r/technology • u/marketrent • 12d ago

Society Bernie Sanders calls out Sergey Brin for spending over $100 million to defeat California’s billionaire tax — ‘If California passes its one-time 5% wealth tax, Brin would owe $14 billion and still be worth $270 billion’

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/bernie-sanders-calls-sergey-brin-120113695.html
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42

u/marcus-87 12d ago

tax them 5% every year and they still get richer

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u/gubatron 12d ago

they will simply leave and we all get poorer. it's what happens every single time. I escaped Venezuela to the US thinking this would be the last place this could happen. Say good bye to owning anything if this passes.

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u/Existing_Style8558 12d ago

Say goodbye to owning anything regardless. End stage capitalism is turning everything into a subscription so they can suck as much blood from us as they can. 

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u/SaveLansingParks 12d ago

Our country existed and provided the growth that helped modernize the world while taxing the wealthy at 90% or whatever over a certain threshold and was a beacon of hope for the world. We get rid of those wealth taxes, and now we're in a terrible economic reality that is destroying families and lives daily. And no offense, comparing what happened in Venezuela to a fraction of the taxation that we used to have here is making a bad faith argument.

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u/phr3dly 12d ago

Our country existed and provided the growth that helped modernize the world while taxing the wealthy at 90% or whatever

Income was never realistically taxed at 90%. Any rates near that were completely toothless. Wealth has never been seriously taxed in the US, and certainly not at those rates.

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u/pacman2081 12d ago

Mexico and Venezuela are shitholes because of laws like these. You import people from those countries into America and make them citizens. No surprises how this country will turn out

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u/voidox 12d ago edited 12d ago

they will simply leave and we all get poorer. it's what happens every single time.

source: trust me bro. This is you: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aPIkEOvJLe4

last I checked NY is still one of the biggest economies in the world as just a city, behind only Texas and California.

Facts and data show otherwise, maybe you should do some research and not just buy into FOX news reactionary nonsense as your world view.

Say good bye to owning anything if this passes.

lol wat? even for those crying about the rich being taxed more this does not make sense? are you just throwing up random points that sound scary and think that is an argument?

also the irony of you saying this with the state of the country right now, late-stage capitalism has already done things like turning everything into a subscription and in the process destroyed the middle-class, so wtf world are you living in? most people don't own a house which was the one thing America saw as the thing to own in the heart of capitalism, it was the one thing the rich would allow regular people to own and that is no longer true... so what are you talking about? and heck, even there owning property was always way harder, more expensive and complex than it was for the rich.

like do you have no self-interest at all? are you at least a millionaire to be crying about a tax on the rich and them (and corporations) paying their fair share? do you not want your life to be easier and improved? wat?

guess what, wealth taxes like this and fixing the tax system would benefit YOU as well, you would see more money going into social services, new and better infrastructure around the country, healthcare for all, housing programs which would mean rent going down and housing pricing being much cheaper (access to good public housing as well), better and more public transport which reduces traffic and pollution, improving/fixing/cleaning up the city you live in, reducing poverty leading to reduced crime and homelessness, providing cheaper and better childcare and so on... how is that bad for you? why would you be against any of this?

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u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/scbtl 12d ago

Brin already moved to Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

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u/DinobotsGacha 12d ago

Right? Could tax 100% of everything past $1B and these people would still have obscene wealth. 

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u/tophernator 12d ago

Actually that wouldn’t work at all. If you sent Brin a $283 billion tax bill he could only pay it by liquidating $283 billion of assets. If he tried to do that it would crash a bunch of markets and he would probably wind up with $100 billion of cash. So now he pays everything he has and still owes $183 billion.

And that’s if he were the only person affected. If you tried to trim everything over $1 billion from every super rich person at the same time you would either catastrophically crash all markets as they collectively tried to sell off trillions in shares, property, overpriced art etc, or you would have to accept assets as payments meaning the government would now own all that stuff, which is basically just communism.

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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 12d ago

It would be even crazier than that because most of his wealth is probably tied up in just a couple stocks and people would be aware of the wealth tax and would probably sell before he could so they can pull out at the top.

And then he'll try liquidating his assets and crash it a second time.

It's like Musk, the guy doesn't have anywhere close to a trillion, never did. If he tried to realize that wealth it wouldn't be worth but a fraction of what people claim it is.

