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u/Spongegrunt 1d ago
How long has it been since Bernie has been to middle school? Someone might want to tell him the Billionares dont have a vault just filled with Billions of dollars that you can pull 5% from. These Billionares own stock, assets, ownership percentages ect. If the government forces them to sell, then who is going to be forced to buy their assets? How does selling 5% of a truck fleet or an Amazon warehouse work?
In all seriousness, yall are clueless morons how money and the economy works.
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u/Accomplished_Tour481 1d ago
Bernies math does not add up. With over #40MM residents in the USA, assuming 3 per household is 113MM+ households. At $12k a piece, that is $1.3+ trillion in costs. Then where is the money coming to raise teachers sailors and expand Medicare.
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u/WastedNinja24 1d ago edited 17h ago
Did I miss something, or 4.4T - 1.3T = 3.1T?
One-time check versus annual revenue?
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u/Choice-Cartoonist-19 1d ago
Do you mean 5% more than already exists in our extremely aggressive progressive tax system?? Orrrr instead of ?
Because every American with a job would love 5% income taxes.
Unfortunately. This stupid performative idea is focused on wealth not income and there is no circumstance where we can allow taxation of unrealized assets. Any effort to do that is grounds for absolute nuclear citizenry response.
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u/TopHornet8316 19h ago
You realize that every home owner pays property tax, right?
I pay someting like 7% annually on the value of my property. Even though the value can go up or down.
Theoretically, I could pay 7% each year on a piece of land that is worth 100k, so $7,000 each year for 30 years, $210,000 - and then they could find a collapsing mine under my property and deem it essentially worthless so I sell it for $50,000 even though I've been paying as if the land was worth 100k and theres a 200k house on the land.
So, whats the difference between that and taxing people sitting on large amounts of stock?
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u/Imaginary-Field-7122 9h ago
Because stocks already generate taxes through earnings
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u/TopHornet8316 3h ago
Youre referring to realized gains?
Again, if we go back to my analogy, my realized gain would be the sale of my house. I am not selling my house, yet I am paying taxes on the value of the house. I also would pay taxes when I sell my house. You are not pointing out anything new. You have not addressed that I am paying taxes on the value of something that I own while billionaires do not pay taxes on the value of the stock that they own, unless they sell it, similar to what would happen to me if I was to sell my house.
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u/StrengthToBreak 1d ago
It's not an income tax. Very wealthy individuals reach a point where dodging income tax becomes fairly trivial if they want it to be.
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u/Choice-Cartoonist-19 1d ago
Right. And like I said. We cannot tolerate ANYTHING that puts a tax on unrealized wealth. It’s starts with them. It moves to us and we can only debate how quickly.
The obsession with over taxing the rich is ridiculous if you consider the alleged base principles of taxation.
Billionaires aren’t using more roads, they aren’t a bigger burden on public schools or healthcare. The aren’t a bigger burden on welfare or any public service. People talk about “fair share”. Fair share would be a flat tax across the board. But everyone actually hates fair when it’s logical.
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u/watermandown 1d ago edited 1d ago
Maybe limit the amount of unrealized wealth that one can claim? Also, wasn't the tax rate on the wealthy in the 50's and 60's much much higher? Aren't those years romanticized as a peak in American productivity?
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u/cleverinspiringname 1d ago
wealth, not income, is the problem within wealth inequality. i thought that was obvious by the name of it. no one earns a billion dollars with an hourly wage. you have to exploit the labor of others at scale to acquire that much money. if you make $5000/day and never take a day off, you'll work for 547 years and 345 days to earn one (1) billion dollars, as long as you never spend a penny.
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u/Choice-Cartoonist-19 1d ago
Yeah. Wealth inequality is what makes the world great. The crying about it is silly. In the best socialist or communist country you can make there is still TREMENDOUS wealth equality.
I’m a thousandaire 😂 and wealth inequality is the only driving factor that keeps me getting out of bed and heading to work daily.
