this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Obviously I don't want to fuck over retirees, so it should be a progressive tax, since those retirement accounts don't reach 8 figures, let alone 10 to 12.
I was pretty careful in my phrasing about it hurting billionaires specifically rather than hurting a larger swath of the population that included billionaires. Given that, I don't think it would hurt "the country" very much at all, and indeed benefit the country because billionaires are a perpetual malus on us.
There are several reasons, and I think you probably aren't adequately accounting for the US being the global hegemon and engaging in brutal imperial exploitation as being chief among them. The US literally goes to war using the most over-funded military in the world for the sake of oil companies. It backs juntas to get cheap deals on lithium. It authors puppet governments for fucking bananas.
Regarding capital flight: It's awesome if billionaires want to flee. If they try, seize everything from them. They play ball or fuck off, no need to accommodate them playing God.
Even a progressive tax is going to fuck over retirees, unless you are suggesting 0% below like $10M. Even then they are still paying taxes either when they put the money in or when they take it out, so taxing on the value is just double tax dipping.
So you are actually suggesting if billionaires want to move we steal everything from them? How is that even remotely ok?
Retirement funds are still not going to exceed like 5 million in the vast majority of cases, but sure! Let's have it be marginal below 10M, that's fine with me. The petite bourgeois should mainly be targeted with things like higher taxes on housing they rent out, and that's really a secondary concern in most places.
Yes, I am. It's as easy as "don't engage in capital flight" to not get hit by it. We can even be generous enough to leave them just a tiny bit, say 1% if they have exactly 1B, since 10M is quite a lot for a human.
Why should they be entitled to gut factories where they used the labor supply and infrastructure to make their money, destroying the local economy and putting many people out of work? "Property rights"? This is going to blow your mind: human welfare is more important than the property rights of people who are richer than God and could get by in insane comfort while never working a day for the rest of their lives anyway.
If I had to weigh the wholesale destruction of communities against John Locke feeling disappointed, I'll gladly accept the latter and travel to England to piss on his grave.
You are suggesting the most immoral thing I've heard yet. To just take everything from someone and leave them with nothing just because they want to leave the area that is hostile to them. Oh wait, nevermind, this sounds exactly like someone as communist would say, and something communist countries have done in the past.
lmao 10M is "nothing". I hope one day you realize that you can do better things than lick boots. If you've got a problem with immorality and robbery, take it up with the billionaires who are actually doing just that and not leaving people with piss, let alone 10M for picking the forewarned bad option. Where I'm from, trying to move something across borders when it is against the law is called "smuggling" and it's normal to seize all of what is smuggled rather than 99% (unless it's, like, people or something).
10M is nothing to someone who owns billions, it's all a matter of perspective. I have a problem with people who use or suggest immoral actions, and that includes you. Stealing from anyone is immoral, I don't care how much they have or how big of a company it is.
What is against the law here? It's not illegal to move your business outside the country, it's not illegal to leave the country, what you are assuming is illegal is actually perfectly legal. It's not smuggling if you are just moving legal goods. Even you can leave a country like the US and transfer your money to wherever you go, it's not illegal at all.
I never said it wouldn't feel bad, but it objectively is a large amount of wealth for one person to have, enough to never work again. To view it as nothing indicates a disorder, so maybe .1% can go to rehabilitating them so they can understand their position, should they accept receiving such counseling.
Of course, your deontological view of a deeply exploitative class of people is untenable to do anything but limply defend the status quo, but I don't think I can teach you how to do philosophy coherently.
Remember that this hypothetical situation we are discussing is of a policy being implemented. That is to say, in this hypothetical, large-scale capital flight is illegal, and therefore to attempt it anyway is smuggling. The 1% left to them to do what they like with (even in whatever poor country they were leaving to exploit) is quite literally a significant mercy to them.
If they drastically reduced their lifestyle, don't get taxed heavily, and are able to invest it, then sure. However if you don't allow them to invest and they don't drastically reduce their standard of living, that's not nearly enough to retire on.
Even a fairly modest personal plane or small yacht will cost a million or more over years of use.
If your idea of philosophy involves theft, I don't think I want to learn it from you.
Ah, this concept is so insane that I just can't imagine it ever happening. In reality the companies and rich would leave and there would be nothing you could do to stop it.
Remember that we already said 10M was below the cutoff of the wealth tax, so they aren't being taxed heavily. Furthermore, they should be able to live their whole life without investing it if they are already like 35.
Whoa, so they can't afford toys that should generally be banned for ecological reasons anyway? Again, if you can't figure out how to live a happy life without a personal plane, you probably need to go to rich guy rehab. Just fucking find some cozy spot and live in idle luxury.
People don't functionally own land, they nominally own it at the mercy of the state. Many things work this way. Your problem is that you can't see beyond a narrow paradigm of how society is organized, as though a particular version of liberalism was ordained by God as being the natural order. It is not.
No, because they only have their power to move things around at the mercy of the state, a state which is generally nice to them because their class controls the state. Many countries have various types of laws opposing capital flight. One excellent example is various manifestations of "right of first refusal" being used to prevent the gutting of factories. There is also the matter of simple history of the mass-repatriation of properties for reasons much less severe than the kind of opportunism we've been discussing, everywhere from Germany to China, along with the complicated legal histories of capital flight in various countries (example). Turns out money laundering can actually be stopped and assets can and have actually been seized for various reasons.
I think you underestimate how fast $10M can be spent. There is a reason why most lottery winners go broke.
So basically you want them to just live like you do, without any extra luxuries? I'm guessing they also can only afford a modest house since even a normal house is $500k+ and then triple that if they have a mortgage.
I don't think it's a problem if people own a private plane as a hobby (you know, like a private pilot) or a big boat for enjoyment. I'm not talking about crazy expensive stuff here, even middle class people are owning private planes.
You and others here have explained your version of liberalism, I believe you call it Marxism, right? I don't believe it's the answer for anyone but communist countries like China, and I don't think that's the answer for the US or most other countries. Do you have another version you are proposing?
We aren't talking about money laundering or anything illegal, we are talking about people wanting to move for a better life. Only the worst of the worst countries will punish you by stealing everything from you simply for leaving.