If we are to tax people because they benefit from public services, then poor people should be taxed more than rich people since they benefit from those services more.
No rich people benefit more. They rely on the rule of law in a nation state to protect their assets and provide a supply of goods and services. And they don't pay much for it (in percentage terms definitely).
Rich people can hire private security. Poor people can't. In terms of raw numbers, law enforcement's job is to protect poor people from other poor people.
> They rely on the rule of law in a nation state to protect their assets and provide a supply of goods and services.
Which as a result let their companies prosper and that benefits the employees.
> And they don't pay much for it
Not true
> (in percentage terms definitely).
Why would it matter?
"Why would it matter?". There are many historical and current day examples of the problems in societies with very high wealth inequality.
I don't want to live in a dystopia with _untouchable_ hyper wealth individuals so I believe that governments should make it very hard to stay a billionaire and virtually impossible for people to inherit that level of generational wealth from their family.
I am very keen for levels of taxation (and the closing of all the loopholes) that would force billionaires to liquidate significant percentages of their assets to pay taxes as I think it will encourage them to work a bit harder. After all if they managed to become a billionaire once they must be very clever, right?
> I am very keen for levels of taxation (and the closing of all the loopholes) that would force billionaires to liquidate significant percentages of their assets to pay taxes as I think it will encourage them to work a bit harder. After all if they managed to become a billionaire once they must be very clever, right?
Even almost all their "assets" are stocks in the companies they created? Would the idea be that the founders of these companies should lose control over them?
They would only lose control if they were incompetent and it was just luck that put them in control in the first place.
The suggested wealth tax is 2%. I have no concerns that a billionaire capable of creating a multi billion dollar business would have any issues raising $20 million per year to sort out their tax bill.
Are there any billionaires you're worried about in particular?
No, governments are not piggy banks, you don't get out what you put in. People pay taxes for the general betterment of the country and everyone benefits from a stable country with a healthy population, which are things you can't really place a monetary value on.