Hey guys, I posted about this a while back, but today something happened to make me think about the concept again in a different way, and I'm basically just looking for some opinions, counter-arguments, and different views from you guys.

Just as a disclaimer of sorts, obviously the concept of a "WC" is insanely vague and just as vast, so my ideas probably are far off potential ideals, if just through the sheer scope of the concept, nevermind my knowledge gaps in many, many domains. tldr; these are just one man's humble ideas

Why I believe a wealth cap is a net positive

We all know the spiel; The majority of the world is poor, a very few number are mindnumbingly rich and some corporations...well...let's not get started. But beyond the sob-story arguments of people dying of hunger while others couldn't spend their money in ten life times, I consider a much more important argument: The evolution of the human race

While getting fat on Coca Cola, fast food and buying tons and tons of jewelry and cars that mostly just go rly fast are things that we have a God()-given right to do, we, as a race of human beings have ridiculously more pressing matters at hand, be it the cure of various diseases, the cure to pollution and our dependence on oil and ghost currency, or simply figuring out a way to stop killing all the wildlife and plant life before we spread out of control like a disease-ridden, war mongering parasite and tear the planet to shreds. Thinking these things will eventually get dealt with is not enough; We need to, as a race work towards a sort of utopia, that is never reached but at least that's the goal. Isn't it? Shouldn't it be?

Now what I'm proposing isn't something draconic or prohibition-like. It's simply to do with incentivising (not a real word) based on priorities.

Some of our priorities should be:
Eradicating most poverty/world hunger (coincidentally those areas are also the ones where horrible abuses occur much too frequently for human kind to tolerate)

Figuring out and implementing ways of stopping the destruction of the planet, for our own damned good not b/c of any hippie bull****

Finding cures to more diseases, pushing towards healthier nutrition/better awareness for ALL segments of the world population (because a healthier person who lives longer is happier and more productive - sounds a bit communist? )

Figuring out a way to correct the penal system, actually create ways for the prisoners to rehabilitate and provide a service to society rather than just shacking them up with more criminals and letting them waste their life and dreams and hopes away)

etc etc


How it would work
Obv this is a rough draft of a myriad of possibilities. I look forward to more input on them from more creative people than myself
Now, setting a WC of say 100 million dollars a year, let's assume the tax rate slowly rises up to the first 50 mil, then there's a drastic rise as it tops out at 90% when you reach 100 mil/year.

I know. I know you're raging. Deep breath, not done yet.

First of all, each person acheiving this income will get benefits from the state to which they pay their taxes. Off the top of my head these could be:

- Lifetime accomodation, car, bills, etc for anyone acheiving 2 years of paying this tax return (notice, it is an acheivement. Dat PR ). That is, you live as you choose but were you to ever run out of money, you're set for life, and the conditions can easily be good b/c it's cheaper for the state (they can have all sorts of contracts with building companies, food, restaurants, etc to get this done)

- Strict and transparent accounting of what the money is used for with the purpose of accreditation. Say a lump sum goes towards the majority (or the whole) of constructing/funding an orphanage,(wing of a) hospital, domestic abuse shelter, animal shelter etc, that institution will have the person's name, and an homage of sorts (it would be as viewing a saint as a protector of this hospital - b/c in a way these men would be close to saints in how much good there money would create). Oh this hospital wing needs donations to keep saving people? Well, good thing we have some of this wall street guy's tax money over here, that should do the trick. And I bet when people go to that wing of the hospital, he'll be the first one they contact if they ever want to invest

- More awesome **** that people would like


Let's quickly hit some drawbacks as we try to wrap this up before your desire to kill me becomes overwhelming.


- The fear-striking argument that productivity would suffer because the whole point of capitalism is making money is the goal, and this motivates people.

I mean sure, but are there really not enough smart people already in management positions who'd jump at the chance to make even 20 million a year but do it more so for the love of competition, the thrill of trying to be the best you can be, and succeed in running this company, proving you can step up to even bigger, etc? And are there not enough smart people coming out of universities that can "trickle up" as it were, take a more important position faster to mitigate the loss through promotion of the previous guy

- The idea that a man should have the freedom to enjoy the money he's earned.

