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Comment by john_moscow | Hacker News Reader

Most of that million works at companies that started out years ago as one ambitious person's dream of becoming rich. It's a long pipeline and the chance of getting through is tiny, but that's how the economy works. If you eliminate that incentive, you will surely enjoy a short-term boost followed by a global economic decline that will be much harder to fix.

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I genuinely do not think that I'll ever be worth a billion dollars in my life, and yet I still come to work every day. I also try and build cool new projects for fun.

Maybe I'm am outlier, but I doubt it; I think most people understand that the billionaire thing is a pipe-dream, and they work every day to pay their bills and if you're lucky to also work on stuff you're interested in. How exactly would that be affected by lowering the wealth-hoarding you're allowed to do?

Would we have more startups if Jeff Bezos were a Trillionaire instead of a Billionaire? You need to pay attention to the economics behind this, there is no evidence that people are aiming to earn $7Bn but wouldn't have bothered if they thought they'd only get $1Bn.

Exactly. If you were a new startup founder in this environment, wouldn't you likely do ANYTHING to not have a valuation >$49MM? Probably deciding not to raise more funding, not to scale, not to grow and help others.

I think that the side effects of a wealth tax might just end VC investing in high valuation companies altogether. I don't know if many people on HN see that as a positive.

I thought Warren's tax plan was the wealth over $50 million. Meaning that if you were worth $51 million, only one million would be taxed at 2%, meaning $20,000 would be payed.

Yes, I believe that's correct.

Well then I doubt it would be this apocalyptic thing of people trying to be worth $49,999,999.99, since being worth $50,000,001.00 would only give them an increased tax of $0.02.

I think most people would still be willing to keep working on stuff, and I don't see why VCs would stop investing in high-value companies altogether.

The trouble with picking an arbitrary number like 50 million is the slippery slope it creates. Today we start with 2% over $50m. Tomorrow we will see a report that lowering it to $40m will help fund health care/fund climate change/(plug any socially acceptable agenda here) and the change will be voted in. A few decades after we'll wake up in an economy that will tax you heavily unless you're sharing your condo with your parents and a grandma [0] because someone has decided that it's an acceptable level of wealth.

[0] Anecdotal, but that was the way to get an apartment for my parents' generation back in Soviet Union and I really don't want to see it here again.

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