Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "We must tax the wealth of multibillionaires." video.

Because their wealth was only made possible through unfair tax laws that they lobbied for and refusing to pay the people who made their wealth possible decent wages.
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How do you pay property taxes?
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You mean a regressive consumption tax? No, thank you. Say no to the Unfair Tax.
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@lostmypassword After when? They started to shift their actual income to things that don't get taxed.
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@lostmypassword And that is what we are trying to address.
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@lostmypassword Then, when should it be taxed? If they are masking it as Not Income, it won't be taxed until it is sold, and part of the argument is that it should be taxed at the same level as ordinary income when it is sold. If they die and leave shares to their children, it will never be taxed because of perhaps the most obscene loophole of all.
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@lostmypassword And one that a lot came up with is the wealth tax. Pretty much all evidence says that all it really does is slow the accumulation of extreme wealth. (One study said that if it was implemented In 1982, when Bill Gates had enough net worth to be subject to it, he would have had a net worth of $13 billion in 2019.) If they don't accept the idea of being taxed enough that they'll never become trillionaires, they might have to face something that makes Share Our Wealth look like supply-side economics.
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@aylbdrmadison1051 Consumption taxes are literally the textbook example of a regressive tax. Unless it has changed since the last time I dealt with people pushing this one, it didn't even exempt food. By definition, the more you make, the lower percentage of income you spend. If consumption taxes are not regressive (you can only make them less regressive, never progressive), find me one specific example anywhere of the rich paying a higher percentage of income than the poor do in consumption taxes. Here's a hint: you can't do it.
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@tourniquet3306 You don't think that landlords pass it onto the tenants? As to the larger question, the point is that the super rich manipulate their income so that it is not taxable, and a wealth tax is designed to fight that manipulation.
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@tourniquet3306 By taking income as stock options rather than salary, even when it gets cashed in, it is at a lower rate. If they die, and they still have unrealized capital gains, the rate at which they die never gets taxed. (Example: If Jeff Bezos died today, his kids could cash out Amazon stock, and the capital gains basis is where they inherited it, so they would get a 12-figure net worth and never pay a penny in taxes.) And I don't know why you are using the first person, because the wealth tax doesn't kick in until someone has assets of at least $16MM.
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@tourniquet3306 So, his kids get to keep hundreds of billions of dollars tax free? Estate taxes don't tax the dead. They tax the heirs.
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