Too many people focus on the “pursuit of happiness” and don’t discover the “happiness of pursuit” until much later in life.
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u/MetaCardboard 1d ago
A little wealth inequality can be good. The problem is the US hasn't seen the kind of wealth and income inequality we have today since just before the Great Depression about 100 years ago.
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u/Odd-Bottle4305 1d ago
So...you are a slave to money just like most people are...if that makes you happy then go for it.
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u/hugoriffic 1d ago
Performative like every time Trump has claimed he was going to issue checks ?
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u/Sensitive-Voice-8260 1d ago
Or any other politician ever dumbass
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u/StrengthToBreak 1d ago
This keeps getting posted, but the math doesn't math. It's off by a factor of 10, before you even get into the practical aspects or unintended consequences.
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u/NoInvestigator7000 1d ago
THANK YOU…you beat me to that comment. Ol’ Bernie is senile like Biden thinking you can get trillions about billions at a 5%.
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u/snackdesaque 1d ago edited 1d ago
Can you show your work, so i can understand how you got that the math was off by a factor of 10? Please include an explanation of the practical aspects you mean and what kinds of unintended consequences.
8.5 trillion about in wealth 5% would not come close, you'd get around 420 billion.
Edit: i do agree that the number still needs to adjusted to get that done, but i think the military budget needs to be smaller, corporate tax rates for mega corps need to also go up, to support this. You cant have facebook be able to make billions in profit every quarter and get tax breaks, then turn aroubd and meddle in elections
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u/StrengthToBreak 1d ago
I did all the math in another reddit thread on the same subject. The very short version is: go look at the Forbes 400. Then draw a median line roughly between the bottom figure there and the $1b net worth you need at a minimum to be in the club. You can extrapolate the average net worth of your top 934 billionaires from there. The headline requires an average net worth of ~$93b each, and the reality is somewhere south of $9b.
In terms of practicalities and unintended consequences, someone could write a multi-volume treatise on that subject, but it won't be me. The point is that even without any of those issues, the headline is just the usual reddit populist nonsense for people who want to be told that there's an easy solution for every problem.
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u/snackdesaque 1d ago
So my question is, how is it that every other poorer country can afford to have universal healthcare, but not the United States. Canada isn't even some kind of crazy socialist utopia, and they're able have you not go bankrupt if you have an emergency room visit. People complain about weight times, but here we pay through the ass and also months of waiting. What is their tax system like in order to be able to afford universal healthcare.
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u/StrengthToBreak 1d ago edited 1d ago
You might be surprised to learn that the US spends far more public money per-capita on health care than any of those countries.
It's not a lack of spending that's primarily the issue.
Health care costs a lot more in.the US than it does elsewhere, for a whole raft of reasons from diet and exercise to the allocation of educated labor to import / export policies, patent protections, health care networks, and so on.
Regardless of any of that, the headline numbers don't add up. The 5% wealth tax would barely dent the existing annual federal budget shortfall. Just to pay for what we already have would require a pretty big tax increase on most Americans (no sense in taxing the poor).
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u/KaseyNPa 1d ago
The tax would bring in $440 billion dollars a year. Taking all of that and applying to the national debt would be 1%
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u/snackdesaque 1d ago
To that point also, why is it that our national debt increases every year to pay lockeed martin for weapons but we cant do the same for healthcare costs and to subsidize tuitions for certain necessary professions like medical school
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u/snackdesaque 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah we spend more, not just because of our diets, lack of mobility, whatever random crap in our food, but i think a lot of it is the profit margins that pharmaceutical companies put on top of the creation of the drug. As far as I remember, 70% of brand name drug costs 4x higher than in other countries. And these drug companies make. I think there should be price caps for this, and yeah there are generic versions, that maybe these things can be expanded as well to cover the creation of the drugs. I think it'd be good to do some research of how other countries. I'd be for some kind of price controls for a certain amount of time to give relief to people.
