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How US Taxpayers Helped Elon Musk Become the Richest Man on Earth | Common Dreams
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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politics
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This is what bothers me. We say it's impossible to do for the wealthy like this. Yet we regular folks get taxed like this every year. Property taxes. We have to pay for the illiquid shit we own, but it's impossible for the wealthy?
Is the US government (or any national government) going to evaluate the value of paintings or baseball memorabilia or the portfolio of song rights for the The Turtles?
My sense is that it's easier to establish value for things -- and make a case for taxes -- when they are sold in a market or used as a financial instrument (e.g. to collateralize a loan).
That's a non argument. The VAST majority of wealth we are talking about is in equities which absolutely have a clear price. All that other stuff is noise to confuse the point. You really think the wealthy will put all their money in art that has no intrinsic value? And wait a sec, even if they did, what did they just pay for it? That seems like a perfectly valid basis for tax.
None of these values are ever perfect. The point is, we pay a small percentage of our assets every year, but the wealthy have convinced us they couldn't possibly. Most don't even "own" anything, it's all under tax and liability protected companies.