alt Hacker NewsIf we limited individual wealth to $999 million--just outright capped it, and enforced that--it would not impact these people in the slightest.
What it would impact is how easily these people could influence the political system and get themselves out of trouble.
At $400 billion net worth, Elon Musk could retire one hundred thousand times. He literally wrote multi-million dollar checks to various politicians and ran an illegal pay-for-votes scheme in Pennsylvania. And he'll face zero consequences for it.
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> If we limited individual wealth to $999 million--just outright capped it, and enforced that--it would not impact these people in the slightest.
It would certainly impact their willingness to do the company-building that creates all those innovations and jobs.
With such a rule, Tesla wouldn't exist, no electric cars, no SpaceX, no cheap advanced launch tech; basically most of the modern world would be choked in the crib by taking away the incentive to build it.
But what do you do with tesla/amazon/etc. then? Force elon to sell of his shares? Take them? What if the price drops? Give the shares back?
It's not like he has all that in money in his bank account, it's ownership of companies, their value is not real until someone else is willing to pay.