We need a maximum wealth cap. I want to see a world where you are literally not allowed to have a net worth over a certain amount. I believe capitalism has its place, but unconstrained capitalism leads to innumerable social ills. You want to let people get rich enough to provide an incentive to get educated, work hard, start businesses, and innovate. But you do not want enough wealth that individuals or small groups of individuals can become a threat to society. We don’t allow individuals to own nuclear weapons, regardless of how virtuous they may be. We decided long ago that private ownership of nuclear weapons is simply too much power in the hands of one individual.
Yet with enough wealth, an individual can create human misery equivalent to a nuclear weapon. For example, Elon Musk has a net worth of $400 billion. If he chose to, could spend his fortune on destroying the lives of 400,000 people. He could select his victims based on whatever criteria he chose. And he could spend $1 million per person simply hiring lawyers to make their lives Hell. Target them with frivolous lawsuits. Even if he never won a case, he could drive them into bankruptcy through legal fees alone. Or, he could pick a city of a million people and dedicate his fortune to just ruining that city. He could deliberately fund the campaigns of the worst candidates imaginable, and offer them enormous fortunes to deliberately destroy that city. Wealth is power, and power is wealth. They are equivalent and interchangeable. If you want to have a democracy, you cannot have unrestricted wealth.
I would set the wealth cap for any nation at 1000x the median household income of that nation, averaged over a certain number of years. In the US, that would be at this time about $80 million. That is a level of wealth even the most skilled and high-paid of lawyers or physicians, if they worked til the grave, lived like a pauper, and invested everything else, would still struggle to reach by the time of their death. The only way people reach that level of wealth is by leveraging the labor of others. And it is a level of wealth far, far above the level where increasing wealth continues to meaningfully increase happiness. That level of wealth is only useful to a person if that person seeks to manipulate and control other human beings.
We need a maximum wealth cap. Beyond a certain level of wealth, everything is taxed at 100%. I think 1000x the median household income is a good place to set that level. And I think that is extremely generous. I don’t care what the former billionaires do with their extra income that would put them above this level. They could simply retire when they hit the cap. They could donate it to charity. They could give it all to their extended families. They could give it to their employees. They could hold grand parties in their home city every year that rivaled the excesses of ancient Rome. They could spend it all on giant yachts. Ultimately, I don’t care. The core problem is the concentration of wealth and power in a small number of individuals. Any method of spreading out that wealth will avoid this problem. Even if they just give it all to their extended families, it would still be for the best. If Elon Musk wants to divvy up his fortune to his 5,000 closest family and friends, so be it. Even if every one of them was as much of a bastard as he was, at least they’ll have conflicting interests, and few of them will want to see anyone appointed dictator.
We need a maximum wealth cap. Forget taxing incomes. Forget a wealth tax. We need to drive a dagger into the heart of the evil that haunts our society. The world does not need billionaires. We can have the benefits of efficiency and innovation that come with a free market without letting wealth concentrate to the point of farce. We can provide an incentive for people to work and discover without allowing individuals to become a threat to nation states. Even if you believe in the myth of visionary capitalist geniuses, we don’t need billionaires. If Musk is already capped out on wealth, the board of SpaceX can still hire him as CEO. He can still enjoy the social status as influence of being the CEO of SpaceX, he just has to dispose of that wealth each year however he chooses.
1000x the median household income. No one should be able to have a fortune larger than this.
I think that making a whole new system would be the way: there are too many loopholes and inconsistencies with legacy economics and rules that are not fit for a UBIfied society.
The first thing is to write up a sort of Constitution, that lays out economic rights. After that, I think using an Universal Ranked Income would be key to having the best of socialism with a dash of highly controlled capitalism. That latter bit is used for guiding the pricing of goods and services, but socialism should define the income of people, plus their minimum and maximum wealth. Capitalism should be driven by the circumstances of the everyday person, not the other way around.
I am thinking there can be five or so central “Obligate” ranks, which determines the income of a person, but the default rank everyone has gives a number of benefits that they will always have access to. By ensuring the survival and wellbeing of everyone, the role of money itself transforms - it isn’t for survival, but rather to upgrade a lifestyle. If money is optional, that means that workers can freely strike or protest.
