cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/30028880
Our policy initiatives and overall goal are slightly different than that of this sub, but we seek to have the largest tent that we can.
I believe incremental change is key, and although $12B may seem a ridiculously high wealth cap to a community arguing for a sub $1B cap, we hope you will look into our arguments.
A $12B cap has a much larger tent, as it only excludes 250 people in the world, and could be a first step in proving that wealth distribution is effective. By the numbers, people with $1B-$12B are not the driving issue of wealth inequality. If we can end the existence of major multi-billionaires all of humanity will be infinitely better off, whether they have a net worth of $1 or $1B
That cap only affects to the top 0.0001% of richest americans. So it does matter because there are 10000 more people in the 1% than in the bracket your cap affects to. And you don’t even want to redistribute all their money, they could keep more money than they could spend in a thousand lives.
At this point I think you are larping because this is the most ridiculous thing I have seen trying to pass as a progressive initiative.
I dont know how to better explain the difference in magnitude of what kind of problem the existence of a hundred millionaire versus a mega billionaire is than I already have. Im more than aware the 1% includes anyone with over $13M. $13M is chump change in the grand scheme of things
I understand you personally are focused on all high level wealth. Simple math reveals that they are not where your buying power as an American wage earner went. Simple math shows that someone with $100M and someone with $10 are basically equally as poor as one another compared to even someone with $12B, let alone someone with $400B.
Do you understand? There really is no need to devolve into stupid personal attacks simply because you dont get my point. Im building a bridge initiative as a progressive. Not trying to build an idealized progressive initiative, like the many I have watched come and go as a progressive individual. Progressive hardly even means one specific thing in the first place anyways
No, you don’t know how to do math.
Top 1% in USA has 42 trillion dollars. People with more than 12 billion dollars have a total of 3 trillion dollars, from which you want to let them remain with about 1 trillion.
So this cap only redistributes 2 trillion from the 1%, which is less than 5% of the wealth that they are hoarding. This doesn’t fix shit. Do you still not get it?
There are 813 billionaires in the US today. If we took away everything above $12B from them, we would start moving the roughly $5T they are sitting on while still leaving them with $1B-$12B each.
You are bringing up a completely different subject than what I referred to, which is that the 1% includes all net worths of $13M or more.
This conversation isnt about redistribution of much of anything from the 1% at large. Its about dislodging the 5 trillion dollars that sit largely in the hands of like 10 people. Just that $5T moving would be enough to allow the rest of the 1% unaffected. Thats like 1/3rd of the federal deficit
I fail to see where my math has been wrong at any point. The point of targeting that $5T specifically is because its $5T that is virtually guaranteed to never move otherwise. Its just feel good money for the mega billionaires, which even 1%er cant relate to or justify