[slively]

Put another way, if you personally taxed all US income at the federal rate for 2 years you’d have less wealth then this handful of people (the federal government collected 4.5 trillion last year). They basically represent another tax on income that everybody pays.

[rayiner]

Put yet another way, Bezos’s $220 billion represents 94% of his “wealth.” And what it represents is the right to a stream of dividends out of Amazon’s profits decades into the future. It makes no sense to compare that to income the government is taxing this year. The government is already going to tax that money in the future when Amazon earns it, and then again when Amazon pays it as dividends. The government can’t make those future profits materialize in the present by taxing Bezos. Obtaining stock from Bezos would give the government a share of Amazon’s future profits. But the government already has that right—it can simply tax those profits when Amazon earns them. Talking about a taxing Bezos’s “wealth” as if it’s money that’s sitting around is just a shell game.

[slively]

I didn’t say anything about taxing them, just framing the amount of wealth they have by comparing it to federal revenue. It’s too much even if it isn’t “realized”.

[rayiner]

Less than two years because total taxation is about $7 trillion (don’t forget state and local). Also, insofar as most of the $10 trillion in wealth is equity, it represents their share of expected corporate earnings decades into the future. The proper comparison for that is the $360-400 trillion in future federal revenues over 75 years, probably $500+ trillion accounting for state taxes.

So the share those billionaires will get of expected earnings 10, 20, etc., years from now is just 2% of what the government will bring in from taxing everyone over a similar time horizon.

[slively]

Cool, so this small group of people controls wealth roughly equivalent to 1/50th of what the entire USA government brings in. Still way too much.

[rayiner]

Why? What’s the specific objection? E.g. Bezos’s “wealth” reflects his 9% ownership of Amazon multiplied by the fact that Amazon makes a lot of money. Presumably you don’t object to the idea of someone owning 9% of a company. That leaves the fact that Amazon is too big/makes too much money. If you’re making an antitrust argument just say that. I probably agree with you on that point!