[koe123]

This question is always strikes me as a false dichotomy, i.e. "we have to tax them, or else they leave". The issue is in my view is that constructing a system where the existence of such a rich class has become necessary to raise enough tax revenue. Organizing your country with more sustainable growth where income disparities aren't so high means you don't have this problem to this extent.

[chipgap98]

Who said "we have to tax them, or else they leave"? That doesn't seem to be what anyone is saying. The issue is that this group is threatening to leave if they are taxed.

I agree you should want to avoid having an income disparity like this, but we are where we are. The goal of this tax is to help correct that disparity.

[oklahomasports]

Not a legitimate goal. But yeah if the government needs revenue they should raise it.

[drorco]

Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent.

Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

[mcntsh]

> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

It's simply because money is compoundable. The more money you have the more you can make, and the more you make means less other people have.

[_DeadFred_]

"U.S workers just took home their smallest share of capital since 1947"

https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/us-workers-smallest-labor-sha...

[cbolton]

I think you have the right idea, if poorly worded. The economy is not a zero sum game, but the idea works when you apply it not on wealth but on wealth increase. That's more or less the famous r > g formula of Piketty: when the rate of return of capital is larger than the growth rate of the economy, wealth gets more concentrated. Its application has been disputed but the basic principle certainly applies in many situations.

[kjshsh123]

There's a finite amount of money. There's not a finite amount of wealth.

Having lots of wealth does not mean other people have less. If that were the case, there'd be as much wealth today as there was 1000 years ago. Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.

[Supermancho]

Not trying to argue, per se. I'm saying that you gave me a lot to think about.

> There's not a finite amount of wealth.

I think there is a finite amount of wealth, at any given time, same as "money". Money is a transactable medium to measure value, rather than as a type of good on its own. The medium can change region to region and over time.

Wealth is an aggregate of all valuables you possess, including expected gains. Wealth is also subjective, because of these properties. People agree on some approximations for the purposes of transactions with money.

> Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.

Depends on perspective, I would say. When the value rises in a public company, even when it's just the expectation, you have people dumping their wealth (as money) into the company. So yes, it does for large public companies. While it does grant some rights, in a practical sense it's a hole you dump money into with the expectation that you can reach in and take out some amount in the future. I can understand this is what is envisioned, when people talk about wealth as zero sum. I don't agree, but I get what they are going at.

> If that were the case, there'd be as much wealth today as there was 1000 years ago.

Wealth is partially based on expectation. The growth in population fuels increases in wealth, because that's the part of the equation that is speculative.

[kjshsh123]

>Depends on perspective, I would say. When the value rises in a public company, even when it's just the expectation, you have people dumping their wealth (as money) into the company.

That's not how it works at all.

[ryandrake]

But relative wealth is all that matters, when it comes to lifestyle. If I have $100K net worth, and I'm living in a city where the first standard deviation net worth range is $80K to $120K, then I'm living a pretty average lifestyle, can afford my groceries and entertainment, and feel middle class.

If I have a $200K net worth, and I'm living in a city where the range is $1M to $500M, then I'm pretty much living in poverty, even though I have "more wealth" than in scenario 1.

This is also why, although my absolute wealth today is hundreds or thousands of times more than a king in the middle ages, I'm not actually living like a king today.

It's also how gentrification works. You're living somewhere and all of a sudden a bunch of very wealthy people move in, raising the prices of everything. You're no more or less wealthy than before, but everything has become slightly worse.

[AnimalMuppet]

Can everyone be rich enough to not be food insecure or medically insecure? I'd like to think so.

Can everyone be rich enough to not be in the bottom 20%? No, no matter how rich we become.

Can everyone be rich enough to have servants? No, unless you count machines as servants. But if you do, then I'm rich enough to have several.

[kjshsh123]

That is exactly wrong. Real wealth is goods and services available.

You live way better than a king. Your expected lifespan is higher than kings because of access to better food, nutrition, and medical care. You have access to luxuries like chocolate, and coffee that kings might have tasted once in their life, or at best every few weeks.

Not understanding what wealth is, is precisely what leads to this mistaken thinking.

