That’s calculated value, it’s not taxed until sold so the book value of the shareholder will be the purchase price. It’s hard to tax stocks owned especially if they’re private and the price per share is not known until sold. In theory if you base it on the last sale price you could sell one share at 1 cent and then the whole business will be worth very little.
If you tax revenue it breaks business models that are mostly distribution. If you tax profit they do some accounting magic to have zero profit like Amazon which leaves very little. Capital gains tax means money will be less efficiently allocated and dividend tax makes businesses just do share buybacks.
I think land value tax is a great start and taxing the businesses net assets would also help in this case. Of course billionaires shouldn’t exist but it’s hard to wipe them out with taxes.
The US gdp is what, 3 trillion dollars per year? The population is around 300 million. And yet, there are billionaires. So for that to be in any way fair, there should be around 1000 people in the US.
Im basically asleep so im oretty sure my math is fucked, but the point is close enough
so your math is slightly off. with 3 trillion in GDP ($USD3,000,000,000,000) with 300 million people (300,000,000people) yields around 10 thousand $/person ($USD3,000,000,000,000/300,000,000people or $USD30,000/3 people or $USD10,000/person) in economic activity generated, assuming it is spread equally. my estimate is sizeable larger. pulling actual figures: in 2023 US GDP was $27.36 trillion and population 334.9 million. If we were to round to estimate, i’d say $USD30 trillion and 300 million people). that estimation makes the math more like $USD100,000/person
($USD250,000/household). Actual numbers math comes out around $USD81,700/person ($USD204,300/household). since the median household income is (last period we had both measures is 2023, hence the choice of the year) $USD83,730 and per capita personal income is $USD57,937 (average household size was 2.5 people, so a per capita personal income of 57,937 would either yield a household income of $USD144,842.50/household {going the other way, $USD83,730/household/(2.5people/household) = $USD33,492/person} or exclude a lot of people for “reasons” it’s been way too long since i looked into economic demography i can only invent said reasons. but massive income inequality and theft could definitely skew things.)
They’re so unbelievably wealthy that they could pay for some of the US’s services on their own, and it’d only make a tiny dent in their pockets.
Here’s an incredible visualization that puts it in perspective.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250827001825/https://dbkrupp.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
And now he has over twice that.
That’s calculated value, it’s not taxed until sold so the book value of the shareholder will be the purchase price. It’s hard to tax stocks owned especially if they’re private and the price per share is not known until sold. In theory if you base it on the last sale price you could sell one share at 1 cent and then the whole business will be worth very little.
If you tax revenue it breaks business models that are mostly distribution. If you tax profit they do some accounting magic to have zero profit like Amazon which leaves very little. Capital gains tax means money will be less efficiently allocated and dividend tax makes businesses just do share buybacks.
I think land value tax is a great start and taxing the businesses net assets would also help in this case. Of course billionaires shouldn’t exist but it’s hard to wipe them out with taxes.
The US gdp is what, 3 trillion dollars per year? The population is around 300 million. And yet, there are billionaires. So for that to be in any way fair, there should be around 1000 people in the US.
Im basically asleep so im oretty sure my math is fucked, but the point is close enough
so your math is slightly off. with 3 trillion in GDP ($USD3,000,000,000,000) with 300 million people (300,000,000people) yields around 10 thousand $/person ($USD3,000,0
00,000,000/300,000,000people or $USD30,000/3people or $USD10,000/person) in economic activity generated, assuming it is spread equally. my estimate is sizeable larger. pulling actual figures: in 2023 US GDP was $27.36 trillion and population 334.9 million. If we were to round to estimate, i’d say $USD30 trillion and 300 million people). that estimation makes the math more like $USD100,000/person ($USD250,000/household). Actual numbers math comes out around $USD81,700/person ($USD204,300/household). since the median household income is (last period we had both measures is 2023, hence the choice of the year) $USD83,730 and per capita personal income is $USD57,937 (average household size was 2.5 people, so a per capita personal income of 57,937 would either yield a household income of $USD144,842.50/household {going the other way, $USD83,730/household/(2.5people/household) = $USD33,492/person} or exclude a lot of people for “reasons” it’s been way too long since i looked into economic demography i can only invent said reasons. but massive income inequality and theft could definitely skew things.)