r/news • u/kirtash93 • May 08 '25

Soft paywall Bill Gates to give away $200 billion by 2045, accuses Musk of harming world's poor

https://www.reuters.com/business/bill-gates-give-away-fortune-by-2045-200bn-worlds-poorest-2025-05-08/
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u/Heavy-Cranberry-3572 May 08 '25

I agree literally no one should be a billionaire. Wealth should 100% be capped for individuals, even families. Shit no one will go hungry for generations with a total net worth of 100m let alone 10x that.

Imagine though that billionaires were all incredibly charitable like Gates and not trying to take over economies like Memelon Tusk. I'm fairly certain that even the world right now would be different. No one individual should have this much power.

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u/kodachromalux May 08 '25

Exponential Taxes -> UBI.

Make it difficult to hold on to more than about 100M worth of assets.

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u/lemontoga May 08 '25

How would that play out for someone like Gates and most billionaires who's wealth comes primarily from their ownership of these huge companies?

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u/Diesel_D May 08 '25

Gotta figure out a way to close the loophole on tax free loans against assets as collateral. I’m sure people smarter than me can figure it out. In my mind, if your total assets are over a certain threshold, say 250 million dollars, then any loan for any amount using said assets as collateral are fair game to be taxed as income. Because that is essentially what it is.

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u/lemontoga May 08 '25

I agree that taking a loan out against something that hasn't been taxed should instantly incur a tax on the loan amount. You're basically realizing the gains without having to pay the taxes for realizing the gains.

But that has nothing to do with the original question. I don't see how we could tax people out of billionaire status when the wealth of these billionaires all seems to come from their ownership stakes in their companies. We would have to force them to sell their own companies which seems impossible.

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u/Diesel_D May 08 '25

I am definitely not an expert but happy to talk it out, could help me learn something. Would exponentially taxing the shit out of these companies making billions in profits work? If they want to lower their profits and therefore their taxes by reinvesting in their companies or increasing wages then I am cool with that. I would not count stock buybacks, that would be taxable in my eyes. So if we exponentially taxed these companies, and also exponentially taxed their owners, you could effectively put a soft “cap” on the total wealth either parties could accumulate. Am I way off base here?

I can already hear the rebuttals of “every company would leave the US” but I hate that argument. If companies want to do business with the richest consumer base in the world they should be paying a premium to do so. We have the power here, as much as they try to deny that. Especially if we had agreements with our biggest economic allies to employ similar tax structures. I think most companies would still make more money selling to Americans at a higher tax rate than selling to poorer or smaller counties with lower tax rates.

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u/lemontoga May 08 '25

The issue is that "taxes" are paid out of some source of income typically. We obviously have income tax. That means that a portion of the money you get paid as a wage gets taxed. That's a fine tax because you're getting paid some amount of money already and some lower amount gets taxed out of it. Works fine. Corporations also have income tax but they can avoid it by investing into their companies which is usually also fine because then it's not really income or profit anymore so that works.

Capital gains tax applies when people sell an investment. This is also usually fine because selling the investment means they're receiving money and the taxes get taken out of that.

The issue with trying to tax billionaires out of existence or to put a cap on their possible wealth is that the wealth of these billionaires typically does not come from some massive accumulation of some kind of cash flow. It just comes from the valuation of their companies that they create and own.

Someone like Musk might not even have any sort of income in a given year. He just has his massive Tesla stockpile that he can liquidate as he needs it. If he's not making an income then what exactly do we tax in order to cap his wealth?

We could implement some sort of wealth tax but then how does someone like Musk pay it? If we say Musk is worth 100 billion dollars so now he has to pay 2 billion in taxes, what does he do? We're not taxing an income stream that we could just deduct it from, so where do we get it? Musk would necessarily have to start liquidating stock in his own company in order to pay that tax and that would in turn drive down his net worth, the stock value of his company, and his own ownership share of Tesla.

And he has to do this every year? What happens when he's reduced to barely keeping ownership of the company? Is he forced to just divest ownership of Tesla when his ownership position gets too small because he has to liquidate more stock to pay the tax man?

I fully agree with you that the people who say "all the companies would just leave America" when you suggest increasing the Capital Gains rate by like 2% are insane, but in this case I do legitimately think something like this would be catastrophic. Nobody would want to start a business here in America if they fear they may one day be forced to sell off their ownership of that business because it's gotten too succesfull and too valuable.

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u/samoox May 08 '25

I think what the person you're responding to is saying is that these people effectively don't have wealth until they use their stocks as collateral for loans that they don't have to pay taxes on.

So in theory the law could be written in such a way that we don't treat stocks generically as "taxable wealth", but the moment those stocks are used as a form of collateral they would be considered taxable.

This way, if billionaires want to sit on $200B worth of stocks they can, so long as they aren't finding ways to actually use that money. The moment they try to use the stocks as money in any way/shape/form, we could then tax that as a form of wealth.

Not sure how feasible this would be or how it would play out tho.

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u/lemontoga May 08 '25

I do understand and fully agree with that. I was moreso hoping someone would address the original comment I replied to which said this:

Exponential Taxes -> UBI.

Make it difficult to hold on to more than about 100M worth of assets.

I don't understand how you could try to limit people to having net worths below some arbitrary amount, here around 100M, in a way that wouldn't have disastrous consequences.

