having your house get ‘too expensive to live in’, in fact, is a classic issue with property taxes, and was happening in California - which is exactly why prop 13 happened. And most of those locations the maximum tax is around 1-3%!
‘Wealth’ is not the same as income, because wealth is potential money, if you can sell - and if you sell, you lose access to it.
A 20% wealth tax would mean any asset which doesn’t earning free cash flow returns of at least 20% a year, or which isn’t appreciating at least 20% a year in a risk free way would be impossible to hold for anyone except the most rich people. And even they couldn’t do it for long.
I can’t think of anything which that realistically describes.
A 20% income tax reduces actual cash in hand to 80% of what you’d otherwise have, which isn’t great. But you still get the actual 80% cash in hand right now, and can use it.
You can’t have ‘80% control/ownership for the year’ of a house in a meaningful way, and especially for people actually using/relying on the asset to live, they can’t find 20% (or in most cases even 5%!) of the value in cash for the asset every year. They’d go bankrupt.
by lazide
5/22/2026 at 7:12:11 PM
All of the people I mention wealth tax to give me the same two counter cases: Grandma and Elon.I think there's no reason why a wealth tax can't be progressive. Just making up numbers here, it could be zero for your first 30 million, and rise to some palpable amount for your first billion.
This would protect granny from being taxed out of her house, and in fact would affect relatively few salary earners.
I'm not overlooking the possibility that such a tax structure could create an effective wealth cap at some level.
The problem in California is that it's very hard to change laws. Likewise in my state, where many aspects of the tax system are constrained by the state constitution.
by analog31
5/22/2026 at 7:36:29 PM
Sure. The issue I’d see is in 20 years inflation might mean that applies to almost everyone, like AMT, but that is a future us issue.The biggest personal complaint I have is why should the government be getting more tax money when all they seem to use it for is blowing up random countries in the Middle East and spying on law abiding citizens for whatever random reason.
by lazide
5/22/2026 at 9:03:52 PM
You could peg the numbers to inflation.Personally, I see a big benefit of a wealth tax being lowering wealth inequality; even if the money isn't actually used for anything useful. That would at least help prevent the ultra wealthy from being able to unilaterally ruin society.
by harimau777
5/22/2026 at 10:19:33 PM
I compare ultra wealthy to blackholes - overtime they accumulate more and more mass and reduce mass elsewhere. But even in nature we have Hawking radiation (which leads to black hole evaporation). So for me wealth taxation is similar like this slow black hole evaporation which seems fair.by pzo
5/22/2026 at 9:29:29 PM
They can't ruin society unilaterally, unless you're talking about Vladimir Putin, who can only do it because he's the head of an autocratic socialist state as well as potentially being the richest man in the world. But the rich bit isn't what does it.by philipallstar
5/22/2026 at 8:34:19 PM
Then let's bake it into a compromise, we add a wealth tax and decrease income tax with the same amount of money.Labour is what actually creates value in society, let's tax it less and ownership more.
by Epa095
5/22/2026 at 11:14:23 PM
You have my vote!by lazide
5/22/2026 at 9:44:40 PM
Yeah, I appreciate the sentiment. Being a liberal, perhaps I was assuming that competent governance was possible. At the same time, the opposite tack, "starve the beast" was a failure.by analog31
5/23/2026 at 10:30:18 PM
Nobody starved the actual beast (military industrial complex) that I can tellby lazide
5/22/2026 at 8:44:11 PM
>I'm not overlooking the possibility that such a tax structure could create an effective wealth cap at some level.No, I think what that does is create an effective corporate decimation. No one has a billion in cash that I've ever heard of. When you say "tax the billionaires of their wealth" because this billionaire has $1 billion, you're talking about his shares right? Maybe in one company, maybe across many. Is he supposed to pay that in cash?
How does this even really work? He could try to sell $200 million in stock, I suppose (if that's even legal according to the SEC, though that stuff could be loosened up), but what happens when he only gets $70mil for it because the stock price tanked? Should he sell more, until he comes up with that original 20% of his "billion"?
What if instead, he just gives 20% of the shares to the government, and they get to sell them, would that count? They wouldn't even have to sell them... the government could become the shareholder, until it controlled every corporation out there. The grift and graft would be massive, nothing to go wrong there. CEOs and other top positions basically appointed by whoever gets to be on the Congressional committee. The Democrats no doubt are certain they'll be in control of it, but then they'll be hysterical when it turns out they miscalculated. Could be fun to watch while eating popcorn, at least until there is no more popcorn left because the corporation that distributed popcorn melted down.
Wealth taxes are the domain of angsty teenage marxists and other retarded children.
How much does a wealth tax collect in the US, does anyone know? Does anyone care? Is it that they've identified a need for the government have revenue and devised a fair way of having the entire nation pay for that need, or are they just hoping it will be confiscatory in the most punitive way possible?
by NoMoreNicksLeft
5/22/2026 at 11:03:15 PM
> No one has a billion in cash that I've ever heard of.What's the biggest amount anyone has in treasury bonds or gold? You could easily liquidate a ton of that.
> but what happens when he only gets $70mil for it because the stock price tanked? Should he sell more, until he comes up with that original 20% of his "billion"?
If the stock tanks that much while he's selling, then the company is only worth about $300 million now, and the money he owes drops to $60 million.
Though I don't see why it would tank that much.
by Dylan16807
5/22/2026 at 11:16:38 PM
If owning stock (passively) all the sudden got taxed to any notable degree, you’ve just dramatically changed the value calculus for most of the world economy at this point. It would be shocking if the price didn’t crash.by lazide
5/23/2026 at 1:51:53 AM
That sounds like a one-time thing. Once things stabilize you wouldn't see a big fluctuation every time a CEO has to pay taxes.Also normal people and the mildly rich and retirement funds and many other big sources of ownership wouldn't be taxed, so I don't see prices actually crashing.
by Dylan16807
5/23/2026 at 2:01:08 AM
>That sounds like a one-time thing.Repeatedly pushing the "destroy the world economy" multiple times per day is most likely not going to be a "one-time thing". But who knows... maybe you're right and economics doesn't work like it has been documented to work by the world's experts for the last 100 years or so.
by NoMoreNicksLeft
5/23/2026 at 3:10:48 AM
Because that's not what the button does...Especially because every push shrinks the number of people affected by the button.
by Dylan16807
5/23/2026 at 11:45:51 PM
If your goal is to reduce the number of rich people this way, boy are you going to have a rough time.by lazide
5/23/2026 at 12:31:38 AM
If someone sells the stock, someone else buys it. The value is still the net present value of future earnings. This is a redistribution of wealth, not a decimation. The wealthy can still earn more if they want to.by analog31
5/23/2026 at 1:43:45 AM
When market cap goes down because overall valuation does, what do you think is happening?Valuation hasn’t been tied or related to earnings for top stocks in at least a decade.
It isn’t ’wealth redistribution’.
Removing half or more of market demand isn’t going to be pretty.
by lazide
5/23/2026 at 3:18:57 AM
Market cap and valuation are the same thing.by analog31
5/23/2026 at 4:47:10 AM
That’s what I said, yes.by lazide
5/22/2026 at 8:55:54 PM
Your argument must not be very convincing if need to refer to your opponents using slurs.Using a wealth tax to nationalize corporations sounds like exactly what we should be doing.
by QuercusMax
5/22/2026 at 9:07:31 PM
>Using a wealth tax to nationalize corporations sounds like exactly what we should be doing.You want Trump and company in charge of it all? Or are we finally back to "the next time Democrats win it will be forever!" wishful thinking? I mean, even if you want to nationalize everything, it's as if you dreamt up the worst possible way to go about doing that so that they've cratered first and started hemorrhaging all their talent in the leadup.
by NoMoreNicksLeft
5/22/2026 at 9:11:40 PM
So let's not even think about how to build a better world because the administration we have right now is garbage?We need a wealth tax, ONLY public financing of elections (no PAC money, no "I'm a billionaire so I can spend as much as I want on myself"), and many other reforms. Nationalizing critical industries and sectors is also something we should be pursuing.
by QuercusMax
5/22/2026 at 9:48:46 PM
From the standpoint of 1926, we built the better world and you're living in it. It's hard to imagine how much better off we all are, but it's not a law of nature, and with enough damage to markets and production, we can get back there again!by randallsquared
5/22/2026 at 9:46:05 PM
> no "I'm a billionaire so I can spend as much as I want on myself"To me, that would seem extremely difficult for Congress to pass a law restricting individual speech in this particular way that would pass First Amendment muster, and I don’t think we should be at “let’s just set aside the Constitution when it clearly says something we don’t like” because I don’t think that ends well in today’s political climate (or any other, but it’s especially bad now).
by sokoloff
5/22/2026 at 11:40:19 PM
We already have laws that limit how much you can give to someone else’s campaign. We’ve already crossed that threshold in terms of “free speech”.by vineyardmike
5/23/2026 at 2:04:05 AM
An old law, belonging to a set of laws which have been eroded over the decades such that it's surprising this one hasn't been set aside already. Both Congress and the courts have changed in ways that won't ever let that be passed again, or let it stand if it somehow is snuck into law. That era is over, you will never succeed in bringing it back.And if you think anything's going to change in November, you're going to be really disappointed.
by NoMoreNicksLeft
5/22/2026 at 11:44:57 PM
Passing a law that restricts the amount of my own money that I can spend talking about myself seems especially directly a 1A violation.by sokoloff
5/22/2026 at 7:11:48 PM
These wealth taxes are not proposed to apply to everyone evenly, that would be a regressive tax policy. There is a wealth cutoff, most commonly proposed to be around $50M.If grandma has $50M in her house and pension, she can afford to pay a tiny tiny tiny fraction of her wealth to make sure her grandkids still have a place to live that's not falling apart.
by malfist
5/22/2026 at 8:32:27 PM
whats all this talk about 20% wealth tax. We are asking for 1% per year, and the rich are still screaming. damn I pay more than that on my house.by naijaboiler
5/22/2026 at 7:21:00 PM
> 20% tax on wealthThank god no one is talking about this, then. According to Graham, a 20% wealth tax is equivalent to a 400% income tax.
by pessimizer
5/22/2026 at 7:26:30 PM
Read my comment - it likely would be equivalently impossible. That is my point.by lazide
5/22/2026 at 7:53:21 PM
Read my comment - it is completely irrelevant to the discussion being had about the linked article, and no one on the planet is suggesting a 20% wealth tax. That is my point.by pessimizer
5/22/2026 at 8:01:39 PM
The argument was that it was ludicrous to say a wealth tax of x percent > income tax of x percent in actual impact, yes?It is clearly the case if you try to apply the income tax rate as a wealth tax using concrete real world examples.
