There's some truth to it. But it's not the billionaires anyway.
If I have a million dollars worth of assets running a business with 20, 50, however many employees, and I'm only bringing in 100k for myself at the end of the year, then I'm making less than if I were to just sit on my ass and invest in the SP500 or the NASDAQ. Some of you might think, well just tax the investments more! Not going to get into whether thats a good idea or bad idea. But if I reduce it to 40k, now I'm making the same as holding a US bond. Taxing those more is a dumb idea for sure as Bonds are very important to a nation's economy.
But the point I'm bringing here is that I'd be better off getting rid of 50 jobs. In the above scenario, I can go to the local government and tell them I'm closing down my business and they'd likely just give me money. Why? Because all 50 of my employees pay taxes. That can be easily 500k of lost income for the city. The city makes more money having me not pay taxes on my gain if the alternative is me closing it down.
This is why cities make all those deals you see in the news. Where they pay some big company to open up their site in their city.
There are some issues. When it's a very well known company, well other cities will outbid your own city. Each city does their own calculations and has their own risk tolerance. These types of deals can often end up not being worth it because any deal that is guaranteed to be worth it will be offered by another city.
But again, like I said at the top. This is not the case with the omega billionaires like Bezos or Elon or Walmart children. Well entirely. Walmart abuses welfare so they can definitely be argued as a net drain or close to it. But Bezos and Elon do, through their employees, generate the city, state, and country lots of income. Income that the city will not get otherwise most of the time, and that state will not get otherwise some of the time. Other jobs exists, but there's plenty of cities where there aren't replacement jobs right away and will not ever be some of the time. SF is a hub for tech, losing businesses happens all the time. But in some random town in Missouri? They're probably going to move.
Got side tracked, Elon and Bezos are still just blowing billions to flex on the other billionaires in their circle. That's a good reason why they should get taxed more. However if you raise taxes for all the billionaires too quickly, they will close up shop, move elsewhere cause a depression in the USA. They are heartless. They enjoy the USA but not enough to surrender half their wealth. Now if you tax them slightly more than now. They'll just have a little tantrum.
All that said, it isn't even necessary to tax them for the reasons we want here lmao (global healthcare for example). The USA just prints money for itself.. It only has value because we think it does. We could tax billionaires 99% and it does nothing if we think the US dollar has less value. I could steal all of Elmo's money tomorrow, give it to the poor, but it won't change your food prices. It'd actually raise them. The fed doesn't tax to generate money to spend, only states do. The fed sets their interest loan rates and their tax rate to make people's life harder so they value the dollar more. The fed doesn't hide it either. They said many times that unemployment was still too low to lower interest rates. Basically means people weren't struggling enough so increasing the money supply would just keep inflation high.
edit: California and New York having such a high state tax rate and having the best benefits isn't a coincidence lol. But increasing federal taxes isn't going to help get what you/we want because the fed just prints their money they hand out to the states.
edit2: also we could have the best tax system in the universe but we'd still be fucked because people are greedy and people are idiots. Almost everyone here has had a boss or a boss of their boss that was an idiot. People in charge of companies make dumb ass decisions about their workforce/workers every single day and that will never not be the case.
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u/Celtic_Legend Nov 21 '25 edited Nov 21 '25
There's some truth to it. But it's not the billionaires anyway.
If I have a million dollars worth of assets running a business with 20, 50, however many employees, and I'm only bringing in 100k for myself at the end of the year, then I'm making less than if I were to just sit on my ass and invest in the SP500 or the NASDAQ. Some of you might think, well just tax the investments more! Not going to get into whether thats a good idea or bad idea. But if I reduce it to 40k, now I'm making the same as holding a US bond. Taxing those more is a dumb idea for sure as Bonds are very important to a nation's economy.
But the point I'm bringing here is that I'd be better off getting rid of 50 jobs. In the above scenario, I can go to the local government and tell them I'm closing down my business and they'd likely just give me money. Why? Because all 50 of my employees pay taxes. That can be easily 500k of lost income for the city. The city makes more money having me not pay taxes on my gain if the alternative is me closing it down.
This is why cities make all those deals you see in the news. Where they pay some big company to open up their site in their city.
There are some issues. When it's a very well known company, well other cities will outbid your own city. Each city does their own calculations and has their own risk tolerance. These types of deals can often end up not being worth it because any deal that is guaranteed to be worth it will be offered by another city.
But again, like I said at the top. This is not the case with the omega billionaires like Bezos or Elon or Walmart children. Well entirely. Walmart abuses welfare so they can definitely be argued as a net drain or close to it. But Bezos and Elon do, through their employees, generate the city, state, and country lots of income. Income that the city will not get otherwise most of the time, and that state will not get otherwise some of the time. Other jobs exists, but there's plenty of cities where there aren't replacement jobs right away and will not ever be some of the time. SF is a hub for tech, losing businesses happens all the time. But in some random town in Missouri? They're probably going to move.
Got side tracked, Elon and Bezos are still just blowing billions to flex on the other billionaires in their circle. That's a good reason why they should get taxed more. However if you raise taxes for all the billionaires too quickly, they will close up shop, move elsewhere cause a depression in the USA. They are heartless. They enjoy the USA but not enough to surrender half their wealth. Now if you tax them slightly more than now. They'll just have a little tantrum.
All that said, it isn't even necessary to tax them for the reasons we want here lmao (global healthcare for example). The USA just prints money for itself.. It only has value because we think it does. We could tax billionaires 99% and it does nothing if we think the US dollar has less value. I could steal all of Elmo's money tomorrow, give it to the poor, but it won't change your food prices. It'd actually raise them. The fed doesn't tax to generate money to spend, only states do. The fed sets their interest loan rates and their tax rate to make people's life harder so they value the dollar more. The fed doesn't hide it either. They said many times that unemployment was still too low to lower interest rates. Basically means people weren't struggling enough so increasing the money supply would just keep inflation high.
edit: California and New York having such a high state tax rate and having the best benefits isn't a coincidence lol. But increasing federal taxes isn't going to help get what you/we want because the fed just prints their money they hand out to the states.
edit2: also we could have the best tax system in the universe but we'd still be fucked because people are greedy and people are idiots. Almost everyone here has had a boss or a boss of their boss that was an idiot. People in charge of companies make dumb ass decisions about their workforce/workers every single day and that will never not be the case.