Further, the problem of inflation can be addressed by making income brackets absolute. A waiter on the East Coast makes just as much as her male counterpart on the West Coast. Everyone within a job class gets the same income, no matter their personal skill or connections. Everyone can be subject to a $100,000 income cap from all combined sources, so it would be relatively easy to keep millionaires and the like from existing. By having everyone relatively equal in the economy, prices should naturally reflect reality.
Unless every country agrees with that we won’t see that happening.
Plus appraising privately owned companies is a pretty hard thing to do and it’s unrealistic to do every year.
Just have a progressively increasing tax system and make it so the system doesn’t allow you to take personal loans with stock as collateral.
The entire US is so loan based and built so people consume as much as possible.
Everybody who choses to use a creditcard when a normal bankcard could have worked is increasing this issue.
The thing with not every country agreeing can be solved by cutting the countries economy off of the other countries. For example if all of the eu would do this if you hava an eu company you can just function normally inside the eu but if you youre outside the eu you have to take a lot of steps to start doing business that assure that you dont ransack the eu. Idk if something likenl this works but this is the best i could come up with.
The population of the US is 340 million
340,000,000*1,000,000=340,000,000,000,000 or 340 trillion.
I’m no expert, but I’m curious by what estimate is that Elon’s net worth? And that’s ignoring the part where a lot of that net worth isn’t even made of money that can be spent easily.
Lets have a guillotine tax : after 1000x the average wealth you are taxed 1% of the wealth above that threshold yearly to avoid meeting with…
That means a growing business owner sells 1-2% of his stock yearly but still grow his wealth if the business likely grow 10%. The government fund education and health and new people can vote on those stocks.
No. The point is not to raise revenue. Concentrated wealth is, in and of itself, as damaging to society as theft, murder, pandemics, and many other crimes and social ills. If you have a community where 100 people each have a wealth of $100k, and you drop in one person with a wealth of $100 billion, you have markedly decreased the quality of life of everyone in that city. You haven’t taken a penny from them, but you have harmed their lives grievously. That billionaire can now buy up every property that comes up for sale. That billionaire can now dominate local politics. The resources of the entire city skew to meet the whims of that one person.
Billionaires are dangerous. You don’t try to keep them around and use them as a cash cow. You eliminate them. You have a hard maximum wealth cap, and anything above it is taxed 100%. It’s not about raising revenue. It’s a matter of public health and safety. Billionaires are that dangerous.
When people hit 10mil, they should prestiege. Give them a fancy title or add-on to their name, take all their wealth and tell them to do it again to hit the next prestiege. Easy fix, gives the 1% the sense of pride and accomplishment they deserve.
Or, he could pick a city of a million people and dedicate his fortune to just ruining that city. He could deliberately fund the campaigns of the worst candidates imaginable, and offer them enormous fortunes to deliberately destroy that city.
Or, he could pick a country of a few hundred million people and dedicate his fortune to just ruining that country. He could deliberately fund the campaigns of the worst candidates imaginable, and offer them enormous fortunes to deliberately destroy that country…
How about this: anything over said wealth cap is automatically used to fund education, health initiatives, as well as fight poverty and homelessness.
Also, politicians need a wealth cap; ie no stock trading while in office, or for 5 years after leaving office. Divest all ties to any business they have before taking office. They must also be prohibited from taking any job that has any relation to the government for at least 5 years after leaving office. All politicians must pay for their own health insurance.
How about this: anything over said wealth cap is automatically used to fund education, health initiatives, as well as fight poverty and homelessness.
Honestly, I agree with the top comment, and is already implied by the top comment with the 100% tax. If they want to cash it out (before that assessment, or when they’re close to it) and burn it in a big pile instead of giving it to anybody in tax or charity, let them do it. It’ll still have a positive effect through deflation.
All politicians must pay for their own health insurance.
lol, no. Everybody gets free health insurance. The end. That’s the way to go on that.
Eh, I’m in Australia, where the problem’s not that big, so I certainly don’t feel any overwhelming pressure. While it’s different from wealth, the top income bracket threshold went from $180,000 to $190,000 between 2008 and 2024, despite inflation making that $180,000 equivalent to $270,000 in the meantime, even under right-wing governments. And all working Australians have superannuation, sometimes considerable sums. So things here at least are fine. But anyone in the US, sure, get off your butts and go do something. Here even the most despised billionaire is about as rich as she was back in 2012, and there’s at least some good evidence of her philanthropy. Australia’s in 9th place for wealth inequality apparently. The United States is 25th… from the bottom. That’s guillotine, or give your money away, territory.
