And they fight against the wealth tax like it were heresy.
Yep.
Saw a vid about doing that recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsDsDqIxgfg
And when I searched for that again just now, saw there are dozens of others too, about “borrow until you die” and similar. “Tax is for the poor” they say.
So much for progressive tax system.
The whole system (not just the tax system) is broken by design.
this is also pretty good vulnerability, should people start to think at somepoint that maybe billionaires shouldnt have all the wealth in the world. I wonder how the ones who have loaned them money would feel if the asset they have loaned the money for would just… go away.
Any person should consider billionaires like foreign occupation, though the occupation consists the entire planet. Maybe we shouldn’t eat the rich, but eat their art collections.
Oh was that why they threw the tomato sauce on that one painting? Now it all makes sense
Isnt this monetary policy rather than taxes?
If we didnt make borrowing so cheap then it wouldnt be cheaper to borrow to avoid taxes. QE has huge effects on making the rich richer, as wages are debased via the money printer.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1108.pdf?sc_lang=en
Its the same with a minimum income, why have a minimum income if you’re just going to deliberately actively erode it via inflation and growing the money supply 7-8% a year?
Its also the obvious cause of the housing crisis, which lets people profit off the cantillon effect utilizing cheap credit, which disadvantages the poor and the young who own less collateral. Those with the best access to credit profit, and those with the least are debased to feed the rich.
Rich ppl exploit systems regardless of the cost to society. They don’t care about anyone but themselves and will be why society fails.
They also have bank accounts here and in the Cayman Islands
This is completely nonsensical.
The way wealth is structured definitely shapes how opportunity flows. It’s worth having thoughtful conversations about tax policy and fairness without turning it into pure outrage—systems matter.
I used to work in fair tax policy. It exists.
Everyone hates it. That’s all I ever learned from years of work on the issue. Even the people who would benefit from it, hate it.
People really really like unfair tax policies, because they imagine themselves on the unfair side of it benefiting from it. They love loopholes because it makes them feel ‘smart’, etc. Our politicians are aware of this. They know that fairer tax code reforms are unpopular. People very much adore the system we have of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and they generally want more of that because emotionally that is what they regard as ‘fair’.
There is a major gap between what people say they want, and what they actually want. Everyone says they want ‘fairness’ but what they want… is a system they feel they can exploit to their own advantage. They want the appearance of fairness, but the don’t want to pay taxes, especially taxes that come due as separate payments once a year.
I won’t even go into the other problem that ‘fair’ taxation would be incredible intrusive.
“Ferengi workers don’t want to stop the exploitation. We want to find a way to become the exploiters.” – Rom, DS9, S4E16
Oh no, AI on Lemmy. It’s joever :(
Capitalist apologia AI, of course
Tax portfolio loans over a certain amount. That’s pretty much it. Sure, there will need to be some moving parts beyond that, but basically if you treat a loan as an income rather than something like a primary residence purchase in the buyer’s own name, it gets taxed.
I think the ‘unrealized assets’ should be taxed as ‘realized’ if they are used as collateral. Yes, it would affect the reverse mortgages and such, or home equity loans, but fuck it, I’d take those relatively small pains against the massive societal gains.
I don’t know what the financial consequences would be. Taxing unrealized assets would also have to have limits because so many retirement funds and the like are unrealized gains, we don’t want to hurt people’s ability to retire. That’s why putting a tax on trying to sidestep paying capital gains makes more sense. We’re not going to figure out how that all works here today. People won’t sit on unrealized gains, they’re going to have to use them in some fashion even if just as collateral, and we need to tax whatever workarounds they use to make those funds work for them.
The rule applies for people with billion dollars of assets.
They divest the assets into holding companies, like they already do, held by LLCs.
Then make it also apply for LLC, or for everyone except (list). I mean every set can be quantified.
Reverse Mortgages are usually predatory anyway, so more scrutiny and regulation isn’t a bad thing.
Yes, this. Tax collateral as advance on capital gains and the whole incentive to dodge taxes with loans go away and it remains fair too
You could make exceptions for loans taken to improve the same asset (home improvement loans) but you’d have to pass strict audits to get the exception approved
Wealth and Asset Taxes now!
And they benefit the most from taxes too.
Public education gives me better opportunities.
Public education gives them thousands of literate employees who can do basic math, think logically, use technology, and learn anything new.
This applies to everything from building roads to government scholarships and health programs. They benefit much more from the military too.
Might be a silly question –
Why not get taxed by selling it once and for all instead of paying interest on the loan against it for years.In the long run won’t interest surpass the one time tax?
Also assuming they invest the surplus after the sale, it should be the cheaper option.
They can get interest rates that are lower than the tax they would pay. Often, they hardly pay any interest at all.
Why do banks do this? Sounds like a favor.
Because a small rate on a large loan is still a lot of income to the bank
And of course because banks can create more money than they have.
Well, many of the people that do this have large stakes in banks.