Even a 3% property tax makes it very difficult for many normal people to own those assets in many real world economic circumstances.
by lazide
5/22/2026 at 9:07:12 PM
I don't think that those issues would be too difficult to fix.The tax could be made progressive so that it doesn't impact people who can't afford it.
Someone's primary home and vehicle could be omitted from the tax.
by harimau777
5/22/2026 at 10:44:58 PM
It does change that there is a multiplier. Even 5% is likely a deathknell for all but a couple percent of assets owned by the most aggressive ‘sharks’.A good way to make owning anything unaffordable though! The carve outs would just defacto set a cap for normal people. No more than one house, etc.
by lazide
5/22/2026 at 11:10:50 PM
What's your definition of affordable here?You can still own millions and billions of dollars of things, but you'll have to shrink your money pile over time to pay for those things if you don't have a source of income.
by Dylan16807
5/22/2026 at 11:27:44 PM
It depends on the asset and the ability to earn income from it.The higher the rate, the harder it will be to do.
At some point, only speculators with deep pockets and the desperate with enough cash flow could do it.
by lazide
5/22/2026 at 7:01:27 PM
You obviously didn't read the thing. 20% is not on wealth. The argument in the piece is that 1% on wealth is the same as 20% on income, and therefore 1% on wealth is obscene.Please read before making replies that don't make sense in context. When I refer to 20% I'm referring the PG's characterization of a 1% wealth tax as an effective 20% income tax, not a 20% wealth tax.
by Glyptodon
5/22/2026 at 7:25:39 PM
I read it, and was replying in context.by lazide
5/22/2026 at 5:59:18 PM
Corrected version:A wealth tax of 1% is equivalent to an income tax of 20% on capital gains.
by ximm
5/22/2026 at 6:54:27 PM
With different issues than the ones caused by deferring gains forever through shenanigans.by Glyptodon
5/22/2026 at 7:06:34 PM
It isn't, because the ultra rich have no capital gains. They get ultra low interest rate loans against assets so they never have to sell assets and trigger capital gains. Google "Buy, Borrow, Die" if you don't understand this strategy.by outside1234
5/22/2026 at 8:01:18 PM
They have to sell eventually to pay off the loans. And if they die, their estate has to sell the assets to pay off the loans, and then their heir will pay inheritance taxes on top of that.Unless their spouse is still alive. In the US, assets' cost bases are reset when a spouse dies. That is the main way that rich people avoid capital gains taxes. I'd much prefer simply stopping that cost basis reset instead of implementing a wealth tax.
by Manuel_D
5/22/2026 at 8:11:59 PM
> I'd much prefer simply stopping that cost basis reset instead of implementing a wealth tax.Neither of these would really work against the people you actually want it to work against.
If you don't have a basis reset then they just do a transaction that has the same effect, e.g. create a new corporation owned by the recipient and then have it repeatedly enter into slightly favorable transactions with the one owned by the donor until the new one has all the assets, or any of a hundred other things.
If you try to do a wealth tax then their assets end up in another country under whatever arrangement is necessary to give them de facto control but not formal ownership.
The best way to solve the "buy, borrow, die" thing is actually a consumption tax because then borrowing money in order to spend it doesn't avoid the tax.
by AnthonyMouse
5/22/2026 at 8:42:25 PM
I'd like to see all taxes replaced by consumption, sales, and/or value-added taxes, with an automatic rebate to offset the regressiveness. It would kind of end up being UBI with a vastly simpler tax code.by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 8:48:37 PM
This would be an extremely regressive tax regime, effectively a flat tax rate. Worse than a flat tax rate, actually, since consumption rates do not scale linearly with income or wealth.by Manuel_D
5/22/2026 at 9:31:13 PM
I think he meant that you'd have the brackets apply to types of consumption instead of income level, so no tax on food, low tax on restaurants, medium tax on high-end electronics, insane tax on planes and yachts. I mean it sounds like it would be easier to maintain/enforce such tiering system than constantly fight with people trying to not technically be wealthy. Downside of course is that some people's luxuries are other's basic needs, but I wonder if there's been serious research on the implications of such system.by DontBreakAlex
5/22/2026 at 9:43:05 PM
Easiest thing would be to not have any tiers of consumption. The stuff people "need" to spend money on such as food and housing would be handled by an automatic rebate, effectively a UBI. No other welfare, assistance, etc. What you earn you keep, unless you spend it, then you pay tax.by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 11:14:39 PM
Boy, that's going to suck for people whose credit situation has shut them out of most traditional housing situations. Or people who rely on what other people don't consider food for sustenance, for whatever reason (protein powder? multivitamins? supplies to grow/produce your own foodstuffs?). Just as examples.by frmersdog
5/23/2026 at 10:05:26 AM
> Boy, that's going to suck for people whose credit situation has shut them out of most traditional housing situations.There are lots of apartments available with no credit check. They're more often of lower quality, but if your situation is such that you want to spend less on rent and have more left for something else (like paying off your debts), why is it a problem for people to be able to choose that?
It's the status quo that screws them, because the government often pays out $1000/month or more in housing assistance but it's required to go directly to the landlord, and then if you have money problems but could live with family or are willing to take in a crappy low-rent studio apartment for a while, you can't take that money and use it to fix your situation instead because if you tried to do that the government takes it away.
> Or people who rely on what other people don't consider food for sustenance, for whatever reason (protein powder? multivitamins? supplies to grow/produce your own foodstuffs?).
Isn't this the opposite? If you give them a UBI then they can buy whatever they want. If you give them paternalistic micromanaged benefits like SNAP then they can buy carbonated high fructose corn syrup in a can but not vitamins or farming supplies.
by AnthonyMouse
5/23/2026 at 2:25:55 PM
You don't know what you're talking about. The corporate takeover of most rentals (apartments and homes alike) near the roadways and transit these people need to get to their jobs (let alone in areas where they wouldn't have to commute) has made those rentals inaccessible. They use little-known credit reporting companies specific to the rental industry that have basically no regulatory oversight, and which allow landlords to deny applications in an opaque way without liability. Housing voucher wait lists are years long; they're basically impossible to get on. The only housing assistance that was available to most people were pandemic-era emergency eviction grants, and those are gone.Van life, couch surfing, living in hotels: these are the options available to them. And it's obviously not so simple as "roughing it" for a few months, as they're essentially forced to sell or abandon most of their personal property.
What you're talking about it taking people in those dire straits and forcing them to pay MORE money just to keep a roof over their heads, while millions of wealthier Americans own multiple properties where they and their family are the only residents. It's ridiculous.
>Isn't this the opposite? If you give them a UBI then they can buy whatever they want. If you give them paternalistic micromanaged benefits like SNAP then they can buy carbonated high fructose corn syrup in a can but not vitamins or farming supplies.
I am, once again, going to state that you don't seem to understand the topic at hand.
by frmersdog
5/24/2026 at 10:58:09 AM
> The corporate takeover of most rentals (apartments and homes alike) near the roadways and transit these people need to get to their jobs (let alone in areas where they wouldn't have to commute) has made those rentals inaccessible.No they haven't:
https://econofact.org/factbrief/do-private-equity-firms-own-...
> They use little-known credit reporting companies specific to the rental industry that have basically no regulatory oversight, and which allow landlords to deny applications in an opaque way without liability.
And then you rent from someone else because in reality large corporations own only a small percentage of rental units.
> Housing voucher wait lists are years long; they're basically impossible to get on.
You're again only making the argument for getting rid of those grants people can't get anyway in favor of a UBI that everyone gets automatically.
> What you're talking about it taking people in those dire straits and forcing them to pay MORE money just to keep a roof over their heads
How are they paying more money for anything to receive $1000 in cash instead of a $1000 payment that can only go to a landlord?
> I am, once again, going to state that you don't seem to understand the topic at hand.
by AnthonyMouse
5/26/2026 at 6:59:36 PM
>No they haven't:I said corporate, not PE.
>And then you rent from someone else because in reality large corporations own only a small percentage of rental units.
Most of the rest are owned by medium-sized corporations that use the same services.
>You're again only making the argument for getting rid of those grants people can't get anyway in favor of a UBI that everyone gets automatically.