As for gentrification, it is often just confusing correlation and causation. People blame rich people moving in, when really a place just actually became better due to improvements in goods or services like public transit exapansion.

[temp84858696945]

There is not a finite about of wealth, but the wealthy are currently using their position to reduce the amount of wealth the average person has, by driving up prices of everyday requirements so that they can make more money.

It's not an issue that they are wealthy, it's that they are abusing that position to gain even more wealth at the expense of the rest of the population.

[jibal]

That there is more wealth now than in the past does not even remotely imply that there is infinite wealth.

> Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.

This is a strawman. The ability of people to accumulate wealth is affected by every aspect of the economic system, including the means by which those companies are acquiring wealth.

[rayiner]

Is compounding interest why Jeff Bezos is rich? Or is it because you get three Amazon deliveries a day?

[jacquesm]

No, he's rich because (1) he had first mover advantage (credit to him) (2) he has a good sense of how to run a business (3) he exploits a large number of people to his own benefit.

[cbolton]

Isn't there also an effect like the second billion dollar being easier to get than the first? I mean all your points are good but the fact that the system allows you to leverage your wealth to increase it is probably the most important factor to get to $250B.

[jacquesm]

Absolutely, the more money you have the more risk you can take. That's fractions-of-a-martingale level money so you can probably chalk up a win before you lose it all. Musk uses the same playbook. Losing is for small fry.

Proverb from my granny to contemplate: the devil always craps on the larger heap.

[dangus]

Don’t forget the giant investment from his parents.

Lots of people with great ideas, skills, and work ethic don’t have $250,000 lying around to invest.

[rayiner]

His parents invested about $500,000 in today's money in their 50s. At that age, 10% of Americans have a financial net worth (excluding home equity) of over $2 million. People in America invest that kind of money in small businesses all the time. That’s on the low end of what it costs to open a Dunkin Donuts, and half of what it costs to open a McDonalds. The kids of the Indian guy who owns the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street aren’t exactly scions of wealth.

And Bezos's biological dad was a unicyclist, his mom got pregnant with him at 16 and later dropped out of college, and his stepdad was a Cuban refugee who got an education and became an engineer for Exxon. Going from zero to billionaire in two generations actually says something remarkable about our system.

Think about it another way. If the government doled out $500k to fund business ideas, do you think that investment would be available to kids of refugees? Of course not. There would be gatekeeping behind credentials and connections, and it would be open to a lot less than 10% of the population.

[1] In terms of birth lottery, having top 10% parents is like being born smart enough to get a 1290 on the SAT or having a 120 IQ. Not exactly rarified aid! https://research.collegeboard.org/reports/sat-suite/understa...

[jacquesm]

Yes, that's a good point.

[graemep]

He also had a lot of startup capital.

[kg]

This reply has very strong "the average human does not eat 10 spiders a day; the average was thrown off by Spiders Georg who eats 10000 spiders a day" energy.

Amazon does not have an exceedingly high profit margin, and my understanding is that a lot of it comes from stuff like AWS, not Amazon deliveries - correct me if I'm wrong here. So I'm not sure that "three amazon deliveries a day" - if this is even common - is why that man is personally rich. Even if it were a big source of revenue, that would go into Amazon's coffers, not necessarily his directly.

Another way to look at this: Even if Amazon is wildly successful, does that mean Jeff Bezos specifically should become filthy rich as a result, instead of all its employees and investors? How should the gains from successful entrepreneurship be distributed?

[rayiner]

> why that man is personally rich. Even if it were a big source of revenue, that would go into Amazon's coffers, not necessarily his directly.

Jeff Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. So 9% of the expected value of the money going "into Amazon's coffers" indefinitely into the future is counted as part of his current "wealth." It's not money under his mattress.

Is your argument that people shouldn't be allowed to own 9% of a company that they started?

[lores]

People should not be allowed to accumulate capital beyond $X, yes. What natural law means they should? Society created the conditions for that person to be so successful; in fact, the person only had the minor part in that success. Once you reach $X, you get a certificate saying you won at life and society is really grateful, and society gets the rest of the rewards while they dedicate their life to philanthropy or torturing kittens or whatever it is they do as a hobby.

