[solidasparagus]

Won't startups just go public sooner? Or maybe private company valuations will become less ridiculous since the value of your shares would actually matter for something besides ego now? I do think that taxing paper wealth is a problem, but if you are creating billions of dollars in economic value, there is usually a solution (e.g. as part of raising that $500M, a portion of that goes towards paying wealth taxes). Anything that incentivizes people to do away with this trend of a decade plus before exiting sounds fine to me.

[mathraki]

People want to exit but in most cases can't because the company is not doing well. Everyone who has tried fundraising with bad results knows it's super hard. Despite popular stories in the press, that's the fate of most startups.

Having a struggling company is super stressful, adding the government asking you to come up with money to pay personally, because you are 'wealthy' on a paper would take it to a different level.

[solidasparagus]

This is ignoring the fact that wealth taxes don't effect you until you are extremely rich - even the most aggressive proposals don't start until you are at $32M-$50M in net worth - there are definitely some startups that are struggling while the founders have this much in equity, but the vast majority of struggling startups never hit the $100M+ valuation that would be required.

Not to be a dick, but I don't see why anyone thinks this is valid justification to block a wealth tax - maybe you could argue that the cap should be higher. Income inequality has gotten ridiculous and is only going to get worse as AI technologies mature. There needs to be a way to reallocate wealth from the super-rich to the 40% of Americans who would be unable to pay for a $400 emergency and I haven't heard a better proposal.

[mathraki]

The point is that it creates direct and indirect obstacles to starting/investing/running/owning a company. Which is one of the big job/wealth creators of our society.

IMO you should do the opposite - remove all obstacles to start/invest/run a company and tax the outcome - or, even better, consumption. If you feel those taxes are too low, then raise them.

[solidasparagus]

> tax the outcome

That is exactly what a wealth tax proposes to do since there is no other realistic way to impose a tax on a successful companies. Corporate taxes haven't worked very effectively. When someone sits on $1B+ in stock, there is no way other than a wealth tax to redistribute that wealth.

First of all, this has literally zero impact on the vast majority of entrepreneurs and small business owners who will most likely never hit $30M+ in net worth. And those are the real job and wealth creators.

Secondly, global corporations have the effect of taking wealth from the many and centralizing it into the hands of the few. And this will continue to get worse as AI advances. These corporations are not good for the long-term health of America and I don't think many Americans will care if it becomes a little bit hard to make $100M.