UBI within the tax regime described above doesn't abolish the paternalism you're attacking, it just shifts it.
>How are they paying more money for anything to receive $1000 in cash instead of a $1000 payment that can only go to a landlord?
I am, once again, going to state that you don't seem to understand the topic at hand.
Or maybe you do, and pivoted to UBI because you realized that the tax issue was indefensible.
by frmersdog
5/22/2026 at 9:53:25 PM
What "high end electronics" would be taxed at a medium rate? Do billionaires not just use iPhones? Most high end private planes are the same models as regional jets (e.g. Embraer ERJ line), so a tax on them would still be mostly impacting normal folks' plane tickets.The core problem remains the same: consumption does not scale with wealth. If we limit taxes go a handful of goods and services, then demand is just going to shift to something else. Consumption taxes give billionaires the option to drastically reduce their tax burden by consuming less. The lifestyle of someone with a $20 million net worth is not that much worse than someone with a $2 billion net worth.
by Manuel_D
5/23/2026 at 10:21:20 AM
> Most high end private planes are the same models as regional jets (e.g. Embraer ERJ line), so a tax on them would still be mostly impacting normal folks' plane tickets.Planes are the things airlines buy, not the things economy passengers buy. If you're conceding that taxes corporations pay get passed on to consumers then what does that imply about corporate income tax?
Also, poor people don't generally buy a lot of air travel.
> Consumption taxes give billionaires the option to drastically reduce their tax burden by consuming less.
Isn't that what we want? An incentive for the money to go to creating jobs or charitable donations rather than private jets and third mansions?
by AnthonyMouse
5/23/2026 at 5:33:56 PM
Correct, corporate tax rates are generally regressive in their effect.Building jets and houses creates jobs though. A more likely outcome of a consumption tax is that wealthy people simply spend less.
by Manuel_D
5/24/2026 at 11:21:44 AM
> Correct, corporate tax rates are generally regressive in their effect.Corporations can be shell companies. Whatever rate or tax you want to be applied to "the rich" has to be at least that high on corporations or "the rich" would just put their money inside a corporation and pay the lower tax. So it turns out all taxes are "regressive" at which point you might as well use the the simple, uniform, less distortionary ones (e.g. VAT) and then achieve different effective rates via transfer payments, the most efficient of which is a UBI.
> Building jets and houses creates jobs though.
That's assuming they're building houses instead of buying up the existing stock while restrictive zoning prevents more from being built. Moreover, jobs building private jets or satisfying other hedonistic consumption are less helpful than jobs building battery factories or growing food, even if they did employ the same number of people.
> A more likely outcome of a consumption tax is that wealthy people simply spend less.
The reason wealthy people don't spend most of their income is that they already buy whatever they want and then still have money left over. Bill Gates isn't going to buy an economy car instead of a luxury car over a sales tax.
by AnthonyMouse
5/22/2026 at 9:32:15 PM
[dead]by MeherunJessi
5/22/2026 at 11:11:05 PM
Consumption taxes are regressive in general and in particular with the 1%, they simply don't spend enough to have it impact their lifestyles.by greedo
5/23/2026 at 10:32:21 AM
This is what parrots continuously say while ignoring that the original problem was that in the existing system they not only don't pay taxes on the money they don't spend, they don't even pay taxes on the money they do spend, because they can borrow what they want to spend instead of using taxable income and then defer capital gains or keep assets in shell corporations.Getting from that to where they at least pay the same taxes as anyone else on the money they actually spend would be a marked improvement.
by AnthonyMouse
5/23/2026 at 6:06:27 PM
Yes, getting them to pay "something" is a good goal, but if it hurts people who are financially vulnerable is non-optimal.by greedo
5/24/2026 at 11:06:50 AM
We already know how to solve that one though. You now have corporations and billionaires actually paying the consumption tax along with everyone else, so you take that money and use it for a UBI, which causes the effective rates on lower income people to be much lower or even negative even though everyone is still paying a uniform marginal rate.by AnthonyMouse
5/22/2026 at 8:36:53 PM
That scheme still wouldn't work. When that new corporation is first formed, it's near worthless. After the series of favorable deals, the value of each share in that corporation goes up. Thus it still incurs capital gains taxes.Of course people will try to cheat taxes, but they'll try to cheat any form of tax: income, capital gains, inheritance taxes, etc. People are good to try and evade taxes regardless of the tax mechanism.
Consumption taxes are regressive: a sales tax is a flat tax that taxes a billion on their $10 latte the same as a poor person. Consumption also doesn't scale linearly with wealth: most billionaires don't consume 1000x as much as a millionaire.
by Manuel_D
5/23/2026 at 9:48:19 AM
> After the series of favorable deals, the value of each share in that corporation goes up. Thus it still incurs capital gains taxes.Only if you sell the shares, which they easily resolve by not doing.
> People are good to try and evade taxes regardless of the tax mechanism.
Which is why you should use the ones that are less susceptible to it rather than the ones that are more susceptible to it. Trying to identify the country in which "profit" is earned in an international supply chain, or value non-fungible assets not undergoing transactions, are easy to game. "You pay a given percentage when you buy something" is hard to game.
> Consumption taxes are regressive: a sales tax is a flat tax that taxes a billion on their $10 latte the same as a poor person.
The existing "progressive" income tax and benefits programs do worse than that: The billionaire pays less on $10 in marginal income than a poor person, because the taxes and benefits phase outs result in absurdly high marginal rates on the poor.
> Consumption also doesn't scale linearly with wealth: most billionaires don't consume 1000x as much as a millionaire.
Only if you're looking for it in the wrong place. A billionaire isn't going to buy a billion dollars in lattes, they're going to invest in some business ventures, which in turn are going to spend the money on equipment and vehicles and utilities and so on, i.e. consumption. You don't get a return on capital by sticking it in a mattress, you get a return by spending it to build or operate something.
by AnthonyMouse
5/23/2026 at 5:36:36 PM
> The billionaire pays less on $10 in marginal income than a poor person, because the taxes and benefits phase outs result in absurdly high marginal rates on the poor.This is just patently false. The highest marginal income tax rate is 37%.
If you've read articles claiming that billionaires pay some absurdly low tax rate, those articles are counting their capital gains as income. Which is just a flat out lie, since those gains don't actually get taxed until the gains are realized, and the value of that capital can go down.
by Manuel_D
5/24/2026 at 11:03:49 AM
> This is just patently false. The highest marginal income tax rate is 37%.Account for benefits phase outs as the tax on marginal income that they are and the marginal tax rate on lower income people is often well in excess of 37%. In some cases it has been in excess of 100% because many of the phase outs overlap and also combine with ordinary taxes.
by AnthonyMouse
5/22/2026 at 8:57:45 PM
Lol nah. The assets are held by a trust. The trust, being a friendly bunch, loan you capital which it gets by liquidating assets, at a rate of 0% with “don’t worry about it” default terms. You’ll probably pay a management fee for each loan.You croak, your heirs become the beneficiaries of the trust. Rinse, repeat.
by madaxe_again
5/22/2026 at 10:03:36 PM
In this case, the beneficiaries of the trust pay income tax on the money they receive from the trust.by Manuel_D
5/23/2026 at 7:47:53 AM
You don’t pay income tax on loans, and the trust exists in a place with no CGT.by madaxe_again
5/23/2026 at 5:38:04 PM
It doesn't matter where the trust exists, what matters is that the people drawing from the trust pay income taxes on that money.by Manuel_D
5/22/2026 at 9:40:24 PM
Debt is usually rolled over if the billionaire is still rich (banks will do that for fees). The only expenses are the interest charges- which were small 3 years ago but larger now because of how interest rate increased.Re: estate taxes - almost no ultra rich pays them, even without surviving wife. According tom Garry Cohn (former big kahuna at Goldman Sachd and former treasury something or other in the first Trump admin) only morons pay estate taxes : https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/only-morons-pay-the-estate-t...
by dh2022
5/22/2026 at 10:05:38 PM
As per your linked article, they mainly either give away their money to charity, or they set up trusts. When beneficiaries receive money from the trust, it's taxed as income.by Manuel_D
5/22/2026 at 11:17:35 PM
You could also just... not pay. And then lawyer-up when the IRS comes after you. (They will not come after you, because they know you've lawyered-up and aren't going to make it easy.)IIRC this is part of how they avoid taxes in general. Penalties don't hurt enough for the ones who do eventually face them.
by frmersdog
5/23/2026 at 1:50:51 AM
You missed this part in the article: “ Estate tax planning has become so effective that wealthy families can now easily pass large portions of their estates to their heirs without paying the tax”The beneficiaries then set up their own tax avoidance schemes. With the effect only rich people with poor tax planning skills, to quote Gary Cohn again, end up pay the estate tax.
by dh2022
5/23/2026 at 5:37:22 PM
Without paying the estate tax, but when those heirs draw money from the trust it's not taxed as income.by Manuel_D
5/22/2026 at 6:26:34 PM
I'm retired. I hope to get a 3% per year income from my savings every year after inflation and taxes. If my state implemented a 1% wealth tax on savings each year, I would go bankrupt in 20 years. I am hoping that I will live 20 years.by irchans
5/22/2026 at 6:53:11 PM
Lol, that's still totally feasible for normal FIRE/retirement situations, my understanding is that most proposals only start at $50 million or more. You can still have a super cushy retirement with $3mil+ and 3% withdrawal forever.by Glyptodon
5/22/2026 at 7:16:45 PM
> only start at $50 million or morecurious how they came to that number. There's probably plenty of voters willing to cast a vote for $0.5M+ and plenty ready to cast a vote for $100M+. How was the line drawn?
by chasd00
5/22/2026 at 7:47:19 PM
The minimum net worth of the top 1% of households is roughly $13.7 million[1]. So at $50 million they can say "we're only taxing the top of the top 1%" as a way to sell it."The top 1%" is a popular target for these schemes because 99% of people might be convinced to support it, since it won't affect them (at least not directly).
