Wealth caps. Worldwide.
Start at something reasonable, say 10 million
Anything over that goes 100% tot axes. Nobody has a “right” to more than that, nobody needs more than that. No, you don’t NEED three Lamborghini’s, you don’t need 20 houses.
Keep everything else the same, just a single rule to make a huge difference
Governments now will have enough income to fund a huge social net with free education, free healthcare, universal income so that people can spend money to keep the economy running
People now can choose to do some of the little work left.
On a side note: fuck these AI clowns for focussing on AI on exactly those tasks that make life worth living instead of focussing on the mundane shit tasks that nobody wants to do. Garbage collection still requires humans yet these shit stains claim that art andusic is now covered. Yay! Now we have shitty AI art and shitty jobs!
Yep, can’t do much about that other than vote and write my useless representatives. Taking back what they stole and putting it to work for the masses, to do the grind, that’s something I can do now.
Peregrine, Snipe, and Kiwi are all available for free on the managed cloud accounts and I’m handing out beta keys for free for a while so please do try them out if you find one that’s useful!
you don’t even need that. If you have more brackets and keep going up in percentages and tax every type of income including investments in progressive way then you will get to a point where its just to hard to make more than say 10 million. We basically had this. When we had tax brackets that went up to 95% and only 40% for investment and that limited wealth quite a bit. Rates need to be the same regardless of source be it inheritance, lottery winnings, wages, or investments. Heck im fine with not paying taxes on things if you legally lock it up so it can’t be sold. still have to pay any income it creates year to year but can’t sell it or transfer it in any way. combine this with a 1% tax on all buying and selling which would be a massive reduction for most purchases but would be a vast increase for stock and bond trading. would completely clear out short term trading.
What’s wild is that, as you say, we used to have this system in the US. We even had it during the time conservatives are so nostalgic for.
Gradually, over the past 60 or so years, all the prosperity has been siphoned back toward the top, and now it’s a radical idea to propose the system that our grandfathers lived under.
The point of the cap is more to really have it clear that NOBODY has the right to hoard wealth. Everybody can be free to live the way they want to, everybody can live perfectly comfortable, and the psycho types amongst us that need to have that little bit more than the rest are perfectly fine being a little richer than the rest while spending their lives on work, if they like that… But nobody is allowed to be crazy rich anymore. If you don’t cap it, ways will be found around it, they will add a few laws, repeal a few others, and we’re back to today again.
This is just a single hard stop, no ways around it, you have a hard physical limit, and anyone even remotely suggesting we can drop this rule is known for being a hoarding pyschopath immediately.
I sorta get you but I do think a soft cap is the way to go. those pyschopaths will literally just go underground. hiding wealth, capping all family and such. I mean they do this anyway basically but with a soft cap it just makes it harder for them to decide which is worse. working more or finding a better system to get more or working more or finding a better way to circumvent the system.
There are ways around this. For example, let’s say you set the wealth cap at 10 million. You write a law that says, “anyone that reports an illegal fortune larger than this will receive half of the money confiscated from this illegal fortune to divide tax-free among yourself, friends, and family.”
Billionaires don’t know how to manage their own money. They hire accountants. So you make it so any random accountant can rat out an illegal billionaire and get paid enough to not only max out their own lifetime allowable fortune, but those of all their friends and family.
Sure, the billionaire could avoid this by just dividing up his wealth among his own friends and family. But in that case, he’s still losing control. And that’s ultimately the point of this. Thousands of low-digit millionaires are infinitely superior to one billionaire.
thats an interesting take. problem is we are already dealing with tens of billions which is closing in on hundreds to likely some of these finance guys are already pulling in hundreds of mil. Might have to start that cap at a billion and titer it down.
How are you going to drive your third lambourghini around without alerting authorities that you’ve been stealing from everybody? How are you going to live in your mega stupid mansion without very quickly getting a knock on the door from the tax man?
because you don’t own the lambourghini or the mansions. you just use them time to time. its not has hard as you make it. I mean its happening right now. Many rich people have property owned by corps that are owned by trusts. there is this whole specific thing because the company owns thing liability wise but the trust does ownership wise. its a crazy rabbit hole if you ever want to go down it.
Then we need to seriously rewrite corporate charter law. For example, maybe it shouldn’t even be legal for corporations to own other corporations. Limited liability as a concept has some value, in terms of encouraging investment. So there is value in LLCs existing. But we don’t need the free-for-all we have now. We could move corporate governance to a white list model, where there are only a set series of structures you’re allowed to use to organize a company.
Among these are the regulations would be restrictions on the forms of compensation you’re allowed to provide high-value employees. Maybe the only legal form of pay for executives should be salary.
And again, you can enforce this by relying on the little people that the executives don’t even recognize as human. Does a CEO formally have $10 million to their name, but they have exclusive use of a $100 million mansion provided by their company? Fine, let the janitor rat him out, and in turn the janitor will end up owning that mansion.
I do feel like we should not allow logical entities to own other logical entities. you can have a wrap something up to allow for pooling assets with individuals but it does seem like allowing multi levels like this causes all sorts of shenanigans. so yeah you can have a trust but no owning companies and if a company buys a company it becomes a combined company or the sale is not allowed.
Agreed. The promise of AI when I was younger (80s 90s) was it would do all the jobs no one wanted and we as humans could focus on arts, entertainment, and leisure. Somehow along the way those got crossed.
It’s not that hard
Wealth caps. Worldwide. Start at something reasonable, say 10 million
Anything over that goes 100% tot axes. Nobody has a “right” to more than that, nobody needs more than that. No, you don’t NEED three Lamborghini’s, you don’t need 20 houses.