None of that means that I won’t ask Americans to do something about it, I mean your hideous wealth inequality is affecting us too.
Is she the one that had her portrait painted and asked the art gallery to take the picture down? Iirc, the artwork was made with a grid showing multiple portraits, of people that had positive, but also negative, influence in the artist’s life.
I’d also add that companies/government offices should not be permitted to pay any employee more than 100x the annual income of their lowest paid employee. If the owners/executives want to further enrich themselves, they must first enrich those whose labor they profit from.
Include stock incentives in that as well. If executives are offered stock packages in lieu of part of their pay to try to get around this rule, require that proportional offers must also be made to all other employees based on level of income.
I’d also add that companies/government offices should not be permitted to pay any employee more than 100x the annual income of their lowest paid employee.
Sadly this wouldn’t be difficult to loophole. Today’s corporations would simply create nested contracting companies. As in, top execs would be one company where the lowest paid employee is a highly compensated Executive VP and the highest the CEO. The next step down being Senior VP that reports to that Executive VP would be the highest paid employee in a separate company that is contracted to the first company housing the high execs. Repeat until you get to the person that waters the flowers in the lobby.
Here’s a visual to show the relationships between these companies and the contract linkage:
I feel like there could still be mechanisms to account for this, though. Maybe something like require that contracts specify number of workers that the contract is worth, and no contracted worker may be paid less than the lowest paid employee of the contracting organization.
Money is pretty much potential human energy. Much like your nuclear bomb example, no one would accept living with a neighbor that has a literal army in their backyard. The government wouldn’t nor would anyone living near them. Yet having that much wealth is having that much “human potential energy” that could power an army. As we can already see with what the billionaires do, they inspire the labor of huge masses of people on their behalf to wreak havock on society. They buy entire media ecosystems to manipulate. No one should have that much power, it’s literally dangerous for all of us.
We need a maximum wealth cap. I want to see a world where you are literally not allowed to have a net worth over a certain amount. I believe capitalism has its place, but unconstrained capitalism leads to innumerable social ills. You want to let people get rich enough to provide an incentive to get educated, work hard, start businesses, and innovate. But you do not want enough wealth that individuals or small groups of individuals can become a threat to society. We don’t allow individuals to own nuclear weapons, regardless of how virtuous they may be. We decided long ago that private ownership of nuclear weapons is simply too much power in the hands of one individual.
Yet with enough wealth, an individual can create human misery equivalent to a nuclear weapon. For example, Elon Musk has a net worth of $400 billion. If he chose to, could spend his fortune on destroying the lives of 400,000 people. He could select his victims based on whatever criteria he chose. And he could spend $1 million per person simply hiring lawyers to make their lives Hell. Target them with frivolous lawsuits. Even if he never won a case, he could drive them into bankruptcy through legal fees alone. Or, he could pick a city of a million people and dedicate his fortune to just ruining that city. He could deliberately fund the campaigns of the worst candidates imaginable, and offer them enormous fortunes to deliberately destroy that city. Wealth is power, and power is wealth. They are equivalent and interchangeable. If you want to have a democracy, you cannot have unrestricted wealth.
I would set the wealth cap for any nation at 1000x the median household income of that nation, averaged over a certain number of years. In the US, that would be at this time about $80 million. That is a level of wealth even the most skilled and high-paid of lawyers or physicians, if they worked til the grave, lived like a pauper, and invested everything else, would still struggle to reach by the time of their death. The only way people reach that level of wealth is by leveraging the labor of others. And it is a level of wealth far, far above the level where increasing wealth continues to meaningfully increase happiness. That level of wealth is only useful to a person if that person seeks to manipulate and control other human beings.
