[pureliquidhw]

Yeah, arbitrary cutoffs make me question things in statistical analysis. This isn't much different.

Why 400? Why Billionaires?

And think about it, with the wealth of 400 people a 331,194,000 person country's gov't programs, including a massive defense program, can be paid for for 7 months! That's a long time for .00012% of the population. The numbers are so big that the human brain just casually slides the scale logarithmically to ignore the sheer magnitude of wealth those 400 people hold!

[Gys]

Are you aware this would be just a one time 7 months ? The following years (decades) nothing. Or problably even a small negative impact (because those 400 will then for sure pay no taxes and do no charities).

[pureliquidhw]

Yes I understand that. Plundering the wealth of the rich is a terrible idea. It's a classic straw man:

Theory: We should tax the rich.

Straw-man: If we took the 400 richest people it would only fund the gov't for 7 months!

Accept Fallacy: Oh, then taxing the rich won't work!

Reject Fallacy: Ok, but there are more than 400 rich people, and no one is saying abolish taxes on everyone else. So perhaps there is a better balance, where those with incomes a certain multiple of local medians pay a higher progressive tax rate.

What I pointed out above was just the weird cutoff of 400 to arrive at 7 months. Why not a base 10? 100,1000,10000 richest. Or something like "The richest 674 people in America could fund it for 1 year" (made up numbers). When an arbitrary number is selected, I just get skeptical. Especially when it anchors to nothing else. What metric/group/club is there that top 400 American billionaires make up. Why do I care about 7 months?