What are the best steps to reduce the wealth of billionaires?

There are a myriad of news articles here on Lemmy that display the abhorrent influence billionaires have on our society (especially the US, where I reside). I consistently read comments where the posters appear hopeless and despondent of the situation, while others jokingly refer to the guillotine.

As for myself, I have recently found myself with a lot of free time on my hands after being laid off and want to gather ideas on what would be the best hypothetical route to solve this issue. Let me be clear: These are only THEORETICAL IDEAS and I do not condone any illegal activity.

Historical precedent: While I am not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Occupy Movement, I do know that they were constantly attacked as being unorganized and lacking structure. It would be wise to not fall into the same pitfalls if those were accurate assessments.

Logical formulation: The foundations of the key points of the movement must be logically sound to withstand any external (and internal for that matter) scrutiny.

Motto: If a motto or slogan is chosen, it must be unambiguous so that attacks are directed to the movement, not the motto itself.

I am also aware that most people can’t spare any time to these kind of movements. Similar to the Texas seceding news, many commentators have noted that most Texans are living paycheck to paycheck and wouldn’t be able to dedicate any time to their cause. I would understand that would be same for this cause as well. However, since I have the time right now, I only ask for your ideas.

Broad issues: High cost of living (mortgages, rent, groceries, etc.) Inflation Homelessness

Philosophical underpinnings: Is there a Threshold of Greed? If so, what is too much wealth?

Possible means of reductions: Voluntary donation or renunciation of wealth past a certain point (highly unlikely) Taxation (also unlikely) Seizing assets (illegal and would most likely set a poor precedent)

It might also to organize an open database of billionaires with their respective fields (Forbes is closed) to help organize a boycott of some sort Though I suspect their fingers are in everything and it would be highly impractical.

Sorry for the word diarrhea. What are your thoughts?

antlion,
@antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I don’t think the crazy taxes need to be on obscene wealth itself, but on the very lavish and wasteful things people do with that wealth, things that have a very real impact to the rest of society.

For example, private jets or even private chartered flights should have some very steep taxes to offset the cost of all the FAA employees and stuff at all the small airports, all the carbon emissions, and everything.

Yachts, and very large properties also come to mind. Like total square feet of living space of all real estate owned - once it crosses like 10,000 sq ft the annual taxes just get higher and higher. For example 10k-20k sq ft costs $1/sq ft annually, 20k-40k costs $5/sq ft, etc.

echo64,

They barely spend money on these things, it’s worth understanding what billionaire really means. You could levey hundred percent taxes on these things and billionaires wouldn’t even notice

jonne, (edited )

And yet they go through great lengths to make sure those things aren’t taxed the way other things are. In fact, they’re tax deductable: propublica.org/…/private-jets-yachts-wealthy-tax-… .

If they didn’t care about spending extra, stuff like that wouldn’t make it into laws.

Being wealthy is cheap in a lot of ways, in the same way that being poor is expensive.

echo64,

yes because they employ tax avoidance people in general and they make more money paying those people to avoid tax all over the place than if they were taxed so it’s a net gain.

to be clear, they don’t even know they are lobbying for tax on these things to be low. their people do it.

and again, to be clear, it’s not the money we care about, its the other 995 million that we should be focusing on nixing.

ohwhatfollyisman,

we need to change the parameters of success.

the current “world’s richest persons” list is actually the “world’s greediest persons” list. we need to all start calling it exactly that. we need to, as society, understand that having those levels of wealth is more a symptom of a sick and twisted mind rather than a consequence of “business acumen”.

the world’s richest persons list should be recalibrated to what percentage of one’s income has been given away in taxes and donations. think about it, if you can indulge in all your necessities, comforts, and luxuries on 10% of your income and still afford to give away the other 90%, are you not 9 times “richer” than you need to be?

separately, any company that turns an obscene profit has done so only by overcharging their customers. these companies should be vilified therefore, and not celebrated.

DecarbonatedOdes,

So true. And a national change in perspective is definitely achievable.

Modern_medicine_isnt,

I doubt it is really greed. They are competitive. It’s a different driver.

bazmatazable,

No matter if it is greed, competitiveness, narcissism, another personality trait or some combination of them the point was that we as a society should not consider becoming a billionaire as model behavior. By all means be the best sports player or musician or top surgeon and make as much money as you are legally allowed. Most tech billionaires are just not that impressive to justify their current net worth.

intensely_human,

Focus on making the poor people richer instead. Then you’ll realize things are going pretty good.

jaek,

Hard to make the poor people richer when the rich are taking an increasingly large share of the pie.

intensely_human,

Actually with the wonders of math it’s not. Because if the pie gets bigger faster than their portion increases, we all win.

And, as it turns out, the poorest people in the world are indeed getting richer.

Urist,
@Urist@lemmy.ml avatar

Resources are ultimately finite, regardless of method of extraction. The poor people would get richer faster with better distribution and research supports basic reasoning that the pie would get bigger if distribution was better.

intensely_human,

Not sure which resources you’re referring to that would be at their limit such that poor people can’t get any richer.

Also no, all the times the economic system has been built around optimizing distribution, production has dropped to almost zero. Under redistribution schemes, the poor tend to die horribly.