[lotsofpulp]

> Another way to look at this: Even if Amazon is wildly successful, does that mean Jeff Bezos specifically should become filthy rich as a result, instead of all its employees and investors? How should the gains from successful entrepreneurship be distributed?

The answer depends on how should the losses from unsuccessful entrepreneurship be distributed?

[jacquesm]

Oh that's an easy one: that's societies' problem. Always has been. The same with pollution and all of the other stuff that can be externalized.

[Starman_Jones]

Why are people getting three deliveries a day from a company that was founded as a bookseller? How many books do they need?

[crop_rotation]

This is like asking why are people buying so much stuff from a company that was founded as compiler/language tool seller. How much compiler do they need.

The above would be Microsoft for context. For some reason your comment assumes that what a company was "founded as" should dictate what they do decades later.

[Starman_Jones]

I think you've just explained how compounding wealth made Jeff Bezos rich.

[Manuel_D]

> and the more you make means less other people have

This is a false zero sum view of wealth that is unfortunately all too common.

[N_Lens]

Economy growing at 3-5% in the US. Rich people's wealth growing at a far higher rate. Which means the middle class wealth is getting siphoned to the rich. The middle class is getting poorer and we can all see that.

[Manuel_D]

> Rich people's wealth growing at a far higher rate. Which means the middle class wealth is getting siphoned to the rich.

No, that logic doesn't follow. Say my wealth grew by 3% and my neighbor's grew by 5%. That doesn't imply any sort of "siphoning" at play.

[JackSlateur]

Which is exactly the same as "my wealth was constant and my neighbor's grew"

Which is exactly the same as "my neighbor's the same and my wealth decreased"

Which is exactly the same as "getting siphoned to the rich"

Money have no intrinsic value: its only value is relative the others (and also depends on what can be bought ..)

[N_Lens]

It's not just about logic, it's about data. The middle class is becoming impoverished and increasingly more precarious while the wealthiest are capturing ever larger gains.

Capitalism concentrates capital in fewer hands.

[votepaunchy]

Or the wealthy are pulling up the average and most of the rest are not “growing the economy” with increased productivity.

[N_Lens]

Capitalists earn money through control of capital. They're actually parasites that extract all the labour and value from others below them in the system. Capital is taxed lower than labour in most developed countries, at every turn capital is advantaged at the expense of living beings. There is no positive morality in this system of mass impoverishment.

[dns_snek]

I think we should put this to the test. The working class stops working for a week/month and we'll see how "productive" the rich capitalists really are.

[drorco]

OK that's one thing, but still there are many new billionaires that didn't exist a few decades ago, let alone a few years ago. Why did they become billionaires and the wealth didn't distribute over a much larger group?

[mcntsh]

Wealth doesn't go straight up, it bubbles up.

And thinking about bubbles, imagine what happens when the GenAI one pops. The wealth some new billionaires had will go up in smoke, their assets will go on sale, and they'll be gobbled up by the old billionaires.

[hrimfaxi]

Is the rate of billionaire generation increasing? Maybe that is the distribution in practice.

[drorco]

Maybe, I think it definitely happened with millionaires, there are probably many more millionaires these days compared to a few decades ago. Inflation helped too for sure.

But I think still a lot of people would argue the distribution is too unequal.

[Lionga]

money (or more exact wealth) is not a null sum game.

[koe123]

> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

Compound interest, and as (admittedly) an armchair economist I buy into the argument that goes along the lines of:

"when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth".

In my view, r has been greater than g for some time now.

> Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

To me, it is clear that while Europe optimizes for quality of life to a large extent, Americans really drink the coo-laid and enthusiastically optimize for shareholder value. I highly encourage you to give life in Europe a go at some point. I hope you'll return (or stay) also having reached the same perspective.

[drorco]

I'm not American. I did stay for months though in the US (SF, NY) and Europe (Italy, France, Greece, PT, DE, more) at times.

I think for competitive and talented people, US in general offers much more lucrative opportunities as long as you're OK with the US specific drawbacks. For non-competitive people, living in Europe would probably be a more convenient.

