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posted by janrinok on Thursday January 20 2022, @09:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the yes,-you-read-that-right! dept.

Millionaires ask to pay more tax:

A group of more than 100 of the world's richest people have called on governments to make them pay more tax. The group, named the Patriotic Millionaires, said the ultra-wealthy were not being forced to pay their share towards the global economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

"As millionaires, we know that the current tax system is not fair," they said in an open letter. The signatories included Disney heiress Abigail Disney and Nick Hanauer. Mr Hanauer is a US entrepreneur and an early investor in online retail giant Amazon.

"Most of us can say that, while the world has gone through an immense amount of suffering in the last two years, we have actually seen our wealth rise during the pandemic - yet few if any of us can honestly say that we pay our fair share in taxes," the signatories said in the letter to the World Economic Forum.

[...] It said globally, $2.52tn could lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty and make enough vaccines for the world.

Gemma McGough, British entrepreneur and founding member of Patriotic Millionaires, UK said: "For all our well-being - rich and poor alike - it's time we right the wrongs of an unequal world. It's time we tax the rich."

Ms McGough added: "At a time when simply living will cost the average household a further £1,200 a year, our government cannot expect to be trusted if it would rather tax working people than wealthy people.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @12:56PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @12:56PM (#1214131)

    The "little" people have to pay income tax. Mostly they just have income.

    The asset class can't really be wealth taxed as it will destroy the value of what you're taxing. Tax bezos.. he has to sell his shares. Value of shares drop.

    Who else owns amazon stock? Retirement funds. So guess what's not happening. It's a suicide pact.

    They can, however, push for higher income tax. Gullible will fall for it. Check out how the administration requires reporting of online services with more than $600 of financial movement. That was definitely to go after the "millionaires" and "billionaires".

    It's pretty clear where the money comes from for the majority of government spending. They could confiscate ALL of these people's income and it wouldn't be enough to fund much. They want yours.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @02:16PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @02:16PM (#1214152)

    if the value of shares drops significantly because someone sells them, it means they didn't have value in the first place.
    hence the term "CORRECTION" being associated to bubbles bursting.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:56PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @05:56PM (#1214243)

      It can also mean that a major holder sold more than the market could bear, causing the price to go below fair value. The same principle applies to physical goods as well.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:07PM (#1214284)

        Or shorting companies, that is what the whole gamestop thing is about.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @07:10AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @07:10AM (#1214465)

        if any one person sells more than the market can bear, it means something outside the market is destabilizing it.
        for instance if the village chicken farmer gets cancer, and suddenly needs to pay huge medical bills, therefore attempting to sell all his chickens at once (and the price of chickens in the village drops), the problem is outside the market (medical insurance). obviously the example is stupid because there are enough villages, towns and whole cities for the "chickens needed for medical bills" amount not to affect the chicken price.

        in the case of ten humans nominally holding a huge percentage of "world wealth", because their stocks have large prices, there are probably many reasons for it, mostly multiple forms of corruption. I doubt any individual human can solve this problem quickly (especially in an online forum), but I will suggest that fighting corruption wherever it is found is a good way forward.

        by corruption I mean, here, any situation where people are getting benefits in non-transparent ways.
        "good-looking people have higher salaries than ugly people" is corruption.
        "transfer the bad stocks to the pension fund" is corruption.
        "don't fine the multinationals because their friends can hurt us through our business dealings" is also corruption (despite the apparent care for the countries finances, which supposedly help with education, health, infrastructure etc).

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday January 21 2022, @12:42AM

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 21 2022, @12:42AM (#1214402)

    >The asset class can't really be wealth taxed as it will destroy the value of what you're taxing. Tax bezos.. he has to sell his shares. Value of shares drop.

    Bullshit. The value of shares = the value of the company / number of shares. That doesn't change just because someone sells a few shares - if it did then every publicly traded stock in the world would tank immediately.

    If you get a bunch of people selling shares in a company at once then that does tend to drive the price of the stock down, but only because everyone else assumes that the sellers know something they don't - i.e. there's a "secret" problem that means the value of the company is actually lower than the current price.