If you took the value (not just available money but full worth) of all billionaires (if they sold everything they had) it wouldn't come close to paying off the debt. It would also significantly affect things way more than taxing the "poor". Tariffs might be able to do it.

You really need to get your fact together again.

Globally:

Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years | Oxfam International

Oxfam International (www.oxfam.org)

Focused on the US:

Do 728 Billionaires Hold More Wealth Than Half of American Households?

The wealth gap between households with the highest income and the bottom 50% of households in the United States has been huge.

Snopes (www.snopes.com)

Yep. Came to say, taxing the snot out of the rich isn't a whole solution. Seems some people can't work a calculator, let alone figure broader economic impacts. But talk to conservatives IRL, anything less than a 100% fix is a fail.

Few years back they bagged on solar. "Can't possibly meet ALL our energy needs!" No, it can't, not the goal. When Germany got to something like 23% solar, Fox News was like, "Yeah, but they have more sunshine. Can't work here." Really, they said that.

How would tariffs work in the shirt, mid, long term? Short-term seems like a disaster.

Yeah, but you can't splat the money out like paste.

Buddy of mine in the 90s was enraged when he found out we shredded worm bills. "They could give that to people like us!"

"Well, yeah. The government could also give us a million bucks each, today. Agreed?"

"Fuck yeah!"

"So, you know I mow lawns for a living, $20 a pop for most places? If I had a million bucks, why would I work for $20?! I'd hit ya for $20,000, at least!"

"Yeah, but I got $20,000! No problem!"

"How much you think a burger would cost?"

"McDonald's got a sweet deal for $5! We could eat like kings!"

While I'm all about taxing the snot out of the rich... jesus, the simple mindedness of some folks. (Not baggin' on you OP!)

And so much of that money isn't real money. If we hit Musk with $300B in taxes, could he pay it? He cashes in stock, stock crashes, he's got less, rinse and repeat. Not defending the parasite, just saying, much of these billionaires money is imaginary, would disappear faster than we could snatch it.

FFS, now I understand the Great Depression more and more. Guess we should have taxed them before they had economy crashing wealth. Live and learn!

And so much of that money isn’t real money.

Guess what, a large part is government debit.

And also, WTF, nobody said anything about splatting the money. What are you talking abut?

I had seen this version that uses Bezos instead of Musk.

I'm glad they've updated it but it's too bad that some of the sources are dead link. Like this one that's supposed to explain how the government can still put to use wealth that's in stocks rather than cash.

"BUt iF we EnFoRCe our lawS, tHEy WiLl Go soMWHerE eLSe."

It's always funny how the state is powerful enough to enforce a mass surveillance and control system on anyone who wants to use internet. But when it comes to tax the rich "it cannot be done, it's too difficult".

And yes, I'm looking at you """""""labour""""""" party.

We don't even need a mass surveillance system. We can see where their wealth is, it's not secret at all. They don't even need to come forward if they don't mind us keeping it.

Even if you buy the (nonsense) idea that billionaires are actually creating all the wealth, the idea that if you raise their taxes they will just stop their wealth-creating activities is utter rubbish. If you took away more of their money, they would have to work harder to maintain their standard of living - thus creating even more wealth.

Funny you think that taxing the rich is not going help pay off all the debt (no one says that alone will fix the debt problem), but advocating for tariffs is basically taxing everyone across the board. And who is actually going to be hurt by this? The ordinary folks. The rich don't care about paying more for groceries and goods because they can afford to pay more for the extra costs imposed by tariffs.

And since you mentioned about the Great Depression in your other reply, guess which is a contributing factor to the Great Depression? That's right, tariffs. It was imposed over one hundred years ago by none other than the Republican party. Ted Cruz himself said to stop imposing tariffs and shaking up the stock market, or they will lose both the house and senate again for another 60 years like the last time!

Tariffs can generate revenue, but it is a short term solution that will create a long term problem.

And they will, except the value created is not from somewhere else.

It's not this, it's that you don't actually have democracy when all your representatives are from a small pool of career politicians. That pool can be (mostly) groomed and bought long before getting a chance to be elected anyplace. It can also be threatened. And compromised in fucking children or murdering prostitutes. All kinds of stuff.

Suppose you have a direct democracy element, then you have to buy\threaten the majority, and this won't be a secret. And threatening the majority is very hard.

Here you can do all these things without ever getting a feedback. It's important to create feedbacks everywhere, if a system doesn't give feedback, then you don't know anything about how it really works.

I know its just a start but its good to see tha Australian government introducing new taxation on retirement savings over $300 million.

That's an interesting argument for direct democracy, which I haven't heard before.

In America we'd call that a War on Retirement, smear the politicians with ads, and ensure all the poor red states vote against it because it's a attack on freedom.

I've used it as an argument for libertarianism initially, because direct democracy is kinda impractical (thought me back then, LOL), but having grown up a bit I see the need for big militaries and in general synchronous pooling of resources, which libertarian models are notoriously not very good at.

But right now things just as impractical as direct democracy are implemented everywhere, so times have changed.

We're aguing over whether to make it $200m and indexed to inflation. Either way it better get up or many of us will be furious.

edit: is? us.