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...
by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 9:28:14 PM
A wealth tax will affect the distribution of investments. It might make higher risk investments like stocks more attractive as compared to bonds, it might make them less attractive. More likely it might make publicly available instruments less attractive in general, as private investments have more flexibility in how they are evaluated. In any case, there will be winners and losers as the investment landscape shifts, which affects everyone. If equity becomes more attractive, it could force less wealthy people into equity, which means they will take on more risk. If private investments become more attractive, less wealthy people will lose out. It might not affect those with no assets, but that is not certain either. So, everyone will be affected, in some way. Impossible to model due to unintended side effects.by whodidntante
5/22/2026 at 11:09:51 PM
Yeah, "It won't affect the 99%," is the wrong framing. The entire point is for it to affect the 99% (by undoing the effect disproportionately high wealth among the wealthiest and disproportionately low wealth among the middle and least wealthy).I think your assumptions are off, though; less wealthy people might not be "forced" into investment at all, but given the "opportunity" to pay off debt or increase/diversify consumption. In the end, the important part is the wealth transfer downward, wherever it ends up. No trickle, but you can pump it.
by frmersdog
5/22/2026 at 11:55:58 PM
In 2020, there was a campaign (prop 15) to legalize increases on the property tax rate in California that only applied to commercial and industrial properties. Intuitively, the constituency for prop 15 should be very similar to a wealth tax on $0.5M+, since the set of people owning commercial/industrial real estate in California are mostly a subset of people with $0.5M+ wealth. What actually happened is there was heavy opposition and prop 15 was narrowly rejected by the voters. Organizations opposing the proposition included the American Legion, the NAACP, and California Beer and Beverage Distributors.Arguably, there’s a disconnect where the people who lead civic organizations don’t have a great deal in common with the median member. They might be wealthier and generally more plugged in to power structures. They might not support policies that are in the best interest of members they represent, especially people who have a hard time representing themselves.
Anyway, if your goal is to get a policy enacted, it’s not enough for your policy to be theoretically good for the median voter. You need a winning political coalition.
by ashdksnndck
5/22/2026 at 11:33:31 PM
There are probably good argument for it being lower (maybe circa $10 or $12 million. But I have a feeling they do want to try and not hit land-rich-but-otherwise-maybe-not "family farms" that have hundreds or thousands of acres.by Glyptodon
5/22/2026 at 7:09:38 PM
Sort of like how the income tax in America started with it only applying to the top 1% of earners?by trollbridge
5/22/2026 at 10:45:18 PM
Do you remember when the top marginal tax rate was 90%? Things don't only move in one direction. The effective tax rate on the ultra wealthy has been steadily trending down for decades.by rurp
5/22/2026 at 8:26:17 PM
Today, sure. In 30 years I wouldn't expect to be able to retire with less that $50 million in savings.by tengbretson
5/22/2026 at 6:52:20 PM
I'm sure any wealth tax would only apply to wealth above a certain amount. For instance, inheritance tax only applies to $15mil and above. Likewise, when you sell a house the first $500K (I believe) in capital gains from the sale is tax free.I don't think people with savings of $15mil and above (assuming that would be the cutoff) are in danger of going bankrupt in 20 yrs from a 1% wealth tax. Assuming your 3% return, they'd be earning $450,000 a year that wouldn't be touched by the wealth tax.
by scientator
5/22/2026 at 8:58:09 PM
Sale of a house isn’t a wealth tax - that would be the property tax you pay, and the exclusions are pennies on the dollar on those.by bombcar
5/22/2026 at 9:08:41 PM
No one is proposing a wealth tax on anyone other than the ultra-wealthy. If you are in a position where a 1% wealth tax would bankrupt you, then you probably aren't someone that it would apply to.by harimau777
5/22/2026 at 10:30:52 PM
A sane taxation scheme should of course be paired with a humane social safety net that could pay you a comfortable pension.by topaz0
5/22/2026 at 6:46:09 PM
But why wage earners should support you by paying more taxes? Reduce your spending by 33% to keep up.by blmarket
5/22/2026 at 6:52:12 PM
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or a serious point.Obviously people who have retired and based their entire life plan on making that work have many fewer options than those who are still working. You are arguing that nobody can plan for any kind of secure retirement, including you.
by MattPalmer1086
5/22/2026 at 8:09:09 PM
It depends on the net wealth we're discussing. I'm sorry if I touched someone who lives with $1M saving. But should I be sorry for someone with $10M, which might be way more than 30 years of lifetime earnings of p80 population? Wealth tax is obviously targeting the latter.Having progressive tax rate might be a better way to discuss, instead of blaming whole points.
by blmarket
5/22/2026 at 4:23:56 PM
> The math doesn't math for someone on the other extreme end of the spectrum who has zero savings or investments and obtains all his income from labor: To him, a N% wealth tax = 0% income tax for all N. Those with -some- savings are somewhere in the middle.Productivity comes from labor AND assets though. You need the farmer and the tractor. Why would we create a tax system that encourages people to divorce themselves from having a stake in the means of production?
by tengbretson
5/22/2026 at 6:10:12 PM
> Productivity comes from labor AND assets though. You need the farmer and the tractor. Why would we create a tax system that encourages people to divorce themselves from having a stake in the means of production?This is exactly why economic models broadly show that taxing capital assets makes workers worse off in the long run. An abundance of capital means that workers will be more productive on the margin, so their wage will be higher. This extends to the capital-income taxation involved in income taxes: pure labor taxes or consumption taxes are inherently more efficient. There are countervailing effects (taxing capital income works as an effective way of indirectly taxing the unearned value of resource-like assets, or of idiosyncratic skills that happen to correlate with holding more capital-like assets) but they can only roughly justify the current income tax arrangement, not some extra tax on assets.
by zozbot234
5/22/2026 at 6:28:50 PM
Oh good! I was worried that trickle down economics was self-serving nonsense pushed by think tank economists on behalf of their benefactors. Since it is economic fact rather than self-serving fiction, when I review its track record I will find that it caused an upward inflection in real wages, right? Right?https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Oops!
by smallmancontrov
5/22/2026 at 6:54:08 PM
As long as capital doesn't get involved in some kind of highly financialized spiral getting further and further divorced from the real economy, we should be good.by zardo
5/22/2026 at 7:14:04 PM
That could never happen here. We have a history of strongly regulating capital and banks. Why look at all the executives we jailed for the 2008 financial crisis!by malfist
5/22/2026 at 6:33:14 PM
Total labor compensation has in fact grown. Unfortunately, much of the non-wage compensation involves services like healthcare that has become a lot more expensive over time due to burdensome overregulation and an overall lack of price transparency.by zozbot234
5/23/2026 at 10:31:17 AM
Also the wages of the fairly-large number of people who work in the health care industry itself.by JuniperMesos
5/22/2026 at 6:34:31 PM
[dead]by smallmancontrov
5/22/2026 at 6:56:00 PM
>Since it is economic fact rather than self-serving fiction [...]You deride the weak justification for trickle down economics, then proceed to link wtfhappenedin1971.com, a site that tries to argue for the reintroduction of the gold standard through a gish-gallop of random charts?
by gruez
5/22/2026 at 7:13:47 PM
The gap between productivity and wages is striking, isn't it?I'm not perfectly aligned with gold bug politics. Their faith in the Kindleberger world is misplaced and their tax aversion can make them useful to my opponents, but at the same time they tend to take the Cantillon Pump and Balance of Payments mechanisms seriously while my traditional allies do not.
No, I don't mind borrowing their charts. Why? Do you have a better go-to link for The Wedge?
by smallmancontrov
5/22/2026 at 7:29:29 PM
>The gap between productivity and wages is striking, isn't it?It's not. The (in)famous epi.org is flawed for all sorts of reasons, from excluding noproduction/supervisory workers (the highest compensated ones!), to excluding non-wage compensation (eg. benefits), to different deflators for compensation vs productivity. If you adjust for all of that, the chart is unremarkable.
https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/gr...
That incidentally, is the exact problem with the site. It presents a barrage of charts, without regard to relevance or rigor, and tries to persuade through sheer volume alone. Yet, if you scrutinize any of them, it quickly falls apart. That's probably why the site doesn't even bother justifying the charts, or even state the thesis, for that matter.
by gruez
5/22/2026 at 9:27:52 PM
There are deep problems with _both_ arguments. Your "happy fun chart" does not include negative effects from the _types_ of jobs that are available now.Nearly all good jobs are now concentrated in dense city cores, in the ever-dwindling set of large cities. This drives up the _cost_ of having these jobs. For example, the median ratio of rent to income is rising: https://www.moodyscre.com/insights/cre-trends/housing-afford...
And this "cost of work" is not only monetary but also psychological and physical (it takes longer to commute). You also don't get nearly the same amount of job security as your parents.
