alt Hacker NewsI would like to propose a cap on net worth.
Realistically, if you have 300M, you and your direct family are settled for life. So, I want to propose 1B cap on net worth, if its more than that for 12 months straight, surplus goes to government, if your net worth is down after that, government obliges to return it partially to make it to 1B.
People, who are eager building things and innovating, will keep building regardless, power hungry will try to find other ways to enrich themselves, but eventually they will give up (e.g. having 10 kids, each with 1B net worth)
Replies
Instead of an arbitrary net number, why not a multiplier of the median? For example, capping at 300x the median citizen/household.
This is so arbitrary and incredibly naive. How did you come to with 300M, why not 300k or 300 billion? How would you determine the worth of rare, illiquid or intangibles? What about wealth held in trusts or companies? How does the accounting work if I borrow against my wealth? What happens when things change value dramatically in a short period of time? And the government is going to "make billionaires whole again" if they crater their wealth?
Doesn’t the US have an almost $2T deficit?
What do you think all that money you taxed from billionaires will do in the hands of the “government”, pay the bills for 12-24 months? Then what’s your plan after the government has spent it all? No amount of taxation can solve a spending problem.
So let's say we implemented this and the government suddenly receives billions of credits from wealthy individuals. Would anything actually change? Is this what's holding us back from repairing all the roads to a fine standard? From implementing universal basic income?
It seems to me that if one tried to actually spend those credits we'd simply get inflation. Prices for roads, food etc. would just go up.
We definitely want to work on inequality, but I think numbers above 1B net worth are just weird quirks of the system. Musk is powerful because he's powerful, the number is just a reflection of that. Keeping his number below some arbitrary threshold isn't going to combat his power.
We need to tackle the problem head on: we need to stop individuals from amassing so much power. We get lost in this stupid abstraction called money. It's not what matters.