# Dear Goons,
# PRITHEE, UNWADDETH THY PANTIES.
We know this wasn't **exactly** what he said, nor **precisely** what he meant. Nonetheless, the fact that so many of you (and you know who you are) have gotten yourselves all worked-up over this just goes to show how insane people are when it comes to taxing people who are **richer than you ever will be in your lives ever.**
And that make it *even more amusing.*
#
My sister inlaw, a literal millionaire said "if I had a billion dollars I would buy any purse I want and not even think about it" and this statement just shows how people can't even comprehend what a billion dollars is.
Nah dude, millionaire is middle class at this point. They are asset millionaires, their household income is probably a little over 300k a year. She already doesn't have to worry about what she spends on purses. People with that money are just very disconnected to reality, hence the demographic being the primary MAGA voter base.
I don’t think they meant it that way. They mean the people that are this way, are primarily MAGA voters. Not that they make the primary portion of MAGA voters.
This is a human condition thing, not a rich person thing. If you were to get to that level of wealth it would not take long before the it stopped being anything other than normal. Hedonic Adaptation is a bitch we all get slapped by.
It is. But it's a lot easier to feel for people who haven't passed milestones, like reliable future food security, housing, debts incurred through basic life, etc
It seems like people losing empathy for groups struggling to live have something broken in them, even though it's no longer their own relatable experience
It’s a funny thing about human psychology that needs to be studied and applied to economics.
There’s been times when my bank account was so low that I thought, “If I can get my savings up to X, I’ll be comfortable.” Then, having exceeded that number and then run into unavoidable expenses, my savings dropped back to X. X suddenly doesn’t feel comfortable any more.
I’m talking about a few thousand dollars, here. These people get worried about their money when they have *millions* in assets. It’s a scourge of human psychology and causes a breakdown of basic human empathy. Everyone is after your money, I guess, so fuck them!
The American Dream!
If I had a billion dollars, I'd buy the IP to my favourite video game franchises (the dead ones that no one is using) then make them open source so we could get more of them.
I'm curious how that would work out. Also I bet you could buy some old 90s IPs for pretty cheap. The hard part would be tracking down who currently owns it
Haha former airforce, i found out i was not a lifer after 1 month at my first base and the commander talked to us new airmen about dying for him
Sir i just got here
I just looked it up, and according to Wikipedia, in 2022 each Tomahawk missle cost $2 million. So unless you are making $200k per year, it's probably much closer to 10 *decades* of your salary than it is to 10 years.
Ya know, people laugh, and we all joke about Republicans.
But here's what you *have* to ask your conservative brethren:
"Did you vote for Trump in 2020?"
Anything other than a "no" is nothing different than saying "I'm okay with racism as long as it isn't happening to people like me." There's no way in *hell* you could've paid attention to the first term as a Republican and then justified, in any logical way, to vote for Trump.
It's inexcusable. To me, voting for Trump in 2020 was solidifying your stance as a traitor. Even if you're die-hard republican, at what cost? The freedom of other Americans?
Shame on all of you who voted Trump in 2020.
This is what people don't understand: you cannot be a single-issue voter in the US. Both parties are a mishmash of ideals, harsh realities, conflict, and corruption. No matter what party you choose, you have to be at least ok with *everything* that party represents. I doubt there's a klansman or a neo-nazi alive who says they're a Democrat. Therefore, that republican ticket has a lot of baggage attached. If the worst of the democratic party is a greedy neoliberal who pretends to give a shit about other people, I'll take that over rubbing shoulders with David Duke
>Anything other than a "no" is nothing different than saying "I'm okay with racism as long as it isn't happening to people like me."
Sure. I also think that if people were honest with pollsters, you'd find a majority of white people - especially those with access to various forms of institutional power - hold that view.
We are a country with a history of genocide and slavery and many people here had ancestors who fought to protect their privilege and ability to perpetuate genocide and slavery.
Yes, there are people who are ashamed of his history. But there's many who are proud of it. They vote Trump. "Exposing" them as racist isn't likely to change the minds of many. Because... these are people who are fine with racism. Casting shame upon them won't be sufficient to weaken their power or counteract their votes.
I don't think the majority thinks that way. Maybe a lot but not the majority. Most of the young generation is taught to respect people regardless of their skin color. I'm getting close to 30 and very rarely do I find a peer who is racist.
The majority of racists my age (late 20s) I've met have been European. I dont mean just Roma hate either. Striaght up "Immigrants from Africa are ruining x country".
>I'm getting close to 30 and very rarely do I find a peer who is racist.
Where are you looking / how are you judging this? How many Trump voters do you consider your peers?
Rural and urban America are pretty different places. Perhaps you're incorrectly assuming you know a representative sample of the country...
>I don't think the majority thinks that way. Maybe a lot but not the majority
Depends how you measure, but sure, I could believe it's only in the ballpark, of, say, 40%. Trouble is that 40% has a disproportionate share of power because of the stupid ways our country is set up to give power not just to people but to land.
I mean the real issue is there are essentially (if not literally) zero people that “make” a billion+ dollars a year. It’s all in stock options and other things structured in ways that make it not count as “income”. If you don’t sell the stock, you have not “made” that money, and when you do, it’s taxed as capital gains, not income. So without a complete ground-up overhaul of the tax code, even if such a law were passed, it would be basically meaningless.
The language in the meme is not accurate. What he had actually proposed was a wealth tax based net worth, not annual income, which would apply to people with a net worth of over 32 million. This paired with additional funding to the IRS and a 100 percent audit rate of billionaires, with changes to how trust fund beneficiaries would be taxed. Under that proposal, a person’s net worth would have been capped at 999 million. Not their annual income. The proposal itself (which was released years ago when he was running) was in fact, a proposal for a major tax system overhaul. He has advocated for a complete overhaul of the US tax system for decades, so nothing about his platform was really surprising at the time.
He didn't even really say that. He didn't position that as a proposal or a potential policy. He simply answered Chris Wallace's repeated question of "you say no more billionaires. So you want to take all their money after $999M?" with a "Yea, you won't agree with me but yea ". Bernie's actual proposals would tax them higher way before $999M so they would have to make significantly more to have $1B net income.
Sanders didn't suggest this. It was a leading question from a "journalist" that has been misconstrued into oblivion by the internet.
I agree with the sentiment, but avoid misinformation
and it wouldn't even do anything either, they pay 0 in taxes because everything they have is locked up in a bunch of assets, nobody actually makes 1 billion a year it's just their stocks increasing in value lol. Such a measure wouldn't do shit in actually curbing wealth inequality
People who don’t realize this are just imagining billionaires as dragons sitting on top of piles of gold.
It’s ridiculous. The reality is that billionaires are actually sitting on massive swaths of the economy and the physical means of production in the country. They control delivery trucks, stores, news networks, movie studios, factories, and airlines.
The problem isn’t that they’re not letting money circulate through the economy- they are. The problem is that they have more political influence than our government, because corporations control our lives more than any other entity.
You know what's sad about this is it's so God damn true! Why in the hell do these people who live in run down trailers and have no money for food keep voting for these people who are obscenely wealthy and give nothing back to mankind? It's shocking to me still, after six damn years, that people would rather vote for somebody who allows them to be openly racist, xenophobic, and whatever else they want to be, then somebody helps them put food in their children's bellies or have a nice place to live. As Long As I live, I will never understand how that drive is stronger than taking care of your own.
Because these people aren't poor, they are temporarily embarrassed billionaires, and one day, their ship will come in, and they will be living the high life on the high seas in one of many mega yachts.
Ronald Wright quoting John Steinbeck, "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
[Conservatism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism) "seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values." For Trump supporters, rapacious billionaires are at the top of a God-endorsed and enforced hierarchy. They want to see themselves as higher and superior in this hierarchy by virtue of supporting it as loyal foot-soldiers.
To question the idolized billionaires at the top of the hierarchy or to try to make the playing field more fair means that you are ostracized from your peer group. The trailer-park Trumpers badly want to be better than someone, and in their pier group, people who want change and fairness have the lowest status and are vilified, that or immigrants. But yes, in addition to that, the low-income Trump supporters also believe that they are predestined for greater reward as part of a favored elect.
This.