Keep everything else the same, just a single rule to make a huge difference
Governments now will have enough income to fund a huge social net with free education, free healthcare, universal income so that people can spend money to keep the economy running
People now can choose to do some of the little work left.
On a side note: fuck these AI clowns for focussing on AI on exactly those tasks that make life worth living instead of focussing on the mundane shit tasks that nobody wants to do. Garbage collection still requires humans yet these shit stains claim that art andusic is now covered. Yay! Now we have shitty AI art and shitty jobs!
I agree, man. Let the tots axe whoever makes over 10 million and keeps it!!
So I am working on the mundane task part…
https://circuitforge.tech/mission
https://circuitforge.tech/roadmap
Not really the part of “wealth caps”, but still, good on you!
Yep, can’t do much about that other than vote and write my useless representatives. Taking back what they stole and putting it to work for the masses, to do the grind, that’s something I can do now.
Peregrine, Snipe, and Kiwi are all available for free on the managed cloud accounts and I’m handing out beta keys for free for a while so please do try them out if you find one that’s useful!
you don’t even need that. If you have more brackets and keep going up in percentages and tax every type of income including investments in progressive way then you will get to a point where its just to hard to make more than say 10 million. We basically had this. When we had tax brackets that went up to 95% and only 40% for investment and that limited wealth quite a bit. Rates need to be the same regardless of source be it inheritance, lottery winnings, wages, or investments. Heck im fine with not paying taxes on things if you legally lock it up so it can’t be sold. still have to pay any income it creates year to year but can’t sell it or transfer it in any way. combine this with a 1% tax on all buying and selling which would be a massive reduction for most purchases but would be a vast increase for stock and bond trading. would completely clear out short term trading.
What’s wild is that, as you say, we used to have this system in the US. We even had it during the time conservatives are so nostalgic for.
Gradually, over the past 60 or so years, all the prosperity has been siphoned back toward the top, and now it’s a radical idea to propose the system that our grandfathers lived under.
The point of the cap is more to really have it clear that NOBODY has the right to hoard wealth. Everybody can be free to live the way they want to, everybody can live perfectly comfortable, and the psycho types amongst us that need to have that little bit more than the rest are perfectly fine being a little richer than the rest while spending their lives on work, if they like that… But nobody is allowed to be crazy rich anymore. If you don’t cap it, ways will be found around it, they will add a few laws, repeal a few others, and we’re back to today again.
This is just a single hard stop, no ways around it, you have a hard physical limit, and anyone even remotely suggesting we can drop this rule is known for being a hoarding pyschopath immediately.
I sorta get you but I do think a soft cap is the way to go. those pyschopaths will literally just go underground. hiding wealth, capping all family and such. I mean they do this anyway basically but with a soft cap it just makes it harder for them to decide which is worse. working more or finding a better system to get more or working more or finding a better way to circumvent the system.
There are ways around this. For example, let’s say you set the wealth cap at 10 million. You write a law that says, “anyone that reports an illegal fortune larger than this will receive half of the money confiscated from this illegal fortune to divide tax-free among yourself, friends, and family.”
Billionaires don’t know how to manage their own money. They hire accountants. So you make it so any random accountant can rat out an illegal billionaire and get paid enough to not only max out their own lifetime allowable fortune, but those of all their friends and family.
Sure, the billionaire could avoid this by just dividing up his wealth among his own friends and family. But in that case, he’s still losing control. And that’s ultimately the point of this. Thousands of low-digit millionaires are infinitely superior to one billionaire.
thats an interesting take. problem is we are already dealing with tens of billions which is closing in on hundreds to likely some of these finance guys are already pulling in hundreds of mil. Might have to start that cap at a billion and titer it down.
Good luck going underground.
How are you going to drive your third lambourghini around without alerting authorities that you’ve been stealing from everybody? How are you going to live in your mega stupid mansion without very quickly getting a knock on the door from the tax man?
because you don’t own the lambourghini or the mansions. you just use them time to time. its not has hard as you make it. I mean its happening right now. Many rich people have property owned by corps that are owned by trusts. there is this whole specific thing because the company owns thing liability wise but the trust does ownership wise. its a crazy rabbit hole if you ever want to go down it.
Then we need to seriously rewrite corporate charter law. For example, maybe it shouldn’t even be legal for corporations to own other corporations. Limited liability as a concept has some value, in terms of encouraging investment. So there is value in LLCs existing. But we don’t need the free-for-all we have now. We could move corporate governance to a white list model, where there are only a set series of structures you’re allowed to use to organize a company.
Among these are the regulations would be restrictions on the forms of compensation you’re allowed to provide high-value employees. Maybe the only legal form of pay for executives should be salary.
And again, you can enforce this by relying on the little people that the executives don’t even recognize as human. Does a CEO formally have $10 million to their name, but they have exclusive use of a $100 million mansion provided by their company? Fine, let the janitor rat him out, and in turn the janitor will end up owning that mansion.
I do feel like we should not allow logical entities to own other logical entities. you can have a wrap something up to allow for pooling assets with individuals but it does seem like allowing multi levels like this causes all sorts of shenanigans. so yeah you can have a trust but no owning companies and if a company buys a company it becomes a combined company or the sale is not allowed.
Agreed. The promise of AI when I was younger (80s 90s) was it would do all the jobs no one wanted and we as humans could focus on arts, entertainment, and leisure. Somehow along the way those got crossed.