We need a maximum wealth cap. Beyond a certain level of wealth, everything is taxed at 100%. I think 1000x the median household income is a good place to set that level. And I think that is extremely generous. I don’t care what the former billionaires do with their extra income that would put them above this level. They could simply retire when they hit the cap. They could donate it to charity. They could give it all to their extended families. They could give it to their employees. They could hold grand parties in their home city every year that rivaled the excesses of ancient Rome. They could spend it all on giant yachts. Ultimately, I don’t care. The core problem is the concentration of wealth and power in a small number of individuals. Any method of spreading out that wealth will avoid this problem. Even if they just give it all to their extended families, it would still be for the best. If Elon Musk wants to divvy up his fortune to his 5,000 closest family and friends, so be it. Even if every one of them was as much of a bastard as he was, at least they’ll have conflicting interests, and few of them will want to see anyone appointed dictator.
We need a maximum wealth cap. Forget taxing incomes. Forget a wealth tax. We need to drive a dagger into the heart of the evil that haunts our society. The world does not need billionaires. We can have the benefits of efficiency and innovation that come with a free market without letting wealth concentrate to the point of farce. We can provide an incentive for people to work and discover without allowing individuals to become a threat to nation states. Even if you believe in the myth of visionary capitalist geniuses, we don’t need billionaires. If Musk is already capped out on wealth, the board of SpaceX can still hire him as CEO. He can still enjoy the social status as influence of being the CEO of SpaceX, he just has to dispose of that wealth each year however he chooses.
1000x the median household income. No one should be able to have a fortune larger than this.
I think that making a whole new system would be the way: there are too many loopholes and inconsistencies with legacy economics and rules that are not fit for a UBIfied society.
The first thing is to write up a sort of Constitution, that lays out economic rights. After that, I think using an Universal Ranked Income would be key to having the best of socialism with a dash of highly controlled capitalism. That latter bit is used for guiding the pricing of goods and services, but socialism should define the income of people, plus their minimum and maximum wealth. Capitalism should be driven by the circumstances of the everyday person, not the other way around.
I am thinking there can be five or so central “Obligate” ranks, which determines the income of a person, but the default rank everyone has gives a number of benefits that they will always have access to. By ensuring the survival and wellbeing of everyone, the role of money itself transforms - it isn’t for survival, but rather to upgrade a lifestyle. If money is optional, that means that workers can freely strike or protest.
Further, the problem of inflation can be addressed by making income brackets absolute. A waiter on the East Coast makes just as much as her male counterpart on the West Coast. Everyone within a job class gets the same income, no matter their personal skill or connections. Everyone can be subject to a $100,000 income cap from all combined sources, so it would be relatively easy to keep millionaires and the like from existing. By having everyone relatively equal in the economy, prices should naturally reflect reality.
When you reach the cap, do you get a sticker that you can put on your laptop? Because I think would be nice.
That seems fair
Unless every country agrees with that we won’t see that happening.
Plus appraising privately owned companies is a pretty hard thing to do and it’s unrealistic to do every year.
Just have a progressively increasing tax system and make it so the system doesn’t allow you to take personal loans with stock as collateral. The entire US is so loan based and built so people consume as much as possible. Everybody who choses to use a creditcard when a normal bankcard could have worked is increasing this issue.
The thing with not every country agreeing can be solved by cutting the countries economy off of the other countries. For example if all of the eu would do this if you hava an eu company you can just function normally inside the eu but if you youre outside the eu you have to take a lot of steps to start doing business that assure that you dont ransack the eu. Idk if something likenl this works but this is the best i could come up with.
deleted by creator
The population of the US is 340 million
340,000,000*1,000,000=340,000,000,000,000 or 340 trillion.
I’m no expert, but I’m curious by what estimate is that Elon’s net worth? And that’s ignoring the part where a lot of that net worth isn’t even made of money that can be spent easily.
That would require a fortune of $330 trillion.
I suck
Lets have a guillotine tax : after 1000x the average wealth you are taxed 1% of the wealth above that threshold yearly to avoid meeting with…
That means a growing business owner sells 1-2% of his stock yearly but still grow his wealth if the business likely grow 10%. The government fund education and health and new people can vote on those stocks.
No. The point is not to raise revenue. Concentrated wealth is, in and of itself, as damaging to society as theft, murder, pandemics, and many other crimes and social ills. If you have a community where 100 people each have a wealth of $100k, and you drop in one person with a wealth of $100 billion, you have markedly decreased the quality of life of everyone in that city. You haven’t taken a penny from them, but you have harmed their lives grievously. That billionaire can now buy up every property that comes up for sale. That billionaire can now dominate local politics. The resources of the entire city skew to meet the whims of that one person.