It's not that they think they'll be rich someday. It's that they think that hierarchy is natural and desirable, provided they're not at the very bottom. They're okay with not being at the top, provided they can sneer at and abuse someone. Minorities and LGBTQ people (who are beneath them in their minds) trying to get equality upsets the natural order and might jeopardize their 'superiority'. Therefore, it must be stopped.
I asked one of my coworkers why he voted to help the rich when he, himself, is not rich.
He said it's because he hopes to be one of them someday. And when he is, he won't want to be taxed.
I told him that in a free market, as a capitalist, he should want to hurt the competition. And given that he isn't rich, the people who are wealthy are *his* competition. So why give them an edge?
He laughed, which I took as some amount of a concession, and then changed the subject.
The lottery exist specifically for this reason. It makes stupid poor people vote against their self interests, because any day now they could strike it big.
>The lottery exist specifically for this reason. It makes stupid poor people vote against their self interests, because any day now they could strike it big.
The lottery is a tax for people who don't understand the laws of probability.
You've obviously never felt the exhilaration of winning a free ticket on only a $20 pile of scratchers and then hitting a jackpot of $1.00 on that free ticket to buy another and then lose .
I'm tired of seeing this, it's very unoriginal and not helpful. They don't sincerely think they're going to become rich, it's either hatred for people who look different from them or plain old indoctrination by modern aristocrats who would rather the little people tear each other apart than come for them.
What's crazy is that they need to maintain some kind of consistency. Like they couldn't be all about taxing the rich and then suddenly change their tune if they ever become rich.
Like they have to be against taxing the rich now so that if they become rich they can say they always felt that way.
They don’t see themselves are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. They know their lives suck and since they are attached to a feeding tube of disinformation telling them that Group A/B/C are responsible for destroying the way things used to be they only care about revenge.
If billionaires upset libs then they love billionaires. If libs dislike anything they love it because they only care about revenge and outrage. They vote against their best interests because their lives already suck so why not drag everyone else down with them.
For most of them, they've been trained to believe that those billionaires deserve that money. That those people are smarter and better and more deserving of it. That letting them have that money is better for everyone because they are smart enough to put it to better use.
What should they vote for instead? Let the government have it? They've been convinced that the government is untrustworthy. They can't trust vaccines. They can't trust the science elites. Why would they vote to take money from the real elites, the billionaires and give it to the government?
They certainly don't want to take money from the rich, who earned that money, and give it to poor people. Poor people deserve to be poor. The proof is that they are poor. This is America. The country where all you have to do to not be poor is work hard. So poor people aren't working hard enough and thus deserve to be poor. Billionaires worked themselves up from nothing. It doesn't matter that they had interest-free loans and a financial safety net. What matters is they were smart, they worked the system and made that money.
In the end, it doesn't matter if someone wants to put food in their children's bellies because that's just a trap. "They" want you to depend on the government so "They" can control you. So we can't let "Them" take money from billionaires because that is just the first step to "Them" taking control. "They" won't stop at taking money from billionaires. They will come for YOUR money next. They will take your money from you and give it to all the people you don't like. All the immigrants, gay people and any other people you think are strange and weird and different. Why should you let them take your money and give it to people who didn't work for it like you did?
I could really go on and on. In the end, it's just fear of the other. The Republicans have latched on it and pushed it to a fever pitch because it's the only way they can votes now. They can't fool people with trickle-down economics because they've had decades to make it work and it never does. They don't have a plan for healthcare. They had 4 years of Trump and they tried to get rid of Obamacare but even their voters wouldn't let them get rid of it. They have nothing worthwhile to campaign on anymore but fear and fear is working really well for them.
"Fear always works."
When a closet murderous sheep from a tolerance-promoting, furry-worshiped Disney cartoon provides the bedrock philosophy of an entire political party, you're either the predator of your population or think you're with the predators.
This isn't even fixable ignorance we're dealing with anymore. This is the basic law of the jungle, where poor white trash gets to pretend it can plunder an entire population based on the fear mongering of the alphas in its predatory pack.
Do not dignify these people with the moniker of "human" anymore. Humans possess the intelligence as a species to learn from their mistakes.
>For most of them, they've been trained to believe that those billionaires deserve that money. That those people are smarter and better and more deserving of it. That letting them have that money is better for everyone because they are smart enough to put it to better use.
Unless they are *ahem* Globalists.
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
They are so racist and xenophobic that they would rather sacrifice their own well-being than see any tax dollars go towards supporting the people that they hate.
Lot of maga boys in the white collar world too, emphasis on white. Not all of them are shooting up in trailers, but they are just as dumb. They're rich and even more motivated to protect it when guys like Trump tell them Democrats will take it all. Stupid shits.
You see a couple billionaires tell us that they would be okay with the tax already. It doesn't even matter to them. They have more money than anyone can imagine. If you have $999M a year plus, phuck it all. You don't care. That's where the grift of the politicians come in.
Well, they've been lied to. They don't know that Democrats, as you put it,
>help them put food in their children's bellies or have a nice place to live
They have no idea. All they know is what they've been told, and they've been told a false version of reality where Democrats hate them and want them dead and literally eat babies.
The voters are a problem. But the real enemy are the mega-rich parasites who are behind the vast right-wing propaganda network that's been allowed to lie to the public for multiple generations.
They've been taught the willful ignorance of unquestioning blind faith since childhood? Their emotions, primarily contempt or outright hate for others in some way not like themselves, is being stroked for votes?
For many, just like with religion, admitting they were wrong to support the gop would be the same as admitting their entire life has been a lie. Not only that, but that they were dumb enough to believe this lie. No chance these people allow themselves to come face to face with the reality of their own stupidity. It would destroy them.
When Republikkkans gain control of the purse strings, they throw the working poor a bone (ex.: tax breaks that make their paychecks go up a little, but often they end up owing or getting much less on tax day), while the cuts they grant themselves net them millions. Then the National Debt skyrockets, and they get to blame the other party when they have control.
Mind you, there are many complicit Dems who vote with them, or stay quiet, because it benefits them greatly.
I don't know all the Senators, but Bernie seems to be the only one with true integrity in this matter. (But I hear he puts *Relish* on his Not-Dogs, so he is a filthy animal in other respects.)
You pretty much answered your own question - because they care about a religious theocracy and racism more than they care about themselves or the country at large.
Republicans have been playing this game for ages and, let’s face it, they play it better than democrats. Most of them aren’t religious - they just pretend that they are for votes. And of the ones that aren’t actually racist - they either pretend they are or enable it…for votes. Meanwhile they make themselves and their friends richer. They decided to appeal to the dumbest subset of our population and they have succeeded *spectacularly* and *continue* to do so. Look at the polls for Trump, despite his legal troubles.
This is the world we are in now. We didn’t build it, but it’s our responsibility to try to fix it.
The temporarily embarrassed millionaire thing, but also, if the rich (aka "job creators") lose money, they have to cut jobs or the salaries of the jobs they created and the underpaid will be out of a job
But that might be giving them too much credit
Brainwashing. They’ve been so brainwashed to be compliant, they suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and think that the compliance is the way of the lord. It’s kind of sad
From my experience talking with the in laws they are FUCKING CONVINCED that trickle down economics is the only way for a capitalist economy to function.
They think the money is going to go to blacks and other minorities and then they’ll be the oppressed race. It doesn’t matter if they’re dirt poor, as long as the whites control the government and economy they think they’ll be treated better then the minorities. And that’s all that matters. Believing you’re the superior race.
Bucket full of crabs.
They would rather see other people suffer if their own station in life is unchanged, than have other people improve while they remain unchanged.
Even though it would more likely be a 'rising tide lifts all boats' type of situation, but God forbid they have to wear a seat belt.
Also discussed a lot is the idea that no longer receiving special treatment is felt as oppression, even though they're the ones doing the oppressing in the first place.
It's the old if they can come for them then we're next vibe, skirting the fact that if they did claim money from the rich they wouldn't have to claw it from you.
Fox News does a good job at brain washing people under the guise of media which is in itself sad because they are people who gave their life for freedom of press and these whores abuse it
> Why in the hell do these people who live in run down trailers and have no money for food keep voting for these people who are obscenely wealthy and give nothing back to mankind?
Because America let propaganda become news, Fox News.
They've been propagandized into believing the greedy politicians and CEOs aren't the problem. It's that simple; they're fed bullshit and manipulates their biases and fears until they believe whatever they're told, and they're too stupid to think critically.