I think the problem though is in the future, both the US and Europe has grave societal and economic issues but from the different angles. Europe lacks economical drive and seems to discourage change on a cultural level. The US on the other hand seems to be an extreme catalyst.

I'm not familiar enough with quantitative data to judge on the compound interest, nevertheless I think in the last few decades we have already been witness on the global level to major changes in wealth: empires like UK have shrank, giants like China have risen. This had been very different a few decades ago and is an anecdote at least that compound interest can only do so much for empires, in the face of major changes.

[kjshsh123]

This isn't a view thing though. We have the data. What you're saying is what Piketty said.

Only issue is, when you account for depreciation, you find that r>g applied to housing (so boomer NIMBYs) not billionaires.

This is not a Karl Marx thing, but a Henry George thing.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-...

[palmotea]

> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent.

Luck always plays the biggest role. Maybe the billionaires would have always been successful in some way, but not be a billionaire or even a millionaire.

Also, your argument sounds like a just-so story designed to support the status quo.

> the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent.

Is is really a good idea to be ruled by the people with the greatest "wealth attraction?"

> Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

Yes, because regardless of anything else, the wealth imbalance has been politically destabilizing. Your comment strikes me as out-of-touch quantitative thinking: making certain easily-measured numbers going up the highest goal, while ignoring other things that are harder to quantify. That's a blind spot shared by a lot of people, especially tech people.

[drorco]

I'm mostly trying to make sense of the world and so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense.

So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent.

We can try and moderate it as a system (e.g some forms of democracy, socialism, etc.) to maybe lower the amplitudes, but it would be ignorant to deny that this might be a core part of current human nature. Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie.

Now imagine, there'd be some alien government, who'd be like "whoa humans are making way too disproportionate progress compared to the other species, let's tax/prune them so they don't get too much power".

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

> ... so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense.

What do you mean, you found that out? And what does that have to do with anything?

> So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent.

To me, that doesn't sound like an observation, but rather an interpretation. We could apply various epistemological carpet beaters to see what remains. One would be the critique of ideology. A few others can be found in the philosophy of science. It also seems to contradict your reference to thermodynamics. Wouldn't that mean that personality traits don't play a role at all? We don't look at individual particles, and certainly not at their personality traits.

> Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie.

I cannot understand this conclusion at all. Why should the structural relationship to other species be reflected within the species itself?

[drorco]

> I cannot understand this conclusion at all. Why should the structural relationship to other species be reflected within the species itself?

It's all an interpretation, never claimed it to be anything beyond a thinking model I like.

> To me, that doesn't sound like an observation, but rather an interpretation. We could apply various epistemological carpet beaters to see what remains. One would be the critique of ideology. A few others can be found in the philosophy of science. It also seems to contradict your reference to thermodynamics. Wouldn't that mean that personality traits don't play a role at all? We don't look at individual particles, and certainly not at their personality traits.

No we don't, but I don't think it's necessarily because we don't want to, but because we often can't. Nevertheless, I think my rationale still applies. For example, if you take a bunch of matter, for example water, you'd find out that the distribution of Deuterium and definitely Tritium is really "unfair". Why only so few particles get to have that extra neutron and others do not?

> I cannot understand this conclusion at all. Why should the structural relationship to other species be reflected within the species itself?

It doesn't necessarily have to but: 1. It seems to have been very favorable trait evolutionally to force your will on other species. I'm no brain nor social expert but it seems to me that in order to stop this trait internally, there would need to be some pretty strong inhibitors to counter that. 2. Regardless of the species claim, you can see the pattern of exceptional individuals with disproportionate influence in many other places in nature: queen bees, pack leaders, and human kings of sorts. in I think practically every culture on earth in recorded history?

I really struggle to think of any mass systems, in human society or nature in which power is not distributed disproportionally to a relatively small portion of individuals.

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

> never claimed it to be anything beyond a thinking model I like.

Sorry, but if that's your yardstick for acceptable models of thought, then only nonsense can come out of it. No one has any reason to take any of your thoughts seriously if you don't question your own thinking more critically.

