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this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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politics
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Credit where credit is due, Bill Gates has been putting his money where his mouth is for decades now.
We don't don't need princes or kings doing PR. If we taxed billionaires out of existence we could fund that and so much more. This guy doesn't get to make up for whatever he was doing on Epstein's plane, at least not without coming clean first.
We could do so much more, but would we? USAID was just shuttered. There's every chance that money would go into the military industrial complex or something equally unpleasant.
Not defending billionaires as a concept (they shouldn't exist, and most aren't as philanthropic as Bill), but I will acknowledge he's doing a lot of good with his money.
If we had been taxing billionaires for the last 50 years, the education system wouldn't be where it is now and USAID would have never been under threat. In fact USAID would have probably never had to operate within the US.
It's also worth mentioning Gates has made our public education system worse by introducing us to the voucher system. Billionaires are part of why we don't spend our tax dollars on things like universal healthcare or free college.
I think you can simultaneously be pro-tax and acknowledge Bill Gates is a good person in a sea of villains.
You can't tax wealth. Wealth is not money.
We tax things that aren't money all the time, see property taxes.
I have no clue who are "we" in your case, but we don't tax property.
https://thenegotiator.co.uk/news/uk-housing-market-news/analysis-uk-has-worlds-highest-property-taxes/
These are not actually property taxes. Stamp duty is like VAT, it's a transaction tax and its rate is very low. You don't pay stamp duty while owning a property. Council tax is a weird abomination and while it is linked to property value in theory, in practice you'll pay the same amount if you live in a £1m house or £50m mansion. Business rates are for business, and property owners don't pay them, only those who rent.
There are no property taxes in the UK. The current government is thinking about land tax, but we'll see if it ever comes to fruition.
It was on the Kamala Harris campaign website that she supported an unrealized gains tax for amounts over $1 Million USD.
Conservatives were freaking out that it might "destroy the economy which relies on foreign investors to prop up the value of USD" lmao.
Everyone should freak out, because it's an utter lunacy.
Compared to the Republican Shitshow destroying the economy anyways and the infinitely stacking Billionnaire wealth hack it sounds like a dream come true.
The Chinese would figure out a way to get their stock market fix, the USA ended up loaning their gains from the transactions to struggling countries anyways so China divesting in the USA would just cut out the middleman.
So if we tax them on wealth they doesn't exist. Do we tax regular folk on the cost of their houses also? I mean they are worth billions but not till they sell.
I pay property taxes based on the value of my home, but what home is worth billions?
If your wealth is enough to serve as security for a credit line that you use to fund your daily spending, it's enough to be taxed.
Yeah, TBF that foundation has done a lot of good.
If he had done that, he wouldn't be as wealthy as he is today. Billionaires being billionaires is a big part of the problem, and the only way to remedy that is for them to not be billionaires anymore.
Wealth is not money.
All wealth can be turned into money.
There's a slight issue though - it can't.
It can though.
Nope.
Yup.
You're of course free to try and provide an example to the contrary.
Example of something that doesn't exist? You remind me of people who believe in god.