I have no doubt his investments are well-diversified. He's not an idiot.

My point was simply that income and wealth are two different things, at least for tax purposes.

This is well known. The question is whether they should be. It's not some immutable law of nature, it's a deliberate policy choice to tax returns on capital differently from returns on labor.

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SoftTalker 21 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think it's all that well understood. People see a headline that Bezos "made" $X billion last year, when that was the increase in his net worth, not that he actually was paid $X billion in cash income. Then they complain that he didn't pay taxes on any of that.

Whether or not we should have a wealth tax and at what level that should apply is an entirely separate issue. I'm quite sure Bezos pays all the taxes he's legally obligated to pay.

	▲	wat10000 21 days ago \| parent [-]
		Few people think the ultra rich are illegally evading taxes. The issue is exactly that they’re paying all they’re obligated to, and it’s not very much, relatively. You’re really strawmanning here. Instead of arguing as if we’re morons who don’t know that unrealized gains aren’t taxed and think Bezos is committing tax evasion, convince us of why it’s wrong to think that Bezos should be legally obligated yo pay more, maybe by taxing those unrealized gains.