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The rich convinced us that taxing them is too complicated but everyday people can be taxed pretty easily
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this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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Note that property taxes, when reassessed every 10 years or so, are also adjusted with changes to the mil rate, as appropriate to keep taxes from property assessment changes from causing people to leave town.
Equities change in value daily. How should those be assessed, and what is the proper response when the equities decrease in value by 30% during a market crash? Does the government refund the previously paid taxes? What if that money is your retirement income?
At what point does a tax on equities essentially become a continuous draw-down of wealth on the same money year after year, resulting in absolutely no incentive to invest in business and for that matter a situation where it is impossible to build up any wealth? How will startups be funded? How will large, shoot for the stars projects be funded?
That's actually the point: use taxes to force rich people to make high risk investments.
If you can't figure out how to turn enough profit on your farm to pay the property taxes, then you sell your farm to pay the taxes and someone else gets to put the capital to better use.
If you can't figure out how to turn enough profit on your $10B company to pay the wealth tax, then you have to sell enough of it to pay the tax, and someone else gets more say in how the company runs.
Wealth tax encourages people with ungodly fortunes to make bigger, more risky bets, because they have to overcome the constant drain of wealth tax. Ultra-wealthy shouldn't just coast along on the low returns of super-safe investments, because those are the people who can afford to lose part of their fortune.
Instead, we have the guy with $1000 YOLOing his life savings on GME options, because the $80 he can get from an index fund isn't going to get him to retirement, while Berkshire Hathaway is sitting of $300B of US treasuries.
I see your point, but disagree with the approach as a long term policy. We can limit the accumulation by taxing the profits. If we can't do that, then the wealth tax won't be any more successful as they will hide that, too.
What's actually more likely to happen is executives would take a higher salary to pay the taxes and pay their employees less, because the last thing they want to do is be forced to sell shares which is the same as giving up ownership and control of their company at that level.
So yes there might be more taxes, but itd be at the disadvantage of the employees, and the government will give it all to DND anyway and you'll never see a dime of it.
Edit: and if they were forced to sell shares, its going to be other mega corps, private equity or hedge funds buying it, they'll still treat the company terribly, probably more so than the people who built it and cared about it, with an eventual hostile takeover as they accumulate more and more.
Edit: to be clear, I think this is a bad idea, but I do support taxing usage of unrealized gains. Thats pretty much how existing taxes work minus the gaping loophole that let's them not pay until they die, where they then get tax advantages.
don’t worry cousin. your ships gonna come in someday and all the fretting about taxing the rich will be worth it.