okwithmydecay
United KingdomTaxing wealth strikes me as like trying to scoop out the ocean. We have to recreate beaver dams and restore the metaphorical flood plains. Spread out and soak in. The water table is going down and the land is subsiding; moving some water isn't enough.
I know Gary likes to play dumb and assume this isn't actually the goal of the rich and powerful all along but they have been executing this class war now for 45 years. Its not like its new and its had universal support from every government since the early 1980s. It is what the ruling class wants, because they get to own everything and live even better. There is a reason you can't get Labour to do anything about it they have been pursuing this intentionally since the 2000s.
My brother in Christ, class war has been active for thousands of years.
How does he play dumb?
By not admitting this is actually something the government is intending and helping happen. He is treating the powerful as if they are unaware of the impact of what is clearly their chosen strategy and what will happen.
I think he does so in that he makes it out as best as he can to not be left vs right as people have been propogandised as to what those terms mean, and he wants to appeal to the masses; but in practice it’s pretty left coded.
Tax Wealth, or well shift from Trickle Down Economics to Robin Hood Economics, which usually doesn't turn out well for the leadership.
Isn't that explicitly the goal of alt-right "thinkers" like Yarvin and his "Dark Enlightenment" (not clever enough for "Endarkenment"?)? Peter Thiel hopes to apply/spread it to all Western civilizations, not just the US.
This man is a clown and can safely be ignored without negatively affecting any part of your life.
It's a parody that this charlatan is making bank shilling populism to a magazine that is sold on the street by the homeless.
Listen to this self-aggrandising spiv winge about the "academics in their ivory tower" and how he's so smart that none of them take him seriously, while making a career out of surface level platitudes like the title. It's wild that anyone can listen to him without cringing out of their skull.
https://youtu.be/Ttrab7AMn-M
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
He’s fucking right
Me resisting the urge to explain how modern medieval historians consider feudalism to have never existed:
But yeah he's right. Or well something will give before that, but that's the limit state we're looking at.
??? which part didn't exist, the serfs, the literal kings and tiers of nobility, what
I'd love to know that, too. Would definitely like to have some books recommended by reputable historians who say feudalism never existed.
gary mate, i think thats what they want
He's right but people in the UK are too racist to gain a collective class consciousness.
Right or wrong, it's bizarre to make an overgeneralised statement accusing others of bigotry.
It’s a comment that is used to make everyone feel like it’s pointless trying to fight this.
We are powerful united and they don’t want us to fight back.
Eat the rich.
It is overgeneralised, but I look at how many people are feeding into the lies told by Nigel Farage and similar people, a lot of people hang on their every word and take it as gospel.
There are articles every week regarding racist attacks and outbursts, most recent discussion I could find: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/13/belfast-southampton-riots-racism-why-is-the-uk-burning
There will never be class consciousness as long as even a decent minority of people listen to the hate being spewed in this country.
What do you feel is "a decent minority" that could prevent it? I think I'd say that Farage's recent poll numbers are easily sufficient, but if his latest alleged corruption is found to be real and it halves them, then I'd say that wasn't enough to prevent class consciousness.
In other words: I really disagree with your generalisation being permanent. Things change in politics and sometimes it's even for the better.
I honestly hope you are right. We are well overdue for change in the UK.
I just feel pretty hopeless about the whole situation as I honestly don't feel like there has been a time in the UK where the working class were not being manipulated by politicians in conjunction with the tabloids to make out that the enemy of the working class is anyone but the rich.
If you put a wealth tax on billionaires where you tax them on their total asset value, they’ll simply leave the country and take all of their millions/billions of dollars in taxes every year that they, their companies, and their employees pay, out of the country, leaving you in a much worse position than you’re already in since those are the people that already pay the majority of the countries income taxes etc.
Taxing wealth is a pathetic idea by people who can’t stand others being more successful than them.
Let them live in their floating city states or in their underground bunkers like erzatz Bond villains. Let's see how much wealth they create there.
