This actually helps them. They get rid of intelligent subversives and can install their loyal servants.

This is not a win. It is the next logical step in the end of Democracy. Be ready to fight for your families’ lives.

I’ve been fighting and calling out billionaires my whole life. I also want the rest of us to be better off, so I call out obvious bullshit like this for our benefit, not theirs.

I weary of bots and morons who can’t think reacting on pure emotional need to “own” someone else.

Also, see my other comment about ad hominem.

What mulgrubs said, plus at least they had to work for it. Today, it’s just handed to them.

Ah, yes. It’s the old “one injustice makes a new one okay” argument. Hate much?

Oooooh, I miss understood thought you were asking me what research is. You wanted me to do the work for you. Yeah, no. If you are older than 12, you should already know how to do that. If you don’t care enough to do it, that’s on you. I did.

See, ad hominem attacks means you got nothing. Have a nice day, come back when you have a convincing counterpoint.

Okay, I’ll bite. Other than going to a full-featured library, or contacting the nearest university with expertise on the desired topic, what does count as research for a layperson?

… Due to my handle? 😄

I appreciate that you took the question seriously and offered a useful response.

No, since you didn’t make any money and were not taxed. Also, the bond issuer is now in bankruptcy and/or being sued into bankruptcy. I might even get back the principle depending on the output of the legal proceedings.

Lol! Ya got me! Yeah, autocorrect is a bitch, and I failed to verify the text. Socks = stocks. (And it tried to change it to sticks that time).

Lol! You have zero clue. I’m close to the opposite of the on line spectrum. I learned how to be informed in the old days, when we were taught his to read and research.

When I don’t know something, I look it up. In discussion forums, I read the other comments before making my own, usually. If someone tells me I’m wrong, I go see what shows up elsewhere on the topic. Most importantly, I’m not immediately condescending or insulting.

I see your point, but disagree with the approach as a long term policy. We can limit the accumulation by taxing the profits. If we can’t do that, then the wealth tax won’t be any more successful as they will hide that, too.

That’s why we have the taxes we have. As you point out, business works with the help of society. However, taxing it as property is a completely messed up approach and will lead to there being little incente to to invest. That’s why we tax profit, not mere existance, as we do for property.

I didn’t think I had to explicitly repeat what I said in a couple other comments I made on the matter. I won’t cut and paste that for you, (and since you set the mode to name calling) shithead.

So, the government should decide how much wealth its citizens should have, and enforce that? I think there are better ways to approch this than turning citizens into subjects.

How long does one own property, and what resources are used by structures on that property that the community has to supply, maintain, or upgrade? What damage might said structures cause to the community while in use? What is lost by the community by selling that property to a private owner? How does a community fund its own services, governance, police, fire department? How are roads and power lines built?

Now, what community is incurring costs by someone owning a stake in a business? What resources does that transfer of money take away from the community? What is the community? What did that community supply to make it possible to invest in that company or buy that stock?

It might not be rocket science, but it is not a “no brainer”. Stocks, like “intellectual property”, have no physical presence. They are not semi-permanent objects taking physical space or requiring physical resources to create or maintain over time. They do not take physical resources that can no longer be used elsewhere.

That simplistic comparison has absolutely zero relationship to reality. Think about it a bit more, if you know how making money on stock investing works, and see if you can find the differences.

Note that property taxes, when reassessed every 10 years or so, are also adjusted with changes to the mil rate, as appropriate to keep taxes from property assessment changes from causing people to leave town.

Equities change in value daily. How should those be assessed, and what is the proper response when the equities decrease in value by 30% during a market crash? Does the government refund the previously paid taxes? What if that money is your retirement income?

At what point does a tax on equities essentially become a continuous draw-down of wealth on the same money year after year, resulting in absolutely no incentive to invest in business and for that matter a situation where it is impossible to build up any wealth? How will startups be funded? How will large, shoot for the stars projects be funded?

Forget 39%. We have greater national debt as a percentage of GDP than we did in 1944. We need to reinstitute the tax brackets from then until 1965, which had a top rate of 90%. There are reasons we had a middle class back then, and this is one of them.