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[–] 155 points 9 months ago (7 children)

Just fucking pay the tax, dickwad.

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  • [–] 26 points 9 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 48 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Actually, there's a huge return on investment with bribes and political influence when you're a billionaire.

    Citizens united was a death blow.

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  • [–] 21 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Reaganomics -> Contra -> Bush Sr -> Citizens United -> 9/11 -> Patriot Act -> Middle East wars -> bank bailouts -> Pause for pandemic -> insurrection -> old man Biden sleeps on imprisoning trump -> literal gestapo in the streets.

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  • [–] 86 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    When they pay obscene amounts of money to prevent paying taxes, or break unions, or disenfranchise voters, it's because they calculate that the obscene amount of money is less than what they'd expend otherwise.

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  • [–] 31 points 9 months ago

    Don't forget their ego

    They may spend more in fighting it than they would in paying tax, but to avoid paying tax is a part of their identity

    I'm proud to pay tax. I want to make my society better. I was rich once, and I could have paid less tax, but I didn't avoid it because I knew that arseholes like these were making the world worse, and I wasn't going to be a part of the problem

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  • [+] 61 points 9 months ago (9 children)
  • [–] 29 points 9 months ago (8 children)

    Just make it illegal to be a billionaire, punishable by death. We’d have a lot less billionaires one way or another.

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  • [–] -5 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    How would that work?

    Do you mean that as soon as someone has a billion dollars in their bank account the would get a hit squad sent after them?

    Because that is really dumb.

    Just about every billionaire have their assets invested in several diverse financial instruments, usually not even directly under their own name.

    It is a highly complex task to uncover all that wealth.


    Aslo, why kill them?

    I have always thought that once a person amasses say 500 million (or some other arbitrary ammount) they should not be able to earn more money directly for themselves, but rather, all money earned on top of the set limit will be taxed to 100%, while maintaining stats to show who earned what so these rich guys can still have their highscore list that they seem to enjoy.

    To further incentivize these guys to keep working to bring in more taxes, the state should build statues and name important buildings in honor of them, you know, exploit their egos.

    Killing them is just a waste of talent and experience.

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  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago

    Foreword: I am not the person you replied to, and I also don't agree with killing anybody.

    That being said, I have to comment on this:

    Killing them is just a waste of talent and experience.

    I would argue they have neither. The people they employ are the ones with the talent and experience.

    Take Elon Musk, for example. He makes big claims that sound plausible, but anybody who actually understands what he's talking about knows that he's only pretending to be knowledgeable in the subject. It's the engineers and designers at Tesla that do all the hard work in bringing products to market, yet he gets the absurdly high pay package for doing little more than lying to consumers.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I’d go by net worth. And if you’re and $900mm you should be scared that the death squad’s math is different than yours. It’s ridiculously easy to not be a billionaire.

    Why kill them? Because they broke the social contract. We let them be enormously wealthy by having a net worth near a billion. It’s not like they were so valuable or productive that they earned that much money. All we ask is they keep their greed under one billion.

    If the punishment isn’t severe and final they will find ways to work around it. Their greed cannot be contained by normal methods.

    Billionaires don’t add value. That money is locked up. You recommend taxing it at 100% but they will find ways to avoid paying it.

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  • [+] -11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Broke the social contract?

    Say that I develop a new kind of solar panel, that is 10 times as effective while being a quarter of the cost as current alternatives.

    I sell them cheaper than the alternatives, the manufacturing process requires less staff so I can pay them very well, with plenty of vacation times and low stress work.

    I make a small profit on each panel, but they sell increadibly well and money just rolls in, I am busy managing the company, and don't have time to look at my personal finances other than to make sure that my taxes are paid and I am not being stolen from.

    I live in Sweden while doing this, a country with a progressive tax code, I don't try to hide anything from the tax man.

    Despite high taxes, money just keeps rolling in.

    Finally I am ready to retire, the product still sells very well, but I don't have the energy to deal with it anymore, so I make a highly controversial decision, I release the patent to the public domain, no one can own it, everyone can use it, I don't want some random patent troll to get their hand on it and exploit it.

    As I retire I check my balance and see that I have 1.02 billion dollars.

    Where did I break the social contract, and deserve to be killed?


    I know the scenario is absurd, but I enjoy finding the limits of rules and other scenarios.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    This is all fantasy fiction writing. No one becomes a billionaire without exploiting others significantly, nor is any billionaire worth it.

    Once you break 1/2 of that it’s very simple to direct one of the many accountants you have on staff at that point to unload money or assets. Failing to do so either reduces the supply of those assets or reduces the supply of cash. That’s driving up costs for everyone else.

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago

    Yes, this is fiction, absurd fiction at that, however it is an interesting point to try and find the limits of a chain of logic.

    In this case this example was quickly proven that the example discussed was still valid as I hadn't included the supply chain.

    So even if the example was absurd it showed that the logic of the example discussed was still valid.

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  • [–] 57 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    That's pretty much exactly what the Antichrist would do.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago*

    No no no, the anti-Christ is obviously every single person who opposes invasive tech and the obscenity of billionaires. Doing the exact opposite of what Christ would do doesn't make you the anti-Christ, that would be too obvious.

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  • [–] 46 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Lobbying needs to gtfo and be illegal already. We don't talk enough about it because the America is on a tilt-a-whirl as it is

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  • [–] 18 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Is he spending more to fight the tax than he would pay in tax?

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    🤣 No....

    These ghouls save billions by spending millions

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago*

    In a just world we would follow the money, and charge them with treason.

    Oh and also freeze all his accounts, then charge every member of his staff associated with treason and him as well.

    Manipulating voters or congressmembers is treason. If they want the death penalty to exist. Give it to all of them that don't rat out their senior who commanded it.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    If that shithead wants it, that's how you know it's bad and should be opposed.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    What a fucken ghoul.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    DE-MO-CRA-CY!

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Did he give every citizens of California a million dollars? That might work.

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