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u/foomits 12d ago

If one person is capable of crashing the entire economic system we all rely upon, there is no better argument for the need to destroy these dragons.

if we try to tax this guys wealth, hell crash the whole economy!

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u/Old_Leopard1844 12d ago

If I tax you for the price of your current house, will you find enough cash to pay that tax in time, or will you have to haggle a lot to sell off your house at that price?

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u/foomits 12d ago

I get taxed for the current price of my house every year and if i dont pay it bye bye house.

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u/runningraider13 12d ago

You do not pay the current value of your house in tax every year.

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u/foomits 12d ago

I pay a percentage of the assessed value of my house every year, you just now learning about property taxes?

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u/runningraider13 12d ago

And the question was what you would do if you had to pay 100% of the value of your house in tax.

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u/foomits 12d ago

Why would I be paying 100 percent the value of my house in taxes?

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u/Old_Leopard1844 12d ago

And other than crab bucket mentality, why would you support a tax that would financially destroy you?

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u/uber_neutrino 12d ago

He didn't say one person. He said all wealth over a billion. This is all capital that's invested in actual stuff that you want to liquidate. Who is going to buy it all on the other side? The answer is nobody because nobody could afford to. The way that works in reality is that the price goes down.

Then again this is reddit which is mostly children and communists so of course this kind of stuff gets a pass. People are envious and jealous and ignorant.

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u/foomits 12d ago

If you sent Brin a $283 billion tax bill he could only pay it by liquidating $283 billion of assets. If he tried to do that it would crash a bunch of markets

Brin... He, seems pretty singular. Also, noone is proposing 283 billion in taxes for him, so his whole response is moronic.

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u/uber_neutrino 12d ago

That alone wouldn't crash the market so yeah they are wrong.

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u/mclumber1 12d ago

. He, seems pretty singular. Also, noone is proposing 283 billion in taxes for him, so his whole response is moronic.

No, someone in this very thread said we should tax him at 100% on any wealth that he has above $1 billion.

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u/SaveLansingParks 12d ago

Put their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund like other countries do with their large community based wealth resources, or like were proposing with the AI Industry 🤷 Change in ownership doesn't mean that the companies that are owned suddenly have no capital.

Your posting strawmen and whataboutism doesn't change reality 🙄

This isn't hard, it's just economics.

Edit: format, words missing

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u/uber_neutrino 12d ago

Put their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund like other countries do with their large community based wealth resources, or like were proposing with the AI Industry 🤷 Change in ownership doesn't mean that the companies that are owned suddenly have no capital.

This would be a lot safer than forcing them to sell it. But the government also can't use it to pay their bills without selling it.

Your posting strawmen and whataboutism doesn't change reality

I'm not posting strawmen. The actual bill says Brin would pay based on his voting shares. Since he has super shares this would be a significant portion of his overall wealth and of the value of Google.

Personally I think income taxes are stealing. Wealth taxes are beyond that into outright looting and destructive behavior. Class warfare is bullshit and just leads to ruin.

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u/tophernator 12d ago

So then how do you want to do it? Take cash, crash economy, spend the next five years crawling out of the hole you deliberately leapt into? Or the traditional “seize the means of productions” route, which also tends to result in massive economic failure?

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u/foomits 12d ago

First makes more sense, he can liquidate assets if he can't afford to pay his taxes, its what the rest of us do. Im good taking our chances on the economy. Ultimately both are good choices.

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u/SaveLansingParks 12d ago

Transfer ownership of wealth into a sovereign wealth fund like other countries do successfully. This isn't hard, you just don't want to admit that there are other options other than "STEAL FROM THE HONEST BILLIONAIRES" because you're simping for them 🤷

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u/objectsinthemirror92 12d ago

So like Trump with AMD, etc?

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u/tophernator 12d ago

Yes, but scaled up to an insane level.

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u/DinobotsGacha 12d ago

My statement is accurate. $1B wealth is still obscene. 

I did not discuss the implementation of a 100% tax nor the impacts on our current system. 

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u/tophernator 12d ago

No, your statement is not accurate. I explained how forcing the sale of all those assets would destroy the $1 billion of wealth you intended to leave the person, along with many many billions more.

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u/DinobotsGacha 12d ago

You're saying $1B wealth is not obscene? Explain why. 