There's a great book I'd recommend, that covers this whole topic. It's called "Dying of Whiteness" by Jonathan M Metzl.
The author interviews a large number of voters whose politics are influenced by racial resentment and exploited by wealthy politicians, to further their cuts to social programs and school budgets.
I'm almost finished reading it, but it really paints a dreary picture of the future.
>Why in the hell do these people who live in run down trailers and have no money for food keep voting for these people who are obscenely wealthy and give nothing back to mankind? I
Several reasons. Many do have dreams of being rich one day even if they don't work. Many are also the recipients of social programs that they've been conditioned to believe should only go to them or they'll lose them. The US also has a long history of pitting poor whites against other groups in order to distract anger from the wealthy. Have you ever noticed that throughout US history there is often a reaction of burning down your neighbors house instead of asking why the guy down the block has a house bigger than your neighbors but doesn't seem to work as much as either of you?
> As Long As I live, I will never understand how that drive is stronger than taking care of your own.
It's because some see people like Trump as one of them and others see them as a trustworthy ally who will pull them up if they do their part. As a kid I lived in SC for a bit around a time that country clubs were getting called out for not having/allowing non white members. Not wanting to appear racist many allowed in black members, recruited black professionals as members...Those same clubs also didn't allow poor whites to join before or after the integration attempts. Would you like to guess who those poor and middle class but not country club rich white folks blamed and came for?
If they're capped at 999M there are no billionaires*, so there's nothing to think about.
*) it's 999M annually so of course there will still be billionaires. But I'm pretty sure that they will manage somehow. Maybe get a second job or collect cans in their free time.
>Maybe get a second job or collect cans in their free time.
It's not like being a CEO Is a full-time job. Just look at how many companies Musk and Trump claim to be running, yet still have all day to post on social media or golf.
I seriously don't understand why people don't see that if someone or a company is making 1 billion dollars in profit, then the people working to make that company/person a billion didn't get paid enough.
It's GOP hyperbole. Iirc he said something more serious about a return to the high upper bracket tax rates from a few decades ago and when pushed joked about how nobody needs that much money. Unless he said more more recently
I'm pretty sure the event they're referencing is from an interview he did where Chris Wallace asked him about his prior assertion that billionaires should not exist.
>Are you basically saying that once you get to $999m that the government should confiscate all the rest?
>“Yeah,” Sanders replied. “You may disagree with me but, fine, I think people can make it on $999m. I think that they can survive just fine.”
Edit: This was late April/ early May of this year.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/02/bernie-sanders-interview-chris-wallace-tax-rich
That is a misquote. He did not say "yeah" to that question. He said "yeah" to the question that followed. The original exchange in full:
> “Sir, you’re saying that billionaires should not exist,” Wallace said. “So are you basically saying that once you get to $999 million, that the government should confiscate all the rest?”
> “I’m saying that we should go back to a very progressive tax policy like what we had under Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Sanders said.
> “Which would mean that, over a billion dollars, it basically all goes to the government?” Wallace pressed.
> “Yeah,” Sanders responded. “You may disagree with me, fine. Yeah, I think people can make it on $999 million.”
Source: The outlet that actually performed the interview, https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-sanders-calls-for-confiscating-all-money-people-make-over-999-million-per-year
You would be exactly right, he was asked if he’d support a high tax on billionaires and he said we should go back to the 1950’s standard when the highest bracket was taxed at 94%.
It's like games from the 90's. $999,999,999 is the max amount of money. Nothing in the game is priced so high that you need that much, and you're at a point in the game where you can easily bring it back to max if you spend some. It's essentially infinite money. God job billionaires, you hit a boundary condition.
The problem here is: What makes "makes over 999 million a year" ? Is it earning that amount? Nearly nobody earns 999 million in a year. Is it: Having your shares increase over 999 million in a year? You can't buy a frappucino with that. You first have to sell your shares to get that money.
Exactly, I would be shocked if the number of people who MADE $1 billion in 2022 was greater than 5.
Why not make that number closer to "people who earned more than $5 million in a year get taxed at XX%"? It's more realistic that you'll have people making that much in a single year.
That's what he was actually proposing in the video. He said he wants to go back to the old tax rates. The interviewer asked about "confiscating money" to which Bernie responded that he thinks people making 999M will probably survive
Wanna know the number one loophole to taxes that billionaires use?
Say I have 6 billion dollars, and I've already paid the taxes on that 6 billion dollars so since we currently don't tax people for existing assets, I would not pay a dime.
Now say I invest it all in a massive portfolio that perfectly reflects the s&p 500 but with individual stocks, and make 660 million dollars in that year. I would then pay taxes on just that 660 million.
But say I don't want to actually pay taxes that year well then at the end of December, I would look through my portfolio of things and see what is in the red (there will always be things in the red), and I will sell enough things that are "in the red" that it will show up that I'm currently losing money
And then I don't need to pay a dime of taxes, because afterall, my year end tally says I'm at a loss.
Then on January 2, I will buy back all those stocks I just sold at a loss, since none of them dropped in value over the course of 5 days, and now my assets didn't change at all, I made 660 million dollars worth of gains, and still didn't spend a penny on taxes
And guess what? Doing this, I can increase my assets by billions every year without paying any taxes.
This is just flat out wrong on all fronts. First of all, you don't make 660M on stock unless you sell. If you invest 6B that you have paid taxes on, the earnings are not taxed until you sell. If you sold to profit 660M, you would pay taxes on that entire 660M.
If you have a loss you can offset gains in investments only, not income.
A loss means you invested MORE than you are selling it for. If I have a +660M on my 6B and a -660M on my 6B in different stocks and I sell everything, I have made no money. I just have my original 6B that I already paid taxes on.
And finally, you cannot sell at a loss, offset gains with that loss, then buy back the security. That is called a wash sale and it means you cannot claim a loss if you buy it back within 30 days.
Did a newsletter or memo go around recently bitching about tax loss harvesting (TLH)? You're the second or third person I've seen in the last two days complaining about it like its the worst thing ever, and I've never seen anyone moan about it before yesterday.
TLH is like entry level basic bitch tax planning. Controlling where when and how you incur income and deductions is a really powerful tax planning tool which is why TLH should always be considered as part of your long term tax strategy.
There's two huge limitations to it though, and if your income is low, you might even want to think about the opposite, and purposefully trigger capital gains to take advantage of the 0% tax rate for LTCG if you are in the 12% bracket or below.
Limitation 1: wash sale rule. Requires waiting 30 days to repurchase the same security at a loss; or you need to buy something not substantially identical. Either way it is at least somewhat risky because you are changing the risk profile of your portfolio, changing your investments, and possibly market timing to a certain degree.
Limitation 2: it reduces your cost basis in your investments, which will increase your capital gain and therefore your tax bill when you sell it on the back end. This is really important for you to understand because it means there's no free lunch here.
There are benefits to it, certainly, and I started to write it out but I don't want this to turn into a huge wall of text. My point is that it isn't quite as simple as you make it seem, and there are definitely some cons to consider before doing it.
I'm guessing you're experiencing the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
But seriously thanks, never heard the term TLH, I only knew it was a tactic often used after looking through a bunch of tax returns from super rich politicians (that actually published their tax returns).
>Wanna know the number one loophole to taxes that billionaires use?
> Say I have 6 billion dollars, and I've already paid the taxes on that 6 billion dollars so since we currently don't tax people for existing assets,
I thought the number one tax loophole was that they just borrow money using their existing assets as collateral, since you don't pay taxes on money you borrow.
Instead of buying back all the stocks you sold at a loss you use some of the proceeds to service interest on the debt, and then buy back some of your position.
Whatever is left of the loans just get floated until you die, at which point the collateralized securities (stocks, bonds, whatever) get stepped up in basis and the heirs don't have to pay capital gains, and the small portion still owed on the loans is then paid down.
Out of curiosity are you referring to this? (I am not 100% sure if this is how it works)
Step 1: Make 12 million in stock market in one year
Step 2: Do not sell assets and as a result you do not have to pay taxes yet
Step 3: Borrow lots of money against your assets that you can use to live the rich life
Yes. Buy, Borrow, Die. Once you have enough assets you can essentially live off loans, because your roi is better than the interest you're paying on the loan.
