Vice-President Kamala Harris

The same people that "built or bought something" are the SAME PEOPLE (and families) that hoard. It often comes in the form of inheritance, because even billionaires aren't immortal. Why do you think Sam Walton's great-great-grandchildren are billionaires? What did they create? New wickets for their horse polo fields? No. Wealth is a corrupting influence.

In this highly unequal nation, no independent person or family should have over 100 million dollars. When they reach that amount (typically on the backs of the working class, like when Elon Musk did all he could to illegally keep Tesla plants open during the worst of COVID), agents of some democratic collective and/or government should straight-up take that excess from them. Simple.

I don't "agree with the policy", other than as an incremental thing that is slightly better than completely unfettered capitalism. We're still gonna have billionaires under Komrade Kamala. Would we have them under Komrade KarlOG? No.

I am not sure you realize the fact that sam walton great great children won't be those paying the 25% tax on unrealized capital gains. They have no huge ones (except if they made further succesful investments). The inherited billions won't be touched, there is no unrealized capital gain in inheritance.

It's people who founded companies now worth a lot of billions and didn't cash out entirely that will pay. Those who cashed out and have zillions won't pay anything. Do you even know how to be a good marxist?

you should oppose this proposal and instead ask for yearly wealth tax.

I get it, in Karl Marx world very succesful startups don't exist. People cash out far earlier and a lot less innovation happens.

If YOU were to read again, you might note that I said nothing about California in particular. I've been talking about national policy.

If you were to read, like, in general, you might come to understand the basic fact that I and others have been screaming at you forever that there is an overwhelmingly massive difference in the economic platforms of Democrats vs. Communists, and thus your repeated quasi-equivalence of the two is deeply stupid.

Btw in Karl Marx economic model all value accrues to the workers, not to the state. The workers *of that company*. The workers. Co-ops can exist, it's not only the state remember? ever actually read Marx?

So if 10 people found a company and work there and new employees get shares and then they sell for outrageous amounts of money, IN KARL MARX WORLD that money is well deserved, earned by work, not by exploitation of other people work through capital, and not sequestered by the state.

At most there could be some objection to an unequal distribution of shares among workers. But if it's 20 guys selling for 20 billions in KARL MARX WORLD they would fully deserve 1 billion each without anyone touching it.

So you are actually to the far left of... Karl Marx.

I do realize that. I also know that there are other taxes than ones on unrealized capital gains.

I'm speaking of various so-called "estate taxes". There IS NO federal inheritance tax directly on the books (huh, it's almost like we have a nearly fully free capitalist exploitation state!), only estate taxes that half-way function as such. A much more robust tax code and set of penalties upon the super-rich would lead to a vastly more equitable society.

What's the downside here? The failchildren of Sam Walton are sad that they're no longer billionaires? Maybe they should try contributing something to humanity or the market beyond being expelled from the womb of someone who was expelled from the womb of someone that was expelled from the womb of someone who married Sam Walton...

I don’t know if I support such a policy proposal but you seem pretty rushed to put your communist label on it. And you need to show your work on the trickle down economic impact.

It would appear to affect a little less than 10,000 Americans, much like taxes on estates above 13.5 mil doesn’t have much of an effect on the masses. I don’t think changing taxes on capital gains changes them from being a capitalist to a communist but the idea that a second generation trust fund baby has less money to use to inflict his terrible politics on the world has a certain appeal.

Again i think you don't understand the proposal like others don't. Trust funds wouldn't be touched much. They already regularly sell to pay out the beneficiaries yearly. They don't accumulate huge unrealized capital gains.

Either that or I recognize that this society is SO deep within the late-stages of capitalism that I recognize that workers will never be ALLOWED to seize the means of production (and its financial benefits) that any hope of smoothing out the grotesque and inhumane levels of income inequality has to come from government.

I mean, if this were the mid 1800s, and all it took was some workers grabbing muskets and confronting Montgomery Burns at the entrance to his estate, that'd be wonderful. That's not our world.

Workers are allowed to seize the means of production and it's financial benefits and they often do that, it's called "investing in stocks", and many millions of workers do.

And workers in companies that grow from nothing to a huge value make a ton of money, ever heard of stock options?

This is an extremely small percentage of the american workforce. Pretty bad argument on your part.

I can understand the proposal and not think your opinions about it’s impact are correct, or even rational.

Again, you need to show your work. I said trust fund baby, not trust fund as a taxable entity.

stock options are one of the most misunderstood things in the world

it is sometimes a vehicle for insane wealth creation - but it's mostly a management tool to avoid paying higher salaries and keep employees retained - they are called the golden handcuffs for a reason

it costs the companies very little to do at minimal risk and can do wonders for reducing payroll and keeping your valuable workers from leaving

it's even worse for startups that have no liquidity for the stock itself because if they quit or get fired, then they must exercise their options, which means they have to purchase them and they still won't have any method of selling them any time in the near future

for startups, you're basically given the option to past post on investing in the company in the most recent round of founding - so say the company raised 30 million dollars to expand their workforce and bring you in at that moment, they offer you 20k shares in stock options as part of your package, in the last funding round where those shares were minted, they were valued at $5 a share so your 20k shares are have a purchase price of 100k for the employee given that 20k stock package

they must pay 100k in order to get those shares - so long as they stay at the company, they are allowed to past post, not requiring them to exercise the option, they can hold onto it and wait until the company either IPOs or gets acquired - at which point they have a secondary market providing value where they can be sold

