Nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires across 24 countries are demanding Davos leaders to tax them more: ‘Tax us. Tax the super rich.’

What happened: Nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries signed an open letter this week urging World Economic Forum leaders in Davos to impose higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy. High-profile signatories include Mark Ruffalo, Abigail Disney, and Brian Eno, with accompanying polling of 3,900 millionaires showing 77% believe the extremely wealthy buy political influence and 65% support higher taxes on top earners.
Why it matters: The richest 1% now own three times more wealth than the world’s total public wealth combined, a gap that has grown from $36 trillion in 1975 to $435 trillion in 2024. This concentration of wealth threatens democracy by allowing the ultra-rich to buy political influence, erode public services like hospitals and schools, and prevent action on inequality and climate issues that affect everyday people’s ability to afford basic necessities.
https://ground.news/daily-briefing/400-millionaires-urge-higher-taxes-on-ultra-wealthy

There are 1,100 billionaires in the United States alone. If we taxed them, we’d solve poverty completely here. And we could also lower the tax on lower wealth brackets. And reduce the national debt.

This massive wealth inequality bubble is unsustainable and will pop some day. That’s the way it has always worked in history. They can give a little now or a lot later.

You know it’s getting when even the ultra rich start asking for more taxes

They know there’s two ways these wrongs get righted, either the people in charge start playing fair or they all get overthrown. And they don’t want the latter. But they can smell it brewing.

could just, idk, **do** the kind, socially beneficial thing instead of waiting around and claiming you want governments to tax you more for the social media points, but sure, what do I know, I’m not a millionaire/billionaire.

What percentage is that. My guess is it’s less than 5%

They can literally just pay taxes as opposed using all the loopholes they do. They should tell that to their accountant instead.

Imagine a 1% wealth tax on all wealth above $1b. That’s roughly $75B of tax revenue per year based on today’s Forbes list of billionaires.

A billionaire often has higher return investment options, but assume they just put their wealth in risk-free securities. A guaranteed 4% minus at most 1% return (though lower than 1% if the first billion of wealth isn’t taxed) is still a monstrous amount of capital gains in dollar terms.

$75B of tax revenue isn’t going to fully fund universal healthcare or anything, but it’s a start and will still allow substantial growth in those billionaire portfolios.

Here’s an idea. Billionaire apologists try to argue that their wealth is tied up in their business and they don’t have the liquidity to pay taxes. If that were the case, they shouldn’t be able to make huge political donations or purchase media outlets to help them control the narrative. Tax those transactions at 1000x. If you can afford to pay 1 million to try to buy a politician the least you can do is tip the country a cool billion while you’re at it.

Tax them. Use the money for healthcare, housing, and education. Watch public support skyrocket.

I’ve got an account they can send the money to.

Billionaires make up the salary of 100s of thousands of workers, tax them to the same degree we would tax all those people.

Indeed tax the super rich

Ok, why don’t you use the powers vested in you from Citizens United and fund progressive and reform candidates?

Or, you know, reinvest in the fucking communities you siphon it out of? Infrastructure, healthcare, poverty, homelessness

>tax me tax me

Sure fire way to never see an increase I taxes and say…*See, we wanted them to tax us but they didn’t*

Just rich people bullshitting their way into more money

“Tax us before these people take it into their own hands”

There’s a very simple way to do this, and it’s to tax unrealized gains (as a separate filing) for every person or business partially owned by a person with a net worth over a certain number with a progressive tax rate. Make it a billion and we’ll be done with this immediately.

People will argue about how difficult and impossible this would be, but multiple countries have similar tax policies.

And the Corporations! And the shell companies! The rich can easily say “tax the rich” because the wealthy know how to hide their money.

Return the US to the tax tables of 1953 when we INVESTED In America.

Meanwhile the politicians “maybe we should tax everyone else instead…”

I mean, form a PAC to support moral causes, including parties that platform tax reform.

Taxing billionaires has to be a policy that’s introduced by EVERY country in the world. And that’s never going to happen. Nothing stopping them paying extra taxes in their own countries. THAT will never happen too.