In reality it isn’t the magnitude of the wealth, it is the disparity in wealth.
Ok_Eagle_3079 on
People will find a way to go by pass this.
Musk Starlink company will suddenly be evaluated at -400 B dollars because of all the debt they have etc. and musk will have 1 B official in wealth.
Reasonable-Can1730 on
Total investments in new innovative companies would be very small. Most people don’t invest or have no time to understand what to do with their investments. They would probably just put them in blue chip stocks like Disney . Also, we would lose all of our entrepreneurial class very quickly as they would lose control of their companies at an early stage further inflating the one or two companies able to survive.
Head_of_Lettuce on
You’d probably see less innovation. People don’t really want to hear it, but the ultra wealthy invest a ton of money into new ventures that drive innovation. Also this would create a host of weird, unintended incentives that drive behavior you probably don’t want.
Rogue_Einherjar on
Wow. The comments here so far are… Woof.
What would happen? It’s quite simple and anyone telling you a different story is full of shit:
People would take more pride in their work. There would be far more competition in every sector, as you wouldn’t have just a few companies bringing in massive amounts of money and buying out competition. The average person would make more money (Think of companies that are employee owned, as this would all but require that), be happier, and distribute more money into the economy via travel and purchases.
We would actually have wealth based on work and not inheritance. Communities would be much better, our children would learn in school and not just be quickly fed information that is just an answer to whatever test is next.
There are so many good things that would come out of that. The other comments here are absolutely not based in reality. The “What are you even talking about?” Gif is all that comes to mind when reading those delusional responses.
Super_Mario_Luigi on
These pipe dreams are usually written by someone with no common sense or to purposely divide. Always pretending one change only has infinite benefits and NEVER examining the obvious consequences. When you remove the incentive to earn, you remove tons of economic activity. I don’t have the will to spend hours on this on people who don’t care to listen.
rupert20201 on
World would be fucked, there would be no motivation to build or research into new technology. The rich would just find a way to spend money faster than they can accumulate, they’d give it to their immediate family, I dunno- spend huge money on doing stupid stuff. Create Disney world of “playboy mansion” you get the idea. Bottom line is, it’s a dumb idea that doesn’t solve any problems.
moru0011 on
Stock markets would crash and whenever a start-up gets successful founders would lose control because they hit the limit. Once tock markets crash, also pension funds would crash
throwawaythatfast on
I think capitalism would work normally (but it would have to be done globally), probably even better because it could free more resources (provided the capping is done through redistributive taxation) for socially and economic stabilizing policies. After a certain amount, 1 billion or 200, it makes no real difference in lifestyle and access to goods and services. It starts to be only about who’s got the bigger… pile of cash (which is not really even cash, just digits and mostly digital stocks)
Evilbred on
Money is just an analogue for resource access.
There wouldn’t be any more or less resources in the economy, so it wouldn’t meaningfully improve the lives of the majority of the population.
Billionaires would continue to live relatively the same, and so would you and I.
Most wealth is abstract numbers on a spreadsheet, coupled with the odd mansion and yacht.
ForcePlenty2367 on
Why would that be necessary? It would stifle innovation. It’s sufficient to heavily tax intergenerational capital accumulation and tax unearned income such as interest, land rents, and returns at least as heavily as regular labor. Nationalizing land to prevent speculation would also be desirable.
AnnoyedNala on
How about 100M and you can only give an inheritance of 1M per person. 1B, the overwhelming majority of people world wide will never come close to 100M, not to mention 10x that amount, with honest work or being damn, real good at what they are doing!
TheMagicalLawnGnome on
What would happen if we evolved 4 arms?
Who knows, because it’s not going to happen.
This isn’t even an intelligible question.
What does it mean to “cap?”
What is the definition of “personal wealth?”
Who gets to decide what the definition is?
How do you separate “personal wealth” from “business/entity assets?”
How do you handle multi jurisdictional issues?
I could keep going.
To be clear, I support progressive taxation. I think we should raise taxes on the wealthiest members of society.
But these types of thought experiments don’t add anything meaningful to the discussion.
There are a number of very straightforward ways we could increase taxation, without getting into the weird, murky “wealth tax” stuff.
Seriously. Just add a new income tax bracket, 75%. Dramatically increase the capital gains tax. Treat personal loans that’s been secured with stocks as taxable income. Remove the income cap on payroll taxes. Increase investment in tax audit/fraud prevention.
We don’t need some new, futuristic concept to deal with wealth inequality. We just need to focus on the many existing, but underutilized tools we already have at our disposal.
jointheredditarmy on
Actually I think a better model will be cap how much you can consume in your lifetime. You can have infinite money, but you can’t spend more than $100m in your lifetime.
probablymagic on
>But the truth is no one knows if capping wealth at a billion would “work,” as it’s untested at scale. But in an era of widening gaps, it’s a provocative thought experiment.
You can ask any economist and they will tell you the answer to this. It is VERY bad. This article touches in some of the reasons why.
If you nationalize private property at large scale, you will tank your economy. If you don’t fix it, you end up tanking democracy.
A good example to look at is Venezuela over the last 50 years. 75 years ago it was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Their government decided to nationalize the oil industry, you know, for the people.
Today it is one of the poorest countries, as well as being one if the most oppressive dictatorships, because when things start to go bad the people who implemented these policies can only keep them in place through force.
tolanescu on
Not much, there would be ways around it.
It would be more useful if wealth would be tied to employment (for each $1 billion you own, you are required to have at least 10 000 well paid employees).
