There are a myriad of news articles here on Lemmy that display the abhorrent influence billionaires have on our society (especially the US, where I reside). I consistently read comments where the posters appear hopeless and despondent of the situation, while others jokingly refer to the guillotine.
As for myself, I have recently found myself with a lot of free time on my hands after being laid off and want to gather ideas on what would be the best hypothetical route to solve this issue. Let me be clear: These are only THEORETICAL IDEAS and I do not condone any illegal activity.
Historical precedent: While I am not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Occupy Movement, I do know that they were constantly attacked as being unorganized and lacking structure. It would be wise to not fall into the same pitfalls if those were accurate assessments.
Logical formulation: The foundations of the key points of the movement must be logically sound to withstand any external (and internal for that matter) scrutiny.
Motto: If a motto or slogan is chosen, it must be unambiguous so that attacks are directed to the movement, not the motto itself.
I am also aware that most people can’t spare any time to these kind of movements. Similar to the Texas seceding news, many commentators have noted that most Texans are living paycheck to paycheck and wouldn’t be able to dedicate any time to their cause. I would understand that would be same for this cause as well. However, since I have the time right now, I only ask for your ideas.
Broad issues: High cost of living (mortgages, rent, groceries, etc.) Inflation Homelessness
Philosophical underpinnings: Is there a Threshold of Greed? If so, what is too much wealth?
Possible means of reductions: Voluntary donation or renunciation of wealth past a certain point (highly unlikely) Taxation (also unlikely) Seizing assets (illegal and would most likely set a poor precedent)
It might also to organize an open database of billionaires with their respective fields (Forbes is closed) to help organize a boycott of some sort Though I suspect their fingers are in everything and it would be highly impractical.
Sorry for the word diarrhea. What are your thoughts?
I don’t think the crazy taxes need to be on obscene wealth itself, but on the very lavish and wasteful things people do with that wealth, things that have a very real impact to the rest of society.
For example, private jets or even private chartered flights should have some very steep taxes to offset the cost of all the FAA employees and stuff at all the small airports, all the carbon emissions, and everything.
Yachts, and very large properties also come to mind. Like total square feet of living space of all real estate owned - once it crosses like 10,000 sq ft the annual taxes just get higher and higher. For example 10k-20k sq ft costs $1/sq ft annually, 20k-40k costs $5/sq ft, etc.
They barely spend money on these things, it’s worth understanding what billionaire really means. You could levey hundred percent taxes on these things and billionaires wouldn’t even notice
And yet they go through great lengths to make sure those things aren’t taxed the way other things are. In fact, they’re tax deductable: https://www.propublica.org/article/private-jets-yachts-wealthy-tax-deductions-irs-files .
If they didn’t care about spending extra, stuff like that wouldn’t make it into laws.
Being wealthy is cheap in a lot of ways, in the same way that being poor is expensive.
yes because they employ tax avoidance people in general and they make more money paying those people to avoid tax all over the place than if they were taxed so it’s a net gain.
to be clear, they don’t even know they are lobbying for tax on these things to be low. their people do it.
and again, to be clear, it’s not the money we care about, its the other 995 million that we should be focusing on nixing.