> Why only so few particles get to have that extra neutron and others do not?

This has nothing to do with thermodynamics and even less to do with unfairness. It's a completely meaningless analogy. You might as well just flip it around and say that it's good that so few particles have to carry around that annoying extra neutron, or whatever. If you're going to draw any conclusions about humans from this, you might as well read coffee grounds or clouds or animal bones scattered on the forest floor. That's not thinking!

I have people like that in my personal circle. They're not exactly the brightest minds.

Edit: A queen bee is simply fed in a special way during the larval stage. Ultimately, it doesn't matter which larva is selected for this purpose. That said, it is also wrong to imagine her as an actual queen or as the CEO of the bees. She does not rule over the other bees but is simply responsible for laying eggs. If you wanted to, you could see from this example that your thinking does not proceed from premises to conclusions, but rather begins with conclusions and then rather loosely gathers together premises that might fit.

[_DeadFred_]

You know that human civilization exists because of all the people putting in work every day who are not motivated just by by money, right? If everyone was billionaire level money obsessed society would cease to work. There is nothing to indicate billionaires are giving us a disproportionate amount of what makes society work, and without working society to host it there is no progress.

[drorco]

> You know that human civilization exists because of all the people putting in work every day who are not motivated just by by money, right?

Where did I say that?

> If everyone was billionaire level money obsessed society would cease to work. There is nothing to indicate billionaires are giving us a disproportionate amount of what makes society work, and without working society to host it there is no progress.

I think if you wouldn't have the crazy risk takers who want the power/influence/money, either other people would need to take the lead on that, or there'd be a lot less advancement and we'd be closer as a society to our ancestors.

I've yet to see mass systems of groups in which work is being done without the leadership and initiative of a small proportion of people. For example, imagine a movement that is not founded by 1 or few people, but instead a company that is founded Day 1 with thousands of people, instantly. I think that's practically impossible without a hypothetical hivemind, but I'd like to be proven wrong!

[jibal]

> I'm mostly trying to make sense of the world

By completely ignoring the facts about it.

> So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent.

It doesn't seem that way to people who look at ALL factors, not just this one that is chosen to justify a sociopathic ideology.

[mcny]

Not to be too glib but my mom would ask counter questions like this:

Why is it that we have to trim out nails when they grow? Why not leave it natural?

Why do we remove the weed in between the pavers in our backyard? Why not let it be natural?

The fact is the world around us needs constant work. Our capitalism is no different. It needs constant pruning or it becomes gluttonous. There was a book I think which said most people involved in illegal drug trafficking are barely getting by, most of the income is soaked up at the top. I don't remember the point the bio was trying to make but it feels like that way for any enterprise these days.

The richest people in the US have reportedly increased their net worth by over 1.5T over the course of the last year or so.

How is this sustainable?

[drorco]

Isn't this basically Entropy? Why do stars fuse and spread out their energy? Can't they just keep it all in? They are going to blow up/die out eventually, how is this sustainable?

The notion I'm getting is that these forces that drive change are bigger than all of us, and they are inherently unsustainable in the larger scale of things, pretty similar to how solar systems are not really sustainable in a scale much larger than us, but not that is still pretty small in a universal scale.

So for your perspective it might be unsustainable, but for the bigger system what you describe is smaller than a grain of sand.

[mcny]

The point is everything needs work. We can't just say oh capitalism produces billionaires so billionaires must be good.

[drorco]

Or in the absence of other competing systems which can be shown to be more efficient, we could say OK seems like billionaires are part of this ecosystem. If you'd like, similar to how we don't like mosquitos but they are nevertheless an important part of the current ecosystem, whether we like it or not. Though if we ever find a better alternative, they'd definitely be in a hard spot.

[kjshsh123]

US homeowners have increased their net worth like $15 trillion since the start of the pandemic.

Besides, there's this thing called tax incidence and it's not as simple as "tax the billionaires" because it's not clear how that plays out in terms of people's wages or middle class investments.

On the other hand, land value taxes would actually be incident on landowners.

