As oligarch fortunes soar: The case for expropriating the billionaires

www.wsws.org As oligarch fortunes soar: The case for expropriating the billionaires

It is impossible to defend democratic rights or any of the social interests of working people without seizing the unearned wealth of the billionaire parasites.

BoycottUnitedStates @europe.pub

www.wsws.org /en/articles/2025/04/24/mpeq-a24.html

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Confiscate all personal wealth over 100million. Break up any company worth over 50billion. Take all institutions of public service out of private equity: utilities, house, prisons, retirement, schools, postal, healthcare and public land management. Reform the legal system to not give the wealthy any advantage. Do not allow elected representatives to own stocks. Do not allow politicians to take private money for political campaigns. Allowing people and corporations to acquire this type of power has been humanity’s whole problem for thousands of years
- Get private equity out of hospitals and forbid them land ownership.
  The current private equity hospital grift:
  Buy a non profit hospital and ruthlessly expand it, putting all other competition out of business.
  Become the hospital's own 3rd party billing center (same name)
  Become the hospitals own 3rd party collection service, a law firm.
  Collect millions per year from the government to pay off unpaid hospital bills.
  Collect those bills with the third party collections by any means, garnishment, denials of service. 6. 6. Get the local courts dependent upon the court fees involved.
  Collect legal fees on top of the actual medical bills, thus "triple dipping" and getting paid three times ... all for services that were mostly paid for by insurance already.
- Billionaires technically don't have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.
  The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don't have much of anything, and the reason why 'declining to take a salary' is typically meaningless.
  
  That feels like an easy loophole to patch- Treat loans as income. Maybe tax it at some separate progressive rate so people using small loans as intended don't get fucked. But if Muskerberg has $100 million in loans taken out against his stock, taxing $90 million of that as income would make a difference. Especially if the top rate is like 90%.
  
  So a loan of $10 million has like $5mil taxed right away? You get $5mil to spend, and still owe the bank like $12mil? Those interest rates are insane, and will definitely affect the working class more than the ultra-wealthy. Specifically businesses, which will increase giants' monopolies. And you can't make businesses an exception, because then the ultra-wealthy will borrow through those.
  The money is not the problem. Money isn't real, it's just a tool that represents power and resources. There's nothing you can do to tax or control money itself because what wealthy people have is all the resources, and they can leverage them with or without money.
  You can't tax your way out of hierarchal Capitalism. The rich are paying as much tax as the current system legally asks of them - which is very little, when your wealth is in resources and not money.
  The poor and workers are more affected by taxes and costs because most of our worth is in money. Once you have enough to start investing and have resources, your worth can grow rapidly.
  
  I don't think the working class is taking out $10mm personal loans against their stock portfolios. And if you do it with a progressive model, smaller players won't be impacted much or at all. Otherwise, if it's being used like income it should be taxed like income.
  I don't think the rich people's "resources" are that useful if they can't turn them into fungible money. Can't eat Tesla stocks. They have power through other mechanisms like access and owning platforms, but money is a big part of it. They can spend money on elections, on bribes, on buying platforms. So I'm not really sure what you meant by the distinction between resources and money.
  
  They shouldn't control that much wealth anyway, even if it's not 'real' money
  
  Buy borrow die
  It does have a notable Achilles heel though, which is that the underlying portfolio has to keep appreciating in value.
  
  Well if it doesn't, sell your stock to yourself a la Elon Musk, who sold X at a loss to XAI (a company he also majority owns). The 'loss' of ~6bil in value (iirc) means he can now gain ~6bil from any other sources without paying gains tax.
- you should run for president
  
  Democrats would say this person is unelectable. After losing to Trump twice...
  
  Unfortunately, I don’t know any billionaires who would be willing to finance my campaign
- Do not allow elected representatives
  I think I get your general gist, but would you please explain, so I'm not mistaken? Thanks.
- Do not allow elected representatives.
  Do not allow elected representatives to do what exactly? Trade individual stocks?
  Feels like something is missing here.
  
  Yea sorry it was meant to say own stocks. I fixed it

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