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u/snackdesaque 1d ago
Oh also does that amount of money we spend on healthcare include things like premiums for insurance corps, who's incentives are to deny care to make a profit?
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u/chrisjinna 1d ago
Going to be an unpopular comment but I've witnessed universal healthcare and I wouldn't classify it as healthcare. More like prescription care. I've seen people wind up far worse off waiting for a chance to being diagnosed. Where small issues become major ones while waiting. My hope is AI diagnosis and scans can give us near free healthcare. So we can avoid issues before they become a problem.
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u/snackdesaque 1d ago
So the number one concern and complaint ive heard is wait times, meanwhile to get to my primary i have to wait 2 months, my premium is 1800 a month basically a second mortgage to cover 3 people. Due to our closest hospital couldn't reach a deal with our insurance company, last year, so we lost our primary doctor, and we couldn't afford a 2300 dollar a month plan to visit our closest hospital. It's expensive to have a small business, to have healthcare. This is out of pocket. I cant imagine
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u/chrisjinna 1d ago
Wait times can be life or death though. The case I witnessed the person had to take a big step down in quality of life simply waiting for a scan. Permanent damage was done. Universal healthcare, in most places, does get urgent care mostly right. The US does seems to do better with ER care and actual health care if you have insurance on the whole. But I can't say either is ideal.
That's why I'm leaning more towards a technical solution. 80% of routine Dr. visits could probably be avoided if we lean into AI and automation. When we get the costs of blood work and scans down everything can become a lot easier to manage. We're so close, just need the world not to fall to pieces.
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u/Creepy_Bad_4547 1d ago
this might understate, but very simple math: 5% of a billion is 50 million. Multiply 50 million by 938 and you get 46 billion. So let's double that-100 billion round numbers. Nothing in terms of government expenses
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u/guynye 1d ago
Unintended consequences. What the rich actually having to pay a fair due? Talk about propaganda.
Is that in the same theory as trickle down economics. 🤣😂😅🤣😂
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u/makingit12345 1d ago
Let’s start with millionaires like Bernie and see how committed he really is.
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u/Electronic-Funny-475 1d ago
Again yall think the government can be responsible. How’s that Social security money
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u/Dred_Capt 1d ago
Yeah where is that 5% gonna liquidate from, dumbasses.
once you give the government a power, that power will be used to increasing effect, always
Youre all paving the way to be taxed on shit you own free and clear, and its wrong. Wanna pay 5% on the value of everything you own? Thats what youre asking for.
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u/Lone-Frequency 1d ago
You may be mentally handicapped since you seem to have missed the most important part of billionaires being the specific demographic.
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u/Just-Upstairs4397 1d ago
We need to raise taxes and cut spending. We have a war time/great recession level deficit. Boomers are absolutely destroying the future.
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u/Bitter-League-6065 1d ago
If you de incentive the value of earning and tax anything over a certain amount....
They'll just stop reporting after they reach peak price before taxing...
You're dumb ... you've never had a job Bernie
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u/artie_kendall 1d ago
It keeps getting posted because the people posting it are either:
1) Idiots 2) Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or North Korean paid trolls
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u/Swimming-Situation14 1d ago
It’s crazy to think how much $12k could change the direction of my life.
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u/Gullywheel 1d ago
He bent the knee to the Clintons, and all that took was a new lake house and forcing Debbie Shultz to resign so he could have her seats....SOOOooOOOOoo can't see this being a reality, regardless of whatever ticklish spots get hit on with these misguided, sophomoric socialist types.
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u/Extension-Bit-7511 1d ago
We don’t tax net worth. We tax income. Being a billionaire means being worth a billion dollars. Not that you have a billion dollars coming in. Trump was averaging 80 million a year income when he first ran for president. Missing this simple truth about wealth is why so many people get it wrong.
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u/Educational-Part4134 1d ago
I remember when Bernie was tax the millionaire and billionaires now that he is a millionaire it's only taste billionaires. He never had a steady job until the goofball in Vermont elected him to be a mayor, hell he was so lazy he was kicked out of a socialist hippie community for not contributing.
