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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

>Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart and Amazon?

What would happen is that Wal-Mart and Amazon, et al. would pay their fair share of taxes, and the owners (or share holders) would not be multi-billionaires, only single-digit millionaires at most. The effect would be that every single person in the United States would have Heath Care, Tertiary Education paid for, excellent unemployment benefits, etc. etc.

There would no longer be desperate people struggling to survive while others have orders of magnitude more money than can be spent in 10 lifetimes.

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> the owners (or share holders) would not be multi-billionaires, only single-digit millionaires at most.

Mmmm, I don't think your numbers add up...

There are 500 people in the US who have more than a billion dollars. If we made them all "single digit millionaires", we'd be looking at a one time wealth transfer of less than a $1T dollars, or about 25% of the US Federal Budget for one year. Sure, that would make for a good year, but then it's spent and we're back where we started...

I think you're dramatically overestimating how much private wealth there is in the hands of the upper echelon compared to how much the sorts of programs you want would cost.

Not only is there a one-time wealth transfer, there is in the ongoing extra taxes of companies paying what they should be paying.

i.e. let's get Facebook to actually pay something in taxes

I liked how you undermined your own argument. If we truly are back where we started then we just do it again, and continue with the money being given to people who then spend it.

How do you remove billions in net worth more than once? It doesn't exist the second time.

Of course numbers his numbers don't add up, as barbie would say, "math is hard"

What specific taxes are Walmart and Amazon not paying that you think they should be paying, or why do you claim they're not paying their "fair share"?

>and the owners (or share holders) would not be multi-billionaires, only single-digit millionaires at most

Are you proposing a >99% tax rate on capital or corporate income?

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