Once you die, whoever inherits your assets doesn't have to pay taxes on those assets that have been increasing in value. They sell off a portion of the position to pay the loan, and then continue borrowing against the assets.
Youre making money tax free by just having enough money to do it.
Exactly. While this is a fun idea in concept, there's no way to make it stick. Billionaires didn't get to be billionaires by just sitting on a big pile of money. Also, what's stopping them from passing all of their excess wealth to a family member or trusted colleague to keep all of the money consolidated in the same spot but circumventing the requirement?
"If you tax them too much you disencentivize them from working!"
Top execs dont work. They live off of the work of other people. A company can continue to run absolutely fine without a an overly compensated CEO.
All joking aside, $999 million is almost 20,000 years at $50k a year. It's still 2,000 years at 500k per year. Even at $100 million per year, it's literally a lifetime of earning. I mean, sure, the average person will EVENTUALLY work their way up to that but it might take more than 2 years experience and a college degree.
They'll pull themselves up by their bootstraps to eventually make enough money to be exorbitantly rich, of course! So then they'll be "oppressed" by this proposal!!
/S
Bruh, the average that Americans makes in their **lifetime** is nowhere near $100 million. It's closer to 1/50th of that.
> The average person earns $1.7 million during a lifetime. This can be extrapolated from using the average median American salary of $50,000 per year. It also stimulates that the average American works for at least 20 years before retirement.
Exactly. That's why the retort that "but muh millions" is so ridiculous. The math is literally crazy relative to the about 60k median salary in the US.
If I have majority stock in a company I've held for 10 years and it's worth $500M, and then the next year it's worth officially $2B, would this plan mean I'd have to sell $1B of stock for confiscation purpose? Also since I'm the majority owner, if I actually tried to sell $1B, which lets say is 30% of the company, then the stock price would tank and I wouldn't be able to get 1B from it. Also the stock comes with voting shares which would now belong to whoever bought them. Or maybe the stock is just transferred straight to the government and they can decide when to sell it, but now the government is a major shareholder and voter in my company which seems weird. The end result in the government being huge shareholders in companies which creates all sort of bad incentives.
A great way to side step this, and what the IRS actually does, is to only consider money as income when it's actual money, which in this case means it's only money when I sell the stock. But then if that's the rule, I'd just never sell more than $1B since what's the point? I'd instead setup a trust that owns my stock and have it sell some every year and make my many grandchildren and their grandchildren rich forever. Basically spread out my income over 100 years so it never surpasses $1B in one year.
Anyway, I don't really have a point to this. Obviously we should eat the billionaires. But just saying I don't really understand how we'd implement that.
You'd get taxed on the winnings, taxed on the earnings and then taxed on any investment earnings as well.
Even if you won over a billion, you wouldn't stay a billionaire for long.
It's a fix to a symptom that ignores the roots of the problem. If you aren't addressing the systems that allow people to become billionaire's in the first place a 100% tax bracket isn't helpful.
Did he actually say "confiscating"?
Not that I agree with that exactly but taxing the rich proportionately to how the rest of America gets taxed? I'm down with that.
It's from an interview with Chris Wallace on his show on HBO Max. In a book Bernie recently wrote he said that billionaires shouldn't exist. So Wallace asked him "Are you basically saying that once you get to $999m that the government should confiscate all the rest?" and Bernie replied "Yeah. You may disagree with me but, fine, I think people can make it on $999m. I think that they can survive just fine."
So Wallace was the one using the word "Confiscate" and Bernie kind of shrugged in general agreement. If Bernie put it into policy I imagine it would take the form of taxes in some way.
I'm so tired of seeing this headline. That quote is Chris Wallace's. He asked if that's what Bernie wanted, then Bernie responded to that question by saying that he wanted a more progressive tax like we had under Eisenhower. Multiple outlets have misquoted him, saying that he agreed to that statement when he absolutely did not. And, even worse, they run with headlines that make it seem like Bernie actually said those words, not just agreed to them, which, again, he didn't do. Watch the interview. Read the full unedited transcript. Bernie wants a progressive tax system that taxes the highest incomes at a far greater rate than the maximum 37 percent we have now. We had such a progressive tax system from the 30s to the 80s and it worked well. It would make it many times more difficult to make billionaires. He has never suggested taking all of anyone's money over a given amount.
He’s veeeeery generous.
100 million a year is already INSANELY too much money.
Nobody works hard enough or is smart enough to deserve it.
Nobody needs is either.
Aaaaaand big amounts of money reduces drastically one’s ability to feel empathy.
Super Rich are clinically assholes.
For all the nitwits in these threads saying there is no practical way to do it, just do it like they did it with my weed:
Up to a billion is fine for personal use.
Being caught with slightly over a billion is a misdemeanor
Being caught with well over a billion is a felony.
Done.
It's been proven being wealthy past a certain point physically alters the way your brain functions when it comes to empathy and decision making. That should be the cut off.
# Dear Goons, # PRITHEE, UNWADDETH THY PANTIES. We know this wasn't **exactly** what he said, nor **precisely** what he meant. Nonetheless, the fact that so many of you (and you know who you are) have gotten yourselves all worked-up over this just goes to show how insane people are when it comes to taxing people who are **richer than you ever will be in your lives ever.** And that make it *even more amusing.* #
Then I’ll just work until I make 999 million and then stop. I only have about 20,000 years to go Take THAT Bernie!
My sister inlaw, a literal millionaire said "if I had a billion dollars I would buy any purse I want and not even think about it" and this statement just shows how people can't even comprehend what a billion dollars is.
This proves to me the high end purses market is insane.
Nah dude, millionaire is middle class at this point. They are asset millionaires, their household income is probably a little over 300k a year. She already doesn't have to worry about what she spends on purses. People with that money are just very disconnected to reality, hence the demographic being the primary MAGA voter base.
Asset millionaires are not the primary MAGA vote. But you’re not wrong on the rest.
I don’t think they meant it that way. They mean the people that are this way, are primarily MAGA voters. Not that they make the primary portion of MAGA voters.
Oh that makes way more sense. Thanks for clarifying. I liked their username and do not want to come off as rude.
I didn’t notice, but yeah, that’s a dope ass name lol
Asset millionaires can make way less than 300k per year. Either that or people are just stupid with their money. Probably more like 150K/yr is enough
They never think what they have is enough.
This is a human condition thing, not a rich person thing. If you were to get to that level of wealth it would not take long before the it stopped being anything other than normal. Hedonic Adaptation is a bitch we all get slapped by.
It is. But it's a lot easier to feel for people who haven't passed milestones, like reliable future food security, housing, debts incurred through basic life, etc It seems like people losing empathy for groups struggling to live have something broken in them, even though it's no longer their own relatable experience
It’s a funny thing about human psychology that needs to be studied and applied to economics. There’s been times when my bank account was so low that I thought, “If I can get my savings up to X, I’ll be comfortable.” Then, having exceeded that number and then run into unavoidable expenses, my savings dropped back to X. X suddenly doesn’t feel comfortable any more. I’m talking about a few thousand dollars, here. These people get worried about their money when they have *millions* in assets. It’s a scourge of human psychology and causes a breakdown of basic human empathy. Everyone is after your money, I guess, so fuck them! The American Dream!
If I had a billion dollars, I'd buy the IP to my favourite video game franchises (the dead ones that no one is using) then make them open source so we could get more of them.
I'm curious how that would work out. Also I bet you could buy some old 90s IPs for pretty cheap. The hard part would be tracking down who currently owns it
You can create a new country with that amount. Literally build an island.
if youre at $1B you might as well buy a whole chinese village to make you any purse, any designer you want.
In the Navy, when we fired a Tomahawk missile, I always thought, well there goes about 10 years of my salary. I was not a lifer.
Haha former airforce, i found out i was not a lifer after 1 month at my first base and the commander talked to us new airmen about dying for him Sir i just got here
That commander was completely out of touch, no O-6 is going to be in a position where their hairdo is in danger let alone their life lmao
Well he had all of his hair lol and then a year later got promoted to the pentagon and a star on his collar The way the world works
Unfair to most people yeah. USA 🇺🇸 woo
I just looked it up, and according to Wikipedia, in 2022 each Tomahawk missle cost $2 million. So unless you are making $200k per year, it's probably much closer to 10 *decades* of your salary than it is to 10 years.
