If Bezos had sold all his shares 6 months ago and bought Bitcoins, what would your argument be about him getting much richer this year? And what did he do wrong in not doing this and keeping his shares instead?
I think that would be better actually: if he had sold all his shares he would have paid a great deal of taxes on it. Instead he'll keep his shares forever, fund his lifestyle with low-interest loans, funnel some of it to offshore accounts, and find all kinds of ways to pass his inheritance to his children while paying as little taxes as possible.
Who cares? Say he pays 50% in taxes on his 200 Billion in amazon shares. That's a drop in the bucket. I mean the US spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on military/defense. How about instead of whining about people using their tenacity to achieve financial success we actually bitch about the government's horrible mis-management of funds. They don't need more money from taxes, they need to learn how to use the money they have effectively, otherwise no matter how many billionaires you tax it won't move the needle on improving quality of life for our country.
I can agree with you to some extent, but the conversation on taxing the wealthy seems like a red herring if it does nothing to solve any of the major problems we face, so let's talk about both things at once instead of just posting tweets about how so-and-so's wealth sky rockets during a pandemic. I think rather than saying I've changed the argument, I feel like the original argument omits half the story. Anyway, just my $0.02 - I do certainly believe that if we want to look at what's "fair", then the mega rich have an unfair tax advantage, but I think for the other 90% of us, we would see a greater benefit being taxed less than if the rich were taxed more, because the funds ultimately end up mis-managed. I guess I'm a little cynical.
The problem is we're currently in the worst of both worlds. When politicians promise to tax the wealthy they usually end up taxing the upper middle class: people rich enough that nobody feels bad for them but "poor" enough that most of their income gets reported on a W2.
In my opinion building the infrastructure to adequately tax the wealthy is part of the solution to building a more equitable tax base. That's a separate issue from spending our tax money wisely.
My argument wasn't to assign blame specifically, but rather question the implied premise that government are acting entitled when taxing wealth or cutting up companies, and that companies bravely create wealth with no outside help. Amazon could not have been successful without the wealthy environment it started in. In turn, that environment did not appear out of thin air and is the result of many efforts.