I-do-the-art on
How would you stop people from just having a ton of kids from a harem of women and giving each kid a few hundred mill as biological piggy banks
17 Comments
There is a science fiction short story on this topic. But in that story billionaires mysteriously got sick and died
They would also miraculously get better if they gave away their money.
https://escapepod.org/2025/07/24/escape-pod-1003-billionaires-tears/
In reality it isn’t the magnitude of the wealth, it is the disparity in wealth.
People will find a way to go by pass this.
Musk Starlink company will suddenly be evaluated at -400 B dollars because of all the debt they have etc. and musk will have 1 B official in wealth.
Total investments in new innovative companies would be very small. Most people don’t invest or have no time to understand what to do with their investments. They would probably just put them in blue chip stocks like Disney . Also, we would lose all of our entrepreneurial class very quickly as they would lose control of their companies at an early stage further inflating the one or two companies able to survive.
You’d probably see less innovation. People don’t really want to hear it, but the ultra wealthy invest a ton of money into new ventures that drive innovation. Also this would create a host of weird, unintended incentives that drive behavior you probably don’t want.
Wow. The comments here so far are… Woof.
What would happen? It’s quite simple and anyone telling you a different story is full of shit:
People would take more pride in their work. There would be far more competition in every sector, as you wouldn’t have just a few companies bringing in massive amounts of money and buying out competition. The average person would make more money (Think of companies that are employee owned, as this would all but require that), be happier, and distribute more money into the economy via travel and purchases.
We would actually have wealth based on work and not inheritance. Communities would be much better, our children would learn in school and not just be quickly fed information that is just an answer to whatever test is next.
There are so many good things that would come out of that. The other comments here are absolutely not based in reality. The “What are you even talking about?” Gif is all that comes to mind when reading those delusional responses.
These pipe dreams are usually written by someone with no common sense or to purposely divide. Always pretending one change only has infinite benefits and NEVER examining the obvious consequences. When you remove the incentive to earn, you remove tons of economic activity. I don’t have the will to spend hours on this on people who don’t care to listen.
World would be fucked, there would be no motivation to build or research into new technology. The rich would just find a way to spend money faster than they can accumulate, they’d give it to their immediate family, I dunno- spend huge money on doing stupid stuff. Create Disney world of “playboy mansion” you get the idea. Bottom line is, it’s a dumb idea that doesn’t solve any problems.
Stock markets would crash and whenever a start-up gets successful founders would lose control because they hit the limit. Once tock markets crash, also pension funds would crash
I think capitalism would work normally (but it would have to be done globally), probably even better because it could free more resources (provided the capping is done through redistributive taxation) for socially and economic stabilizing policies. After a certain amount, 1 billion or 200, it makes no real difference in lifestyle and access to goods and services. It starts to be only about who’s got the bigger… pile of cash (which is not really even cash, just digits and mostly digital stocks)
Money is just an analogue for resource access.
There wouldn’t be any more or less resources in the economy, so it wouldn’t meaningfully improve the lives of the majority of the population.
Billionaires would continue to live relatively the same, and so would you and I.
Most wealth is abstract numbers on a spreadsheet, coupled with the odd mansion and yacht.
Why would that be necessary? It would stifle innovation. It’s sufficient to heavily tax intergenerational capital accumulation and tax unearned income such as interest, land rents, and returns at least as heavily as regular labor. Nationalizing land to prevent speculation would also be desirable.
How about 100M and you can only give an inheritance of 1M per person. 1B, the overwhelming majority of people world wide will never come close to 100M, not to mention 10x that amount, with honest work or being damn, real good at what they are doing!
What would happen if we evolved 4 arms?
Who knows, because it’s not going to happen.
This isn’t even an intelligible question.
What does it mean to “cap?”
What is the definition of “personal wealth?”
Who gets to decide what the definition is?
How do you separate “personal wealth” from “business/entity assets?”
How do you handle multi jurisdictional issues?
I could keep going.
To be clear, I support progressive taxation. I think we should raise taxes on the wealthiest members of society.
But these types of thought experiments don’t add anything meaningful to the discussion.
There are a number of very straightforward ways we could increase taxation, without getting into the weird, murky “wealth tax” stuff.
Seriously. Just add a new income tax bracket, 75%. Dramatically increase the capital gains tax. Treat personal loans that’s been secured with stocks as taxable income. Remove the income cap on payroll taxes. Increase investment in tax audit/fraud prevention.
We don’t need some new, futuristic concept to deal with wealth inequality. We just need to focus on the many existing, but underutilized tools we already have at our disposal.
Actually I think a better model will be cap how much you can consume in your lifetime. You can have infinite money, but you can’t spend more than $100m in your lifetime.
>But the truth is no one knows if capping wealth at a billion would “work,” as it’s untested at scale. But in an era of widening gaps, it’s a provocative thought experiment.
You can ask any economist and they will tell you the answer to this. It is VERY bad. This article touches in some of the reasons why.
If you nationalize private property at large scale, you will tank your economy. If you don’t fix it, you end up tanking democracy.
A good example to look at is Venezuela over the last 50 years. 75 years ago it was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Their government decided to nationalize the oil industry, you know, for the people.
Today it is one of the poorest countries, as well as being one if the most oppressive dictatorships, because when things start to go bad the people who implemented these policies can only keep them in place through force.
Not much, there would be ways around it.
It would be more useful if wealth would be tied to employment (for each $1 billion you own, you are required to have at least 10 000 well paid employees).
How would you stop people from just having a ton of kids from a harem of women and giving each kid a few hundred mill as biological piggy banks