[credit_guy]

That's not all that matters. The main reason to have taxes is to fund the government, not to make society a more just society. And thinking that billionaires will just take a wealth tax as served, and perhaps will ask "can I have some more" is one way to think about this, but probably not the best way. A better way to think is that action might be followed by reaction. There is no manifest destiny for California to be the epicenter of tech.

[m11a]

California already has very high taxes. I think marginal tax rates are higher in California than for UK tax residents, certainly for CGT, and roughly similar for income tax.

I'd say the fact that California remains the epicenter of tech despite its high taxes suggests concentration of talent matters far more than tax rates.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yeah, the marginal rates for California are approximately the same as I pay in Ireland. The capital gains taxes are way lower though.

[mannanj]

Does the government not have the goal to make society a more just society? When did that stop being a priority of government? Even a teeny, tiny one?

[credit_guy]

Sure, the government has that goal too. But the government has many tools, and using taxes for that is using the wrong tool. Or maybe you think that billionaires owe us not only to pay taxes, but also to play nice, and pay those taxes with a smile on their face?

[breakyerself]

Billionares shouldn't exist. We shouldn't just tax them for the revenue. We should tax them to limit the undemocratic power that comes with excessive wealth.

[mannanj]

Agreed. Humans evolved in a tribal, local community leadership system. To have as much wealth as millions of people that you never interact with should not exist as a person. It is against the system principles of humanity; either create a new species and turn the billionaires into them, or balance the system.

[ethbr1]

> pay those taxes with a smile on their face

The government's monopoly on punitive violence isn't only intended for the peasantry...

[mannanj]

Funding the government, which has the goal to create a more just society, means taxes should support that.

If you're not using your funding to support your goals, thats corruption.

[credit_guy]

This is wishful thinking. Billionaires can vote with their feet, or can pay expensive lawyers and accountants to find all the possible loopholes to not pay those taxes. California wants to tax Elon Musk for his trillion dollars. But how much of that trillion dollars was generated in California? He has a very valid claim that a lot of it was generated in Texas, and he'll go all the way to the Supreme Court with that.

People can vote that a new tax should be levied on billionaires, but can't vote how those billionaires will react to the tax. Moving out of state is one option (see Larry Page, Sergey Brin, etc). Hiring armies of lawyers to challenge any wealth assessment is another. Litigating to the Supreme Court yet another. I'm not a billionaire and never will be, but if I can think of these few ideas, they can think of 100 times more.

[mannanj]

It's wishful to ask the system designed for a goal, to do the goal?

[credit_guy]

Exactly. You can ask many things, like you can ask for world peace, and you can ask for universal brotherly love. If the ask has no chance to result in the outcome you desire, it's purely wishful thinking.

It feels to me you are asking "why can't we just eliminate billionaires". Well, they have a vote in that decision.

[lovelearning]

What are those other tools?

[well_ackshually]

>and pay those taxes with a smile on their face?

Considering the alternative for them over the past millennia has been, inevitably that they get caught, hanged, quartered, beaten and other various violent methods: yes, they should smile, they're buying their lives with all that money :)

[robocat]

> they're buying their lives

Extortion is the word that summarizes your point.

[well_ackshually]

Ah yes, extortion is not the part where their disproportionate centralisation of wealth threatens your very livelihood with every action they take. Extortion isn't when they happily tell you they're going to replace you with AI. Extortion isn't when they steal your money with unpaid hours, it isn't when they threaten to fire you if you don't shut the fuck up and do as they say, when they act as a state within the state, corrupting institutions and polluting the very ground you, your children and your food grow on, it's when they're being held accountable for their actions and told that if they're going to have a personal wealth equal to that of millions, they also have the sum of responsibilities of these millions.

Just so you know, careers as a bootlicker are kind of a dead end.

[ycdeebs]

Careers of insulting people are also kind of a dead end.

[Nasrudith]

You clearly don't understand psychology at all. Rule by fear has a major downside that Machivelli warned about. If you keep people under threat all the time, as soon as the threat fails and you can no longer point a gun at your head they preemptively kill you and feel good about it.

Threatening violence to get what you want always ends with you being out-violenced by a bigger thug.

[mannanj]

This is how alpha chimps function in their tribe. They resort to war and violence to prolong their rule, and it works for long enough, thats all they need for the cost-benefits to be worth it on their side.

In humanity, being the alpha chimp, you can actually just run away from the tribe with all your wealth instead of outright die and form a new identity and start a life elsewhere and change your last name and go somewhere not well known, and if you and your family does this for enough generations you are forgotten.

I think this might explain the rotten apples at the tip-top of our industrial/societal wealth classes. I think they are these people, played out over generations, having somehow survived the system that used to make it impossible to do this when at the chimp level (or even medieval maybe, maybe this new form of evasion only arose in the industrial age).

[BugsJustFindMe]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alpha-male-a...

[well_ackshually]

It's only by fear if they don't understand how to restrain themselves. Behave well with all your wealth, and nothing will happen: it's the same reason why wealthy patrons of art and craftsmen were at least respected, and why things ended poorly for robber barons.

And no, I do not believe that Musk's flabby arms or Bezos' shiny head are a threat of bigger violence to me anyways.

[georgemcbay]

> The main reason to have taxes is to fund the government, not to make society a more just society.

Both are important reasons for taxes.

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both." (often attributed to Louis Brandeis, though he probably never said exactly the quote)

Taxation is one of the primary tools for avoiding destructive levels of wealth concentration.

Of course, the wealthy decry this as unfair wealth redistribution but all governments engage in constant wealth redistribution.

In the US we happen to have decided (since the Reagan era) that through increasingly regressive taxes the redistribution will almost always function upwards, ultimately resulting in the oligarchical dismantling of our government that we find ourselves in today.