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u/Weary-Level-7854 1d ago
Taxation of unrealized assets is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard come from the Democrat party, and they tried pushing the idea that men can become women and get pregnant.
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u/daveinreallife66 1d ago
Has the Bern thought that, if businesses knew every person was going to get a guaranteed $12K, prices wouldn't rise more? Dumb idea.
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u/backtotheland76 1d ago
We'd all be better off in the long run to just pay down the national debt. High interest rates are changing the equation
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u/Creepy_Bad_4547 1d ago
This tax would make up 46 BILLION which in government terms is nothing
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u/Complete_Break1319 1d ago
If the poors knew the tax code we could have avoided this horrible meme altogether. Bernie knows the truth, but he's only concerned w reelection, not passing laws (hence why he's only ever got 3 through and 2 of them were renaming libraries)...
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u/EffectiveDirect6553 1d ago
Dude, if yall knew economics. You would know this is a horrible idea unless you can get Russia and China to agree.
Billionares will just buy their stuff on black markets or elsewhere. Hence breaking job markets and causing the government to pay MORE for damages than it gets
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u/Mental-Cupcake9750 1d ago
The math ain’t mathing my friend. Start crunching numbers and you’ll realize why it’s just another sham
Great talking point but is not based in reality at all
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u/DarkRogus 1d ago
Another day, another post where you have people on reddit believe that billionaires have McDuck style money bins on a private island guarded by sharks with lasers and monkeys with lightsabers and all we need to do is send in government dump trucks and shovel in all that wealth they are hoarding from those money bins and take it back to Fort Knox.
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u/EpitomeOfJustOK 1d ago
No we are pretty realistic, the monkeys have regular sabers not lightsabers
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u/EighthSeal 1d ago
Are you on LSD? They do have McDuck money. They have a TON of money.
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u/MetaCardboard 1d ago
And they use it to rape children. And yet this comment section is full of people (or bots) defending them.
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u/Working_Agent4932 1d ago
Total billionaire wealth in the USA is about $7 trillion. So a 5% tax is between $300-400 billion. This is less than 10% of the amount outlines above and would be less than a 10% increase in total federal revenue.
So basically this 5% wealth tax would generate enough revenue for $1,000 per adult with nothing left over for giving raises to any federal workers.
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u/EighthSeal 1d ago
Are you serious? A 10% increase in total FEDERAL revenue is huge. Also, let's not spend billions on bullshit wars. You forget the face of your forefathers, because these people used to be taxed so much more. Don't lecture me on numbers. I know the numbers.
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u/Working_Agent4932 1d ago
It's a fraction of what it would take to execute on the plan above. Did you not see the part with the math or did you not understand it?
You can make a strong case they they marginal rate should be much higher but you need to be less delusional about the net impact it would actually have
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u/EighthSeal 1d ago
Oh, here we go. "Do you not understand the math?"
Yes. Yes I do, and it would go a long way. Why are you dick-riding millionaires and billionaires? They drive off of your labor and millions of others. Fuck them.
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u/DarthDragon117 1d ago
Ironically there was an episode where McDuck went over how most of his money wasn’t in cash or gold, but reinvested all over the place.
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u/CovidTower 1d ago
Agree. Everyone says billionaires are so rich but like we don’t know that for sure because it could be property value or family or something.
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u/DrummerAshamed2186 1d ago
This is why 2 out of 3 billionaires vote for Democrats! They know it's not going to happen.
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u/Some_guy_in_WI 1d ago
Sure, now try to get congress to vote against their biggest donors to make it happen.
That's where the problems begin.
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u/ClarifyingResolution 1d ago
Sounds good, but realize that these things back fire, because these wealthy people consult the best financial advisors for finding loopholes. If a wealthy person, or a company has to pay more out of its own pockets, they are going to ensure that the customer is going to pay more out of their own pockets-- and the people are going to suffer for it. I hate that this is reasonably how it will go.