Sure, we're not taking it all away, just a vast majority of it past a certain threshold. One that allows for extremely comfortable living, extravagant purchases and what have you. Provisions would have to be made for prospective investments past the wealth cap, the money could easily be placed in escrow after being taxed a lower amount, with a due-date outstanding on the decision of the investor, after which there would be clauses in the contract, bla bla

A side effect of this, I believe, would be that the people in important positions would start trending towards those who actually love the job, love the challenge, love succeeding, rather than just love the (insane amounts of) money.


I'm going to end this by saying it's painfully obvious to me that we need to start looking at policies at a more global level, not only wrt where they are enforced but more importantly wrt how they impact the wellbeing of the planet as a whole. I think having the means to pursue higher goals, both in the way we conduct our industries and businesses as well as on a global level, would allow us, as a planet to grow(not in size) and prosper far more than we have done since the 1900s. Our technology is advanced enough to allow it, all we lack is .... money? That makes no sense. I feel we could end an insane amount of misery, and create a bunch more happiness all around through simply de-incetivising certain things, certain ideas and ways of life while also providing something back to the people we tax, both at a micro level (names on buildings) as well as at a macro level (fewer poor people on the streets, cleaner air, faster cures for diseases)

lol how many people do you think earn more than $100,000,000 a year? The current requested US federal budget is $3,800,000,000,000 I think a few extra million is just the push we need to get these problems solved!

I mean yeah, obv you're right, not sure quite what I was thinking. 50mil with sharp increases after the first 10 mil then, or start out lower and increase anually, so first year u only tax 75% of > 50 mil, next year 80% etc,

But hey, even with 100 mil a year, a quick google shows that in 2004 for instance, a hedge fund manager earning 100mil would barely break the top 25 for hedge fund manager earnings. In 2005, the figure went up to 130 mil.

Apparently, the top 26 hedge fund managers alone in 2005 made an average of 363$ million dollars. That totals around 9.4 billion dollars in one year, from hedge fund managers.

So either way you cut it, you'd be taxing some solid billions of dollars from just these 26 people. Now in addition to the federal budget, say you set aside 1 billion from those people, boom you've just built a hospital in 50 states (and purchased a decent amount of equipment too). Add up another 24 people to make the top 50 hedge fund manager earnings and you tax another few billion dollars.

The best estimate for homeless people i've found indicated there to be roughly 630k homeless people ~ 2010. With 2 billion dollars per year, you could feed all of them 3x/day, every day at roughly 3$/meal (yeah, it's not much but when massproducing mashed potatoes and ****, it's plenty)


And so look what we've done in one year, using less than half the taxes collected from 26 people.

I would like to acquire a cap that makes me wealthy. I am assuming it works like those Super Mario 64 hats.

What makes you think the goal is maximizing revenue rather than just not having ultra rich people.

Why are you talking about income? You know you can only tax wealth once right?

Also want to see the link to your google, not exactly going to take your word on based upon displayed economic chops.

LOL, why hedge fund managers? Why build and equip hospitals in all 50 states if you are only trying to feed the homeless? Why don't we tax all minimum wage cashiers 2% of their salary for the greater good? There are so many more minimum wage cashiers and fast food workers. 20 million min wage cashiers and FF workers at 2% would nix the homeless problem right? Surely they wouldn't miss a 2% tax hike and they would work just as hard to help out right? No, lets jack a certain segment of the population at a 75% tax rate because they succeeded and it feels better to you. Where does it stop after the hedge fund managers? Do we tax politicians at a steeper rate? Will they vote the tax hike in for themselves, or do we just say that it is happening? How exactly does that become law?

In what profession do you work? Maybe we should cap the amount of earning on that profession.

And boom there's a hospital.

I know that his idea sounds crazy but there is the fact that the machine has made (or is making) manpower more or less obsolete.

Sooner or later change will come and we will either deal people in or out. The average American is now a negative economic unit. If we toss out the economic consumption value of the bottom 80% of Americans then the logical move would be to eliminate them entirely for the sake of efficiency.

Given that I am well buried in that 80% its an issue I have a personal stake in.

Why not make the wealth cap about $350k?

HFM was just an example. Obv I am advocating doing this across the board, all professions. Your reading comprehension sucks.

Is this principle only valid for wealthy people? What about extremely good looking people?

Start with wealth, then move on to forced disfigurement of the beautiful.