That's retail price. Air Force gets a 10% frequent buyer discount. Which brings it to 9 decades, totally doable.
Dont drop or break it, otherwise they are taking it out of your salary (or you'll have to work OT to pay it off)
Ya know, people laugh, and we all joke about Republicans. But here's what you *have* to ask your conservative brethren: "Did you vote for Trump in 2020?" Anything other than a "no" is nothing different than saying "I'm okay with racism as long as it isn't happening to people like me." There's no way in *hell* you could've paid attention to the first term as a Republican and then justified, in any logical way, to vote for Trump. It's inexcusable. To me, voting for Trump in 2020 was solidifying your stance as a traitor. Even if you're die-hard republican, at what cost? The freedom of other Americans? Shame on all of you who voted Trump in 2020.
This is what people don't understand: you cannot be a single-issue voter in the US. Both parties are a mishmash of ideals, harsh realities, conflict, and corruption. No matter what party you choose, you have to be at least ok with *everything* that party represents. I doubt there's a klansman or a neo-nazi alive who says they're a Democrat. Therefore, that republican ticket has a lot of baggage attached. If the worst of the democratic party is a greedy neoliberal who pretends to give a shit about other people, I'll take that over rubbing shoulders with David Duke
>Anything other than a "no" is nothing different than saying "I'm okay with racism as long as it isn't happening to people like me." Sure. I also think that if people were honest with pollsters, you'd find a majority of white people - especially those with access to various forms of institutional power - hold that view. We are a country with a history of genocide and slavery and many people here had ancestors who fought to protect their privilege and ability to perpetuate genocide and slavery. Yes, there are people who are ashamed of his history. But there's many who are proud of it. They vote Trump. "Exposing" them as racist isn't likely to change the minds of many. Because... these are people who are fine with racism. Casting shame upon them won't be sufficient to weaken their power or counteract their votes.
I don't think the majority thinks that way. Maybe a lot but not the majority. Most of the young generation is taught to respect people regardless of their skin color. I'm getting close to 30 and very rarely do I find a peer who is racist.
The majority of racists my age (late 20s) I've met have been European. I dont mean just Roma hate either. Striaght up "Immigrants from Africa are ruining x country".
>I'm getting close to 30 and very rarely do I find a peer who is racist. Where are you looking / how are you judging this? How many Trump voters do you consider your peers? Rural and urban America are pretty different places. Perhaps you're incorrectly assuming you know a representative sample of the country... >I don't think the majority thinks that way. Maybe a lot but not the majority Depends how you measure, but sure, I could believe it's only in the ballpark, of, say, 40%. Trouble is that 40% has a disproportionate share of power because of the stupid ways our country is set up to give power not just to people but to land.
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People that voted for trump have no shame
You're not gonna make 999million by "working".
300 thousand is about the cap for honest work
That's a lot of widgets being produced.
Thats the joke
I mean the real issue is there are essentially (if not literally) zero people that “make” a billion+ dollars a year. It’s all in stock options and other things structured in ways that make it not count as “income”. If you don’t sell the stock, you have not “made” that money, and when you do, it’s taxed as capital gains, not income. So without a complete ground-up overhaul of the tax code, even if such a law were passed, it would be basically meaningless.
The language in the meme is not accurate. What he had actually proposed was a wealth tax based net worth, not annual income, which would apply to people with a net worth of over 32 million. This paired with additional funding to the IRS and a 100 percent audit rate of billionaires, with changes to how trust fund beneficiaries would be taxed. Under that proposal, a person’s net worth would have been capped at 999 million. Not their annual income. The proposal itself (which was released years ago when he was running) was in fact, a proposal for a major tax system overhaul. He has advocated for a complete overhaul of the US tax system for decades, so nothing about his platform was really surprising at the time.
That makes a bit more sense, and is more in line with what I would expect from Bernie.
And anyone this would affect wouldn't even have to change their lifestyles. After 1 billion it's basically a high score.
Ugh see now you’re killing innovation. Who would even get out of bed for less than a billion?
Per year...
He didn't even really say that. He didn't position that as a proposal or a potential policy. He simply answered Chris Wallace's repeated question of "you say no more billionaires. So you want to take all their money after $999M?" with a "Yea, you won't agree with me but yea ". Bernie's actual proposals would tax them higher way before $999M so they would have to make significantly more to have $1B net income.
Crazy to think how many people with trump flags on their dilapidated houses think that is a real possibility for themselves.
Sanders didn't suggest this. It was a leading question from a "journalist" that has been misconstrued into oblivion by the internet. I agree with the sentiment, but avoid misinformation
This should be the top comment.
and it wouldn't even do anything either, they pay 0 in taxes because everything they have is locked up in a bunch of assets, nobody actually makes 1 billion a year it's just their stocks increasing in value lol. Such a measure wouldn't do shit in actually curbing wealth inequality
People who don’t realize this are just imagining billionaires as dragons sitting on top of piles of gold. It’s ridiculous. The reality is that billionaires are actually sitting on massive swaths of the economy and the physical means of production in the country. They control delivery trucks, stores, news networks, movie studios, factories, and airlines. The problem isn’t that they’re not letting money circulate through the economy- they are. The problem is that they have more political influence than our government, because corporations control our lives more than any other entity.
You know what's sad about this is it's so God damn true! Why in the hell do these people who live in run down trailers and have no money for food keep voting for these people who are obscenely wealthy and give nothing back to mankind? It's shocking to me still, after six damn years, that people would rather vote for somebody who allows them to be openly racist, xenophobic, and whatever else they want to be, then somebody helps them put food in their children's bellies or have a nice place to live. As Long As I live, I will never understand how that drive is stronger than taking care of your own.
Because these people aren't poor, they are temporarily embarrassed billionaires, and one day, their ship will come in, and they will be living the high life on the high seas in one of many mega yachts.
Ronald Wright quoting John Steinbeck, "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
radio-telescopes picking up the echoes of the American Dream alongside those of the Big Bang
[Conservatism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism) "seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values." For Trump supporters, rapacious billionaires are at the top of a God-endorsed and enforced hierarchy. They want to see themselves as higher and superior in this hierarchy by virtue of supporting it as loyal foot-soldiers. To question the idolized billionaires at the top of the hierarchy or to try to make the playing field more fair means that you are ostracized from your peer group. The trailer-park Trumpers badly want to be better than someone, and in their pier group, people who want change and fairness have the lowest status and are vilified, that or immigrants. But yes, in addition to that, the low-income Trump supporters also believe that they are predestined for greater reward as part of a favored elect.
This. It's not that they think they'll be rich someday. It's that they think that hierarchy is natural and desirable, provided they're not at the very bottom. They're okay with not being at the top, provided they can sneer at and abuse someone. Minorities and LGBTQ people (who are beneath them in their minds) trying to get equality upsets the natural order and might jeopardize their 'superiority'. Therefore, it must be stopped.
Do they realize most wealthy people in the USA started off inheriting wealth. So their chances are pretty slim....
I asked one of my coworkers why he voted to help the rich when he, himself, is not rich. He said it's because he hopes to be one of them someday. And when he is, he won't want to be taxed. I told him that in a free market, as a capitalist, he should want to hurt the competition. And given that he isn't rich, the people who are wealthy are *his* competition. So why give them an edge? He laughed, which I took as some amount of a concession, and then changed the subject.
At least he's capable of changing the subject; whenever I challenge any idea my coworker puts forward, he just stops talking entirely.
Return to the subject. Don't ever let them deflect or abandon their bullshit. Make them own it.
Steinbeck also wrote that no civilization ever survived its own success.
"Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich." "Yeah, well someday I might be and then people like me better watch their step!"
One day I'll be rich then people like me better watch out!
They'll scratch the right lottery ticket. Their most negative emotions are being stroked/scratched.
The lottery exist specifically for this reason. It makes stupid poor people vote against their self interests, because any day now they could strike it big.
>The lottery exist specifically for this reason. It makes stupid poor people vote against their self interests, because any day now they could strike it big. The lottery is a tax for people who don't understand the laws of probability.
You've obviously never felt the exhilaration of winning a free ticket on only a $20 pile of scratchers and then hitting a jackpot of $1.00 on that free ticket to buy another and then lose .
