this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Any billionaire can lose 90% of their wealth and have above 100 million left.
Many can lose 99% and have above 100 million left.
Some can lose 99% and still be billionaires.
The 100 millionaire will still have a million or more left after losing 99%, but that's not "live like hogs in the fat house forever" money at least. It's just "I don't have to worry if I lose my job" money.
A hundredbillionaire can lose 99% of their money and not make any perceptible changes in their lifestyle.
I propose the following:
Gap individual wealth at 50000x the national median annual income. Max wealth anyone in the US could have is, at present, under 2 billion. Other countries will vary, but generally it's plenty enough to motivate people to innovate, but nobody gets to be Bezos or Musk wealthy. Yachts should count towards this wealth gap, at a depreciation rate of 5% a year off the build cost. Primary residence doesn't count unless it's also used for generating income. You get to have one car, regardless of price, that doesn't get counted towards it, and the other ones count at market value. So you can have your classic car that appreciates in price, and a daily driver - without having to worry about the classic car's effect on your wealth limit.
Side effect is that now suddenly rich people near the gap will be a lot more interested in paying better wages to the working class. Why? Because then they'd get to keep more of their money. And to raise the median efficiently, you need to be raising wages for the poorest among us first and foremost.
Holy cow, they can lose 90% of their wealth and still be above 100 mil. The math checks out, but my gosh, how rich are they?!
It's ridiculous.
Numbers are funny, anyway. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's net worth is closer to yours and mine than it is to Elon Musk (Forbes list currently placing them at ~100 bill and ~250 bill respectively). But that's only in absolute terms. In reality, Jensen's got like 8 or 9 orders of magnitude more wealth than I do depending on how far into the month we are, and on the same order of magnitude as Musk.
Either one losing 99% of their wealth would still be above a billion.
Well, at least now I feel that Musks tweet about liberty and being oppressed and blah are even more funny than ever. He has literally the wealth to buy countries, if he would wish to.