you stay and work there another 3 years, in the meantime they've continued to grow, in the latest funding round, the share price was valued at $15 a share - so in theory, your 20k shares which you owe 100k on are now worth 300k - pretty sweet right - but you were also making only 120k a year and if you were doing that same job at a regular company then you'd be making over 200k

so that 200k of value came at the cost of 80*3 years=240k of salary

so even though the company had 3x'd in those 3 years, you still lost money by choosing them and would have been better off with a traditional job

people are so focused on the outliers where a company did so stupendously well that there stock options made them millionaires but this is extremely rare and there's definitely a tradeoff of having a much lower salary to take on that risk

and even worse, if you want to leave you can't because your shares unlock on a 5 year timeline so you'll only get 12k shares if you leave at year 3 instead of 20k shares

and you'll also need to have 100k in liquidity to pay for those shares when you quit or get fired or you lose them forever

and, if you do have that 100k then you could be sitting on those shares for quite a long time before you can do anything with them

this was most famous with uber a company which didn't ipo until it'd been around for a full decade

https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/29/handcu...

Compare it to Karl Marx world, where if you leave a company, no matter how big your contribution to it, you get nothing equity related because equity has to stay 100% with the workers and can't be traded in general.

the world is not binary and this is a lazy excuse to hand wave away a lot of the bad things that happen in our economy

i expect better from you luciom, you can live in a world where employees aren't gangbanged by the investors without it being anything remotely close to karl marx world as you put it

and frankly, if you and i lived during karl marx's time, long before workers unions and government regulations stepped in to better protect them, and you heard of this new fancy idea that basically offered a way out of that indentured servitude then communism would have been very appealing to you and me back then as well

you need to go visit some historic "company towns" to get a real understanding of just how much grip and control a handful of industrialists used to have over the day to day livelihoods of regular people

in fact, much of the social services we provide today from free universal education, social security, public health, etc came as a response

none of those things existed during the overwhelming majority of human history when we were mostly farmers

it all happened because with industrialization, farming became so efficient that landlords no longer needed to fully employ everyone to farm their land

an average family farm throughout most of history was anywhere from 10 (a minimal self-sustained hermitage type) to 60 acres with the median being about 30

they'd have large families, everyone working on the farm and bringing in other villagers periodically to assist

by 1900, with modern equipment available, the average size of a farm shot up from 30 acres to 150 acres and now the entire family didn't need to work it anymore and some of the sons could pursue life outside the farm

by 1950, once we'd further industrialized and replaced everything that was previously done by animals or human power, the average size of a farm went to 250 acres

today, some farmers literally operate their farms inside an air-conditioned office where they monitor the situation via sensors and control semi-automated processes via their desktop and the average farm is over 450 acres

back when people were farming, even on the behalf of a landlord, the system had its own system of safety nets in place, there was always more land that didn't have enough hands to tend it and thus there was always a manner to contribute - so things like unemployment were self determined

once that went away, people needed to accept any condition possible to work in a factory because the alternative was starvation and a slow cruel death

this is the world karl marx lived in, a world that no longer exists today with medicaid, welfare, social security, project housing and free schools

this is also why the soviets only focused on cities and mostly left the countryside alone because they needed those who were max exploited and would die unless they put up with it, this is also why they had so much friction with china despite that they'd make perfect allies on paper, china had still not modernized and remained an agricultural society and the soviets didn't think it was possible to recruit farmers who didn't live and die on the whims of the board members and this caused a lot of friction between the two during the early era of revolution, so much that the USSR actually funded the Nationalists figuring it was better to have a friendly power in China that actually had a chance of winning rather than engage in a quixotic quest on supporting their fellow communists who had no chance at success

i weep a single tear for the people with over 100million that borrow against their vast holdings as "income" to avoid paying taxes that may be affected by this.

25% forces sales, with consequences for everyone else as well

maybe they'll all flee the country as well. that always seems to come true also.. lol.

you should go get on a message board in your country and try to convince your countrymen to roll out the red carpet for the flood of disaffected centimillionaires. maybe you can grab some of our "job creators" that we apparently will be upsetting.

oh wait they'll probably still just stay here.. just like all of them cry about living in NYC, LA, SF but still don't leave.

We do already, we will gain massively from the British choice of ending non Dom status

https://www.rsm.global/italy/rsmsts/en/n...

Problem with the USA is the very fascist (and illegal under international law but you never care about that) fiscal claim on citizens even if they leave the country, which requires renouncing citizenship, unlike every other country in the world except north Korea.

That's why they don't leave, as in a sense you never REALLY abolished slavery

10% owns 90% of the stock market value .
Try again …

And with the stupid buyback share programs companies do to push stocks ever higher , it prevent the bottom 50% to buy any significant market share ever.

1 Apple share , 225$ lol…
Tell someone winning 30k a year , hey you buy 2 share of Apple this year , it’s life changing .

Taxes on stocks a lot of the time are mega cringe. But as with anything the devil is in the details. I’m guessing that just like the “price controls” fake news, the real position is probably a lot more reasonable.

No man she proposed 25% tax on unrealized capital gains as per Zucman communist proposal (he previously wrote proposals for Warren when she was big about the wealth tax). He is the guy that thinks the Laffer curve maxes out at around 70% (actual, not statutory)

Zucman himself, the crazy french marxist economist, bragged about it

https://x.com/gabriel_zucman/status/1825...

who on earth makes 30k a year outside of fast food employees and why should their opinions matter on national economic policy?