Billionaires are dangerous. You don’t try to keep them around and use them as a cash cow. You eliminate them. You have a hard maximum wealth cap, and anything above it is taxed 100%. It’s not about raising revenue. It’s a matter of public health and safety. Billionaires are that dangerous.
Tax the top 10% of their body?
When people hit 10mil, they should prestiege. Give them a fancy title or add-on to their name, take all their wealth and tell them to do it again to hit the next prestiege. Easy fix, gives the 1% the sense of pride and accomplishment they deserve.
They’ve bootstrapped once, they can do it again.
New Game Plus but in real life? 😆
Or, he could pick a country of a few hundred million people and dedicate his fortune to just ruining that country. He could deliberately fund the campaigns of the worst candidates imaginable, and offer them enormous fortunes to deliberately destroy that country…
How about this: anything over said wealth cap is automatically used to fund education, health initiatives, as well as fight poverty and homelessness.
Also, politicians need a wealth cap; ie no stock trading while in office, or for 5 years after leaving office. Divest all ties to any business they have before taking office. They must also be prohibited from taking any job that has any relation to the government for at least 5 years after leaving office. All politicians must pay for their own health insurance.
Honestly, I agree with the top comment, and is already implied by the top comment with the 100% tax. If they want to cash it out (before that assessment, or when they’re close to it) and burn it in a big pile instead of giving it to anybody in tax or charity, let them do it. It’ll still have a positive effect through deflation.
lol, no. Everybody gets free health insurance. The end. That’s the way to go on that.
I also agree with the top comment and with your comment too. It’s settled then?
When?
Eh, I’m in Australia, where the problem’s not that big, so I certainly don’t feel any overwhelming pressure. While it’s different from wealth, the top income bracket threshold went from $180,000 to $190,000 between 2008 and 2024, despite inflation making that $180,000 equivalent to $270,000 in the meantime, even under right-wing governments. And all working Australians have superannuation, sometimes considerable sums. So things here at least are fine. But anyone in the US, sure, get off your butts and go do something. Here even the most despised billionaire is about as rich as she was back in 2012, and there’s at least some good evidence of her philanthropy. Australia’s in 9th place for wealth inequality apparently. The United States is 25th… from the bottom. That’s guillotine, or give your money away, territory.
None of that means that I won’t ask Americans to do something about it, I mean your hideous wealth inequality is affecting us too.
Is she the one that had her portrait painted and asked the art gallery to take the picture down? Iirc, the artwork was made with a grid showing multiple portraits, of people that had positive, but also negative, influence in the artist’s life.
AnywayEdit: i forgot what i intended to write, sigh
Jesus Christ we just need you lads to not let them lynch minorities. Start there
I’d also add that companies/government offices should not be permitted to pay any employee more than 100x the annual income of their lowest paid employee. If the owners/executives want to further enrich themselves, they must first enrich those whose labor they profit from.
Include stock incentives in that as well. If executives are offered stock packages in lieu of part of their pay to try to get around this rule, require that proportional offers must also be made to all other employees based on level of income.
Sadly this wouldn’t be difficult to loophole. Today’s corporations would simply create nested contracting companies. As in, top execs would be one company where the lowest paid employee is a highly compensated Executive VP and the highest the CEO. The next step down being Senior VP that reports to that Executive VP would be the highest paid employee in a separate company that is contracted to the first company housing the high execs. Repeat until you get to the person that waters the flowers in the lobby.
Here’s a visual to show the relationships between these companies and the contract linkage:
I feel like there could still be mechanisms to account for this, though. Maybe something like require that contracts specify number of workers that the contract is worth, and no contracted worker may be paid less than the lowest paid employee of the contracting organization.
Money is pretty much potential human energy. Much like your nuclear bomb example, no one would accept living with a neighbor that has a literal army in their backyard. The government wouldn’t nor would anyone living near them. Yet having that much wealth is having that much “human potential energy” that could power an army. As we can already see with what the billionaires do, they inspire the labor of huge masses of people on their behalf to wreak havock on society. They buy entire media ecosystems to manipulate. No one should have that much power, it’s literally dangerous for all of us.