A wealth tax of just 1%/year is sufficient to prevent new billionaires from forming and slowly eliminating existing billionaires without having to bring out the choppy boys. Given current public anger, they would be wise to support such things.
Well, what do you think is going to happen to stock prices when billionaires are forced to liquidate over $200B in stocks and bonds a year just to cover their taxes? The only other option is dividends being issued and that would reduce the prices of the stocks as well.
It may bring down the overall numbers, but given the rate of passive growth would still be several times the wealth tax, I see no reason they would disappear or new ones would stop appearing.
Norway as an example has had their wealth tax for over a century. They still have one of the highest rates of billionaires per capita worldwide.
The passive growth for the last 70 years was largely due to governments buying stocks (to prepare for future budget deficits from a population swing) and the population flooding the market trying to get returns and effectively boosting market prices.
If you look over a longer history, you will see that stocks on average did barely better than inflation. And that on average stock prices were close to equal to 4x the annual dividend issued.
Most stocks today have no dividends. It is a game of greater fools.
A wealth tax of just 1%/year is sufficient to prevent new billionaires from forming and slowly eliminating existing billionaires without having to bring out the choppy boys. Given current public anger, they would be wise to support such things.
How so? I support the idea of a wealth tax, but I would have expected the billionaires to be getting way above a 1% return on their assets.
Well, what do you think is going to happen to stock prices when billionaires are forced to liquidate over $200B in stocks and bonds a year just to cover their taxes? The only other option is dividends being issued and that would reduce the prices of the stocks as well.
It may bring down the overall numbers, but given the rate of passive growth would still be several times the wealth tax, I see no reason they would disappear or new ones would stop appearing.
Norway as an example has had their wealth tax for over a century. They still have one of the highest rates of billionaires per capita worldwide.
The passive growth for the last 70 years was largely due to governments buying stocks (to prepare for future budget deficits from a population swing) and the population flooding the market trying to get returns and effectively boosting market prices.
If you look over a longer history, you will see that stocks on average did barely better than inflation. And that on average stock prices were close to equal to 4x the annual dividend issued.
Most stocks today have no dividends. It is a game of greater fools.