For posting satire from The Onion and other similar sources.
redundancy, but not for its own sake
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this is the way I feel when they say wealthy folks will leave. I want them to. Send elon back to africa.
Billionaires are parasites. All they do is take over governments to make themselves richer at your expense. There is nowhere in the world that wouldn't be a better place if their billionaires left.
The ground, six feet under anywhere on Earth, is the best place for billionaires
I hate to waste good food like that.
I'm okay with eating them. Ground hamburger... they don't deserve to be steak.
send Elon back to africa
He'd never go back because if he did that would put a lie to his whole "south Africa is doing white genocide" narrative if he could easily move back
No, we do not want him back.
I say send him to Ascension Island, like Napoleon. That puts him the furthest away from any civilization available on this planet.
At least untill we can sens him to Venus.
St Helens is was.
I stand corrected.
But any island with 1000s of km of open ocean would do.
I'd go with something closer to the arctic circle, just for added uncomfort. Something like South Georgia Island
I know we want him cold and miserable, but then you have him miss out on the local insect life and tropical diseases.
I think we can successfully launch him to space with his own spacex stuff. Just use a never return trajectory.
I concur with this statement. Why waste valuable resources and time trying to figure out how get the spacehip to the planet. When we can just yeet Musky into space with all the other Esptein Class parasites.
wealth tax everywhere!
if we can't eat the rich, we should at least tax them.
How much of their wealth would they exchange for not being dragged into a public square and drawn and quartered, along with their friends and families?
That's where the conversation needs to start.
I want nations to institute a universal wealth tax. If you or any company you own part of operates in a country, you need to pay X% in taxes. Not necessarily all in our country. You can incorporate elsewhere, but if they tax you X-Y%, you have to pay us the remaining Y%. The idea being that there's no such thing as tax havens if you want to do business with us. Pay your share somewhere or GTFO.
And a simple solution for tax havens would be to levy a trade tax against tax haven countries approximately equivalent to what the local revenue services imagine that the amount of deferred tax wealth is currently inhabiting their shores.
I'm pretty sure they could be well paid to be very imaginative.
This guy’s personality is literally “I’m an asshole”
It'll certainly result in fewer deaths on Ontario lakes.
This got me for a sec. It's one of the most believable headlines from the onion I've read.
Don't threaten us with a good time, Kevin.
This idiot thinks he won't be subject to an exit tax like they have in Norway.
Not sure why this is a Beaverton article, he's actually said this in public.
I totally thought this was true. It seemd truer than the actual news.
Here, here, Eh!
Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out! Just leave the money behind before you leave.
There is a more direct way to make Kevin O'Leary leave.
Deport him to Equador.
Well, we better get a move on and put one up here in America too, cuz we don't fucking want him either.
They, unfortunately, never actually move away.
Ugh, these clowns really do think the world revolves around them, huh?
They actually believe all the propaganda that simply "having wealth" creates value.
Except it doesn't, not real tangeable value. So they can fuck off. Someone or someones, can fill the void. That is kind of the idea. You earned your zillion follars, go away and let someone else try. Many someone elsees.
I think it's pretty much a requirement to get that much wealth.
You have to have a pretty twisted sense of self-importance to accumulate that much wealth in the first place. If you have some shred of decency and/or humility, you will never get that far.
Make the tax effective regardless of where they live, but only on high level billionaires who are douches.
Only way out of it is to give up citizenship
This shouldn't be considered satire. If anything, it's an understated fact.
Exactly! My first thought was, "How is this an Onion headline?"
You know, I just realized, if all these guys worth and value come from their "stocks," then isn't their worth and value made up. Like, I'm always hearing we can't tax them because their incomes are somewhere else, but if we can't tax them, then they shouldn't be worth what they say they are.
Can't we put limits on stocks, or a stock's value? I mean, what's the point of being a billionaire and having a billion dollars in profit if it's just gonne be a big number to sound impressive.
Its like those video games that use really large numbers, when they serve the same purpose. Doing 1000 dmg to an enemy who has 10000 health, is essentially the same as doing 10 damage to an enemy who has 100 health. Like, why are we using these large numbers if they're all made up in the end?
I know economics ain't that simple, but I find it absurd how we call these people billionaires, yet we can't physically see or touch all the money they have. What's the point of having a billion dollars, if you can't spend the billion dollars
This has been my hang up for a while.
With real generic numbers.
Elon Musk is worth 1 trillion dollars.
But its all Tesla (or whatever) stock.
Is Elon woth 1 Trillion, or is Telsa, because it can't be both, someone is lying.
Companies have true value, so the stocks do hold real value, but the way they can be inflated skews what that worth really is. Companies have assets and revenue and profits which are measurable, but when you start looking forward things start to get murky as people try to predict future value.
Add onto that, just like people can borrow against their house, they can then borrow against these stocks, and our system is set up where they can do this tax free. So they have inflated values beyond the actual value of the stock which they can borrow against. Elon doesn't actually have a trillion dollars. If he actually tried to realize it all, he'd probably end up somewhere in the low hundreds of billions or even below that, as the market would crash as he flood it with new shares. He could try to do it over many years and he'd come out with more, but that'll take time. But he can borrow against his stock as if he had a trillion dollars which is a real problem.
