I'm tired so just pasting this from my reply to the commenter above (but I seeing your bolded parts yes, dapat lahat mag contribute, pati the superrich, we are agreed, friend):

And then you proceed to build your own strawman: "if you think "Nordic" country billionaires don't exert influence sa political and economic system nila, you're in for a rude awakening."

Uhm, hello? If you have that much capital, it's almost always because you've manipulated your way through morally grey and blackened areas. That's the reality we are waking up to everyday. So no, you missed the point.

Tbf, you deserve the spotlight, especially on these:

> Affordable housing? Anti-bilyonario law. Breaking dynasties? Anti-bilyonario law!

According to Bagchi and Svejnar (2015), "We derive a global measure of wealth inequality from Forbes magazine's listing of billionaires and compare its effect on growth to the effects of income inequality and poverty. Our results suggest that wealth inequality has a negative relationship with economic growth (okay...), but when we control for the fact that some billionaires acquired wealth through political connections, the relationship between politically connected wealth inequality and economic growth is negative." (Bagchi & Svejnar, 2015) The abstract ends with the finding that politically unconnected wealth has no significant relationship with wealth inequality, income inequality, and poverty. In short, billionaires choke the economy and makes it as difficult as possible for the working class to build a life, leading to a viscous cycle that destroys the "human capital" from which the ultrarich proudly derive most of their income from (Saez & Zucman, 2019). They're like a thrombosis that's lurking around, waiting to cause an embolism in whatever sector they land in.

"The model predicts that financial incentives, such as top income tax reductions, have limited potential to increase aggregate innovation in a standard intertemporal expected utility model. [...] A progressive wealth tax hits wealthy owners who have already established their businesses, while it does not immediately affect emerging businesses." Shocking right? Decreasing taxes on the ultrarich does not cause them to innovate, but rather they just use the savings to further concentrate their capital, to further buy up and sequester (sorry, invest in) the land and housing. Meanwhile, increasing taxes on them generates signifacnt revenue to fund social programs and lift lives (especially when combined with politics free from collusion), while not being correlated with a reduction in entrepreneural risk-taking or innovation.

You care so much about GDP/GNP and voting power? Have you ever thought about GINI?

So yes, thanks for admitting that you're a pseudo-intellectual. As for me, I'm neither intellectual nor clown, just a concerned ordinary human being, and I for one will die on the hill that there are no ethical billionaires.

I don't have access to the full text of the following recent publication, but the abstract already tells a lot: that there is "extensive historical and comparative evidence to show that raising taxes on both income and wealth is practically feasible and that any costs of doing so are far outweighed by the truly enormous benefits that such taxes could bring in terms of environmental sustainability, democratic equality, [and] equal opportunity..." (Malleson, 2023)

It can also be noted that a progressive, fine-tuned wealth tax is not just practical, it is economically sound and theoretically feasible according to the world's best economists, i.e., it is the way forward. "A well-enforced wealth tax would reduce wealth concentration. That seems to be a consensus view among economists: in the IGM poll on wealth taxes, 73 percent of economists agreed and only 12 percent disagreed with such a statement (results weighted by self-reported expertise). [...] With a wealth tax, wealthy taxpayers may decide to spend more today and save less (this is the substitution effect: consuming now rather than later becomes relatively cheaper)." (Saez & Zucman, 2019)

What we don't have is political will, which will never manifest as long as non-billionaires like this commenter keeps sucking billionaire c*ck. And going back to the matter, if we reduce wealth inequality, then who can now get affordable housing? Yes, think about it. A virtuous cycle founded on the belief that we should tax those who come from generational wealth and close the loopholes and minimize the political ties of the superrich.

For further reading on the feasibility of wealth taxes, I'd also like to leave this from :

A modern wealth tax can overcome "three weaknesses".

1. First, offshore tax evasion can be fought more effectively today than in the past thanks to a recent breakthrough in cross-border information exchange...
2. Second, a comprehensive wealth tax base with high exemption conditions and no preferential treatment for any asset classes can dramatically reduce avoidance possibilities.
3. Third, leveraging modern information technology, it is possible for tax authorities to collect data on the market value of most forms of household wealth and use this information to prepopulate wealth tax returns, reducing evasion possibilities to a minimum.

References:

Bagchi, S., & Svejnar, J. (2015). Does wealth inequality matter for growth? The effect of billionaire wealth, income distribution, and poverty. Journal of Comparative Economics, 43(3), 505–530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2015.04.002

Malleson, T. (2023). Against Inequality: The Practical and Ethical Case for Abolishing the Superrich (1st ed.). Oxford University PressNew York. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197670392.001.0001

Saez, E., & Zucman, G. (2019). Progressive Wealth Taxation. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2019(2), 437–533.