From the epi.org chart - it indeed misses that a lot of stuff is now cheaper. Clothes, electronics, toys and even appliances - they are so cheap that we now treat them as disposable!
by cyberax
5/22/2026 at 7:53:19 PM
This smells like the think-tank "CEO comp justifies worker underpayment" and "health care inflation is wages" arguments, I'll look into your source but I can't pretend to have high hopes.As for "gish gallop," right back atcha: those billionaire-funded think tanks firehose a lot of nonsense into the economic discourse (and curricula!)
by smallmancontrov
5/22/2026 at 6:47:08 PM
What percentage of increased productivity has gone back to the workers as increased financial health during the last say 20 years? Not increased wages. Their increase in end of day actual financial health versus end of day increase in actual financial health of the owning class? Not some Peter/Paul highlighting Peter 'wages have gone up' while ignoring any stealing from Paul 'actual financial health' has gone down metric.300 years of thinking has established that copyright is the best way to sustain ongoing creation of knowledge and thought, yet the same crowd seem pretty fine gutting that 300 years of understanding because of their judgement that their desired use case for today outweighs the cost to society of lost future knowledge creation, so they seem plenty happy to ignore established thought when it benefits them.
by _DeadFred_
5/22/2026 at 7:26:57 PM
People at the bottom end of the income scale are sharply deterred from holding any meaningful amounts of savings, because this can exclude them from 'means tested' benefits. This is effectively a disguised ~100% "wealth tax" that hits many among the most heavily disadvantaged and marginalized. We're essentially telling people that they have to be living literally hand-to-mouth before they're deemed to deserve any kind of broader social support.by zozbot234
5/24/2026 at 3:37:52 PM
The party that abhors wealth taxes for billionaires is the same one that lobbies them into place for the poor.by smallmancontrov
5/22/2026 at 4:29:39 PM
The current system without wealth taxes already largely divorces labor from equity stake. Unless you're one of the relatively few tech or office workers who get equity compensation or have a large savings rate, you currently don't have much of a stake in any means of production.by ryandrake
5/22/2026 at 4:44:49 PM
I'm not disputing the claim that few people are able to save and invest into having a stake in the means of production.However, if your goal is to increase stakeholdership, how would a policy that explicitly disincentivizes that behavior fix anything?
by tengbretson
5/22/2026 at 6:15:14 PM
Why do I get the feeling that you would never field the structurally identical complaint against disproportionately taxing labor and consumption, even though that's a much more prominent feature of our current tax policy?In any case, taxes do not go into a black hole, no matter how much the right likes to encourage this self-serving fiction. Taxes generally get spent down the economic ladder and move people up the economic ladder, increasing their marginal propensity to save. People must have money if you want them to save money.
Even more concretely: reversing the policies which dissolved the middle class might reasonably be expected to restore the middle class, or at least slow their demise.
by smallmancontrov
5/22/2026 at 6:14:04 PM
How does it disincentivize "stakeholdership"? Are people expected to say, please don't make me rich, because I'd have to pay 1% of it?by svachalek
5/22/2026 at 6:18:36 PM
Well for a start it pressurises asset holders to sell their assets.But the point isn't to increase stakeholdership so much as to stop privileging stakeholders with very low effective tax bills relative to mere workers, which means that there's a lot less cause for concern about those workers not owning their means of production
by notahacker
5/22/2026 at 7:02:09 PM
>Well for a start it pressurises asset holders to sell their assets.Even assuming this is true, then what? Do you think the average joe is going to suddenly buy alphabet or meta stocks because bill ackman or ken griffin sold their shares to buy bigger yachts?
by gruez
5/22/2026 at 11:11:19 PM
Perhaps you could direct this strawman upthread, to the person who implied that to enable the average joe to obtain a share in the means of wealth creation it would be necessary for the HNW individuals who currently own it to be able to maintain that ownership without paying tax on it...All I pointed out was that at the margin, HNW individuals needing to liquidate 1% of their portfolio every year (and also HNW individuals not being disincentived from realising their capital gains as under the current system) actually works in favour of people trying to buy shares in means of production (by increasing liquidity and lowering prices), as well as obviously against wealth concentration.
There are arguments against wealth taxes that are actually credible, like those concerning capital flight, but this thread seems like a magnet for bad ones. Like, AMZN valuation dropping slightly at the margin from Bezos at al's forced divestment of portions of their stock actually being a bad thing for the economy as a whole is a defensible position; the utopian scenario involving delivery drivers ending up with a decent sized stake in Amazon somehow being impeded by wealth taxes isn't....
by notahacker
5/22/2026 at 8:10:05 PM
> Well for a start it pressurises asset holders to sell their assets.To whom are the selling? The buyers would be only those that can make efficient enough returns to offset this tax due to their existing systemic advantages, like economies of scale or regulatory lobbying. This would accelerate consolidation.
> But the point isn't to increase stakeholdership so much as to stop privileging stakeholders with very low effective tax bills relative to mere workers
At this point I think there is ample evidence that policy in this country does not move forward without the consent of these so-called privileged stakeholders. If you take that as a given, why would you support handing these people an economic machine gun to point at your future self?
by tengbretson
5/22/2026 at 11:22:52 PM
> To whom are the selling? The buyers would be only those that can make efficient enough returns to offset this tax due to their existing systemic advantages, like economies of scale or regulatory lobbying. This would accelerate consolidation.You don't need "systemic advantages" to earn more than 1% average annual return on your wealth. And strangely enough, not paying tax on their wealth accumulation whilst everyone else pays it on their earnings and trades doesn't reduce prospective buyers' advantages...
> At this point I think there is ample evidence that policy in this country does not move forward without the consent of these so-called privileged stakeholders. If you take that as a given, why would you support handing these people an economic machine gun to point at your future self?
Using pretty phrases like "economic machine guns" doesn't somehow make an argument of the form that wealth taxes somehow make wealthy people more powerful actually make sense.
by notahacker
5/22/2026 at 11:26:47 PM
>The buyers would be only those that can make efficient enough returns to offset this taxOr people who aren't wealthy enough to have to pay it.
by frmersdog
5/22/2026 at 7:03:19 PM
Regular people have less and less savings to buy "stakes in the means of production". Capital is getting more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands: the top 10% of the country owns almost 80% of it all. Wealth needs to be taxed and redistributed.by thrance
5/22/2026 at 4:19:28 PM
I think it’s a good point that these taxes don’t apply to most people. Another reason they don’t apply is that most people save for retirement using retirement accounts.But nothing in the article implies that these wealth taxes apply to most people. The argument is that a 1% wealth tax is equivalent to a 20% income tax because, under certain assumptions, the government gets the same amount of money.
by skybrian
5/22/2026 at 6:41:57 PM
Only in theory. In practice it’s not equivalent at all because once you reach a certain (very high) level of wealth, there’s the “buy, borrow, die” strategy that avoids realizing most of your capital gains. I’ve also heard of proposals to tax asset-backed loans above a certain threshold, which is aimed at the “borrow” part of the strategy. But the concern there is that the super wealthy may quickly find a different strategy for tax avoidance, so a blanket wealth tax should be harder to circumvent. But as with anything to do with the tax code, those with the best tax accountants and lawyers seldom end up losing.by qzw
5/22/2026 at 6:59:11 PM
> because once you reach a certain (very high) level of wealth, there’s the “buy, borrow, die” strategy that avoids realizing most of your capital gainsIf that is what is being targeted, then why not actually target that. Apply some percent taxation on the current value of all assets transferred because of death. And, if they want, only apply it to estates over some X threshold in size.
Performing the taxation at time of probate makes the valuation easy (unlike a 'wealth tax') because the valuation could be one of "value at time of death" or "value at time of transfer". And, if the ultra wealthy are using this angle to avoid taxes, then this taxes some of that transferred value.
Of course, just like with subscriptions, to the politicians a yearly wealth tax is far more valuable than a one time tax on the total value of the estate.
by pwg
5/22/2026 at 7:28:51 PM
>If that is what is being targeted, then why not actually target that. Apply some percent taxation on the current value of all assets transferred because of death.That already exists. The rate is 40% of the asset value.
by jdasdf
5/22/2026 at 6:47:14 PM
There is no evidence[0] that the wealthy use the "buy, borrow, die" strategy in any significant way. The underlying financial math doesn't make sense if the goal is to maximize wealth so it isn't surprising that wealthy people don't actually do it.[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
by jandrewrogers
5/22/2026 at 7:18:20 PM
"Focusing on the top 1 %, while total borrowing is substantial, new borrowing each year is fairly small (1–2 % of economic income) compared to their new unrealized gains""1 % of wealth-holders (above $14 million in 2022)"
1-2% of $14,000,000 is $140,000 to $280,000 a year. The median personal income is $45,140. They are benefiting untaxed to the tune of 3-6 times the median American income.
1-2% of 100 million is 1-2 million dollars a year untaxed benefit (44x median income). That is substantial. That their wealth is growing so fast that that is fairly small to them and makes the median American income seem small doesn't sell me.