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u/Careless-Pin-2852 1d ago
Lets also hurt other people we hate for other people we like.
Pick a group of Americans you hate and take away there benefits or tax them more.
Do you hate MAGA or do you hate minorities or maybe both
Pick a group you hate and think about how to hurt them for your benefit.
If that feels gross that is my point
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u/Holiday_Ad4551 1d ago
Why doesn't Sanders give his money to the government, nothing is stopping him.
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u/nerd_ginger 1d ago
That math doesn't even work? $12,000 x 325,000,000 people = $3.9 trillion. So you only have $500 billion left over.
Come on y'all...
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u/Scary-Personality626 1d ago
Are we doing that thing again where we think net worth is real money we can just take?
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u/ThundrLord 1d ago
Look at what the Republicans are saying 🙄 My lord the comment section is full of em
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u/Shibby009 1d ago
Or you could just give families more and the rest will take care of itself depending on how people spend that money. This guy is a hack and has never had a job besides government. He wants to give away people's hard earned money to keep getting elected. Don't worry you fools can pay for his security and his free healthcare that he gets for the rest of his life. Do you get that? No. He's just placating you so he doesn't have to lift a finger. Y'all been played. Good job sheep.
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u/Major_Shlongage 1d ago
This is childish idealism, though. Crap like this never works out.
It's so easy to express these hollow, feel-quotes but they're meaningless.
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u/adulttumtum0 1d ago
Any politician that says they are writing a check to the people is a liar. And any person who believes it is an idiot.
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u/FavoriteApe 1d ago
When all the billionaires leave, who will pay for all the new government spending then?
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u/dakellateg 1d ago
I would support that IF the federal government FROZE the budget and the money collected went to the National Debt...
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u/Traditional-Leg-543 1d ago
how long has he been in office?? how many times have the dems been in office to do this?? and now he wants to? lol
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_3507 1d ago
Return America back to before Reagan and his power hungry fascist billionaires and there actually were middle class Americans.
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u/Magnamar1 1d ago
Funny how back in the day it was millionaires he wanted to tax but once he became one now’s it’s about billionaires
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u/NameWaste 1d ago
It’s because Bernie doesn’t understand economics. This will not work. It has never worked, and it will never work. The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.
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u/Accomplished-Bus7566 1d ago
When will Bernie give up some of his money or let the homeless into one of the 3 houses he has?
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u/Exciting-Zombie8449 1d ago
Sigh. Herman Cain had this figured out, and i believe that is the reason his campaign ended as it did. 9-9-9 Throw away the over 10 million word tax codes. Instead, everybody ( billionaires to bus boys) 9% personal tax. Every business 9% business tax. No loopholes. No tricks. 9 % national sales tax ( new goods ) We get taxed much less, the super rich get taxed far more ( flat tax, no magic write off) Businesses get taxed more realistically.
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u/j_rooker 1d ago
stop with the bullshit give $$ to families. Let's cut the fkn deficit first. then see what's left for "rewards"
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u/Grunergeist420 1d ago
Americas billionaires are thought to have between 6.70 trillion and 9.24 trillion.
Collecting $4.4 trillion from a 5% wealth tax would require that number to be 10x higher.
The number isn’t 88 trillion you can tax at 5% for $4.4 trillion, it’s 8.8 trillion you could tax at 5% for $440 billion.
He proposes to give Americans, including children, in households below $150k, $3000k per person. This would be roughly 78% of the population, roughly 267 million people.
Giving 267 million people $3000 each costs $801 billion, not $440 billion.
With the -$361 billion, he’s going to give teachers a raise and expand Medicare.
I wonder why nobody who wants to re-elected will back this proposal and stamp their name on it so they can explain next year why nobody got $3000, teachers didn’t get a raise, and Medicare expansion wasn’t paid for.
