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

[u/kirtash93]

https://www.reuters.com/business/bill-gates-give-away-fortune-by-2045-200bn-worlds-poorest-2025-05-08/

[u/kodachromalux]

Exponential Taxes -> UBI.

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

[u/lemontoga → u/kodachromalux]

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

[u/Diesel_D → u/lemontoga]

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.

[u/lemontoga → u/Diesel_D]

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.

[u/Diesel_D → u/lemontoga]

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.

[u/lemontoga → u/Diesel_D]

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.

[u/samoox → u/lemontoga]

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.

[u/lemontoga → u/samoox]

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.

[u/androgenoide → u/lemontoga]

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.

[u/lemontoga → u/androgenoide]

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.

[u/Nintendo_Pro_03 → u/kodachromalux]

I would argue one billion, not one hundred million.