I'm personally against taxing unrealized gains, but I believe at least past a certain threshold, we should figure out how to tax people borrowing against their stock indefinitely and never paying taxes. (edit: the borrowing itself also leaves a paper trail that can be used to audit and fine / jail people if they try to hide it) That's a big part of the problem were facing. They have this wealth AND they get to use it, without paying taxes. We need to tax their usage. If we tax their usage, that will alter their behaviour. They'll either keep spending and we tax it as they lose ownership, or they'll reduce spending, but keep the ownership in the companies that their shares bestow, but they can't do both.
E.g Someone worth billions will buy a house worth 10s of million of dollars, and just pledge some stock against it, and perpetually keep that loan alive until they die. Their house staff, paid the same way. They do have to pay interest on that loan, but they just can just pledge more stock against that as well.
Edit: This also works better with higher tax brackets. If they try to realize/borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, we need new tax brackets for that.
Sounds slow.
If Elon wants to claim he is a Trillionaire for ego points, fine, we tax him at that, at 100% for any worth over 1 billion dollars.
Or he can STFU and talk about his actual "value". And then we still tax the hell out of it because no one needs anywhere near that much money over ten lifetimes.
And now you've stolen the company he founded and self funded with a hundred million dollars and given it to venture capitalists and hedge funds, because of some perceived and unrealized gain.
It'd be the same for any person with a meaningful stake in a company.
Your basically advocating that once a company reaches a certain size, the founders and possibly the early investors have to give up their ownership and the influence that offers.
Edit: a company like SpaceX and countless others simply wouldn't exist under rules like that.
Edit: and that size is literally at the whim of the markets since stock values dont represent the current day value. Imagine a company being led by a founder and hedge funds scheme a plot to raise the stock price through something like a gamma squeeze to force the founder to sell shares from that temporary gain, so they can do a hostile takeover. If thats possible, itll happen.
Yeah, thats kind of the idea, they sell to others, it spreads the interest of the company out so it better represents societies needs and not the whims of one asshole. You don't want that to happen, you run it privately off its own profits without the shareholder parasite class involved.
And we don't need Space X. We fucking HAD NASA. Space was fun and hopeful but now Space is stupid because its all under the umbrella of this single Nazi asshole.
Founders often run their companies better
https://hbr.org/2016/03/founder-led-companies-outperform-the-rest-heres-why
Specifically, the study found that S&P 500 companies where the founder is still CEO are more innovative, generate 31% more patents, create patents that are more valuable, and are more likely to make bold investments to renew and adapt the business model — demonstrating a willingness to take risk to invent the future.
The "spread it out" doesn't get spread out to society, it will get spread out to other venture capitalists and hedge funds, and they are never as interested in the long term vision and plans for the company as its founders are.
Saying, sorry, you can't run the company the way you want after a certain size (edit: within the law obviously), is just plain shortsighted.
I'm not saying don't tax them when they try to realize those gains via selling or borrowing, and it can even be at incredibly high rates, but stealing the company from them is not the right decision. Make them choose, their company or the wealth it generated.
Edit: And just to be clear - yes you can be a CEO without any shares, but without your founding shares giving you influence, you won't have the same kind of influence within the company, ultimately neutering your ability to function the way you'd like and stiffling whatever vision / passion you might have.
I somewhat agree with you, but the overwhelming valuations of the companies give me some concern too.
At this point, whether I like it or not, a handful of tech bros control the fate of my retirement account even if I have nothing to do with them. If someone has a bunch of VOO, then at this point half their value is in the hands of a few tech companies. On top of direct potential impact from messing up, the companies know they have the economy at large as a hostage, and government has proven it's happy to recognize "too big to fail" and socialize the losses while letting the gains be private.
So an institution passing a certain size broadly gives me concerns.
Now on the other hand, the other "capitalist" outcome outside of founder mindset is usually ruining the company faster, selling it for parts or otherwise exploiting previous success for short term gains. I totally get that the only thing more risky for a business than founder-aligned capitalism is the "capitalist for the sake of capitalism" that will drive great things into the ground if it means a few more percent wealth right now.
So I think you either somehow limit the relative value of such companies to the broader market (no idea how, but somehow), or accept some societal governance over these 'too big to fail' companies. If society is going to be on the hook for bailouts, then society should have some say in governance ahead of the bad outcome that demands a bailout.
Well, "true" value is a weird one, everything ultimately is relative and somewhat subjective.
I'm with you, and perhaps more aggressive about taxing loans against stock as if they were realized gains. Loans that have nothing to do with acquiring the asset that backs the loan (e.g. a loan to buy a house or even improve an existing house backed by the house itself, ok, sure that can get a pass, at least on the primary residence). In the interest of fairness, have an ability to reconcile the tax situation upon repayment of the loan by tax credit. So if one wants to whine about "double taxation", they can be mollified that they will get their extra taxation back if they pay back their debts in the manner expected by tax code. They may still whine that by paying taxes now on gains to be realized later they are giving the government a 0% loan, but that's just the price of accessing their wealth early.
You don't understand.
If their "worth" might cause them an inconvenience like taxation, then you have to understand that it's merely a quirky feature of how stock is valued and totally fictional.
However, if they need to fund purchase of a yacht and need to borrow against that worth, then you have to understand it is a real and supremely meaningful thing.
See how perfectly reasonable it all is?
Good
Let them move. I promise we’ll always have rich people.
Call their bluff! What have you got to lose!?
tax him double if he moves away, the cowardly traitor tax they're calling it.
It would be hilarious if they taxed him into the US only for the US to shortly after undergo a huge political shift taxing him even further.