If you ever wonder why politicans like Sanders and AOC don’t follow up on these great-sounding proposals, it’s because doing basic napkin math tells you that they’re not serious.
You should feel insulted when people expect you to believe in things like this, and stop taking them seriously.
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u/Robot_DIY 1d ago
OP stands by to do what? Are they gonna go and deliver the tax updates to the accountants?
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u/OD1N999 22h ago
Yes I agree. I’m also not a raging libtard like most redditors but I do have some views that would be considered liberal. This is one of them for sure. Education in sciences and mathematics especially is needed in our countries schools. Teachers deserve more social status and wealth and need to be held to a higher standard in general in this country. We need to look to other countries and how they have made educating their children a priority (Japan, Nordic countries, etc.) Once you reach billions of dollars in personal income I think you need to be taxed at a higher rate and give back to the education system of your people. I don’t know about handing out 12,000 dollars to people (most are idiots that will waste it anyway) just use it all on reforming education. It’s the most important thing to keep our people and our society moving forward and maintaining power in the world.
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u/Longjumping_Link_110 20h ago
I'm sure we can do better with the money than giving handouts and flushing it down the drain with teachers, have you heard about school children today?? I don't know how you could possibly argue teachers even deserve to have a job at this point, let alone that they need more money. Might as well go back to raising the minimum wage so Cops can see their wages and pension benefits double over night.
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u/Optimal-Can8584 20h ago
About as smart and realistic as 5000 dollar mid term checks. Americans are so naive
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u/Ill_Huckleberry7554 19h ago
Yes, most broke, uneducated people would agree with this. If this were to be approved your 401K would drop by half overnight.
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u/UranusSmellsFunny 1d ago
Just curious how he’d do that? Most wealthy people don’t take cash salaries or they take very small cash salaries and instead take stocks and bonds as their salary then they leverage those for cash that is not taxable. So they end up having very little to no taxable income. If there’s nothing to tax, how is Bernie going to get them for 5%?
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u/hugoriffic 1d ago
Same way Trump is going to give everyone $5000 on top of the $8000 or so he’s already claimed we were going to get.
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u/UranusSmellsFunny 1d ago
The pedophile CAN’T give the $5000 because that would make it officially vote buying, so that’s all a lie. Bernie would give the money but we all know republicans will shoot his plans down immediately.
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u/CowGoesMeww 1d ago
Taxing wealth and income are two different things. Sanders has proposed both. That's where you collect the numbers he's proposing. It's a great idea.
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u/CowGoesMeww 1d ago
Commenters here seem to be confused. Sanders has proposed taxing income and wealth. So the ultra rich can no longer shield wealth by limiting their income to keep their taxes low. It really isnt difficult
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u/Skoodge42 1d ago
But taxing "wealth" is very nebulous and rife with issues. Hence the debate on how do you tax unrealized gains or loans without creatin massive issues.
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u/EpitomeOfJustOK 1d ago
You’re right, it’s hard and me, some rando on reddit, can’t instantly think of how, so let’s just keep the current system.
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u/Skoodge42 1d ago
Please learn nuance.
I was pointing out it is insanely complicated so just saying "tax wealth" makes no sense without actual methods of doing it.
It's no different than saying "let's cure cancer" or "solve world hunger". Unless you have a reasonable way of doing it, saying "let's do it and then we can do these things with that money" makes no sense.
But thank you for the example of how to jump to conclusions and insulting someone for being realistic and wanting specifics lol.
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u/FCRagnar 1d ago
It is difficult. It's been tried before. All over Europe. They've mostly all been repealed.
It leads to less net revenue yield, capital flight, brain drain, massive administrative overhead and more.
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u/Wickedocity 1d ago
If that happened, why would a billionaire who could live anywhere in the world live in the US? They could get citizenship in another country and just "visit" here whenever they wanted. It is just nonsense fed to ignorant people to get votes.
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u/Impossible-Emu-8756 1d ago
What happened to the 6-10 trillion the US printed during the pandemic?