[AussieCoder]

Every proposal I have seen kicks in after $100m. That's a level of wealth where even paying a 5% tax is likely to result in an annual net increase in wealth, as when you have that amount of money to invest achieving 5%+ returns is not unusual. The net result is that wealth would still increase, just at a slower rate.

Additionally, even amongst the general population, let alone startup founders, the number of people with wealth in excess of $100m is tiny. Numbers are hard to come by but I've seen estimates of 5,000 people in the US. What this means is that people arguing against a wealth tax are happy to disadvantage 330m people to protect the wealth of a low number of thousands.

[logicchains]

>What this means is that people arguing against a wealth tax are happy to disadvantage 330m people to protect the wealth of a low number of thousands.

By not giving 1% of your wealth to Africa you're disadvantaging a billion people to protect the wealth of one. It's not a disadvantage to someone that they're not getting a part of somebody else's wealth; we're not born with some divine right to other people's money.

[selectodude]

The ability to have 100 million dollars is entirely due to the enforcement of laws that we all agree on. I think we should re-frame the wealth tax as guillotine insurance.

[logicchains]

Enforcing those laws doesn't take a lot of money: see countries like Singapore (or America 100 years ago). In the US most tax money goes into welfare, and warfare (and I think it's hard to argue that America's current military expenditure is the minimum necessary to protect its citizens' property).

The talk of guillotines is completely out of place by the way: the French revolution was not a bunch of peasants guillotining the rich out of envy; they were guillotining the royal family, for taxing them too much!

[selectodude]

>The talk of guillotines is completely out of place by the way: the French revolution was not a bunch of peasants guillotining the rich out of envy; they were guillotining the royal family, for taxing them too much!

That is rather reductionist. At the time, the landed gentry, nobility and the church were the rich people in France. The middle class guillotined the rich because they were the ones paying all the taxes while the actual wealthy were not paying any taxes at all. I'm sure you can see the overlap with the present day sentiment.

[pashamur]

The real reason America has such high military expenditure is more about ensuring the hegemony of the U.S. dollar by backing Saudi interests in the Middle East (and thereby ensuring that the dollar is the main currency denominating oil transactions, which ensures its global reserve status). Which gives the U.S. an upper hand on the world stage because of its currency being the reserve.

https://citizentruth.org/the-secret-deal-that-formed-the-us-...

[theplague42]

It's not other people's money, it's the government's money! They printed it.

[Loughla]

I know it's cliche, but these arguments always seem to boil down to the - Americans don't view themselves as poor, merely temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Though, I would make that 'billionaires' in today's world.

It's just the strangest thing to me.