[notahacker]

Well for a start it pressurises asset holders to sell their assets.

But the point isn't to increase stakeholdership so much as to stop privileging stakeholders with very low effective tax bills relative to mere workers, which means that there's a lot less cause for concern about those workers not owning their means of production

[gruez]

>Well for a start it pressurises asset holders to sell their assets.

Even assuming this is true, then what? Do you think the average joe is going to suddenly buy alphabet or meta stocks because bill ackman or ken griffin sold their shares to buy bigger yachts?

[notahacker]

Perhaps you could direct this strawman upthread, to the person who implied that to enable the average joe to obtain a share in the means of wealth creation it would be necessary for the HNW individuals who currently own it to be able to maintain that ownership without paying tax on it...

All I pointed out was that at the margin, HNW individuals needing to liquidate 1% of their portfolio every year (and also HNW individuals not being disincentived from realising their capital gains as under the current system) actually works in favour of people trying to buy shares in means of production (by increasing liquidity and lowering prices), as well as obviously against wealth concentration.

There are arguments against wealth taxes that are actually credible, like those concerning capital flight, but this thread seems like a magnet for bad ones. Like, AMZN valuation dropping slightly at the margin from Bezos at al's forced divestment of portions of their stock actually being a bad thing for the economy as a whole is a defensible position; the utopian scenario involving delivery drivers ending up with a decent sized stake in Amazon somehow being impeded by wealth taxes isn't....

[tengbretson]

> Well for a start it pressurises asset holders to sell their assets.

To whom are the selling? The buyers would be only those that can make efficient enough returns to offset this tax due to their existing systemic advantages, like economies of scale or regulatory lobbying. This would accelerate consolidation.

> But the point isn't to increase stakeholdership so much as to stop privileging stakeholders with very low effective tax bills relative to mere workers

At this point I think there is ample evidence that policy in this country does not move forward without the consent of these so-called privileged stakeholders. If you take that as a given, why would you support handing these people an economic machine gun to point at your future self?

[notahacker]

> To whom are the selling? The buyers would be only those that can make efficient enough returns to offset this tax due to their existing systemic advantages, like economies of scale or regulatory lobbying. This would accelerate consolidation.

You don't need "systemic advantages" to earn more than 1% average annual return on your wealth. And strangely enough, not paying tax on their wealth accumulation whilst everyone else pays it on their earnings and trades doesn't reduce prospective buyers' advantages...

> At this point I think there is ample evidence that policy in this country does not move forward without the consent of these so-called privileged stakeholders. If you take that as a given, why would you support handing these people an economic machine gun to point at your future self?

Using pretty phrases like "economic machine guns" doesn't somehow make an argument of the form that wealth taxes somehow make wealthy people more powerful actually make sense.

[frmersdog]

>The buyers would be only those that can make efficient enough returns to offset this tax

Or people who aren't wealthy enough to have to pay it.