I was just thinking to myself today about how the Mayor of NY said we shouldn't have billionaires. I then decided to do the math, and really think about what that means.
When adding up the entire net worth of all the billionaries in the United States, it comes close to about $2 trillion dollars.
When you divide that among 340 million people, our current population, that means that everyone would get a $5,000 one-time payment.
That really made me think, what good would come of that?
How would that actually help in anyway? The entire country would blow through that in two months. And we would be sacrificing the benefits of capitalism that come from billionaires with billions to burn on their little projects like (Space exploration or whatever else they think may benefit all mankind).
I just don't see how redistributing the entire wealth of all the billionaires to US citizens would help anything at all. A one-time, one-generation $5k paycheck makes literally no impact at all.
What good does this do?
Realistically, long term, if we were to literally redistribute all the wealth of the US billionaires, how would it actually help your average US citizens, because a one-time one-generation payment for $5k doesn't seem like it makes any meaningful impact at all, and the potential downside seems like it could be catastrophic, so I will leave this question here for you all to help me better understand.
What other benefits could come from redistributing the wealth of all the billionaires in the United States to US citizens (about $2 trillion dollars, split among 340 million people) which would only amount to a one-time $5,000 paycheck?
byu/Fun-Examination-6875 inAskEconomics
Posted by Fun-Examination-6875
1 Comment
Sanity check: $2tn is just about enough to eliminate the budget deficit… for one year.
Not that much money in the grand scheme of things.
The bottom line here is that “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, rent freezes, tariffs, “corporate tax cuts pay for themselves”, etc… Many of these things from all sides; they’re are mainly and primarily rhetoric, ideology, and performance of social identity rather than good economics.
To address the hypothetical, the main potential benefit would be a short term boost to consumption as well as financial relief for lower income households, which could temporarily raise aggregate demand. And that’s pretty much it