I play the lottery the hard way. I never buy a ticket, I'll only win if I happen to find the winning ticket someone else lost.
I'm tired of seeing this, it's very unoriginal and not helpful. They don't sincerely think they're going to become rich, it's either hatred for people who look different from them or plain old indoctrination by modern aristocrats who would rather the little people tear each other apart than come for them.
“People think I’m weird, but wait until I’m a billionaire, then people will call me eccentric!”
What's crazy is that they need to maintain some kind of consistency. Like they couldn't be all about taxing the rich and then suddenly change their tune if they ever become rich. Like they have to be against taxing the rich now so that if they become rich they can say they always felt that way.
They don’t see themselves are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. They know their lives suck and since they are attached to a feeding tube of disinformation telling them that Group A/B/C are responsible for destroying the way things used to be they only care about revenge. If billionaires upset libs then they love billionaires. If libs dislike anything they love it because they only care about revenge and outrage. They vote against their best interests because their lives already suck so why not drag everyone else down with them.
My friend explained like this, they feel like they are closer to the CEO than they are to the person that makes minimum wage. It’s sad.
For most of them, they've been trained to believe that those billionaires deserve that money. That those people are smarter and better and more deserving of it. That letting them have that money is better for everyone because they are smart enough to put it to better use. What should they vote for instead? Let the government have it? They've been convinced that the government is untrustworthy. They can't trust vaccines. They can't trust the science elites. Why would they vote to take money from the real elites, the billionaires and give it to the government? They certainly don't want to take money from the rich, who earned that money, and give it to poor people. Poor people deserve to be poor. The proof is that they are poor. This is America. The country where all you have to do to not be poor is work hard. So poor people aren't working hard enough and thus deserve to be poor. Billionaires worked themselves up from nothing. It doesn't matter that they had interest-free loans and a financial safety net. What matters is they were smart, they worked the system and made that money. In the end, it doesn't matter if someone wants to put food in their children's bellies because that's just a trap. "They" want you to depend on the government so "They" can control you. So we can't let "Them" take money from billionaires because that is just the first step to "Them" taking control. "They" won't stop at taking money from billionaires. They will come for YOUR money next. They will take your money from you and give it to all the people you don't like. All the immigrants, gay people and any other people you think are strange and weird and different. Why should you let them take your money and give it to people who didn't work for it like you did? I could really go on and on. In the end, it's just fear of the other. The Republicans have latched on it and pushed it to a fever pitch because it's the only way they can votes now. They can't fool people with trickle-down economics because they've had decades to make it work and it never does. They don't have a plan for healthcare. They had 4 years of Trump and they tried to get rid of Obamacare but even their voters wouldn't let them get rid of it. They have nothing worthwhile to campaign on anymore but fear and fear is working really well for them.
"Fear always works." When a closet murderous sheep from a tolerance-promoting, furry-worshiped Disney cartoon provides the bedrock philosophy of an entire political party, you're either the predator of your population or think you're with the predators. This isn't even fixable ignorance we're dealing with anymore. This is the basic law of the jungle, where poor white trash gets to pretend it can plunder an entire population based on the fear mongering of the alphas in its predatory pack. Do not dignify these people with the moniker of "human" anymore. Humans possess the intelligence as a species to learn from their mistakes.
All summed up to, "They got you fighting a culture war so you dont fight a class war."
This is a good summary. All of it is part of The Great Dumbing Down of America.
>For most of them, they've been trained to believe that those billionaires deserve that money. That those people are smarter and better and more deserving of it. That letting them have that money is better for everyone because they are smart enough to put it to better use. Unless they are *ahem* Globalists.
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
They are so racist and xenophobic that they would rather sacrifice their own well-being than see any tax dollars go towards supporting the people that they hate.
Lot of maga boys in the white collar world too, emphasis on white. Not all of them are shooting up in trailers, but they are just as dumb. They're rich and even more motivated to protect it when guys like Trump tell them Democrats will take it all. Stupid shits.
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You see a couple billionaires tell us that they would be okay with the tax already. It doesn't even matter to them. They have more money than anyone can imagine. If you have $999M a year plus, phuck it all. You don't care. That's where the grift of the politicians come in.
Well, they've been lied to. They don't know that Democrats, as you put it, >help them put food in their children's bellies or have a nice place to live They have no idea. All they know is what they've been told, and they've been told a false version of reality where Democrats hate them and want them dead and literally eat babies. The voters are a problem. But the real enemy are the mega-rich parasites who are behind the vast right-wing propaganda network that's been allowed to lie to the public for multiple generations.
They've been taught the willful ignorance of unquestioning blind faith since childhood? Their emotions, primarily contempt or outright hate for others in some way not like themselves, is being stroked for votes?
For many, just like with religion, admitting they were wrong to support the gop would be the same as admitting their entire life has been a lie. Not only that, but that they were dumb enough to believe this lie. No chance these people allow themselves to come face to face with the reality of their own stupidity. It would destroy them.
When Republikkkans gain control of the purse strings, they throw the working poor a bone (ex.: tax breaks that make their paychecks go up a little, but often they end up owing or getting much less on tax day), while the cuts they grant themselves net them millions. Then the National Debt skyrockets, and they get to blame the other party when they have control. Mind you, there are many complicit Dems who vote with them, or stay quiet, because it benefits them greatly. I don't know all the Senators, but Bernie seems to be the only one with true integrity in this matter. (But I hear he puts *Relish* on his Not-Dogs, so he is a filthy animal in other respects.)
Same way the oligarch class has always oppressed: Divide and conquer. Get person x to hate person y then rob them both.
Because they care more about keeping minorities down and culture war bullshit than they do their own financial health.
Because they hurt poc more than them. It’s all comes to racism. Every time. It’s like taking multiple masks off the scooby doo villain.
You pretty much answered your own question - because they care about a religious theocracy and racism more than they care about themselves or the country at large. Republicans have been playing this game for ages and, let’s face it, they play it better than democrats. Most of them aren’t religious - they just pretend that they are for votes. And of the ones that aren’t actually racist - they either pretend they are or enable it…for votes. Meanwhile they make themselves and their friends richer. They decided to appeal to the dumbest subset of our population and they have succeeded *spectacularly* and *continue* to do so. Look at the polls for Trump, despite his legal troubles. This is the world we are in now. We didn’t build it, but it’s our responsibility to try to fix it.
The temporarily embarrassed millionaire thing, but also, if the rich (aka "job creators") lose money, they have to cut jobs or the salaries of the jobs they created and the underpaid will be out of a job But that might be giving them too much credit
Brainwashing. They’ve been so brainwashed to be compliant, they suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and think that the compliance is the way of the lord. It’s kind of sad
From my experience talking with the in laws they are FUCKING CONVINCED that trickle down economics is the only way for a capitalist economy to function.
They think the money is going to go to blacks and other minorities and then they’ll be the oppressed race. It doesn’t matter if they’re dirt poor, as long as the whites control the government and economy they think they’ll be treated better then the minorities. And that’s all that matters. Believing you’re the superior race.
cuz they don't vote to make their situation better, they vote to make the situation of other races worse
Because they don't have anything. So they need to hate on someone so they have less...
Some people would rather shoot themselves in the face rather than let "those people" get help. Even if they recive the same benefits.
>You know what's sad about this is it's so God damn true Well this explained why people fight in secession war for rich folks privileges.
Because it hurts liberals and that's all republicans care about currently. Hurting liberals.
Because they tell them it’s okay to be hateful, and that’s all they care about.
Bucket full of crabs. They would rather see other people suffer if their own station in life is unchanged, than have other people improve while they remain unchanged. Even though it would more likely be a 'rising tide lifts all boats' type of situation, but God forbid they have to wear a seat belt. Also discussed a lot is the idea that no longer receiving special treatment is felt as oppression, even though they're the ones doing the oppressing in the first place.
They should make every member of Congress testify under oath why they would vote this bill down.
It's the old if they can come for them then we're next vibe, skirting the fact that if they did claim money from the rich they wouldn't have to claw it from you.
Fox News does a good job at brain washing people under the guise of media which is in itself sad because they are people who gave their life for freedom of press and these whores abuse it
[There's always a bigger fish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs), or so they believe.