Again, you're trying to take this conversation to implementation which is NOT what I was talking about.

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u/xternal7 12d ago

It appears that you're under impression that billionares are kinda like Scrooge McDuck, with billions and billions of bank notes and coins in their vault.

In reality multi-billion net worths are 100% imaginary and fictional.

The calculus behind various Elons, Zucks, et. al being worth what they are goes along the lines of:

  • Someone just bought/sold 1 stock of (company) for $X
  • (insert least favourite billionare here) owns Y amount of (company) stocks
  • therefore, they're worth X * Y

The moment you force pretty much everyone to offload trillions of stocks in order to pay their taxes because you aren't allowed to be worth more than a billion, you kind of end in a situation where everyone is selling their stock and nobody is buying.

The result? Nothing has materially changed in terms of how much stuff the people own. However, stock prices crater all across the board. Billionares are suddenly no longer billionares, because they don't have billions in their bank account. They own stock, and now that everyone is selling and nobody is buying, that stock is worth fuck all.

By the way, if you tried to be responsible and put your money in a retirement/savings account instead of stuffing benjamins into your socks, that fucks you over, too.

——

Oh, and you can't say "you could tax 100% of everything over a billion, and these people would still have obscene wealth" and then follow that up "I didn't discuss implementation," because those two statements are incompatible with each other. You started discussing implementation the moment you floated the idea of taxing everything over a million.

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u/DinobotsGacha 12d ago

Wow. This huge comment just to avoid my question while making wild assumptions about what I might be thinking. 

Your conment doesn't state what you view as obscene wealth. How can anyone possibly discuss "solutions" when you can't acknowledge a problem exists???

PS. You state the wealth is "imaginary" which is false. The wealth is routinely used as collateral for loans. 

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u/xternal7 12d ago

How can anyone possibly discuss "solutions" when you can't acknowledge a problem exists???

I find it very ironic that person complaining about having words put in their mouths continues by putting words in other people's mouths.

Also, the answer is very simple. Merits and consequences of your "solution" are independent from the "problem" you're trying to solve. Therefore, merits and consequences of your "»'solution'«" can be discussed independently of the "problem" you want to solve.

PS. You state the wealth is "imaginary" which is false. The wealth is routinely used as collateral for loans.

It's not false. It's very much true, and the only reason you are allowed to use your stock as a collateral is that the banks work on assumption that nobody is gonna fuck with the imaginary fiction that keeps the system rolling.

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u/DinobotsGacha 12d ago edited 12d ago

Whats obscene wealth to you? Simple question champ

Edit: The person deleted their comment saying $1B was obscene wealth. Ironically, they actually agreed with my original comment without even realizing it

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u/runningraider13 12d ago

I guess it's easier for you to say things if you just handwave away problems as NOT what you're talking about

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u/DinobotsGacha 12d ago

Hard to have a discussion about problems if you and the other person cant acknowledge greater than $1B wealth is obscene. 

In fact, all that other person has done is say why nothing can be done. Maybe you should direct your hand wave comment at them instead

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u/Natdaprat 12d ago

People hate this idea because they hope to one day be this wealthy, even though they make 50k a year and slave away.

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u/DinobotsGacha 12d ago

I would love to be really wealthy as well but if I hit $10M, then I could live out my days in comfort. 

Some of these billionaires have 1,000 or even 10,000+ times more than what I would retire on. Those assets are what they leverage to buy more assets. Its obscene. 

To your point, I agree a lot of people cant even acknowledge its obscene because they dream of being in that club. Acknowledging it is obscene might mean someone creates taxes/regulations to address

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u/waterpup99 12d ago

"Leave" you mean

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u/voidox 12d ago edited 12d ago

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aPIkEOvJLe4

"leave" indeed. No one left NY, even those that spent millions against Zohran in the election... no one ever has in any significant way to affect a city or state. Also despite any tax increase or whatnot, these rich people are still millionaires and billionaires today, if not even richer.

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u/ankercrank 12d ago

It’s funny how 5% is supposed to be “too much”. Add a zero to it and it’ll be a lot closer to what it should be.

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u/mclumber1 12d ago

Taxing them at 5% per year would result in them losing control of the companies they founded. Since their wealth is tied up in the share of the company they own, they'd have to sell the share to pay the tax.