this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Financial obesity? More like socioeconomic cancer.
It's not just an excess of adipose tissue. It's a malignant tumor, and it's capable of metastasizing. It's already in society's lymph. We're cooked.
Where I live, in Washington state, there isn't an income tax however, finally they're implementing one on people making over 1M/yr. There were people out protesting that definitely don't make 1M/yr. It's wild.
But where would the money come from to pay the tax from billionaires? They don't have cash so they would need to get it from somewhere.
If they have billions of dollars, they're not strapped for cash. They have a whole culture and industry designed around tax "optimization" where they buy private yachts, mansions, paintings, and other "real" assets under shell companies to write those purchases off as "business expenses" to reduce their tax liability. That's why they "don't have cash". Because they deliberately avoid holding cash across fiscal years.
They also have sneaky ways of avoiding capital gains tax by reinvesting dividends in ways that defer taxation indefinitely.
That all needs to change, and the only way to change it is through tax policy.
The only way to defer capital gains taxes should be through certain retirement plans, which are generally used by the working class because billionaires don't need 401Ks. And they still get taxed at the end of term when the money is withdrawn, and they can't be withdrawn from early without a tax penalty.
All these exceptions for billionaires written into the fine lines of the tax code that you need to be able to afford a personal accountant and layers of shell companies in order to utilize needs to go away.
Billionaires have the money to pay taxes; we need to stop allowing them to pretend they don't.
They don't have a billion dollars. So where did the money come from to pay the tax?
I'll tell you, it's you. The consumer.
I bet you think China pays the tarrifs too
Your comments across this thread show you took Economics 101 and think you understand shit
Are you deranged? They have net worths in the hundreds of billions of dollars. They make billions more dollars each year. I just explained in detail how they game the tax system to avoid paying taxes on their gains. I'm not going to write it all out for you again just because you missed it the first time.
Yes, obviously their revenue comes from the consumers. In the same way your salary comes from your employer. Money changes hands, that's the whole point. What difference does that make?
By the way, a significant portion of their revenue (with increasing emphasis lately) comes from business-to-business sales. Not the consumer.
And no, China doesn't pay the US tariffs. The US importers do, and they pass the costs on to their consumers. What kind of idiotic strawman/red herring was that supposed to be? If I was a moron who thought China pays US tariffs, I wouldn't be here saying "tax the rich," would I? Stop deflecting from your plutocrat apologia.
Saying the billionaire don't have a billion dollars, so where does the cash come from to pay the tax? This is a real question and it's the reason no one has figured out how to tax them.
Like i said, the "wealth" elon has is backed from stocks at 350 p/e. That money isn't real. U effectively want to tax something that isn't real.
"the billionaire don't have a billion dollars"
Oh yeah, I forgot "billionaire" is what we call someone who doesn't have a billion dollars...
"No one has figured out how to tax them"
I just explained it in detail, which you continue to ignore. People have figured it out, it's not that complicated. It just doesn't get implemented because politicians are bought by corporate dark money lobby groups, and people like you do a lot of footwork obfuscating the situation on the internet by pretending billionaires are poor and penniless.
"the 'wealth' elon has is backed from stocks at 350 p/e. That money isn't real"
Yes, their net worths are inflated (which gives them benefits on loans, which they use to further inflate their wealth). But that's easy to fix. Either don't let them declare worths that are higher than reality, or tax them at the net worths they declare.
Either way, that doesn't change anything I said about how capital gains are taxed, or how they should be taxed.
Get a clue.
Why should you, I, or anyone care where they get the money from?
A simple answer would be they could sell some of the assets they have which contribute to their classification as a billionaire. If they don’t have the collateral to pay the tax, they’d be able to prove it by no longer being classified as a billionaire, in which case the goal would be achieved with another billionaire being euthanised.
Also, is you get rid of a billionaire, how does that help the people? I'm give you an example. We take all of elon musks assets and socks. Go to the open market to sell them. No one buys them because they don't want the stocks taken from them, so the people buy them. The sticks are now worth 1/100 of the original value because elons companies are high P/E stocks. So know you turned a "trillion" into 100 billion that the people paid for. You then use that 100 billion to pay for services. It's gone in 8 months.
Next year you are have no service, no money, and possibly down companies that failed.
I don't see the point.
Eliminating billionaires will neutralise their ability to manipulate society at the level they currently do.
Money doesn’t originate from the private sector, if it did it would be fraud. The funding of services, in an economy with sovereignty of its currency, originates from legislation through the budgets passed by the relevant agents.
Permitting any entity to grow more powerful than the entity responsible for regulating it is carcinogenic, if not suicidal.
And you think that kind of system would work? And who is buying the assets?
Why are you defending the tolerance of sociopaths?
If they can’t find a buyer for their assets, they’d could give them away or destroy them. It’s irrelevant how they diminish their hoard, the point is that they cease their possession of it.
But the problem is the "horde" isn't real in some cases. Like with elon, his wealth is tied to 350 p/e stocks. Overnight his wealth would drop 700 billion of he was removed from ceo or investors priced the stock at 35 p/e.
It's fairy dust.
We just need to extend graduated tax brackets all the way up. Currently the highest tax brackets end somewhere at like six figures, and anything above that is taxed the same.
Even 90% taxes on a billion dollars still leaves you with a hundred million in spending money. There's no way someone needs more than that. In one year? That amount alone could be put in a CD with a 3% APY and you'd make $3,000,000 in interest in one year. There's no way someone needs even a net-worth higher than $100,000,000, but no one can complain about "only" making that much after taxes in a year.
Especially when you consider that tax rates only apply to the income above the amount specified in the bracket. That 90% would apply to your second billion made in a year. Everything below the first billion gets taxed at the same rates as everyone else in a given bracket, i.e. your first $100,000 in a year gets taxed the same as anyone else's first $100,000...
Billionaires have no room to complain.
Oh, and those graduated tax brackets should apply the same between capital gains and regular income. Currently, the highest capital gains tax rate in the US is about 20%... comparable to someone making about $45,000 a year in regular income...
That means the highest tax rate someone making money primarily from investments would pay is the same as someone who would be considered at or below the poverty line in most states.... And the billionaires are only paying that rate on their "taxable" interest, meaning it ignores all the money they launder through shell companies and writing off large purchases as business expenses...
Poor people can't write off rent, food, and utilities on their taxes... so why can billionaires write off mansions, yachts, and paintings...?