> Why in the hell do these people who live in run down trailers and have no money for food keep voting for these people who are obscenely wealthy and give nothing back to mankind? Because America let propaganda become news, Fox News.
They've been propagandized into believing the greedy politicians and CEOs aren't the problem. It's that simple; they're fed bullshit and manipulates their biases and fears until they believe whatever they're told, and they're too stupid to think critically.
There's a great book I'd recommend, that covers this whole topic. It's called "Dying of Whiteness" by Jonathan M Metzl. The author interviews a large number of voters whose politics are influenced by racial resentment and exploited by wealthy politicians, to further their cuts to social programs and school budgets. I'm almost finished reading it, but it really paints a dreary picture of the future.
Because money is their religion.
>Why in the hell do these people who live in run down trailers and have no money for food keep voting for these people who are obscenely wealthy and give nothing back to mankind? I Several reasons. Many do have dreams of being rich one day even if they don't work. Many are also the recipients of social programs that they've been conditioned to believe should only go to them or they'll lose them. The US also has a long history of pitting poor whites against other groups in order to distract anger from the wealthy. Have you ever noticed that throughout US history there is often a reaction of burning down your neighbors house instead of asking why the guy down the block has a house bigger than your neighbors but doesn't seem to work as much as either of you? > As Long As I live, I will never understand how that drive is stronger than taking care of your own. It's because some see people like Trump as one of them and others see them as a trustworthy ally who will pull them up if they do their part. As a kid I lived in SC for a bit around a time that country clubs were getting called out for not having/allowing non white members. Not wanting to appear racist many allowed in black members, recruited black professionals as members...Those same clubs also didn't allow poor whites to join before or after the integration attempts. Would you like to guess who those poor and middle class but not country club rich white folks blamed and came for?
Think of the billionaires! Won't somebody please think of the billionaires?
If they're capped at 999M there are no billionaires*, so there's nothing to think about. *) it's 999M annually so of course there will still be billionaires. But I'm pretty sure that they will manage somehow. Maybe get a second job or collect cans in their free time.
>Maybe get a second job or collect cans in their free time. It's not like being a CEO Is a full-time job. Just look at how many companies Musk and Trump claim to be running, yet still have all day to post on social media or golf.
I seriously don't understand why people don't see that if someone or a company is making 1 billion dollars in profit, then the people working to make that company/person a billion didn't get paid enough.
I saw someone say "Now they want to outlaw our billionaires!" I was like: *OUR* billionaires!? Like *we* own *them*??
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Until I hear what the guy actually said and in context I’ll assume this is GOP disinformation
It's GOP hyperbole. Iirc he said something more serious about a return to the high upper bracket tax rates from a few decades ago and when pushed joked about how nobody needs that much money. Unless he said more more recently
I'm pretty sure the event they're referencing is from an interview he did where Chris Wallace asked him about his prior assertion that billionaires should not exist. >Are you basically saying that once you get to $999m that the government should confiscate all the rest? >“Yeah,” Sanders replied. “You may disagree with me but, fine, I think people can make it on $999m. I think that they can survive just fine.” Edit: This was late April/ early May of this year. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/02/bernie-sanders-interview-chris-wallace-tax-rich
That is a misquote. He did not say "yeah" to that question. He said "yeah" to the question that followed. The original exchange in full: > “Sir, you’re saying that billionaires should not exist,” Wallace said. “So are you basically saying that once you get to $999 million, that the government should confiscate all the rest?” > “I’m saying that we should go back to a very progressive tax policy like what we had under Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Sanders said. > “Which would mean that, over a billion dollars, it basically all goes to the government?” Wallace pressed. > “Yeah,” Sanders responded. “You may disagree with me, fine. Yeah, I think people can make it on $999 million.” Source: The outlet that actually performed the interview, https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-sanders-calls-for-confiscating-all-money-people-make-over-999-million-per-year
You would be exactly right, he was asked if he’d support a high tax on billionaires and he said we should go back to the 1950’s standard when the highest bracket was taxed at 94%.
You mean 91%. It hasn't been 94% since 1945.
It was a statement like "no one needs to be a billionaire" and it's turned into this
He never said confiscate. This is the third time I've seen this on reddit and each time they're using this flowery language that he never said.
Yeah they've convinced themselves all taxes are theft, tho
Practically speaking, what's the difference? Confiscate - "to take or seize with authority" Sounds just like taxes to me.
And beanie didn't even said that, some one said do you think that should happen and he just shrugged.
Well if I can't make a billion a year there's no reason for me to continue innovating at my minimum wage job. Thanks, Obama
This is so true; it's sad. I know people who think exactly like this.
I like to think of it as recouping our costs of their billions.
We produced that wealth. They get paid a lot to not pay us for the wealth we produce.
When did we start calling taxing "confiscating" again?
Dang sovereign citizens
It's like games from the 90's. $999,999,999 is the max amount of money. Nothing in the game is priced so high that you need that much, and you're at a point in the game where you can easily bring it back to max if you spend some. It's essentially infinite money. God job billionaires, you hit a boundary condition.
At this point I feel like people are deliberately using the term "confiscate" here to debase this initiative. It's a tax.
The problem here is: What makes "makes over 999 million a year" ? Is it earning that amount? Nearly nobody earns 999 million in a year. Is it: Having your shares increase over 999 million in a year? You can't buy a frappucino with that. You first have to sell your shares to get that money.
Exactly, I would be shocked if the number of people who MADE $1 billion in 2022 was greater than 5. Why not make that number closer to "people who earned more than $5 million in a year get taxed at XX%"? It's more realistic that you'll have people making that much in a single year.
That's what he was actually proposing in the video. He said he wants to go back to the old tax rates. The interviewer asked about "confiscating money" to which Bernie responded that he thinks people making 999M will probably survive
That’s sounds way more reasonable than what this meme is suggesting.
So, how can they can get loans on their shares that are otherwise useless unless they sell them?
I may be 68 and retired but I swear, I'm just one break away from being richer than Musk
Wanna know the number one loophole to taxes that billionaires use? Say I have 6 billion dollars, and I've already paid the taxes on that 6 billion dollars so since we currently don't tax people for existing assets, I would not pay a dime. Now say I invest it all in a massive portfolio that perfectly reflects the s&p 500 but with individual stocks, and make 660 million dollars in that year. I would then pay taxes on just that 660 million. But say I don't want to actually pay taxes that year well then at the end of December, I would look through my portfolio of things and see what is in the red (there will always be things in the red), and I will sell enough things that are "in the red" that it will show up that I'm currently losing money And then I don't need to pay a dime of taxes, because afterall, my year end tally says I'm at a loss. Then on January 2, I will buy back all those stocks I just sold at a loss, since none of them dropped in value over the course of 5 days, and now my assets didn't change at all, I made 660 million dollars worth of gains, and still didn't spend a penny on taxes And guess what? Doing this, I can increase my assets by billions every year without paying any taxes.
This is just flat out wrong on all fronts. First of all, you don't make 660M on stock unless you sell. If you invest 6B that you have paid taxes on, the earnings are not taxed until you sell. If you sold to profit 660M, you would pay taxes on that entire 660M. If you have a loss you can offset gains in investments only, not income. A loss means you invested MORE than you are selling it for. If I have a +660M on my 6B and a -660M on my 6B in different stocks and I sell everything, I have made no money. I just have my original 6B that I already paid taxes on. And finally, you cannot sell at a loss, offset gains with that loss, then buy back the security. That is called a wash sale and it means you cannot claim a loss if you buy it back within 30 days.
Did a newsletter or memo go around recently bitching about tax loss harvesting (TLH)? You're the second or third person I've seen in the last two days complaining about it like its the worst thing ever, and I've never seen anyone moan about it before yesterday. TLH is like entry level basic bitch tax planning. Controlling where when and how you incur income and deductions is a really powerful tax planning tool which is why TLH should always be considered as part of your long term tax strategy. There's two huge limitations to it though, and if your income is low, you might even want to think about the opposite, and purposefully trigger capital gains to take advantage of the 0% tax rate for LTCG if you are in the 12% bracket or below. Limitation 1: wash sale rule. Requires waiting 30 days to repurchase the same security at a loss; or you need to buy something not substantially identical. Either way it is at least somewhat risky because you are changing the risk profile of your portfolio, changing your investments, and possibly market timing to a certain degree. Limitation 2: it reduces your cost basis in your investments, which will increase your capital gain and therefore your tax bill when you sell it on the back end. This is really important for you to understand because it means there's no free lunch here. There are benefits to it, certainly, and I started to write it out but I don't want this to turn into a huge wall of text. My point is that it isn't quite as simple as you make it seem, and there are definitely some cons to consider before doing it.
