Don't tax them "as income". Tax them as assets.Why tax assets as income when they aren't spend?
Because they have value, and tax should be proportionate to wealth (rather than just income) if it's to be in any way fair. If they're not being sold, and they're just sitting there, that essentially means that hundreds of billions of dollars are more-or-less inert: being used to inflate the perceived value of something else, but not actually having any direct stimulus effect. Inert monetary value should be taxed so that it can actually be of some use.If Bezos owns 60% shares of Amazon which equals hundreds of billions of dollars but him not selling those shares to buy yachts, hookers and sports cars why tax those shares when they indirectly co-determine the stock price for other investors? Often with a public interest like pension funds? It makes no sense.
If investors currently base their arcane predictions of worth on inert stock-levels, then I suppose they'll just need to figure out a more meaningful and less ridiculous method of calculating worth.
If he was actually investing it and it was being spent, then it wouldn't sit as inert cash and be subject to the same asset tax. Blue Horizon's value would then presumably rise as a result of the investment, and then that would be taxed as an asset. Of course, Bezos would still be motivated to make the investment in the first place, because if the investment was a wise one than the rise in value of Blue Horizon would be larger than the money he'd have saved by keeping it in stocks.Bezos would be much better off investing the value of those stocks in his other company, Blue Horizon.
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