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?

Illuminostro,

An upper income cap for individuals AND corporations. $250 million for individuals, $250 billion for corps. 90% taxes on revenue over $1 million. Tax idle stock at 1% per share, per quarter.

PersonalDevKit,

Probably one of the most actionable steps so far.

How do you overcome corporations basing themselves in tax minimum countries, like Apple and Google.

As well as rich individuals who base their trusts in zero tax inheritance countries.

Rich people have lots of money to “invest” in accountants and lawyers to work around rules like this.

Modern_medicine_isnt,

Yeah, there are a thousand loophole. The very rich get paid in stock or low interest loans and the like. Thier stated income is often very low to avoid paying taxes. Corporations of course can just split up into multiple corporations to avoid caps.

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.

demesisx, (edited )
@demesisx@infosec.pub avatar

we should just Go aroUnd acting lIke they are the best ever Landlords on the pLanet and there is nOthing unusual abouT them beIng the oNly people on earth familiar with thE concept of happiness, right fellow captive serfs?

foggy,

I’m not sure, I kinda feel like we could use GUILLOTINES the way GUILLOTINES have been used historically, to spread that happiness around.

mydude,

deleted_by_moderator

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    skozzii,

    You have to be pure evil to be a billionaire, sitting on that much wealth with so many suffering in the world you can easily help. They are psychopaths if you think about it.

    I’m down with the guillotine.

    nick,

    Separate them from their heads. And wealth.

    an0nym0us,
    @an0nym0us@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Behead them!

    foggy,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    an0nym0us,
    @an0nym0us@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Behead them!

    demesisx,
    @demesisx@infosec.pub avatar

    behead them with guillotines

    an0nym0us, (edited )
    @an0nym0us@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    OP said we should behead them with guillotines which was removed by your cuck lemmy.world mods.

    Hey mods: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk aren’t going to blow you so you can stop sucking them off.

    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.

    Tolstoshev,

    Education. Until the masses realize the tricks being used on them, we can redistribute all we want and it will still all funnel up to the top again.

    RememberTheApollo,

    We’ve tried that.

    They still decided horse dewormer was a better idea than masks.

    hglman,

    Yeah and it worked, now the rug has been pulled from schools for a long time.

    rsuri,

    Honestly I think the best means for changing things is right under our noses: voting. Not just federal, but also state and local. As it is now, in most places tax cuts that flow mostly to the wealthy are still a great political move that’s an easy way to get votes. That’s the first thing that needs to change.

    There’s all kinds of groups like the Center for Tax Reform and the US Chamber of Commerce that push for policies that tend to increase financial inequality - but as far as I know there isn’t one for reducing inequality. Given how many people recognize the problem, maybe there should be one. And then politicians can start to fear that group as much as they fear the others. Of course it won’t have a lot of wealthy donors, but as some politicians have shown small donations can do a lot.

    Sprokes,

    Voting doesn’t change anything when billionaires can be easily lobbied. Just look at what happening in France, it is not the US as there are some rules against it but politicians are doing exactly what billionaires want them to do. French people are against those laws in favor of the rich but the gouvernement doesn’t care.

    Pistcow,

    2nd amendment

    otp,

    The Rupert’s Land Act?

    Asudox,
    @Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

    Locking as the reports for the comments in this post are just enormous.

    banneryear1868,

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

    sagrotan,
    @sagrotan@lemmy.world avatar

    Guillotines. No, seriously: Long process. First step is ignoring them. Totally and ultimately. Second step: Tax 'em. You wanna live in a civilized environment - you pay. For others. You flee ? Wanted list. Losing citizenship. Step three: If it doesn’t pay taxes, it pays with property. In short: hold them accountable, to the end. And when they lived for a few months on their super yacht in international waters, baking and shaking, they’ll get miserable. There’s a legitimate chance they buy their own country and then they walked into the trap. Imagine that: billionaires that are forced to deal with all the other ego junkies and maniacs: 'dis gon be gud!

    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

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