And what would happen if we did?

  • Windex007@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    The problem isn’t that i “don’t understand the gap”. The problem is that this isn’t what I’m asking.

    How do you define for the purposes of this hypothetical law which loans would be taxed as income?

    Telling me how rich Bezos is is completely tangential.

    I’ve been trying to use the Socratic method to prime the pump that

    -The root of the problem isn’t the loans themselves, it’s that they can “realize value” from shares (using them to secure a loan) without selling them.

    But that doesn’t seem to have gotten anywhere because of how excited people are to hear any question to be somehow a doubting of how rich these guys are?

    If that is the case, and you step back, can you consider an alternative strategy besides just some messy spaghetti definition of “income loans” vs other loans?

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Read my answer before replying, I provided a solution for that’s and it’s a solution based on the astonishing difference between what high middle class people and super rich make.

      I’ll repeat it, every dollar you take from a loan gets tallied, and expires after 5 years. Whenever that value goes beyond 10 million you start paying taxes on the loans. You, or any high middle class person, won’t be able to take that many loans in such a short period of time, simply because it would mean that you need at least an income of 2 million per year just to repay those loans, and I think we can agree that’s not high middle class.

      This way there’s no loophole on the type of loan.

      • Windex007@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        This is a bad system for several reasons:

        -It requires an arbitrary use-agnostic choice of value. Why 10 million? Why not 5? Why not 50?

        -it requires an arbitrary time scale. Why 5 years? Why not 3? why not 10? Why not limit once in a lifetime?

        We’re defining a system here with numbers out of thin air with no context around anything. These are fundamentally badly designed systems. No amount of fiddling with the parameters will make up for the fact that it’s fundamentally flawed.

        Also, beyond that, you would be amazed how many scenarios exist for people and businesses to secure large loans that this would impact. The goal is to actually tax the super rich who are dodging taxes, not kneecap legitimate useage. You’d hurt hundreds of thousands legitimate borrowers and just shove Bezos and Musk into using alternative mechanisms to leverage their security holdings.

        I know you think I don’t understand your proposal. I challenge you to consider that I do, and still think you can reconsider the root cause of the issue and come up with alternative ideas. You’re stuck on the loan aspect. That’s a symptom, not the cause.