politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Just make it illegal to be a billionaire, punishable by death. We’d have a lot less billionaires one way or another.
How would that work?
Do you mean that as soon as someone has a billion dollars in their bank account the would get a hit squad sent after them?
Because that is really dumb.
Just about every billionaire have their assets invested in several diverse financial instruments, usually not even directly under their own name.
It is a highly complex task to uncover all that wealth.
Aslo, why kill them?
I have always thought that once a person amasses say 500 million (or some other arbitrary ammount) they should not be able to earn more money directly for themselves, but rather, all money earned on top of the set limit will be taxed to 100%, while maintaining stats to show who earned what so these rich guys can still have their highscore list that they seem to enjoy.
To further incentivize these guys to keep working to bring in more taxes, the state should build statues and name important buildings in honor of them, you know, exploit their egos.
Killing them is just a waste of talent and experience.
I’d go by net worth. And if you’re and $900mm you should be scared that the death squad’s math is different than yours. It’s ridiculously easy to not be a billionaire.
Why kill them? Because they broke the social contract. We let them be enormously wealthy by having a net worth near a billion. It’s not like they were so valuable or productive that they earned that much money. All we ask is they keep their greed under one billion.
If the punishment isn’t severe and final they will find ways to work around it. Their greed cannot be contained by normal methods.
Billionaires don’t add value. That money is locked up. You recommend taxing it at 100% but they will find ways to avoid paying it.
Broke the social contract?
Say that I develop a new kind of solar panel, that is 10 times as effective while being a quarter of the cost as current alternatives.
I sell them cheaper than the alternatives, the manufacturing process requires less staff so I can pay them very well, with plenty of vacation times and low stress work.
I make a small profit on each panel, but they sell increadibly well and money just rolls in, I am busy managing the company, and don't have time to look at my personal finances other than to make sure that my taxes are paid and I am not being stolen from.
I live in Sweden while doing this, a country with a progressive tax code, I don't try to hide anything from the tax man.
Despite high taxes, money just keeps rolling in.
Finally I am ready to retire, the product still sells very well, but I don't have the energy to deal with it anymore, so I make a highly controversial decision, I release the patent to the public domain, no one can own it, everyone can use it, I don't want some random patent troll to get their hand on it and exploit it.
As I retire I check my balance and see that I have 1.02 billion dollars.
Where did I break the social contract, and deserve to be killed?
I know the scenario is absurd, but I enjoy finding the limits of rules and other scenarios.
If you were able to get such an absurd amount of money out of it, you definitely didn't pay the people who did the manufacturing and mining etc. enough for their work. If you did, would wouldn't have become a billionaire in your lifetime.
That is an interesting point, that I didn't consider, thank you for taking my scenario seriously
@Brkdncr too drastic - pls, no death penalty. Not even for greedy fascists.
Ew.