Can’t say much about US, but in my country if you get 100k assured by an investment of 100k, for exemple, you pay 1.2% in the loan, but the investment keeps going up by 1.1%. So you pay 0.1% for the 100k. A LOT less that you’d pay if getting your own money back
Sounds like a bank interest problem, no?
If all I need to beat is 1.1% annual growth rateon my investments, I would take loans against most of my assets and turn a profit.
Why the low interest rates in the banks in your country?
It’s not a low interest for everyone. But here its like this: of you pay, fine, at the end your money (invested) is yours to do what you want. If you don’t pay, the bank will keep your investment as payment. The investment is the way the bank assures you are going to pay. If you can’t put anything in the deal (car, house, investment) you’ll pay full interest, which could be anything. I see clients getting 6,5% interest all the time
Coincidentally, I saw an article entitled “Buy, Borrow, Die”. If you don’t need to have a salary paying job (so not applicable to almost everyone I know or have ever met), you buy an asset let it grow, refinance it (borrowings grow), spend the money you borrowed (tax free) some for more assets, some for pleasure. Rinse and repeat until you die with a shitload of debt that then gets wiped out.
One word: Land value tax.
Every time I see a post like this I am disappointed that NO ONE mentions Henry George.
People, please, go educate yourself. Taxes were solved before ww1.
Why’s that? You stated your opinion knowing that many people are ignorant of it, but failed to back it up. Why should we research your idea when we have ideas of our own? Don’t suggest we’re ignorant if you’re not willing to take the first step in educating us. Your contempt feels good but doesn’t solve any problems. Ciao
Georgism is an ideology.
They think the LVT will solve all social problems ever. That’s the premise of the book he wrote about it.
He’s basically like Marx, but instead of communal ownership of production he thinks taxing land value will solve all society’s problems. Like communists, Georgists think if you just read this book and BELIEVE poverty will disappear.
The LVT has a lot of merits, but it has lots of drawbacks. It’s difficult to value land as district from property, for one. It would also be highly inaccurate in the case of mineral rights and other factors.
I feel you and I’m glad you asked. The goal of my comment is to invoke interest so one can go down the rabbithole on ones own terms. This has a much more sustainable effect than just serving information on a boilerplate nobody asked for. Much like a catchy title/thumbnail on a yt video generates clicks, but the actual information does not.
There are a lot of resources about LVT out there including some educational videos in an entertainning way. Pick your own poison: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=georgism
My Standpoint: Our present tax system is bad (almost worldwide): Tax based on value generated (like income, sales and import taxes) costs society a lot (real costs but also opportunity costs) while simultaniously not solving a lot of todays issues (f.e. tax evasion, old money, zone planning / car centric design, pollution, etc.). Land Value Tax (or more precicely: Resource Tax) solves this by getting rid of the penalty for being productive or creating value while simultaniously taxing those being exponantionally wasteful with resources and/or pollute.
With LVT, there is now a penalty free incentive to increase profits and/or efficiency. On the other hand, if you consume and/or occupy resources like land, oil or air pollution, you’ll have to pay tax for that derived from the resources scarcity. The sum of the tax would be similar or higher than todays sum and would finance all government spending including a citizens dividend which could be interpreted today as unconditional basic income which would provide for basic human needs.
Georgism is PRO Economy and PRO Humanity. Win Win. Regardless of your political flavor, you should be in favor 😏
Winners: Society, everyone from poor to rich, resourceful entrepreneurs
Losers: old money, polluters, unrighteous beneficiaries of today’s flawed legal situation
I worked for 5 years to promote LVT.
In real life it’s far more complex to administer than a straight property tax, that’s why it will never be popular. It also creates bizarre outcomes where where it rewards some land uses and punishes others and creates weird incentives about land topology and parcelization.
Who is going to assess the value of the land as distinct from improvements? Geologists? Environmentalists? Different parents will presume different values and push those values. Property taxes are assumed basically based on other similar properties on the market, in terms of size, age, and space. But 2 parcels of 2 acre right next to each other could be radically different values depending in there topology and environments. I lived on a 2 acre parcel once, and our neighbors had 1/4 acre plots, but our 2 acres was mostly swampy low lying land that was not adjacent to the part the land our house was on that was regular. It was also weirdly shaped and the ‘access’ to it was a narrow 10ft corridor. It was essentially… useless land attached to our parcel, we couldn’t even develop it because in order to clear it you’d have to get permission form your neighbor to drive construction equipment across their driveway/lawn and destroy it. The extra ‘land’ in our case added 0 value to our property and in fact removed value, as houses around us were often selling for more due to the extra liability our extra land came with.
It introduces just as many problems as it those it claims to solve. It makes sense in some limited contexts, like say, urban land use across small and regular parcels, but not all land is urban land.
You forget that George was writing when society 70% agricultural and rural and working off a model of undeveloped land. in 2026 only 17% of the USA population lives outside of cities.
Technically three words.
I’m german speaking. So for me, this is one word ;)
We Swedes can get in on the verylongcompoundword fun too
Fun fact, in German the entire Bible is just one word!
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This is why we need a wealth tax.
