Tax the rich

It is politically popular to go after billionaires so what do these people do with their money. They are all different but they have some things in common. Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook and is 34 years old and worth $70 billion dollars. His company employs 35,000 people most of whom are high tech types earning on average $120,000 per year. While his life style is modest he does splurge on real estate and owns several expensive homes. More than 99% of his wealth is in Facebook stock. The same is true for other young billionaires in that their money is in stock. If a wealth tax is introduced these rich people will sell stock to pay the tax. This is a typical transfer of money from the private sector to government under the theory that government can do more good with the money than these companies can. While these companies create jobs the government does not. Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon is worth $100 billion and has 660,000 employees. If Senator Sanders proposal of a 8% wealth tax is approved, Bezos will cash in $8 billion in stock each year and send that to the government. This is money that would otherwise be invested in growing his business or starting new businesses.