I doubt there's a way to structure this perfectly given one has to start from the baseline of these taxes being introduced, but is 21-25 a reasonable benchmark?
Naively, it felt like a lot of fluctuations and rubberbanding occurred right after Covid which wouldn't necessary make representative set.
The type of billionaire to be so much of a knob to actually leave over this is exactly the kind of billionaire you want to leave and free yourself and your countrymen of. Some of the most selfish, greedy, maniacal people who will tell the law to bend for them to get out of their way.
People don’t like having their stuff stolen. Maybe that’s regrettable, but it’s a strong and universal preference that has important policy consequences!
My lord... Taxing billionaires feel more like punishing them out of envy than improving society to people like you and DSA. No matter how much they/their companies carry the economy with taxes, jobs etc, it's still not enough so they must be made poor to please the ego right?
The "billionaire flight" problem actually illustrates perfectly why you need a wealth tax in the first place: to prevent billionaires from having undue levels of power and consequence on the populus. When you let individuals accumulate outright unreasonable amounts of money you give them a single random individual, with no governing credentials, whose choices should have no bearing on others the ability to indirectly effect the economic fate of thousands or millions of other people just because of their selfishness (to the extent that effects actually materialize, which to large extent they don't anyway...) It's outright laughable that any government would consider giving individuals such power over the fates of the people they are supposed to serve, represent, protect (at least in the liberal democratic tradition).
Humanity should not strive for kingship, whether minted through "god given right" or coin. We should strive for collective, distributive, balanced control of resources.
Now that we have the socialist Trump doctrine established with the help of the tech billionaires, we have a precedent for going forward - partially nationalize the private entities.
Start with the startups, and move into the equity funds and family offices. Once you hit certain thresholds, you pay a 2.5% wealth tax or provide 1% equity, capped at 25%.
It’s totally legal now as the toadies on the Supreme Court have adopted an expansive interpretation of executive power.
TLDR Norway’s recent wealth-tax increases caused some very rich people to leave, but the “billionaire exodus” was economically much smaller than the headlines suggested—and the tax still raised a lot more revenue without detectable damage to business investment.
I mean there are some small countries that have absolutely benefitted by giving billionaire expats gentle treatment and keeping taxes low. Dubai, Singapore etc.
Totally fair to claim this cannot scale to a "big" country, but it absolutely works to attract capital.
Naively, it felt like a lot of fluctuations and rubberbanding occurred right after Covid which wouldn't necessary make representative set.
Nobody is stealing from billionaires.
Europe could benefit a lot from breaking the stranglehold of old money.
Now that they're doing their best to undermine American democracy, perhaps we should do more to encourage them to leave.
Humanity should not strive for kingship, whether minted through "god given right" or coin. We should strive for collective, distributive, balanced control of resources.
Start with the startups, and move into the equity funds and family offices. Once you hit certain thresholds, you pay a 2.5% wealth tax or provide 1% equity, capped at 25%.
It’s totally legal now as the toadies on the Supreme Court have adopted an expansive interpretation of executive power.
Totally fair to claim this cannot scale to a "big" country, but it absolutely works to attract capital.