Hacker News Reader

Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

> But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument.

Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%.

France's public spending is 60% of the GDP, the situation in France is totally catastrophic (6% deficit atm) and... We should listen to Piketty because he's only ever worked public jobs and... He's french? And came up with an ultra-simplistic formula using bogus data?

I mean... If Piketty says it, obviously government spending representing 60% of the GDP ain't enough. Let's make it 100% and called it a planned economy. Because we saw a lot of fully functioning communist societies on earth?

Ponder this.

View on HN

what a weird argument. > Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%.

so in other word confiscating the wealth of < 1000 people would reduce the US (a nation of ~300 M people) debt by nearly 20%. In other words we could significantly reduce the budget (much less interest payments) by taking away the wealth of ~0.0003% of the population. That seems like a no-brainer in terms of policies (the government makes decisions that takes peoples wealth away every day).

And guess who's going to renounce to US citizenship and/or start companies outside the US after that? Are entrepreneurs still going to immigrate to the US knowing that their wealth will be confiscated once they become successful? Who is going to fund the startups? etc.

If the US were to implement such measures, get ready for an exodus of talent and capital.

Yes, and after we confiscate their assets, we turn them into delicious meat pies. Surely this is not unethical because each billionaire, turned into meat pies, will feed many dozens of us.

a "no-brainer"? for a one-time reduction? that severely damages America's ability to generate wealth? am I taking crazy pills today? I advise you to compare America's GDP per capita and especially disposable income per capita to any other country. wealth generation matters so much more than distribution.

> that severely damages America's ability to generate wealth?

Why would it damage that ability? The assets those billionaires own aren't going away. The skills of the people working at those businesses aren't going away.

Because dealing with someone who has proven willing to steal is bad for business. We've seen this happen again and again with communists who think they are oh so clever for 'nationalizing' their business to collect all the profits. They inevitably then find their actions effectively self-embargoed as other businesses avoid them like plague-ridden cannibals because that is what they are. Why show up to trade if there is a good chance they'll just seize all of your goods?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com