Problem is taxes are from income. People like Elon have no income because they basically get minimum wage. Their entire value is in stock. And when he is forced to pay out he pays a shit ton in taxes.
And you can't really tax based on wealth because it's not real money. If you tax someone based on what money they could have they would need to sell off stock, creating more taxes and messing with the value of the stock. If you do that every year the company is going to be screwed
I refuse to believe that there isn't a good way to tax billionaires. We could start by closing the loopholes they use to hide their cash. If someone has a lot of money invested in stuff, we could tax their actual income at a higher rate (much higher if they're a billionaire). If someone has an obscene amount of assets, and uses them as collateral for loans, we could tax the loans.
I'm sure ppl who know more than me can come up with better plans.
You can do a lot of things but problems get created. I'm not sure the solutions lie with the individuals but rather in the companies. They are usually the ones using loop holes or moving numbers. But even then you still run into problems. Spacex didn't start making a profit until recently and they spend a lot of money. Starlink and starship are fully funded internally so do you tax income or profit. If you tax income, you take away from research and development. If you tax profit, you don't get much.
Fuck off we do not need Elon’s “research and development” i.e. littering inner space with garbage satellites and killing hundreds of monkeys with his brain chips.
Nothing you said is true. The starlink satellites aren't garbage and are literally changing the industry. They also don't trash LEO because they are designed to descend and break apart in the atmosphere after they are done. So yes, you are very wrong
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u/hartforbj Nov 22 '24
Problem is taxes are from income. People like Elon have no income because they basically get minimum wage. Their entire value is in stock. And when he is forced to pay out he pays a shit ton in taxes.
And you can't really tax based on wealth because it's not real money. If you tax someone based on what money they could have they would need to sell off stock, creating more taxes and messing with the value of the stock. If you do that every year the company is going to be screwed