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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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Okay a history lesson on how capitalism started and feudalism fell.
When you are "rich" in feudal society it means you have land. Land that everyone sees, that gives predictable income and even least educated peasant would be able to tax you reasonably (reasonably = as high as possible without you starting a rebellion over it). But then come merchants - they can have a wagon full of wood or just a small pouch of spices and it would be worth the same. Nobody really knows how much their wares earn because it fluctuates and every goods transport is a huge risk. So the merchants gain wealth indefinitely because king can't see how much they have ant tax them accordingly, while landowners get poor because they are taxed to oblivion.
Now who is the modern "nobility"? Who has wealth tied up and measured in such a way that government knows exactly how much to tax them? Wage workers. In fact your employer rats you out to government on how much you earn. In exchange things like companies, banks, stocks, loans etc. are in the "nobody knows how much they are worth" category. Say you are taxed 10% on the value of all the stocks you own, this means you have to sell 10% of your stocks annually, and by selling stocks you make those stocks less valuable for everyone... so technically they should be taxed less because value drops down? Generally speaking if taxing something changes it's value drastically then governments avoid taxing it.
My personal solution - outlaw stocks, bonds and loans for fucks sake.
Myth.
You can transfer the stocks themselves to the IRS, and leave the IRS with the responsibility for liquidating them. We can require the IRS to look at the total traded volume of any issue they acquire, and prohibit them from selling more than 1% of that volume in the same time period. Liquidated shares will comprise no more than 1%; those shares will not significantly affect the market value of the issue.
"Stock" is what the ownership interest is distributed among multiple people. When two people equally build a business together, they each hold a "share" of that business's "stock". Banning "stocks" means banning every type of joint ownership, which is every type of business except "sole proprietorship" and "government enterprise". Banning stocks is only feasible in a completely centralized economy.
Banning Bonds and Loans is even less feasible, and results in even more absurdities. Taken to extremes, your Amazon driver would have to collect payment at time of delivery, not at time of order. Payment before delivery could be considered a type of loan. Likewise, a business's order to a vendor for supplies would have to be paid at time of delivery. Any other time would be considered a "loan" one way or another.
Just a note, suggesting a 10% tax is pure fear mongering that billionaires and capitalists use to scare people. The average property tax rate in the United States is 1.1% so that's a reasonable percentage to give. People don't sell 1% of their home every year.
Property taxes are a thing. Stocks are property.
I honest to god used 10% as an idea of "ridiculously low tax" but I guess the topic of problems with billionaires may be too american for me.
Stocks should be taxed on buy/sell and yearly hold though.
You live in a country that has 10% property tax rates?
IMO just stop letting them borrow against the unrealized values. You can borrow against what you've paid taxes on.
Just have countries force the "you can't charge interest" rule on Christians.
Islam coming later was able to see the obvious loophole so they added you can't accept loans with interest btw.
Though this does interfere with separation of church and state it seems countries already forgot about that.
I enjoyed reading this perspective, thanks. It's definitely compelling.
Yeah, the financial market was never actually useful. Its just a money vacuum that the rich benefit from