How is an untaxed benefit of 3-44X the median income insignificant? I would love to benefit annually by that 'insignificant' amount. By this argument why should we not then exclude all economic income below $140,000 to $2,000,000 from taxation? Since it's 'insignificant'. Oh, right, because it's only insignificant in the context of 'they are so obscenely rich it's insignificant to them'.
by _DeadFred_
5/22/2026 at 7:17:24 PM
That paper is looking at the top 1%. Buy, borrow, die is the realm of the top 0.1 % or 0.01%.Are you saying that billionaires are actually realizing capital gains to afford yachts, private jets, and mansions?
by avidiax
5/22/2026 at 9:34:20 PM
Of course they are. You can read reports to the SEC on executive stock sales all day.Here’s billionaire Tim Cook last month:
https://m.investing.com/news/insider-trading-news/apple-ceo-...
by twoodfin
5/22/2026 at 4:05:06 PM
If you mean that a person with 0 savings pays 0 wealth tax, then sure. Most people when they earn income save some of it. Therefore it is wealth taxed.by arh5451
5/22/2026 at 6:08:12 PM
It seems fairly simple to have a standard deduction so that only folks with wealth over a certain amount get taxed.by amanaplanacanal
5/22/2026 at 6:52:07 PM
Almost all wealth tax proposal I’ve seen start at the level of 8-9 figures of wealth. Why are we now talking about it as if it’s going to apply to your average person’s savings account? If we’re just going to accept these billionaire-invented narratives around the wealth tax, then there’s really no point in discussing the actual pros and cons of these proposals.by qzw
5/22/2026 at 7:46:15 PM
Because it’s the standard playbook for dealing with even the slightest suggestion of fairer taxation. Trot out an old dude in a suit from a Foundation, make sure to avoid anyone knowing exactly what that foundation does or who funds it and have him suggest it’s a really nice idea, but the unforeseen consequences will actually hurt “working people like you and me”. Present as fact, job done.by tclancy
5/22/2026 at 7:44:34 PM
>Most people when they earn income save some of it. Therefore it is wealth taxed.This is one of those “check your privilege” moments and one where it is best to look at the median and not just the average when talking about household wealth in the US. Between 57% and 67% of U.S. adults are estimated to live paycheck to paycheck. They aren’t saving it, they’re going into debt because the only local grocery store is a Dollar General and it’s just a clever name nowadays.
by tclancy
5/22/2026 at 9:02:40 PM
Do they still live paycheck to paycheck after receiving a raise?If so, the problem likely isn’t the paycheck.
by bombcar
5/22/2026 at 10:40:51 PM
At most times during the last 50 years, wages have been growing slower than inflation.by topaz0
5/24/2026 at 1:34:47 AM
Ah, the old moral failing! It’s not that there are flaws in the system that could be improved, it’s the poor people who are sinful. Got it!by tclancy
5/22/2026 at 11:55:43 PM
Australia is proposing a CGT tax of 30% on "capital gains" .. essentially taxing the _income_ from wealth.This is more of a fair comparable to reason about when comparing taxing wealth and taxing wages.
In nerd-speak, taxing the Derivative of Wealth is comparable to taxing Income.
You could argue that a fair comparison of wages and wealth would first subtract the minimum cost of living, so that wage tax is effectively a tax on the growing wealth of wage-earners. This would arguably be a fairer tax comparison - in both cases it is the derivative of wealth that is being taxed.
If a large portion of the populace spends all their income on basic food, rent and petrol then they have no chance of wealth increase, and perhaps should fairly be charged 30% of their $0 growth in annual wealth.
by jgord
5/22/2026 at 10:09:17 PM
Also, this seems to ignore a major problem with how progressive income tax rates are figured in the US.You can work for years at a startup at a depressed wage, then have a windfall that makes up for it on average.
That windfall (in California) will be taxed at a marginal rate of 52%. The only people that ever pay nearly that much are middle class. Some sort of time averaging would help.
Anyway, the US tax code is complicated. Personally, I’d prefer a flat tax with universal basic income. This could replace income, capital gains and inheritance taxes in their entirety. (Along with a lot of social services bureaucracy).
by hedora
5/22/2026 at 4:18:22 PM
I feel the same way. I hear a lot of complains about wealth tax but it always seems like the problems mainly pertain to billionaires. I don't see why we should optimize for that small minority.If we moved to a wealth tax I'd be the first in line to pay it. So long as everyone else had to pay it too.
by tyleo
5/22/2026 at 7:16:17 PM
WSJ Opinion Piece: "Why It'd Be A Mistake To Inconvenience Billionaires" -Some Other Billionaireby malfist
5/22/2026 at 9:05:57 PM
Not even that. Someone who got laid off by one of Paul Graham's friends likely has decent investments and is receiving relatively small salaries from labor (that is, 0, unless you're counting unemployment insurance, and then, is that saved-up labor pay, delayed and amortized, or "investment" income from your taxes?). And if that person is class-conscious, or at least self-interested, they should be 100% on-board with a wealth tax.by underlipton
5/22/2026 at 10:09:31 PM
Is this situation so uncommon? Almost everyone who lives in a house in California, for example, is living primarily off the unrealized gains on their home equity. Very few have the wage income to qualify for a mortgage on what their lifestyle is worth now.California contains a lot of houses!
by closeparen
5/23/2026 at 1:49:02 PM
> living primarily off the unrealized gains on their home equity.How is that paying for food? Insurance? Electricity? Gasoline? Health care? Gifts and charity? Or even taxes?
by PopAlongKid
5/23/2026 at 7:41:17 PM
Illustratively, living in the house is worth about $15,000/month and everything else combined is maybe $2,000.by closeparen
5/23/2026 at 2:43:41 AM
In other words, PG is so rich now that he forgets the existence of less fortunate citizens.by raincole
5/22/2026 at 6:44:44 PM
> But Graham's math is only applicable to those flush with investments and with relatively small salaries from labor, so a wealth tax is only unpopular to that particular group.That can be quite a lot of people on HN, and also including FIRE people, so I can see why it's unpopular.
by satvikpendem
5/22/2026 at 6:55:06 PM
Most FIRE people aren't going to have $50 million plus and be hit by this.by Glyptodon
5/23/2026 at 3:22:58 AM
I said on HN including those who are FIRE, where the net worth of the average individual here is much higher than the average and some do, yes, have $50 million or more in assets.by satvikpendem
5/22/2026 at 7:44:55 PM
It will never stop at $50M. Once the law is created it is sooo much easier to just lower the threshold. Even if not lowered, in 30 years inflation means it will capture a whole different number of people - maybe you. Maybe it will bankrupt your children.by everfrustrated
5/22/2026 at 10:43:38 PM
"taxes only ever go up" is an incredible belief to hold in a historical run of decades of tax cuts.by topaz0
5/22/2026 at 10:01:25 PM
30 years is plenty of time to change the law. We change the tax code all the time. In 2020 or so it was recently amended to substantially increase the standard deduction. Slippery slope is a fallacy unless you can prove the pattern already exists.by throwaway173738
5/22/2026 at 10:02:06 PM
As I commented elsewhere, everyone gets affected by a wealth tax, as it will affect how assets are priced and how businesses operate across the board.For those who have little hope of the wealth tax applied to them (me for example), but as as someone who has investments and need them for retirement, I need to decide if this will affect bond prices or equity prices in a positive or negative way as their attractiveness will change in relative terms, or if publicly accessible funds will get devalued in favor of private investment opportunities and all public assets get devalued. Oh, wait, I am not wealthy, so I do not have the option of private equity, and cannot participate in what would be an attractive investment opportunity when investments shift towards more opaque assets.
For those that have zero assets, I do not think that a shift by the wealthy to private equity is a good thing, unless you want to work for a private equity company. A government job would be your best bet. And a shift to private equity would have a downward pressure on tax collections, so whatever projections for how much a wealth tax would generate, I am suspect.
A lot of people complain about private equity. This scourge was, to a small or large degree depending on your viewpoint, an unintended side effect of SOX compliance, meant to protect investors, and in the end narrowed down the amount of public companies, and created more opportunities/demand for PE. I think it is debatable how much protection investors actually received.
We live in a system, and making a fundamental change to one part of that system has effects on all parts. Raising the amount of taxes under the current system ? That is one thing. Introducing a whole new tax concept, difficult to predict. Especially if this is done by states, which could cause capital movements with their own unexpected consequences.
by whodidntante
5/23/2026 at 3:12:34 PM
Did you expect honesty? Forthrightness? If so, why?by Henchman21
5/23/2026 at 11:10:38 AM
Also when most of you income comes from your wealth, your income tax rate is effectively 0%…So complaining about having to contribute to the society that gave the conditions for your vast wealth is going to get you 0 sympathy
by 3uler
5/22/2026 at 6:59:48 PM
Billionaires gonna billionaire, I guess.by booleanbetrayal
5/22/2026 at 7:08:03 PM
It's so funny to me how many people have taken envy up as their core personality. Billionaires happened to have created the most opportunities for everybody. Amazon is amazing for the consumer that seeks convenience, but it's also amazing if you want to dropship and make your living off of that. Independent sellers make up 65% of all sales on Amazon. So somewhere the idea that nobody benefits from the creations of billionaires has to be questioned.Illegal and legal immigrants are being completely supported by Uber right now in NYC. If you lived here you would know that this is their primary source of income for many of them.
The gate that previously blocked your ability to disseminate your ideas to a wide audience and create a living off of it has been completely torn down by the billionaires that create platforms like Tiktok. There are scores of people that have made a living off of this, which was virtually impossible before. The barrier to entry to start from grass roots and build a following and then monetize it has been erased.
It's completely banal at this point to just point at billionaires and say they are the problem just because of envy. I wish there was a plugin for it so I can erase it from my consumption.
The premise that billionaires are less efficient than the government at deploying capital to serve society is incongruent with reality, but sure, they are a convenient scapegoat if your heart is poisoned by envy and lack. That's really all it is and it needs to be called out more often because it's a mind virus that is easy to infect others with. Your life is not served by being clouded by envy and lack, and spreading it is detrimental to all consciousness.
