You should probably read this article on how the super wealthy are taxed in our country.

First hit on Google images when I searched for “money.”

I really don’t care what your politics are, and I could end this post right now with no buts whatsoever and it would be a fair and accurate portrayal of how I feel.

For present purposes, however, I really don’t care what your politics are, BUT you should probably read this article about how the super wealthy are taxed in the US.

Cliff’s notes: in the US you are taxed on “income,” not wealth. What that basically means is that you are only taxed on money flowing into (or “coming in”!) your bank account; you are not taxed on any stock or houses or art or whatever property you own until you sell it and the money from the sale flows in to your bank account. So you can own a share of stock or a house or a piece of art that skyrockets in value, and until you sell it, you don’t pay any tax on it. Fine so far.

But here’s the trick of the super wealthy like Jeff Bezos: he doesn’t really sell his Amazon stock as it skyrockets in value (thus basically avoiding any income tax as his wealth skyrockets), and then he takes out loans to pay for his living expenses using the Amazon stock as collateral. He gets a very good interest rate on the loan because Amazon stock is very good collateral. And thus unlike me, he doesn’t pay any taxes whatsoever on the money he uses to pay for iced coffee or sparkling water or other totally unnecessary extravagances that the rich and famous are blowing their money on, I assume.

Super cliff’s notes: They aren’t.

And so maybe the answer is implementing a wealth tax that taxes Jeff Bezos on his Amazon stock and rocket ships regardless of whether he sells them, and thus regardless of whether any money actually flows into his massive bank account. The problem there of course is how and who is going to estimate the value of Jeff Bezos’s rocket ship? I don’t have the answer. Feel free to enlighten this block association if you do.