Urist,
@Urist@lemmy.ml avatar

I reiterate: All resources are ultimately finite. There is however more than enough for all if extracted sustainably and shared somewhat equally. Under redistribution schemes, the poor stop being poor because having basic needs met increases social mobility. Also production increases because it is in many cases artificially restricted due to the consumers being too poor to buy the things they want and/or need.

LemmyKnowsBest,

Money is infinite though. The wealthy people know how to tap into all the manipulative ways of increasing their own wealth. What we need is education for everyone to know how to do this. But of course a problem with that is that if everyone is wealthy, no one is wealthy because wealth doesn’t exist without something to contrast it with, which are the poor financially-illiterate people who do all the hard labor which generates wealth for their CEOs. Which is why the wealthy people don’t want to educate poor people on financial literacy.

Squizzy,

deleted_by_moderator

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    bionicjoey, (edited )

    Since this is AskLemmy, perhaps Lemmy should answer you.

    beebarfbadger,

    No need, I’ve been hearing that it’s good when they get all the money shoved at them BECAUSE, and hear me out now, they may or may not choose to maybe trickle some of the wealth they don’t obsessively hoard or burn on pleasure trips into space back onto the population.

    They’re bound to start doing that aaaaaany decade now…

    ChonkyOwlbear, (edited )

    A recent study has shown there is little increase in happiness beyond $500,000 in annual earnings. Based on that I suggest a cap of $500k per year or $50 million lifetime earnings.

    The former would be for most people, the latter is for movie stars or athletes who might have a few very high earning years and love off them the rest of their life.

    banneryear1868,

    Labor organizing, laws, and taxes. Same way we got what we have now but the work isn’t done.

    pruwybn,
    @pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    To answer the question in terms of things you personally can do, I think the boring and realistic answer is to research organizations who align with your goals and who you think have effective methods, and get involved with them.

    Personally I like represent.us - They’re specific to the US, but their idea is to put anti-corruption laws into place that help remove the influence of money on the government. This would help get laws passed that favor everybody instead of just the rich. Their approach is to begin at the local level and get enough momentum for a national movement to have some power.

    Here are a couple of videos they made, first about what the problem is, and second about how they are trying to solve it:

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A

    stoy,

    To help our poor billionaires I will take one for the team and help them reduce their burden, for a small administrative fee, I will take ownership of 10% of their fortune, I’d imagine there are several other people who gladly would agree to help in slmilar ways.

    Thorny_Insight,

    But then you’d be a billionaire aswell and would need to be excecuted for the horrible person you are.

    stoy,

    I’d obvously vet my clients based on their fortune:

    A bilionaire with a fortune up to 9 billion, then I’d manage to deal with 10%

    But at 10 billions to 99 billions, I could only manage to deal with 1%

    Also, I would disperse the money, sharing it with the world, while at the same time gathering cameras, computers, and other things I enjoy, thus ensuring that the wealth is not just collected, but actively used and taxes are paid.

    Then as the funds I have been tasked with reducing are gone, I am able to accept a new client for this most noble of task.

    ComradePorkRoll, (edited )

    I hear what you’re saying. I don’t see the methods you listed working under our government as our system has this flaw where the laws enforced tend to depend on which party is in charge.

    That being said, organize your workplace. I’m personally fond of the Industrial Workers of the World as we are the only union that has an anticapitalist stance and our industrial organizing methods make it harder for employers to create division amongst the workers of a workplace (ie: separate unions for school teachers and school maintenance staff).

    jadelord,

    Taxes! But different. This channel is very informative:

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEdx1BIb1x0

    The first Episode of Sabrina Live! is called How the Rich Don’t Pay Taxes. All the rich need to do is use three simple steps: “Buy, Borrow, Die.” In this episode, Rich Kid attempts to buy a $50 video game after purchasing a $1 Pokemon card. He then leaves his Pokemon card to his son - Rich Kid II.

    www.peoplestaxpage.org.

    DecarbonatedOdes,

    Since force is a clear crowd favorite: What would that look like? Angry mod surrounds home of billionaire and guillotines them on their lawn? According to Forbes there are currently 735 billionaires. That might take some time.

    jpreston2005,

    It’d be more like, load them into the guillotine, and right before you set the blade in motion, offer them one last chance. swipe your cards, enter your pins, and transfer 90% of your income to the public fund (and live), or die and we take all of it. They’ve been using the threat of violence and incarceration against us our whole lives (steal from a company, cops arrest you, company steals from you, you have to get it back yourself), why not return the favor?

    demesisx,
    @demesisx@infosec.pub avatar

    Are you kidding?

    735 would take like 20 minutes in parallel if all of the wage slaves got together wherever each billionaire is and gave them what they have coming. And boy do they have it coming!

    Those who make peaceful revolution impossible (by buying up our politicians, governments, and news-media) will make violent revolution inevitable.

    uriel238,
    @uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    It took about a century in France just to go from monarchy to republic.

    Pistcow,

    2nd amendment

    otp,

    The Rupert’s Land Act?

    jerrythegenius,
    @jerrythegenius@lemmy.world avatar

    Do it yourself, coward

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