To think the world should have a 100% tax rate

I am not belittling
but like the majority - I am saying a bit silly and wholly unrealistic

You are relating your suggestion here to landing on the moon or conquering Everest?

okay

I’ve seen it all, now…

Don’t worry OP - if AI has it’s way - income tax will cease to exist soon enough.

As to wealth redistribution - which you propose - good luck with that.

Most of the on paper wealth of billionaires etc is in company stocks and shares. Often from companies they have started themselves. You can't take those shares away if someone legally owns them.

And it is really difficult to tax on the value of an unrealised share. Capital gains etc works only once the share is sold. Some countries have tried to tax the unrealised value of stocks and it has been a disaster.

So you'd have to limit their value to keep under the threshhold or forceable remove their property from them.

But who benefits from publically traded stocks being high? PENSIONS! We'd all be up the creek if the stock market was massively hit.

Instead, perhaps by better regulating the way that these billion-dollar companies become so highly valued in the first place would be better? 15-20 years ago, companies went public early on in their growth, in order to gain access to capital to grow more. Many businesses flopped but some made meteoric rises and overall, the markets grew.

Now companies delay going public. Therefore the early explosive growth is not accessible to pension funds or average investors. Only the uber-wealthy can access venture capitalist funds which now has replaced public funding. And that is how the ultra rich are getting richer in todays world - because they are the only ones who can access these super lucrative funds and super high growth.

The thing for me is, "wealth" at this level is mostly decided by how much other people value your stuff. So you start a company, people think it has enormous potential and want to buy shares in it, the value sky rockets, and suddenly you're on the hook for enormous amounts of cash?

Elon Musk is actually a good example of this. Spacex is running at a loss. Tesla is profitable now but wasn't for a long time despite the shares being hugely "valuable". Focusing on one company for simplicity because obviously he has roles in others - Elon became very rich because people wanted to buy Tesla. But Tesla wasn't actually making any money. How do you tax that?

Would income and assets of £999,999,999 not be enough of an incentive?

No suggestion as way way way above my pay grade

but that doesn’t mean I can’t think that a mumsnetters suggestion as to how to address it is daft and unrealistic

Even if people don't have that in the bank, many would have the option of downsizing their home to raise that (and more).

If we're talking redistribution at a global level, most of the uk would be the ones with the surplus.

Anyone remember Beckham not taking a salary when he moved to Paris St Germain? It wasn't philanthropy. It reduced his tax bill.

I take your argument seriously.

You can save a life for about $5,000.

If you personally have more than $5k and you haven’t given it away, are you also guilty of manslaughter?

What the line?

Keeping your own children safe and healthy, maybe. But once you’ve acquired more that that, what’s your (our) excuse?

The vast majority of the people in the uk could save lives by buying only absolute basics and giving the rest to the poor in the developing world. Are they guilty of manslaughter too?

In a way it’s illogical that centimillionaires are still motivated to be billionaires, billionaires to become multi-billionaires, etc etc etc.

But it’s good that that drive exists I think. Humanity and technology advances for many reasons but one is that individuals are still driven to do the even bigger, even more ambitious, even more improbable venture.

Some might do it anyway even with a 100% tax, but many might not.

As in the Rolling Stones- are they still producing music? You would hope that when they were more concerned with their creative output than incredible wealth being the end goal.

You could harmonise policy and practices with the EU to tackle the issue of loopholes. It's done with lots of things like Food standards, the Environmental commitments, data protection etc.

I think there’s a slippery slope and a cut off point.

I agree people shouldn’t be starving of course, but stopping people accumulating wealth is not as simple as it sounds. You seem to be advocating for all surplus monies over a specific amount to legally be handed over to the government.

Countries have done this and it didn’t end well.

I propose to amend your idea and say that any surplus earnings of billionaires over a billion pounds would be directly re-distributed directly to the pockets of the poorest people. Cut the government out. This is not a serious suggstion of course.

Of course and I also think that someone like Jeff Bezos who could save millions of lives each year with hardly a dent in his assets is guilty of manslaughter.

it is your suggestion for how to address the issue not the issue itself

If inflation is high and therefore interest rates high these wealthy individuals would never be able to keep their current wealth in line with inflation.

Seems a bit harsh.

Well no they’re not and we both know that
but we will simply have to disagree as to the relevancy of personal circumstances to perspectives