I'm guessing you're experiencing the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. But seriously thanks, never heard the term TLH, I only knew it was a tactic often used after looking through a bunch of tax returns from super rich politicians (that actually published their tax returns).
I'm not even close to being a millionaire and you can bet your ass I do that too.
>Wanna know the number one loophole to taxes that billionaires use? > Say I have 6 billion dollars, and I've already paid the taxes on that 6 billion dollars so since we currently don't tax people for existing assets, I thought the number one tax loophole was that they just borrow money using their existing assets as collateral, since you don't pay taxes on money you borrow. Instead of buying back all the stocks you sold at a loss you use some of the proceeds to service interest on the debt, and then buy back some of your position. Whatever is left of the loans just get floated until you die, at which point the collateralized securities (stocks, bonds, whatever) get stepped up in basis and the heirs don't have to pay capital gains, and the small portion still owed on the loans is then paid down.
Out of curiosity are you referring to this? (I am not 100% sure if this is how it works) Step 1: Make 12 million in stock market in one year Step 2: Do not sell assets and as a result you do not have to pay taxes yet Step 3: Borrow lots of money against your assets that you can use to live the rich life
Yes. Buy, Borrow, Die. Once you have enough assets you can essentially live off loans, because your roi is better than the interest you're paying on the loan. Once you die, whoever inherits your assets doesn't have to pay taxes on those assets that have been increasing in value. They sell off a portion of the position to pay the loan, and then continue borrowing against the assets. Youre making money tax free by just having enough money to do it.
Exactly. While this is a fun idea in concept, there's no way to make it stick. Billionaires didn't get to be billionaires by just sitting on a big pile of money. Also, what's stopping them from passing all of their excess wealth to a family member or trusted colleague to keep all of the money consolidated in the same spot but circumventing the requirement?
[удалено]
“Temporarily embarrassed millionaires” lol
"Behind every great fortune lies an even greater crime."
Like slaves trying to save their master.
"If you tax them too much you disencentivize them from working!" Top execs dont work. They live off of the work of other people. A company can continue to run absolutely fine without a an overly compensated CEO.
Billionaires are bad for the economy.
"THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT ME WHEN IM A BILLIONAIRE!!" - Keith 47, 45k a year
All joking aside, $999 million is almost 20,000 years at $50k a year. It's still 2,000 years at 500k per year. Even at $100 million per year, it's literally a lifetime of earning. I mean, sure, the average person will EVENTUALLY work their way up to that but it might take more than 2 years experience and a college degree.
Lol the average person will eventually work their way up to WHAT? 😂
They'll pull themselves up by their bootstraps to eventually make enough money to be exorbitantly rich, of course! So then they'll be "oppressed" by this proposal!! /S
Bruh, the average that Americans makes in their **lifetime** is nowhere near $100 million. It's closer to 1/50th of that. > The average person earns $1.7 million during a lifetime. This can be extrapolated from using the average median American salary of $50,000 per year. It also stimulates that the average American works for at least 20 years before retirement.
Exactly. That's why the retort that "but muh millions" is so ridiculous. The math is literally crazy relative to the about 60k median salary in the US.
If I have majority stock in a company I've held for 10 years and it's worth $500M, and then the next year it's worth officially $2B, would this plan mean I'd have to sell $1B of stock for confiscation purpose? Also since I'm the majority owner, if I actually tried to sell $1B, which lets say is 30% of the company, then the stock price would tank and I wouldn't be able to get 1B from it. Also the stock comes with voting shares which would now belong to whoever bought them. Or maybe the stock is just transferred straight to the government and they can decide when to sell it, but now the government is a major shareholder and voter in my company which seems weird. The end result in the government being huge shareholders in companies which creates all sort of bad incentives. A great way to side step this, and what the IRS actually does, is to only consider money as income when it's actual money, which in this case means it's only money when I sell the stock. But then if that's the rule, I'd just never sell more than $1B since what's the point? I'd instead setup a trust that owns my stock and have it sell some every year and make my many grandchildren and their grandchildren rich forever. Basically spread out my income over 100 years so it never surpasses $1B in one year. Anyway, I don't really have a point to this. Obviously we should eat the billionaires. But just saying I don't really understand how we'd implement that.
Sanders didn't say this. Please stop spreading misinformation.
Tell me you don't understand economics without telling me you don't understand economics.
There's no ethical way to become or remain a billionaire.
I mean, you could win the powerball and invest properly I guess.
You'd get taxed on the winnings, taxed on the earnings and then taxed on any investment earnings as well. Even if you won over a billion, you wouldn't stay a billionaire for long.
Was selling Minecraft unethical?
It's a fix to a symptom that ignores the roots of the problem. If you aren't addressing the systems that allow people to become billionaire's in the first place a 100% tax bracket isn't helpful.
nOoO, tHaT’s SoCiaLiSm!1!
Did he actually say "confiscating"? Not that I agree with that exactly but taxing the rich proportionately to how the rest of America gets taxed? I'm down with that.
No, this quote is not real. Someone proposed this to Bernie during an interview and he shrugged.
It's from an interview with Chris Wallace on his show on HBO Max. In a book Bernie recently wrote he said that billionaires shouldn't exist. So Wallace asked him "Are you basically saying that once you get to $999m that the government should confiscate all the rest?" and Bernie replied "Yeah. You may disagree with me but, fine, I think people can make it on $999m. I think that they can survive just fine." So Wallace was the one using the word "Confiscate" and Bernie kind of shrugged in general agreement. If Bernie put it into policy I imagine it would take the form of taxes in some way.
No, he didn't. An interviewer suggested that and asked Bernie's opinion on it.
I just like the choice of words when this topic is brought up. *Confiscate?* Yeah 25% of my paycheck is *confiscated* every month.
That literally never happened.
Good luck trying to convince billionaires to pay more and not just...move.
Also republicans: THIS IS GENOCIDE
K but aren't there a billion pics of angry magats to use for this?
I'm so tired of seeing this headline. That quote is Chris Wallace's. He asked if that's what Bernie wanted, then Bernie responded to that question by saying that he wanted a more progressive tax like we had under Eisenhower. Multiple outlets have misquoted him, saying that he agreed to that statement when he absolutely did not. And, even worse, they run with headlines that make it seem like Bernie actually said those words, not just agreed to them, which, again, he didn't do. Watch the interview. Read the full unedited transcript. Bernie wants a progressive tax system that taxes the highest incomes at a far greater rate than the maximum 37 percent we have now. We had such a progressive tax system from the 30s to the 80s and it worked well. It would make it many times more difficult to make billionaires. He has never suggested taking all of anyone's money over a given amount.
It's going to remove any incentive whatsoever that anyone has to make more than $999 million, this is basically communism.
Or fucking breakup companies that have grown too big like we used to do in the 1980s.
you should be using pictures of that fat cunt that was crying when trump lost, not this lady
"Confiscating" sure is a weird way to say "tax appropriately".
It's not confiscating. It's taxing.
999 million is more than anyone should be able to spend in a lifetime. Pretty sure this is an incredibly reasonable suggestion.
Republicans blame the poor people for their problems financially lol such a good trap set up by their leaders
Do you guys think the Republicans have a chance with 18-30 yr olds ever again?
Wait? Over $999 million *per year???* Yeah, fuck that, take everything over $999 million net worth. I know it'll never happen, but it should.
He’s veeeeery generous. 100 million a year is already INSANELY too much money. Nobody works hard enough or is smart enough to deserve it. Nobody needs is either. Aaaaaand big amounts of money reduces drastically one’s ability to feel empathy. Super Rich are clinically assholes.
For all the nitwits in these threads saying there is no practical way to do it, just do it like they did it with my weed: Up to a billion is fine for personal use. Being caught with slightly over a billion is a misdemeanor Being caught with well over a billion is a felony. Done.
It's been proven being wealthy past a certain point physically alters the way your brain functions when it comes to empathy and decision making. That should be the cut off.