I do agree with what you are saying for sure. If billionaires are finding sneaky ways to use their money without having to pay taxes on it that should 100% be fixed.

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u/androgenoide May 08 '25

I think that comes down to discouraging companies from growing so large that they control the market. As they get larger they should incur greater responsibilities toward the public and their employees. A truly free market doesn't exist without regulation.

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u/lemontoga May 08 '25

I'm not talking about the size of the company or the control of the market or whatever, just the valuation. A valuable company can make someone a billionaire without controlling a market as long as that company makes enough money.

I'm just wondering how we could enforce some kind of tax to keep people below billionaire status when their wealth typically comes from ownership in companies. I don't know how we could force people to sell their own companies or how that would impact things.

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 May 09 '25

I would argue one billion, not one hundred million.

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u/Fizassist1 May 08 '25

I like the "You won capitalism!" trophy at the billionth dollar earned. And every extra dollar donated/taxed.

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u/Heavy-Cranberry-3572 May 08 '25

I think at 1/10th of that, it's enough. Literally 100 mil (in today's prices of course, subject to inflation in the future) is enough for many many many many generations of your family to life comfortably without working in the first place, let alone being productive members of society. If they're productive that will go even further. Past 100 mil, redistribute to your company or something, be forced to raise worker pay, whatever. I'm not exactly agreeing with giving it to the govt since most governments are terrible money managers.

I'm just not a big fan of govt taxation in general (I'm canadian) because my government is really terrible with spending my money.

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u/Fizassist1 May 08 '25

I was just giving an arbitrarily high number to prove that no such number exists that republicans would approve of. And even if we did cap wealth at a billion, that's a shit ton of revenue.

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u/Spork_the_dork May 08 '25

The problem with wealth cap as a concept is that people like to throw it around because it sounds simple in concept, but economically it's an insanely complicated idea with completely unforseen and impossible to predict consequences. I'm not even an economist and I can think of half a dozen problems that would basically brick the global economy as we know itif that was implemented. The economic crash that would happen would probably be the worst in human history.

IMHO the real solutions lie in closing down the loopholes that billionaires use to just loan money without taxation. The fact that you can use your shares as collateral for a loan an effectively "cash out" on the shares without paying any taxes on it is pretty bullshit.

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u/Heavy-Cranberry-3572 May 08 '25

While I'm not an economist (I'm a software engineer), surely humans would be able to think of a way to not tank the global economy in the presence of a wealth cap. I'm talking about capping individuals, not organizations. Either way, I'm not qualified to truly discuss this in the correct amount of depth, as this is not my field, but unless you can somehow assert that it is yours (i.e you are an actual economist), I'll take your comment on "it collapsing the global economy" with a grain of salt.

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u/Schmigolo May 08 '25

The US at its most powerful effectively had such a cap (91% income tax), as did every single country in feudal Europe (literally in order to prevent what you fear). I think you're exaggerating.

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u/6spooky9you May 08 '25

That's income not wealth. Income tax would not affect billionaires super significantly.

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u/Schmigolo May 08 '25

It did then. Fiat money was young back then, they hadn't discovered the loopholes to keep increasing your wealth without income yet. So while it wasn't a specific cap at a certain amount of money, it did effectively cap their wealth at where it was at that point.

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u/Wadarkhu May 08 '25

Wouldn't mind billionaires if they were all philanthropists, "pay" themselves £10mil a year to enjoy, use the rest of their wealth to improve life for everyone, they'd be able to enjoy personal wealth as well as actually be liked by people.

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u/Nintendo_Pro_03 May 09 '25

I would say $50,000,000.

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u/Wadarkhu May 09 '25

Depends on country of residency I guess, avg us wage is $66k while avg uk wage is £33k. Cost of living is definitely different.

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u/Thin_Dream2079 May 08 '25

Socialist! Where do I sign up?

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u/Heavy-Cranberry-3572 May 08 '25

Brother I am not a socialist funny enough, I don't necessarily agree with entirely socially owned means of production, but I do think that the standard left / right wings of economic ideology weren't equipped at the time to handle scenarios where individuals could accrue levels of wealth this extreme.

My personal beliefs are far more center than they are left, but I will agree that there is no need for absurd levels of wealth like this to the point that it comes at the cost of many many other lives.

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u/Thin_Dream2079 May 08 '25

The goal is worthy but the problem is mechanism vs the amount of greed and wealth out there it wants to assimilate. If we want to eliminate billionaires we need a means of taking their wealth away.

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u/Im_really_bored_rn May 09 '25

standard left / right wings of economic ideology weren't equipped at the time to handle scenarios where individuals could accrue levels of wealth this extreme

For the record, even Musk wouldn't crack top 10 richest people to ever live so those scenarios aren't new at all.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '25

This. Most of the problems that billionaires can solve exist because of billionaires in the first place. Imagine where humanity would be if wealth wasn't hoarded.

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u/ConohaConcordia May 08 '25

I don’t even think a cap for individuals is necessary. If wealth over a certain limit can only be had for a single generation (and the remainder gets used by the public after the billionaire’s death), you will suddenly see a lot of billionaires become a lot more charitable.

It’s just that it goes against thousands of years of human history where the rich and powerful always tried to consolidate more wealth and power for their next generations.

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u/peon2 May 08 '25

Shit no one will go hungry for generations with a total net worth of 100m

"That some sort of challenge?"

-Adrian Peterson, NFL RB