'Stupid' and 'insane': Some billionaires vent over tax plan

Omaha World Herald ^ | Oct 28, 2021 | HALELUYA HADERO

[Mean Daddy]

Elon Musk isn't happy.

With a personal fortune that is flirting with $300 billion, the Tesla CEO — the richest person on earth — has been attacking a Democratic proposal to tax the assets of billionaires like him.

The idea behind the Democratic plan is to use revenue from a billionaires tax to help pay for a domestic policy package being negotiated in Congress that would, among other things, help combat climate change, provide universal prekindergarten and expand health care programs. The proposal wasn’t included in President Joe Biden’s framework for the domestic policy package released Thursday, though that deal among Congressional Democrats isn’t final.

Musk, who recently blew past Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world No. 1 in wealth thanks to Tesla's soaring share price, would be liable for perhaps a one-time $50 billion tax hit under the Democratic proposal.

Forget it, he says.

“My plan,” the SpaceX founder tweeted Thursday about his fortune, "is to use the money to get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness."

He may well get his wish, with the proposal removed from the White House framework.

[Mean Daddy]

And while Warren Buffett has yet to comment publicly on the proposal, the billionaire head of Berkshire Hathaway has long called for higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy like himself.

What I find amazing is that Buffett is always telling us about how many billions of dollars he's giving away but not one word about writing a $1 billion check to the gubmint. Does he not know that there is no law against paying more? That no "journalist" thought to ask him? It's because with his donations, he's buying influence and population control.

[Vaquero]

They haven’t figured out that this is a Marxist plot? How did they make billions being that stupid.

[setter]

At first it will be the first 700, then next year 1000, then 2500, then 5000 then 10,000 then 100,00 then first 1 million top earners.

[Mean Daddy]

Yep. I know it sounds odd, but every should be fighting this because if they take their money, they can take our money.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

Careful, Elon. You may get the “Jack Ma” treatment from the People’s Democratic Party.

[SmokingJoe]

Stupid’ and ‘insane’: Some billionaires vent over tax plan

Everything Dementia Joe and the Dems do is stupid and insane.

[Mouton]

They were happy to elect this moron government. Live with it now.

[palmer]

if they take their money, they can take our money.

They will take your money in round one. All your stock values will decrease as entire portfolios (not just Amazon, Tesla, etc) will be liquidated to pay the taxes. Instead of selling stock and reinvesting the money, the billionaires will be forced to sell stock and turn over the money to the leftists.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Yep. I know it sounds odd, but every should be fighting this because if they take their money, they can take our money.

It's worse than that. Much, much worse. This is diverting useful productive capital to useless waste, with benefits going to Democratic Party constituencies. This is the Curley Effect on a national scale.

Curley Effect:

James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of using redistributive politics to shape the electorate, and show that this model yields a number of predictions opposite from the more standard frameworks of political competition, yet consistent with empirical evidence. (Emphasis added)

[SmokingJoe]

Musk is Canadian as well as South African.
Plus he can always move to Monaco and pay no personal income taxes at all like most Formula One drivers do.

[ProudVet97]

“but not one word about writing a $1 billion check”

I guess he figures $1 billion won’t do anything for public debt of $30,000 billion!

[lodi90]

Basically none of the industries or rich people being hit by Democrats now cared to help Trump win. The NRA was the only large org that went to bat for Trump in my neck of Florida.

[DownInFlames]

There is no where left to flee. This is it, the last bastion of freedom.

[DJ MacWoW]

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[TheConservativeTejano]

Partner, we know that the whole budget by the DemonRats is a big joke on all of us and now the billionaire tax.

The DemonRat party is giving almost $1 million dollars to an illegal alien.

We say “ Kill this Budget Bill” now!!!

We do not even know how many dollars in taxes we are going to pay.

We r going to have to scrap this whole bill and get folks to present “No New Taxes” and do this bill.

I just found out that there is about $200 Billion missing every single year from the budget.

[SmokingJoe]

You are wrong.
There are plenty of low tax, freedom loving countries out there to move to if you want especially if you are the richest man in the world like Musk is.

[butlerweave]

Oh come on guys the Democrats need to pay Illegals $450,000 of your money ,LOL

[who_would_fardels_bear]

We are told that there are millions of individual investors but we are also told that the vast majority of financial products are owned by a very small number of people. If these individuals are taxed on unrealized profits then they will have to sell off a huge chunk of them every year to pay the tax bill.

This would tend to lower the overall value of financial products, free up more for individual investors, and turn Wall Street into even more of a short timeframe casino.

If implemented it would be horrible but it would be an interesting economic experiment. Time to hoard popcorn.

[ridesthemiles]

HAS BUFFETT EVER cleared up his past tax delinquincy????

EVER???

[ridesthemiles]

What “Budget”???

IIRC, in 8 years, Obama only presented a ‘budget’ 2 times.