[pstuart]

And the US monetary supply has also increased by $15 trillion: https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1695809591047491857?lang...

Therefore devaluing the value of the dollar so that those who had basically steady state income (wage earners) have been completely fucked while the lucky ones had their yachts rise with the tide.

[vladvasiliu]

I think there's clearly a question of envy which doesn't seem addressed.

I'm not particularly in favour of high taxation, but I think that the argument is a bit more subtle than that. The general point is that "the ultra rich" are able to benefit from a whole host of loopholes which allow them to pay proportionally less than the plebs.

Now, this specific point seems somewhat debatable, judging by the fact that people don't seem to agree; I personally have not looked into the matter to form an opinion.

Maybe our tax code hasn't kept up with the financialization of the economy. In any case, this whole tax increase thing, at least as I see it in France, since to spill over to "regular rich people", as in engineers or similar who "just" have a relatively high salary.

Another issue, which I think is different but is rolled into complaints about rising tax rates is what the state actually does with the money. As in "I'm ok with paying tax, but not to fund this or that thing". In France, specifically, many "public service" offices have closed, having people either travel great distances or fight half-assed computer systems, while, at the same time, the number of public servants (so, cost) has increased.

[dv_dt]

Look for the Sugarscape model research studies. With uniform equally distributed starting point, fairly unbiased rules, and a set of random early wins, large disparities tend to accumulate over time without active policy to counteract it.

[jibal]

Which is why there should be active policy to counteract it.

[rawgabbit]

You could have asked the same question when slavery was legal. Why is slavery not evenly distributed. Social injustice has been the default since the beginning of known history. Social justice is something that has to be fought for.

[1718627440]

Because a tree has better access times than a list, so some amount of hierarchy results in a better performance than unstructured set of individuals. As directing people means more available work force for ones goals, and money represents ability to do something and availability to resources, some people will have more money than others.

[RGamma]

There's many shades of grey between financial laissez faire and enforced equality. This entire "taxes are theft/unnecessary" (and frankly extremist in the neutral definition of the word) thinking is destroying the US politically and socially right now.

Do you not see this? Probably because you don't feel it in your pocket (yet, let's see what happens when the USD crashes. I will feel it too, no doubt.)

There's the belief that the economy can be a mighty tool to improve our lives, but isn't it going pretty much overboard since some time? Is this materialistic growth-at-all-costs ideology really making average US lives better these days?

From the outside the US feels like a runner that is stretching its arm towards the finish line (total automation) while also falling on their ass.

[jibal]

> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed

That's not an argument, it's a completely counterfactual assertion ... or rather, the assertion that this is the cause of uneven distribution of wealth.

> Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

But of course it's not true, it's just an attempt to justify a morally bankrupt sociopathic ideology.

[port11]

Countries with low inequality tend to have strongly progressive taxation systems — Belgium, Sweden, Finland, etc. The billionaire class isn’t a necessity, it’s a failure of morality to overpower the affordances of hyper-growth capitalism.

[gruez]

>Organizing your country with more sustainable growth where income disparities aren't so high means you don't have this problem to this extent.

Sounds like US vs Europe. Having redistributive policies funded by taxes works well until your most productive people flee for a country that doesn't, and you steadily lose ground to competitors economically.

[ozlikethewizard]

Americans like to act like they've beaten European nations in some kind of battle, but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens? Not try to make the biggest corporations? In which case, even taking the whole of Europe as an average (which you shouldn't), by every metric beyond GDP its ahead.

[gruez]

>but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens?

It's going to be hard to provide all of that when you don't have the money for it (eg. fiscal crisis in France right now), or if you get invaded by your neighbor (or any other competitor) eclipses you economically and then uses that to subjugate you. The european model of reaping the peace dividend and using it to fund a more generous welfare state worked from 1990s to 2010s, but is breaking down with the rise of china and russia, and is further exacerbated by sluggish growth and the demographic/pension crisis.

[disgruntledphd2]

> the demographic/pension crisis.

This is the actual issue, which we often avoid talking about because it's grim. Like, health care is expensive, old people health care is really expensive, and the proportion of old people in many Western countries is increasing over time (because of a fall in birth rates). I believe the FT had a good article about this recently, where they showed that the vast majority of extra spending from government was on old people.

