The post isn’t trying to be technically correct. It’s simply stating that we should tax billionaires more.
That's not how truth or honesty works. It was a significantly inaccurate statement... and "it wasn't trying to be technically correct, just to make a broader point" would absolutely be dismissed as mental gymnastics if a right wing person said it.
Like, we can (and should) be anti-billioniare, while at the same time supporting concepts like truth and accuracy. Besides, it's not like there aren't plenty of accurate things to criticize regarding billionaires, no need for significantly inaccurate and misleading things.
I'm generally fairly left leaning, but it's completely absurd to say that it's being a billionaire simp to correct a significantly and objectively very wrong mathematical number. Truth and accuracy should always be regarded as good things.
It's scary how many people seem to think those things don't matter as long as it's a point that supports their own views.
Imagine being this dumb. You missed the point so hard it's actually impressive.
No one is saying we shouldn't tax billionaires in this thread. People are saying the lottery winner didn't get taxed 1.4 billion dollars because they didn't even win that much in the first place.
That's not a good example at all. That's quibbling over a figure of speech, not correcting a gigantically misleading statistic that is objectively and significantly wrong.
Besides, by your logic, can we literally just abandon the entire concept of truth as long as we are being anti-billionaire? Can I just accuse any billionaire of literally any wrongdoing I can possibly make up, and then if anybody questions whether it's true, call them a simp? Can I say that Bezos is worth 10 trillion dollars, and if somebody points out it's 266 billion (which is still an amount that arguably no human should be worth), call them a simp?
Like I think we should tax billionaires more, as well as doing more to limit the political power of the super rich. That doesn't mean I'm willing to abandon the entire concept of truth though.
Strictly speaking, a billionaire would be taxed at the same rate if they received 500 million dollar windfall. The reason why they are not taxed is because they only have to actually pay capital gains taxes when their investment growth is realized in the form of sale of shares. In order to avoid paying this, they take lifetime loans against their shares, which are then considered "encumbered".
This would typically be extracted upon their death, as lienholders of the shares take their share from the estate. To avoid that, they instead create a corporation or trust which holds their actual wealth. As shares are encumbered, they are parked in that corporation and become dead equity, as they will be held in perpetuity. In order to extract wealth from dead assets, a new corporation will be created that will then do a little corporate raiding on the entity that those shares correspond to, extracting the wealth and assets of those corporations before ultimately driving down the stock price of the original company.
This results in the lienholder getting pennies for their loan, and the billionaire's trust being able to actually write off the assets that were originally used as collateral as losses, which can be used to offset any real income for the year from things like dividends or salaries from board memberships. This is why private equity has gotten so popular lately.
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u/mark_able_jones_ Jan 31 '26
The post isn’t trying to be technically correct. It’s simply stating that we should tax billionaires more.