Which is on top of the plans for the-best-health-plan-you’ve-ever-seen and the plan to release his tax returns, which are on top of boxes of plans we’ve long forgotten and will never see the light of day.
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Instead of taxing the billionaires, why don’t we take all of their money. Every dime.
According to this website: Billionaire Wealth Distribution Statistics 2026: Who Holds What • CoinLaw
The United States leads with 902 billionaires in 2025, compared to 813 in 2024.
- Among U.S. billionaires, total wealth reached an estimated $7.6 trillion by Labor Day 2025, up ~160% since 2017.
So we take it all and it doesn’t even pay down a 1/4 of our debt.
What we have is a spending problem.
Instead, we could just take anything over $100,000,000 or even make it half a billion - you know, an amount that someone might be able to survive life’s little left-hooks.
Pete
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Fixed that for ya.
Hawkwin
Whose income increased substantially last year - and still paid $8,000 less in federal taxes.
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Why don’t we just stop spending all together? Then none of us would have to pay taxes. I guess that could fix affordability for some.
Seems kinda drastic though. We probably need to pay for some things.
Billionaires can probably afford paying the same effective tax rate as the rest of us. Billionaire lovers argue that we shouldn’t target them because they work the hardest and are the smartest among us. The livelihood of everyone else depends on keeping billionaires happy. They’re super special people. We can’t afford to upset them.
Here’s a thought, maybe we can’t afford to continue pandering to them. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to continue policies that funnel money to a small group of people who hoard wealth. Maybe, just maybe, our economy and society would be far better off if billionaires didn’t exist.
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I have a personal plan unrelated to elections, increase income.
With over a year’s data using the Covered Call Roll Selector to back up the original Covered Call Selector I feel confident my portfolio can produce a lot more income than traditional investing in stocks.
For example, TSLA produced 18% in income since 12/18/2024 which is almost 15% annualized while my calls tracked the crazy volatility from $440 down to $220, up to $498, now $406.
- Strike price from $510
- Down to $265,
- Back up to $410
Now I aim as close as possible to ATM.
TSLA has a relatively low yield compared to other technology stocks like SMCI. I’m in the process of replacing PLTR with higher yielding data center suppliers. Couldn’t have done it without the software, without the Selectors.
The Captain
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I’m guessing all of us here have managed our finances so that our expenses don’t exceed our income. The government should do the same.
I’m not against taxing more from billionaires and millionaires, but the mantra that taxing the rich will solve our problems, I’m not buying it. Like I said upthread; take all of their money. Who do we take from the year after that. It doesn’t solve the deficit spending.
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I agree with you. I’m certainly not suggesting that it will, but it has to be part of the solution.
But, but… that’s only five hundred MILLION! I can’t leave the Billionaire club.
Yep. And wars, evil, pointless, illegal wars, costing a $Billion/day is a real spending problem.
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I disagree. The government should not run with a surplus; at a profit. It should always run with a small deficit or with some debt. Running as a surplus is a contractionary force on our economy. Running at a deficit is stimulative. Running surpluses would actually increase the risk of recessions.
I think the missing part is that most are not asking to punitively tax the rich, only to tax them proportionately to their wealth and income. The OBBBA gave massive tax cuts to the rich that they didn’t need.
Indeed it does not, but we don’t necessarily need to completely eliminate the deficient spending. If the debt grows at the same rate as GDP, then we don’t have an issue. We could run a deficient forever and never have a problem - but the deficit was something like 1.8T last year - an actual decrease from the year prior. If not for the massive tax cuts, it might have been one of the best years for a decrease in the deficit - maybe even the largest non-covid decrease ever.
How nice would it have been for the party in power to have been able to say they presided over one of the largest year over year decreases in the deficit?
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Former CEO of Goldman Sacks was on PBS Newshour tonight w a new book. He said basis of the wealth divide is that people w assets are doing ok. Those w/o assets are left behind. Feeds directly into the k shaped recovery and the affordability problem. Anyone have a solution to the wealth divide problem?
Most practical is raise the minimum wage. Fed min is still $7.25. Most states are at least $15/hr these days.
We had speaker from federal reserve bank in St. Louis. He said fundamental problem is red lining and discrimination that prevented home ownership as that is major asset for many. He suggested slave reparations as a solution. But how do you pay for that.
Raising minimum wage at least does not increase national debt. But most would say contributes to inflation.
You don’t. You can’t. There has been rampant discrimination of nearly of every sizable group that came into the country from the Chinese workers in the 1850’s on the West Coast to the Irish and Italians on the East Coast, and the Mexicans and other Latinos from the South. Oh, and I should include Native Americans who were ruthlessly exterminated and prevented from integrating into US culture for centuries.
Blacks, obviously, are a special case thanks to slavery, but there is no way to 1) adequately repay or 2) fairly distribute whatever meager amount of money we might be able to scrape up.
The remedies I would suggest are 1) hamper the transfer of generational wealth (not eliminate, but not engage in the wholesale transfer as is now common) and 2) ruthlessly enforce antidiscrimination laws and add to them if they are found wanting. (Yes, I mean this racially, but I would be happy to see age and gender discrimination as rigorously persued.) Finally, I would change the method for funding schools, where rich districts have fine schools and poor districts have substandard schools: this is redlining of a different flavor which leads to generational stagnation.
I’m sure there are more, but that’s where I’d start.
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Free public education is one of our best social programs. It’s too bad many poor fail to stay in school to graduate. A diploma can get you job training many places. Better job training can get you into the middle class.
“Poor schools” needs definition. Usually we are talking about test scores. Previously it was per cent age graduating or going to college. We need to address the quality of the student body. Poor students from poor families results in many disadvantages. There are underlying social issues we ask schools to address. Poverty is a relative term but it remains a core issue.
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