This objection has been brought up repeatedly but these are solvable problems.
Firstly, a lot of assets the wealthy own cannot be transferred out of country. Stock in companies, real estate, etc. The super rich are not rich because they have bank accounts with all of their money that can just disappear overnight, but because they own real things in the real world.
Secondly, economist Gabriel Zucman has proposed a solution to the “they will all take their money and leave.” The USA taxes all citizens on their income no matter where they are in the world. You could simply create a wealth tax that says “if you have wealth over 100 million USD and have lived in this country in the past 5 years, you have to pay the tax no matter where you live for the next X years. (X could be 5, 10, 15, whatever.) If it goes into effect starting in some future date of course people will try to shift assets and move but if you make it retroactive they can’t. Also the tax needs to apply to companies so they can’t have an LLC holding all of their assets tax free neither.
Finally, taxing wealth is not about being jealous or craven that others have more. It’s about survival of society in some form that isn’t “ten people own everything and the rest live in desperate poverty.”
For the ultra wealthy, their wealth can grow passively from compounding interest leaving them will little choice but to continue acquiring assets. If you were given a million dollars every week (that’s roughly 5% annual growth on a billion dollars) you would quickly find that you had lots of money sitting around despite paying off all of your debt, upgrading your house, having fun trips. Eventually you would start using that money to either buy stocks, real estate, etc. Then those things appreciate and your $1M per week begins to climb despite living a lavish lifestyle. It’s just a natural consequence at that point that you buy up and own real world assets at an increasing rate. This means there is less and less available to own for everyone in your community.
Essentially, at a certain point these individuals become financial black holes where their wealth is not only self sustaining but continues to grow and consume things. There is no stop unless society puts brakes on it to limit the growth beyond a certain point.
You realise that they'll not leave because it would be A LOT more expensive than just paying their taxes right ? Moving assets is expensive, they will not sell all their property, they will not move their companies. Them moving away is just propaganda for fools like you.
And in any case, they already don't pay much, even if 1% of them move away, the tax income from the rest will make up for it.
According to Abigail Disney they already pay more to avoid taxes than the cost of the taxes themselves.
That's absolutely not surprising. Paying for attorneys, transfer pricing experts, etc. would definitely cost a lot more
How is it not surprising when it contradicts your argument?
Because it allows them to increase their wealth while lowering their taxes, and the assets and properties are not moving or changing hands (well, they kind of are by moving from holding A to holding B, but the holdings are still entirely within their hands). That's the expensive part which justifies paying experts.
Not false, but something has to give. Billionaires are a drain on society, the conditions that allowed their creation tanked the middle class. They centralize capital in their hand at the downfall of everyone else. A wealth tax is a step forward. Ideally, combined with international agreements with the biggest fiscal havens to not let them run away.
I want to stress how the rise of billionaires is a global phenomenon. In an ideal world, all nations would slowly implement wealth taxes.
The idea that billionaires would leave the economy that made them billions, the services and amenities that make being a billionaire worthwhille, and all their rich friends, all for a little tax break is pretty ridiculous. They already choose to live in California, New York, and London - expensive places with high taxes - rather than Cayman Islands or South Dakota.
They're definitely not uprooting the whole corporate campus, moving it away from the skilled workforce it needs, the housing that they need, and the good schools that they want.
Billionaires' personal wealth isn't generating any taxable income, anyway, so there's no income tax to lose if they do leave.
One will die:
Society or the billionaire.
They arnt paying anyway so it’s not a loss.
They are a drain on society. If they leave, it's a net positive. If they start to pay their fair share, it's a net positive. Either way we win.
Let millionaires leave every country to form their own utopia. Let them try and live without anyone making the life go around. Just millionaires eventually eating each other.
Come find me boot licker, I'll show ya jealousy. Its damn near dinner time, I can't wait I'm starvin.
PS bring army cause you can't do shit for yourself, ya gonna need it
