Google cofounder Sergey Brin has spent $102 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses

[u/Logical_Welder3467]

https://fortune.com/article/how-much-has-google-cofounder-sergey-brin-spent-to-oppose-california-billionaire-tax-102-million-owe-13-billion-if-loses/

[u/peazley]

$18 million, gives you $1,000 per day for 50 years. Without earning anything off your investment. That’s a nice hotel and fancy dinner every night for the rest of your life.

[u/hammertime2009 → u/peazley]

I’m ok with this idea. Hell even 100 million… let them have it. Fuck it 1 billion is the cutoff. Be rich as fuck. Nobody ever ever ever needs 10 billion or 1 trillion. It’s just insane.

[u/EchoingAngel → u/hammertime2009]

The real problem is people getting rich enough to start shaping the system. That's how it becomes a runaway issue

[u/Conformatrix → u/EchoingAngel]

Which is why a 7 or maaaybe low 8 digit limit makes sense. At that point you have to actually weigh your grandiose nation/world-shaping ideals against your creature comforts.

Although reps are notoriously cheaper to buy than people imagine, so maybe lower would be better.

[u/Hal_Fenn → u/Conformatrix]

It's actually why, as unpopular as it tends to be, we should pay politicians a lot more while also clamping down on any and all types of gift/donation/bribe.

It generally gives you a much better quality of politician and obviously makes their opinions a lot harder to sway.

[u/otakuarchivist → u/Hal_Fenn]

Yep. I was tired enough of how bad things are that I was actually thinking about running for office at one point. When I saw the salary rates and considered that I'd have to reapply for my job every four years, I quickly realized that wouldn't be a good option compared to my current sufficiently paying very safe career. Not to mention the cost of campaigning in the first place.

[u/Acceptable-Piccolo57 → u/Hal_Fenn]

Yup, no stock/ investments etc, and a decent salary

[u/Leviticus_Sux → u/[deleted]]

But 100 million in what? Net worth or liquid assets? Being a billionaire doesn't mean having a billion dollars. It means owning shares and assets that are estimated to be worth a billion dollars.

If you start a company and you build it to become worth a billion dollars, does that mean you now have to give away shares in your company above 100 million? Now you only own 10 percent of your company and you no longer control the very thing you built... What if the people who now control it run the business into the ground and you now are broke and penniless? That wouldn't be fair at all...

And if it's based on liquid assets, then the billionaires will just reinvest the money above the limit in other businesses and assets so that they don't have to give it away in taxes (which is sort of what they already do to avoid taxes now...). Then they just take out loans against their assets when they want to buy something expensive.

Point being, there's no easy way to enforce such a limit because the concept of being a billionaire isn't what most people think.

I'd love to find a way to limit their wealth and power too, but it's not such a simple thing.

[u/Conformatrix → u/Leviticus_Sux]

I don't think we should dismiss the idea of limiting the size of private business entities. The more powerful a given company, the more they're able to exert influence over government to optimize for their own needs over that of the people a government is meant to serve. That's one argument for nationalizing any corporation past a certain size, then there's the "too big to fail" scenario- if they're so large that it would destabilize the town/state/country for them to fail, then the town/state/country should have a say in what the business does.

Also, it's just logically sensible for you to only own 10% of your company once it's that size? There exists no billion dollar company that's just one dude. You are not the one person who built the company to a billion dollar valuation.

Past 100 million, you start portioning off ownership to the other people who built your business with you. Does that sound fair?

[u/Leviticus_Sux → u/Conformatrix]

Fair? I don't know. Not necessarily...

Sure, other people may have helped you build it to become that large, but you were in control of it and led the company to its size. Giving away that control when you've done nothing but lead a business to success probably wouldn't seem very fair to you if you were in that position.

But, even if we agreed what you said was a fair thing to do, this is not a simple thing to enforce. While I completely agree that we have too many individuals with too much money and power, I'm not convinced that the solution is a simple and direct limiting of their assets like that. There's a million ways around that kind of thing and it would be virtually impossible to define and enforce.

As I stated in other comments, I think the solution is more about limiting corporate influence in politics (repealing citizens United and banning large political donations by individuals and businesses), closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals and corporations, improving workers rights (like undoing laws that make it hard for unions and labor organizations to be created & function and/or create new laws that make it easier for them to form), actually enforce laws against monopolies, and better regulate news organizations (not by interfering with what they can and can't report on and say, but by limiting large corporations or wealthy individuals that own other businesses from owning and/or controlling them. In other words, a news organization should be just that: a news organization. Not a subsidiary of a large corporate conglomerate that has a vested interest in using news stations to control narratives that can benefit them and hurt their competitors.).

The problem with any of the ideas being talked about by you, me, and most of the others in this thread is it requires the very politicians that are corrupted by these wealthy businesses and individuals to enact/repeal these laws. Not only that, but the supreme court itself has become blatantly corrupt, and they were supposed to be the guiding light in our system. If the supposed impartial judges of our country have been corrupted by wealthy individuals/businesses, I'm not sure how we can expect our politicians to be better....

Getting enough of the public to vote for actually honest politicians is near impossible when the "news" organizations and social media is weaponized by the wealthy to divide our country into two halves and have them fight against themselves...

A significant portion of the right literally thinks Democrats are evil socialists and communists (because they think those are the same thing) that want to take away their guns, murder babies, open the borders for Mexicans to come in and steal jobs & commit crimes, give away all the other jobs to non-whites, and a bunch of other "scary" things.

They've literally scared their base into thinking that the left are enemies and not just fellow countrymen that happen to disagree on some issues here and there. This fear-mongering is what allows them to be ok with breaking rules and political norms because it's not just about political differences. It's about "the fate of our country".

What they don't realize is that it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, but not in the way that they are scared of. The left must become more inflexible and more extreme to effectively counteract this onslaught. It's almost impossible for one side to play by the rules and still be effective when the other side constantly breaks those rules to get their way.

The Democrats have never been a super unified force (at least not in my lifetime), whereas the right have become quite unified and focused on winning at all costs, and that is a dangerous thing...

[u/Conformatrix → u/Leviticus_Sux]

Giving away that control when you've done nothing but lead a business to success

Again- at the scale of 1 billion dollars, it's literally and objectively not just you. Can we agree on that? I'll respond to the other stuff after we settle this point.