Lots of American universities are named after the dudes who paid for them initially. I'm not saying I'd be proud to go to Bezos U (go fighting bald eagles!) but if it were free then you could hold your nose.

Strangely, I guess, if I try to imagine myself having one billion dollars, it's just an amount of money that the only way I'd even make a dent in it is if I either was specifically making bad purchases or if I had lost my mind. (For example, just gambling it all away.)

Even if you simply threw it in a normal index fund that isn't focused on dividends, but growth, you might still make 1%, or 10 million a year in dividends. So just the dividends you accidentally make would let you live a very luxurious lifestyle.

I could imagine having one billion dollars if it was just the worth of my private company that I didn't want to split up or something like that, but otherwise, it's really just too much money. I'd be donating to charities just to keep my net worth at a level that I could look myself in the mirror and not feel like a villain, and so I'd actually be in favor of things like wealth taxes. It would just make my life easier.

I think people who imagine themselves as billionaires and are still stingy with money are either not accurately imagining that amount of money, or they're too stupid to have any amount of money, or they're villains, just like every billionaire today is a villain.

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 trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

Elon's treason and corruption would be an easier case to prosecute and confiscate his ill gotten wealth.

Especially with ICE and national security involved.

But then they'll get smart, and when AI has led to a permanent 65% unemployment rate, they will demand UBI, and take it from the Trillionaires.

I was at work, talking to someone my own income.

I asked him to name some things that he'd buy with a billion dollars that he couldn't get with $100 million.

He couldn't actually name one thing, but kept insisting that billionaires 'needed' the money.

Part of the issue here is that the damage has already been done. The taxes should have been in place a LOOOOOONG time ago to at least partially prevent getting where we are now. This is the equivalent strategy of running out the clock while you're ahead. They've done that already. Focusing on the worst of the worst is a fool's errand.

Doesn't mean we can't update the rules moving forward, of course, but you're going to find that your ideas are not as popular as you think if and when people realize they have to voluntarily make compromises. Amazon could be harmed, perhaps mortally, quite easily if everyone would stop buying from their e-commerce site and businesses would stop using their web services. Good luck with that. Walmart would cease to be a thing if everybody stopped shopping there. You know the song and the dance, but that shit's not happening.

Yeah, now it's too late. Taxing the billionaires will only be undone by them as they use their vast riches to influence elections and control governments. Today's ultra wealthy has more wealth and political power than they have at any time in human history, and they are set on world domination (and enslaving the worker class until they can all be replaced with automation).

We're going to have to find a way to take all their ill-gotten gains. And rest assured, they will not relinquish it unless forced to do so. We'll probably have to pry their lucre from their cold dead hands, and that of their heirs (and their heirs).

Here we go again. No sources.

According to his site:

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/sanders-make-college-tuition-free/

It would cost $70B/year.

According to this site, he makes about $9.8B/year, so even a 100% tax wouldn't do it.

The problem is how do you calculate his taxes? He's already doing that and paying his $800 or whatever it is. So you have to make assumptions about how much you would tax at 4.7%.

I therefore assumed this meant if his entire net worth were taxed at 4.7%.

According to here which tracks it real time: https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/

It's currently $270B.

$270B x 0.047 = $12.7B.

So no, you couldn't fund it just by taxing him 4.7%. I think we'll need to create a special tax on billionaires to cover the rest.

THIS math may not work, but there is math that will work.

A good start is the America First Fund (irony intended), which is what we will use as seed money for the social programs that this country desperately needs to be able to compete with ever other industrialized nation.

The American First Fund is where we will collect things like the tariff repayments. Why should those go to the government, when they were stolen from the Citizens? That money should go into the America First Fund. Any corporate fines collected because of their crimes against Citizens, should go into the AFF.

And fines against corporations and Sociopathic Oligarchs should be increased enormously. The minimum fine for ANY infraction should start at $1 billion. Fines should hurt them, just like a $200 "rolling through a stop sign" ticket hurts Citizens.

And confiscation should be on the table. Corporations are to be operated to benefit the American economy, and the Citizens. If you continue to operate your business to your personal benefit alone, at the detriment of society, your entire corporation will be confiscated, and operated as a non-profit to benefit society, with any excess revenues going to the AFF. And Oligarch families who find themselves destitute because their entire estate was confiscated due to their sociopathic behavior toward their fellow Citizens, will NOT be eligible for the AAF benefits funded by those confiscations. In the future, the only homeless people will be former oligarchs who have EARNED their homelessness.

The America First Fund's level will be mentioned nightly on the evening news. When the wealthy tune in to see what the Dow/ NASDAQ/ S&P were for the day, the rest of the Citizens can see where the America First Fund stands, and the wealthy will also see it, and know that their money could be removed, and added to it at any time.

American Citizens should benefit by fines against corporations for abusing us, they shouldn't go to the government to build more bombs or golden monuments, while we're told there is no money for food or healthcare or education. Those fines belong to US, and the America First Fund makes sure those funds are spent on US, and not the Sociopathic Oligarchs who caused the fines in the first place.

I'm assuming this is about taxing his Net Worth and not his Income? Because most years they have negative income, and on some years they have like $30Bn which won't be enough for free college.

they account for unpaid trillions in tax avoidance schemes. plus reigning in the DEFENSE budget is a good start.

because more education definitely would not increase someone’s chances of making more money

Tax the billionaires now so we all can be billionaires later.

probably has more to do with people not wanting to see 'lessers' get ahead--those who put in less effort and minorities, etc.

you can't fight this with memes. it's something that's fundamental to american programming and not everyone sits on the internet all day reading this shit.

look at the underlying messages in films, tv shows and popular media, and it's the same ambition and personal responsibility driven nonsense that has always been there. it's always putting out the message that only the most deserving should succeed.

the conversation about wokeness and representation is just a distraction.

If the countries that are a nice place to love all came round to rising taxes, then there would be nowhere for these billionaires to run too. If things get bad enough it might happen...

It's okay we're only gonna tax trillionaires, so the billionaires are okay