Now, clearly, society doesn't want to just shoot old people when they get sick, but I'm not sure how taxation is gonna look as the proportion of old people increases. Obviously increasing retirement ages helps here, but that's mostly just a massive tax on blue collar workers, who are much less likely to be able to continue working into their 70s, whereas for many cubicle jockeys, it's a lot more plausible.

[arjie]

Everyone has their own objectives for life, but I actually don't think that the purpose of a state is to provide the instantaneous highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens. Some might argue that it is to provide those things not at a sampled time but over a duration, but if so which generation should experience that? And if optimized over generations then surely some people must lose so that future others must gain, or the future others must lose to that the present ones may gain.

Personally, I think a higher goal for the state is to provide a substrate of sufficient physical safety, law and order, and infrastructure so that its citizens may have the ability to pursue their aspirations. I think human thriving is very important. And I want the ability to try at a ridiculous thing and achieve commensurate reward. In many ways, I don't even want that for me. I want that for others. When I see someone take a crack at something that most thought impossible and make it happen, I love it.

It isn't that those of us who have this opinion are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. It's that we like that someone took a crack at something absurd and became billionaires for it. People who don't get it always say these things out of misunderstanding: "Why do the poor in the US vote so often against their own interests?". The obvious answer is "because they are principled and not purely self-interested".

[Yizahi]

The thing is that Europe doesn't have much redistribute policies. Everyone at around lower rank manager or middle developer are landing in the highest tax bracket in most of the countries, and pay as much tax as rich people. And almost every tax raise is usually targeted at these barely middle-class people.

[dns_snek]

Except for the fact that despite popular belief, this doesn't actually happen. Not even among millionaires.

https://taxjustice.net/press/millionaire-exodus-did-not-occu...

[m463]

your post has a mistaken question.

The actual question is: "If we tax tax them, will they leave? (losing the planned tax revenue/backfiring)"

It is pretty easy to avoid state taxes - just move to a different state.

[Balinares]

Research shows that they mostly don't, for all the screeching about it. https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/ju...

[rayiner]

Taxing billionaires isn't "necessary to raise enough tax revenue." Total personal income in the U.S. is 26 trillion annually: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income. For the most part, that's real money that reflects goods and services in the real economy.

The increase in wealth of billionaires in 2025 was $1.5 trillion: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-1-5-trillio... Most of that isn't even real money--it's people betting on AI. (As an aside, is the government going to give huge tax refunds when the AI bubble bursts and all that "wealth" disappears?)

If the U.S. just taxed people the way they do in Germany we could raise trillions in revenue without resorting to tricks like one-time wealth taxes. The focus is on billionaires because Americans want a German-style welfare state without German-style taxes on the middle and upper middle class.

[Lionga]

Countries in which the income disparities ARE so high are also the ones where the "poor" are the richest. They just feel poor in comparison not in absolute terms.

70K a year is poor in California, but top 1% rich in almost any country in the world.

Low income disparities are countries like Albania, Afghanistan, Armenia to name the first three with below 30 GINI income.

[samiv]

This is an anomaly and left over from the time when middle class was growing after the 2nd world war. We (Western countries) are dismantling all the back stops and the process will reverse and move all the wealth to the few rich people in the capital class. When this process is complete the poverty levels in the west will equal those of the countries you mentioned, Afghanistan etc.

The USA and UK are leading the process since they started to pursue this goal aggressively during the 80s with Reaganism and Thatcherism.

[ghufran_syed]

and you’re claiming the process still isn’t complete more than 40 years later? shouldn't the wealth gap between the poor in the US vs the poor in Afghanistan be starting to get smaller if your argument is correct?

[dns_snek]

And this is exactly why nominal $ amount comparisons are completely pointless. Someone who makes $70k in southern or eastern Europe is living like a king (or living at least good life anywhere in Europe) while someone making $70k in expensive parts of California is going to struggle.

Wealth is equal to your share of the overall resources, $ amounts are just an abstraction.