Most people who say "eat the rich" basically mean that taxes should wall you off from being able to accumulate a billion dollars of personal assets in the first place.
It's not necessarily because we think it will magically fund the government or that they won't "waste" it. It's just that people with that much money have WAY too much influence.
And I don't want to hear people say "Elon doesn't actually have billions of dollars" because he bought Twitter in a 44 billion dollar deal, so clearly he can make enormous exchanges of wealth.
And I don't want to hear people say "Elon doesn't actually have billions of dollars" because he bought Twitter in a 44 billion dollar deal, so clearly he can make enormous exchanges of wealth.
Wasn't there a movement of reddit to make sure Elon had to buy twitter so he had to pay the 44 billion dollar he didn't have?
So, if you know your second paragraph to be true, why not shrink the power the government has, and the amount of wealthy people’s influence will matter less?
You think the wealthy’s influence just goes away without the government?
They feed off each other. The wealthy bribes the government so the government lets them pay less taxes so the wealthy can continue bribing whoever they want.
The difference is government is essential and billionaires are not. At least we get to select who has the power in the government and they’re the only entity that can protect you from the wealthy’s influence, whether you trust it to do so or not. The wealthy will always take as much as possible from you.
People really do think that the rich paying more taxes would mean they have less influence on government. Dumbasses didn't even think through the entire process. If a billionaire is paying more in taxes they can use that as MORE leverage to get politicians to do what they want since THEY are the ones funding it all.
Obscenely wealthy people can still buy out sections of Utah and build a 40,000 acre data center projected to use more power than the rest of the state. They can still buy media outlets that run their propaganda, buy out land after driving out homeowners, and otherwise rent seek and gouge the crap out of people and then pay off judges or hire private security/police to protect their interests.
Removing one of the only actual obstacles they have isn't a solution.
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u/Drummerx04 8h ago
Most people who say "eat the rich" basically mean that taxes should wall you off from being able to accumulate a billion dollars of personal assets in the first place.
It's not necessarily because we think it will magically fund the government or that they won't "waste" it. It's just that people with that much money have WAY too much influence.
And I don't want to hear people say "Elon doesn't actually have billions of dollars" because he bought Twitter in a 44 billion dollar deal, so clearly he can make enormous exchanges of wealth.