The Progressive Plan to Solve World Poverty, Environmental Degradation, Cancer, and the Penal System
by Jah Onion

Step 1: Implement lovingly crafted wealth confiscation scheme to stick it to those dastardly rich people.
Step 2: Solve world poverty, environmental degradation, cancer, and the penal system somehow.

So we confiscate all this money, and then Bernanke just prints 5 billion dollars less out of the hundreds of billions he prints.

Good Job, Good Effort.

There's a reason all the communist countries are aborting that failed Marxist ideology.

Marxism was a coherent but flawed ideology.

This is more of a Miss America contestant proposal. I think we should all be happy and solve world hunger and rich people can help the poor people. We'll fill in the details later. OK.

IMO anyone who trolls him for trying to come up with a solution that betters the lives of humans is being a complete d-bag. With that said I couldn't agree less with your plan. Sorry bro.


Your heart is in the right place but this plan, well, simply won't work.

Excessive wealth is a negative externality and we should take steps to mitigate it, even if completely abolishing it is outside the realm of realistic possibility. We could pretty easily keep the system the way it is and impose taxes on those at the top and boost those on the bottom in a sort of end-around in order to achieve some mitigation. In this way the mechanisms that create huge wealth gaps would not be corrected but, rather, after the fact adjustments are made. In contrast to the propaganda spouted by the wealthy and their army of poor zombies looking for a scrap from their table, this approach would not create disincentive for investment and growth- it would increase incentive. As an owner, if your profits are being taxed at a higher rate then you will have to produce even more to maintain that same level of profit. On the other end giving money to poor people makes sense as well because, out of necessity, they spend everything they get and stimulate the economy.

The problem with this approach is the wealthy, for obvious reasons, are rabidly against it. The wealthy fight tooth and nail to avoid our adjusting the outcomes produced in an economy in which they enjoy the competitive advantages. The have fostered a narrative, shared by their lapdogs and other ignorant people, in which any adjustment to "market" outcomes are seen as unfair. This appeals to a very superficial and unfortunately quite common misunderstanding of how the economy works in the real world. And they use academics to support these views. Most of the economists who justify right wing policies are academically valid in their micro theory applications. The problem is that their theories only apply to hypothetical scenarios and have literally nothing to do with the real world. So the narrative of the wealthy, looking to protect their wealth, comes off sounding very sensible with a nice finishing coat of academic jargon to shine it up.

I don't see that narrative, that we are all entering into free contracts in a fair competitive market, ever being discredited as it should, at least not until we reach some kind of real crisis. So my proposal to mitigate the excessive wealth gap is this: end inheritance. Anything above some number, say 100k, is taxed at 100%. The rule would be that you can give anything away as long as you are alive but once you are dead anything above 100k (or some better number) goes back to the state to be used in efforts to eliminate the luck factor wrt the initial starting conditions of people in our "fair competitive economy". So these would be things like better education and health care for the poor, so that they can start on something closer to equal ground with someone who by luck happened to be born into millions. The taxed estates could also go toward capitalizing projects of people who don't have parents able to give them start-up funds. I think this idea could compete with the established narrative since at it's core is a principle of a fair start in life (in contrast to plans in which monies "fairly" earned are redistributed).

Whatever way we might come up with to get fairer wealth apportionment has to be seen as a fair process (not just fair in results) or else most people will reject it, most people not being educated enough to see the current rigged game for what it really is.

Steeeeeelll....

Ooops, I mean

Deeeuuuuuuuuccccccessssssssssss

Rigged game is actually fun to play though.

Rigged game also pulling poor people out of poverty all over the world.

Deuces, if you love the poor, you would actually support rigged game. Stop hating poor people.

A wealth cap doesn't make much sense. A progressive tax on wealth can accomplish the same things.

In any case, it's clear that wealth accumulation at the top is not necessarily good for all members of a society.

That doesn't work either.

France trying really hard on that ultra progressive tax thingy idea.

Good job, good effort.

Wealth accumulation good if there are more Bill Gates around using funds privately.

It's clear (empirically) that wealth accumulation at the top is necessarily bad for society.

"Bad for society" is a subjective measurement. And it's certainly not clear, even if we agree on the meaning of "bad for society", unless "bad for society" means "rich people have lots of wealth".

This is gold.