 Fun fact Elon Musk is actually the most insufferable cringe-worthy wannabe Edgelord on the planet Oh, and he also happens to be the richest human being currently and also the richest man to ever have lived in the history of humanity with an estimated net worth of 229.6 billion dollars and guess what his wealth continues to grow He just increased his wealth by nearly 42 billion dollars in a single day after rental car company Hertz ordered 100,000 Teslas and he's on track to be the world's first Trillionaire and let me repeat that Trillionaire with a T not billionaire trillionaire one person So not only is this level of wealth immoral because he made all of this money on the backs of exploited Tesla workers But it's also immoral because in a late-stage capitalist society where wealth equals power This much power this much money that you have it gives you so much power that you actually pose a legitimate threat to democracy and that's not hyperbole in fact a 2014 Princeton University study found that when it comes to policy outcomes average Americans Don't get what they want codified into law But when you look at the interests of elites and the business class Well, everything that they want actually does end up becoming law and that's because in a capitalist society Money equals power and you see that in action So what we have to do at a minimum is Introduce a wealth tax to make sure that we don't have Billionaires this many billionaires we have to make sure that people don't have that much wealth. Otherwise They're gonna have more power. They're gonna have a disproportionate say over what happens in our so-called democracy So we need a wealth tax and we need a tax on unrealized capital gains Now the Democratic Party to their credit is considering raising taxes on just some of the country's richest people And if this were to go through it wouldn't be the end all be all I think that they would still be incredibly rich people Like Elon Musk would still be the world's richest person But it'd be something but um, he's against even these measly attempts to rein in his wealth a little bit But before I tell you what he said I want to talk about the bill introduced by Ron Wyden So as Jeff Stein Andrew Van Damme and Tony Rahm of the Washington Post explain Senate Democrats this week are preparing to propose a new tax increase that would raise billions of dollars From a handful of the richest Americans attempting to create perhaps the most narrowly focused tax policy in post-war history Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden said Monday He will in a matter of days release a tax on billionaires that economists and tax experts project could raise more than half of its revenue from just 10 People including Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Bezos is the owner of the Washington Post. We'll talk about that in a second Estimates vary widely on exactly how much money the plan would bring into federal coffers in part because no such idea Has ever been put into effect while Democrats have increasingly eyed the plan as a way to win the support of Senator Kyrsten Sinema Who has expressed opposition to increasing the corporate tax rate? Some legal scholars have warned it could get struck down by the Supreme Court and while negotiations are rapidly evolving Democrats are considering swapping the billionaire tax for a separate 3% surtax on millionaires earning more than five million dollars per year According to two people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal Negotiations details remain very much in flux now the reason why these billionaires are paying such low effective tax rates is because Most of their money is kept in stocks, right? so when you have all of your money all of your wealth in stocks and that's not taxed and you have no capital gains tax Well that money is gonna continue to grow and grow I mean when you have that much money, you don't have to do anything your money makes money And so that needs to be taxed. That's insane that that's not being taxed But that's not what's happened. So, you know, they are able to continue to get exponentially wealthier and Meanwhile the tax burden is shifted to the working class and that's just unacceptable Now when it comes to this threat to democracy posed by billionaires, I think that the Washington Post article It inadvertently put it best. I trust Jeff Stein and his reporting But I mean the Washington Post is an outlet that is owned by Jeff Bezos This is supposed to be a check on government authority. It's supposed to be Something that is a check on power that includes billionaires So I don't know the extent to which Jeff Bezos has editorial control over Washington Post writers I assume he has not much contact with them But I mean if you're a Washington Post writer and you know that your boss is very very powerful Are you going to maybe at least think twice about publicly writing something where you're critical of your boss? Yeah, I think so So in order to have a functioning democracy, you need a free press But when billionaires get so powerful and have so much wealth that they start buying up Media outlets start having an outsized say over what politicians do and don't do That's a really huge issue. Now when it comes to this plan proposed by Ron Wyden Where they tax unrealized capital gains? What would be the impact to these billionaires? Well, it's Relatively insignificant. So as you can see the 10 billionaires who this would impact the most Wouldn't take that much of a hit overall to their net worth So Elon Musk would lose about 50 billion dollars. So he'd still be the world's richest man Jeff Bezos would lose 44 billion Bill Gates would lose 19 billion Mark Zuckerberg will lose 29 billion Warren Buffett 25 billion Jim Walton of the Walton family who has the Walmart chain 12 billion So, I mean, they'd still be massively massively wealthy But for someone like Elon Musk, he'd no longer be worth over 229.6 billion he would have a net worth of 179.6 billion. I Mean, I don't know how he'd make it after that but that's what we're talking about here chump change to these individuals It's a hit to their wealth But one that will not be felt because even if you had ten billion dollars that is such an Inconceivable amounts of money that even if you tried really hard You're not going to be able to spend that in your lifetime Even if you were lucky enough to live to be a thousand you're not gonna spend Ten billion dollars. So for someone to go from a net worth of 229.6 billion to 179.6 billion It's nothing it is absolutely nothing and to just show you how Disgustingly rich these folks are so when you compare these ten billionaires to I think the next 700 billionaires well, they'd be paying about as much as these ten billionaires I mean that goes to show you how rich people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are now Elon Musk Responded to someone on Twitter who shared a prompt for bootlickers to use if they do want to call lawmakers at the behest of American Oligarchs and tell them to not raise their taxes I don't know who would want to do that But this person shared a prompts apparently they care about billionaire wealth that they don't have and will never have but Elon Musk responded to this and quoted Margaret Thatcher Saying eventually they run out of other people's money and then they come for you Okay, well, let's be overly charitable to Elon Musk here when we shouldn't be but let's be overly charitable and assume one that money is in fake and Two that there really was a point where you run out of money after taxing people like Elon Musk so much Well given how much wealth he has I think it's gonna take a very very very very long time Until we run out of money So go for it. Most of us won't be alive to see it. That's how much wealth These people have So for him to have the audacity to whine after being the richest person in the world being on track to become the world's first Trillionaire I Mean this is when you get people calling for revolutions This is when the peasants break out their pitchforks because if you're that fucking greedy To where you don't even want a small tax I mean this is a relatively small tax and if you think that 50 billion of his wealth is too much How much are you gonna take it out of your paychecks? It's a lot of money before you even see your paycheck lots of taxes are removed. So if we take out a comparatively Equal amount from workers, then I think that these dipshits can handle the cut to their wealth It's fine and I'm of the belief that taxes don't fund spending So I subscribe to modern monetary theory and I don't believe that We have to tax billionaires to find ways to deliver Social goods to people, but I think that taxing billionaires is a social necessity If we want to live in a functioning democracy because again, if you let people like this Get that much wealth become a trillionaire. I Mean he gets everything he wants not just materially speaking But from a political standpoint Every politician is gonna want to listen to the trillionaire who can easily bankroll their campaign every organization every nonprofit is gonna want to listen to the trillionaire and If they believe that he might help their cause Every charity is gonna be disincentivized in speaking negatively of Elon Musk if he might be able to help them out It's just it's it's not something that a healthy society would allow So you have to not just increase their taxes and tax unrealized capital gains But you have to tax these billionaires out of existence Until we no longer have billionaires the taxes haven't been increased enough So for him to complain about this I say, um The taxes just got ten feet higher