There is objectively more paths to success than ever before. Being preoccupied with what you don't have currently and pointing the finger to blame at some boogeyman billionaire is not going to change anything for your personal life. The buck is on the person with the finger to improve their life and take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to them. Spending your time being mad that people have created something society deems worthwhile and are being rewarded for it is spending your time being envious about something that has nothing to do with your own problems.
by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 7:47:27 PM
It is less amusing how many of our brethren think the Landed Gentry got there by merit and deserve to live in their castles untroubled by the rabble.by tclancy
5/22/2026 at 9:56:40 PM
Some 20% of US billionaires grew up poor, or at least without well-off parents. 60+% were upper middle class or below. So, I think we can note that they've created enough value for the rest of us and deserve to keep the fraction of that value that they were able to negotiate.by randallsquared
5/23/2026 at 4:20:29 AM
What is the demographics breakdown on those statistics? How much is old vs new wealth vs generational wealth?A lot has changed in the U.S. in the last 20-40 years.
Also I'm not really convinced that the existence of individuals with over a billion dollars in wealth is a net positive for society or really anyone except that individual.
by nullocator
5/22/2026 at 9:38:08 PM
Another comment that's clearly coming from a place of envy, entirely framed about what billionaires deserve rather than having any sort of introspection.by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 9:47:29 PM
You know nothing about me, yet you assume everything. I think having that much money is egregious and I am certainly not envious of people who have an endless void to fill, let alone those who aspire to be like such people. My life is quite full, thank you very much.I think it's a bit ridiculous that these individuals feel the compulsion to min-max their capital at the expense of pursuits that could better be fueled by it, specifically for the collective good. I think it is shameful behavior and not something we should be promoting in society.
by booleanbetrayal
5/22/2026 at 10:50:39 PM
The irony of saying that I know nothing about you while saying that you know that billionaires have an endless void to fill, and think that billionaires are simply running on the compulsion of min-maxing capital instead of min-maxing the results of their capital.Shameful and obvious envy. You're not fooling anybody because your comments betray you
by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 10:57:57 PM
I've met a few and they have all been solely focused on maximizing their wealth with little consideration for the second+ order effects. It's anecdotal, but I'll take first hand information over self-serving comms-fodder.Speaking of comments, I've seen yours on here. So much hate; so much toxicity. What exactly are you contributing here beyond discord? Maybe get your own demons in check and stop projecting.
by booleanbetrayal
5/22/2026 at 11:12:40 PM
> What exactly are you contributing here beyond discord?Well I'm not on here very much and don't comment very much but sure I'll give this a shot:
The rejection of populist ideas that have pushed many into celebrating political violence and death. Want examples?
The rejection of the vicious cycle of envy that has been brewing in these comments and other platforms like this one that is the path that directly leads to above.
by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 11:23:50 PM
Is this a Peter Thiel smurf account or something? I'm going to disengage from you and whatever brand of twisted sychophantic (re: "envious") proselytism this is, now. It's boring and certainly not engendering any support for your cause. Quite the opposite. Maybe you should try to post even less, as it would do more for your cause.by booleanbetrayal
5/23/2026 at 12:37:04 AM
Please disengage if you're not getting anything out of it. I'm sure letting random billionaires live rent-free in your head is deriving much more value for your life. It's not a rocket launch, you don't need to announce that you're disengaging.by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 8:28:50 PM
> the idea that nobody benefits from the creations of billionaires has to be questionedWho said that? Not in the post that prompted your reply, nor in the parent post.
> Illegal and legal immigrants are being completely supported by Uber right now in NYC.
Can you prove that taxis wouldn't have been able to do that, if Uber didn't exist? That wealth taxes wouldn't have been able to support them?
> The gate that previously blocked your ability to disseminate your ideas to a wide audience and create a living off of it has been completely torn down by the billionaires that create platforms
Musk is also erecting new gates, to promote himself and his ideas. I have to admit, I'm surprised what he lets stay up there, but I still don't believe it's an actual free platform.
> I wish there was a plugin for it so I can erase it from my consumption.
Vibecode it; the billionaires tore down the gates that previously blocked your ability to have any software you want -- as long as the billionaires accede to your use of their AI and running your own software against their platforms, of course.
You complain about open platforms filled with people giving you their ideas for free, and you just don't like what they're saying, but you just cited exactly that openness as one of the valuable things that billionaires deserve to have billions for.
> The premise that billionaires are less efficient than the government at deploying capital to serve society is incongruent with reality
Nobody said that, explicitly. Maybe the people arguing against billionaires don't believe capital efficiency is paramount, so you'd have to persuade them of that first, otherwise you're just saying "But capitalism is the right way, of course!"
by zzrrt
5/22/2026 at 8:49:04 PM
> Can you prove that taxis wouldn't have been able to do that, if Uber didn't exist?Yes, because we only have to go back a few decades to see that the cab industry in NYC were being gatekept by medallions that people were paying 800k+ for just to have the opportunity to drive cab. That was not a system made by billionaires. That was a system made by the government and unions, which is exactly the system that you're fighting for.
> Musk is also erecting new gates, to promote himself and his ideas. I have to admit, I'm surprised what he lets stay up there, but I still don't believe it's an actual free platform.
It's more free and less friction than what we had before. The fact that you can't accept it despite the evidence in front of you and your own observations about being surprised is highlighting that you are failing to be objective.
> Vibecode it; the billionaires tore down the gates that previously blocked your ability to have any software you want -- as long as the billionaires accede to your use of their AI and running your own software against their platforms, of course.
Sure, another capability that billionaires unironically gave me. I do have other more interesting things to work towards.
> ou complain about open platforms filled with people giving you their ideas for free, and you just don't like what they're saying, but you just cited exactly that openness as one of the valuable things that billionaires deserve to have billions for.
Yes, and notice that I didn't say that they should be banned from the platform and their speech oppressed. I turned it around to make it about my own consumption. I have the free will. You're not arguing against me, you're proving my point.
> Maybe the people arguing against billionaires don't believe capital efficiency is paramount, so you'd have to persuade them of that first
Maybe we shouldn't assume the people without capital know what is paramount and what isn't when it comes to capital. It's hilarious to think there's some poor chap out there saying these people are being too efficient with capital and accumulating it while also believing that capital efficiency is not paramount. Hello? The problem you're pointing out is directly related to capital efficiency, yet you think the solution is to be capital inefficient. That has clearly not worked out for you or for anybody else in this society. We have countless examples where capital inefficiency has hurt us badly in this society.
by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 8:39:40 PM
... you read an awful lot into that comment, I think you are being a bit uncharitable.Though I agree with many of your points, what I think the OP was gesturing at was the idea that billionaires are more avaricious than the average person; hence we shouldn't be surprised that Paul Graham is wary about paying an effective tax rate that would put him on par with majority of tax payers in this country.
This isn't an new or particularly controversial observation: e.g. "Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one." Benjamin Franklin
"The love of money grows as the money itself grows." Juvenal
Having worked for several billionaires and seen them in their day-to-day, those quotes resonate with me.
by oa335
5/22/2026 at 7:26:21 PM
I don't think anyone is simply envious. People mean to point out that allowing individual accumulation of wealth to extreme degrees lead to runaway structural problems. Billionaires and companies existing and providing wages are not inextricably intertwined. It's entirely possible to have one while preventing the other. The idea that the only way you can incentivize individuals to start companies is to allow them to accumulate so much wealth that they become tiny kings is patently absurd. The world has thousands of companies and founders who happily sustain their businesses without ever reaching this ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.by voidhorse
5/22/2026 at 7:33:36 PM
> I don't think anyone is simply envious.I think most are.
> The idea that the only way you can incentivize individuals to start companies is to allow them to accumulate so much wealth that they become tiny kings is patently absurd. The world has thousands of companies and founders who happily sustain their businesses without ever reaching this ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
And how many of those companies and founders have given back to society at the scale that these uber wealthy people have? Entire new economies have been built up.
> ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
This is still just envy. You should try to prove that you're being oppressed by the systems these billionaires have created because we don't have to go very far back to observe when these systems and economies did not exist. I'll remind you that for example, in NYC before Uber, taxi medallions were being sold for over a million dollars and people were going into debt just for the opportunity to drive a cab. If you go far back enough creating a virtual store front to sell your ideas and goods was a gate that was actually very high. Thanks to the systems that are in place now you have the opportunity to spin this up for very little risk and prove out your idea. Structural problems such as what? The idea that wealth is power? That's the same structural problem that has always existed, except that there are more players than ever before. You can launch an entire grass roots political campaign on social media for free. Does that sound like a system that oppresses or is that a system that has given you opportunity to enact change?
Even the barrier to invest in companies and participate directly in the profits and value creation has been erased or lowered. Hundreds of millions of people are directly benefitting from this everyday. It is now a few simple clicks of a button and you're in. Who lowered that barrier? It was the billionaires. And yes, because they did that they will get an asymmetrical reward because their impact and value creation for society is asymmetrical to yours.
You're not doing this, but when you try to have this conversation amongst the general population what is the response? Once you start poking holes at the concept it always reverts to "you're a bootlicker", "why are you defending billionaires, they don't care about you". These responses highlight envy, not reality or the desire to be objective.
Deep down a lot people either don't realize how much free will and agency they now have in this society or they are just living with contempt because everywhere they look they see people that are using that free will to accomplish more than them. It's lack and envy all the way through.
by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 8:48:31 PM
Thank you for spelling out some good points. They always seemed obvious to me but I could never clearly explain them.by lurker919
5/23/2026 at 4:16:17 AM
> given back to societyI wouldn't necessarily categorize giving people opportunity to do underpaid, tenuous, non-career, zero-mobility gig work as "giving back to society" nor would I classify the unregulated harms of social media, phone additions, etc. as social good either. That's not to say some of these things aren't also good in many ways, but I also still don't understand why you think this somehow leads to a moral or social justification for unbounded levels of amassed wealth to a single individual.
> Structural problems such as what? The idea that wealth is power? That's the same structural problem that has always existed, except that there are more players than ever before.
So your response to issues such as most people being unable to have a single living wage, rising homelessness, unaffordable housing, is "shrug wealth is power". This is not some kind of inviolable law of nature. We as human beings defining the terms of the game, can set up some legislation.
Learn history. America specifically has combated very similar issues in the past and curbing unimpeded accumulation and breaking up monopolies led to more innovation more diversity in the market and a better distribution of wealth. America has taxed the wealthiest classes more in the past and it wasn't a disaster. Look up the new deal.
> You're not doing this, but when you try to have this conversation amongst the general population what is the response?
Who are you conversing with, me, or the general population? What do you mean when you try to ascribe a belief to the general population? Have you done polling on this? Or are you basing this on media? What are you actually talking about? Why are you so confident in arguing against some perceived hypothetical belief you think "the general population" holds? How do you know there aren't more people who actually agree with your perspective?
> Who lowered that barrier? It was the billionaires
No. Scores of laborers employed by the billionaires lowered the barrier. Yes, many of the billionaires begin with a great idea, but there's no reason having an idea justifies having unbounded wealth. All enterprises depend on legions of people to actually materialize production. There is nothing written in nature that states that the person risking upfront capital should always be compensated more than the people who make production a reality, nor is there any corollary that states that the accumulation permitted should be completely unbounded.
You have convinced yourself that anyone not agreeing with your own belief is ruled by nothing but an emotional or psychological state rather than rational, but different, perspective. This is a perfect way to be a stubborn ass and ensure that no one will ever change your mind. It is anti-intellectualism at its finest. I hope one day you realize how foolish you are being about this.
Since you seem to be into super-reductive arguments, here's mine: we are all clearly hyper-dependent on one another on this planet. There is no reason people who make lots of money shouldn't have to give a reasonable portion of it back to the government and country that they draw labor, customers, and much more from daily. There is no reason that accumulation should be permitted without bound. It is pointless and leads to problems. We can and should argue for reasonable limits or at the very least taxation on massive wealth.
As for me, no envy here. I live comfortably and I am happy with what means I have, something most billionaires don't ever seem to experience. However, I also have eyes and functioning neurons so when I clearly see other human beings unable to afford basic necessities without feeling tremendous stress and pressure and then I see certain high-profile billionaires blowing money on dumb shit, underpaying and abusing workers (piss bottles) and more, I can understand why people want better guardrails in place, and no, wanting to limit the degree to which random people who got lucky in the market can exploit you is not envy.
by voidhorse
5/22/2026 at 7:36:42 PM
this post drips with envyby someguydave
5/22/2026 at 7:48:42 PM
If they were saying that kings shouldn't have the unchecked right to execute people, this response would be akin to "Oh, you just wish you could kill anyone. Your argument is invalid."by zzrrt
5/26/2026 at 9:10:05 PM
No, I mean that the argument that someone is evil because of a number in their bank account is dumb, and a more likely explanation is simple envyby someguydave
5/22/2026 at 8:13:05 PM
Not really. The person saying that billionaires shouldn't exist is just failing to describe why that number is so mystical or interesting to them. If billionaires don't exist are we saying that people worth 500 million won't have power? you can keep doing this but the end result is the same. Power is asymmetrical and the system is self balancing. Those that have more wealth have more power. It's that simple. If you want to make wealth irrelevant then at least come up with a real system where wealth does not exist, because power is an intrinsic property of wealth.The idea that you can distribute wealth is actually the tell for envy. You want to distribute power because you want power. And you won't be satisfied until that power reaches you, therefore you need to eliminate not just the billionaires, but after it trickles to centimillionaires and decamillionaires after that. If your premise is based on billionaires not existing because they have outsized power you're not going to be satisfied until that power eventually reaches where you are stationed in society.
It has nothing to do with billionaires and it has everything to do with people with more wealth than you having more power. That's envy. How far do you have to distribute before power is meaningless?
by abletonlive
5/22/2026 at 10:48:00 PM
Like saying, "There have never been more opportunities for commoners to become kings!" Okay, most of the people who say kings shouldn't exist will still feel that way, even if they could become king.> You are closer to a billionaire in your capabilities and agency in this society than a peasant was under an actual King.
How much of that is because I live in a democratic republic, and not because billionaires exist? I guess you might say they're the same thing, but I believe there are free-enough societies with less wealth/power inequality than the US. I think I care more about the gap between top and bottom than about my own personal level of power, but of course it's hard to be objective.
It is harder to draw the line with money than with literal kingship, but I don't accept that we should change nothing and let unbounded power disparities exist.
Edit: More to the point of the original article, maybe I can accept their existence if we plugged all the holes they use to pay a very low percentage, as discussed in other comments. They may remain billionaires, but the tax law would treat them more like the rest of us than like kings.
by zzrrt
5/26/2026 at 9:11:03 PM
You are acting as an evil king, deciding for yourself who is moral and immoral on the basis of vibesby someguydave
5/23/2026 at 4:28:24 AM
I think there is a massive difference between wanting power and wanting freedom and security from undue exploitation and/or economic hardship.Most people I know don't "want power". They just want to be able to afford basic necessities (food, housing, clothing) without feeling like they are on the brink of survival every day.
Billionaires are starting to take the heat because people are starting to recognize that the wealth created for these billionaires is 100% dependent on their labor, time, and sweat, yet many of them see fractions of fractions of what the billionaires make. If it's somehow unfair for the billionaires to have to pay the government a wealth tax it is equally unfair for said billionaires to withhold so much of the capital generated by their workforces for themselves.
by voidhorse
5/26/2026 at 9:11:48 PM
People who want to do nothing and have others pay for their existence are generally evilby someguydave
5/22/2026 at 3:58:37 PM
[dead]by clear-octopus
5/22/2026 at 7:18:11 PM
> But Graham's math is only applicable to those flush with investments and with relatively small salaries from labor, so a wealth tax is only unpopular to that particular group.Not quite, because you're using the opposite extreme where someone has no assets. Meanwhile the median net worth in the US ~$200k, which would be $2000/year in tax for every 1% in wealth tax. That's certainly enough for ordinary people to notice.
On top of that, the conversion is even worse than that implies for ordinary people, because the primary reason the median is ~$200k isn't that the median person has $200k their whole lives, it's that they have ~$0 when they're 18 and ~$400k when they retire and the median person is about halfway to retirement age. If you transfer tax burden from income tax to wealth tax then that means they'll be paying more in wealth tax in the second half of their life, which means they need to be saving rather than spending the money not paid in income tax, including during the first half of their life. But that causes their net worth to go up on paper by more/sooner, because they're essentially holding extra money they'll only have to pay in tax later, which in turn causes them to pay more in tax for a tax on holding assets.
Moreover, then you can't say that Alice always benefits because she has no assets and Bob always pays more because he has $400,000 because what's actually happening is that Alice pays less when she's 20 and more when she's 60. That's going to be unpopular because the 20 year olds are generally expecting to be 60 someday but the 60 year olds never expect to be 20 again.
by AnthonyMouse
5/22/2026 at 8:02:54 PM
I've never seen a wealth tax proposal where "wealth" was defined as ~400K in assets. They tend to start in the millions with generous carve outs for IRAs and primary residences.by Ensorceled
5/22/2026 at 8:23:16 PM
See reply to the sister comment posted earlier than yours and saying the same thing.by AnthonyMouse
5/24/2026 at 5:22:28 PM
What is the point of this reply?by Ensorceled
5/22/2026 at 7:43:56 PM
Nobody is talking about a wealth tax on someone with a net worth of ~$200k or ~$400k.by SoftTalker
5/22/2026 at 7:57:24 PM
> Nobody is talking about a wealth tax on someone with a net worth of ~$200k or ~$400k.If that were the case the criticism of Paul Graham's reasoning would be wrong to begin with because the only people paying it would be the people who do get most of their income from investments.
Moreover, your proposal doesn't actually work. If corporations don't pay a wealth tax then rich people just put their assets into corporations that they control but don't formally own (there are many ways to do this). But if they do then ordinary people with ordinary retirement savings can't be spared, since it doesn't change your finances to have the companies your retirement savings are invested in give you lower returns by the amount they pay in wealth tax than to have you pay a wealth tax out of the returns.
by AnthonyMouse
5/22/2026 at 8:13:26 PM
When income tax was first implemented, less then 1% of people had to pay it. Taxes are a slippery slope, and that number will slide down.by bigfishrunning
5/22/2026 at 8:20:40 PM
They don't even have to change the number. Per capita GDP growth and inflation cause the same number to impact more ordinary people over time by doing nothing.by AnthonyMouse
5/22/2026 at 7:53:05 PM
We don't know, actually. If the threshold for "wealth" is set to be >100k, then we are.by moralestapia
5/22/2026 at 9:08:11 PM
And almost nobody will support that. It would be political suicide for any lawmaker to implement that.by SoftTalker