There are only 3500 billionaires in the world. Tax the pants off them.
Make it so that once they make their 1st billion - and this includes assets, investments, shares, liquidity, debt, etc - their earnings are capped. They get a "Nobel Billionaire Award" and henceforth, every year, if the value of their assets surpasses $1 B, it's shaved off and put into a Billionaire fund that goes towards projects that the billionaires don't earn from at all. These projects can be anything from space research to astrology whatever - and since they don't earn from it at all, there is no incentive to "maximise" profits for it. Instead they maximise curiosity and efficiency.
Next, make inheritance laws limited. If you have earned $1B, automatically, when you pass away, you can only pass on 50% of that $1B or $500 M. That means if you have 10 people who will get your assets, each one gets $50M on your death. It's enough to live on, or start a business, or invest wisely so that your kids too have to work or budget to live comfortably. If they only manage to make $999M in their lives, they have the freedom to will over 100% of their assets. Only billionaires get the 50% cap.
So what happens with this?
With no avenue of earning more than 1B, but with the drive and ambition that it took to make that 1B which is their inherent talent, the energies of the billionaires are driven to projects that would improve the world. If they can't profit financially, they should be able to profit through goodwill - which only happens when you actually do good for people. So you fix education and health and environment and labour etc. And when they reforest 10000 acres of land, they get the Golden Forestry Award and goodwill credits. And when they clean up one whole sea, along with safe waste management, they get the Fabulous Marine Award. And when they clean up the air over a state (or whatever), they get more and more goodwill credits that allows them to participate in govt and policy making that doesn't touch their tax limits. And while they do all this, because of all their good work, quality of life goes up globally, while cost of living stays the same. That $500M will have just as much value a100 years later as it does today.
The main problem brought up here is that billionaires are not motivated by money so much as power and influence. To that I say - power and influence towards what end? To make their companies bigger to profit more, yes? To make it to the top of the Forbes list? Yeah, we gave you an award already. You won. You're still only 55 years old. What now?
And if you're not currying favor and bribing politicians and bureaucrats for your self interest - then you don't have to make Epstein Islands, to blackmail people.
The final thing is the shell-company game. Where billionaires hide behind companies. Musk famously said "I have no money, I just have shares, but I can't go and buy bread with it." But if you can take a loan against it, buy companies but not bread, that just makes you a chump and you can go hire and finance guy. Meanwhile, for the sake of the world, repeal the "company is a separate legal entity" charlatan-speak.
A company is as legal an entity as a knife. If it's used to commit a crime, a fraud, an embezzlement, it's the person wielding the knife that is punished. Companies can have multiple accounts and multiple employees, but each employee is accountable for their income and their actions. If you're a board member, partner, policy maker in the company, and make money from this company profits (different from salaries), then you become equally responsible for this company's actions. And yes, they too can only earn as much as 1B. Is jail worth it, if your earnings are capped?
If you build a house, everything about the house becomes your responsibility. Nobody walks around saying "the house stole my laptop". Same with a company.
Which brings us to land. Land cannot belong to an individual. You can still own a $20 M house, but the actual soil under it belongs to the planet, and you can lease it from the government (is that what property tax is?) paid for by the owner of that house.
Which brings me to the govt. We know of the 5 year cycle of election. This is rubbish because so many policies are designed to manipulate people into voting them in and keeping them in, rather than things that are actually important for the people. And the people who get elected are lying little career charlatans, who can be bribed *cough*Israeli AIPAC fund!*cough*. So - we scrap elections.
Stay with me.
Instead we introduce the voluntary/draft jury system of assignment of "a government of your peers, by your peers, for your peers". Every 2-5 years, from a citizen pool of the nation / state, between the ages of 28-58 college graduates, we random-select 200 people who are then semi-randomly made to run different departments as per their aptitude. This can be defence, housing, health, traffic, education, women's welfare, finance, etc. Their only mandate - make and follow through on policies that will improve the world you will go back to living in in 2-5 years in regular jobs. Populate each department with experts in the field, and let the outgoing "minister" handover with recommendations to the new "minister" about who to keep, who to fire, history, background, and upcoming vision, so far.
And finally someone for the big picture consolidation, the "Prime Minister / President" if you will. An independent board of directors - also random selected for 7 years - of experts and heads of companies from different fields with voices from finance, science, defence, societal research and academia, creative arts, sports, energy, environment, a member of the billionaire club (depending on goodwill credits), etc etc who vote on recommendations as presented by the "ministers" and a final budget allocation for each of these initiatives. No nonsensical tax shifts, but about how to use the money in the billionaire fund and other resources.
Now what happens with this set up? Money that was only moving vertically into the hands of 3500 people, starts getting spread laterally across the world of billions of people. General quality of life improves with better / cheaper / free access to health, education, research, environment, etc. Meritocracy becomes the norm because if regular people are going to make policy decisions, they will need to be educated well. Corruption drops because if food, shelter, health, environment insecurities disappear, people wouldn't give up their moral core so easily for more money.
And yes, people who are not very bright or have tiny earning capacities, they get to coast along because well, why not? Go paint a scenery badly. Read a book. Deal with your parent's schizophrenia. Have coffee with friends. Start a drum circle - why not?? If peer-govt and the billionaire fund are solving the problems of hunger, shelter, health and environment because they can and want to - then why does the average joe really need to earn so much? More people want to fall in love and have families and game nights with friends than want to earn a billion dollars.
And finally, once people get out of the loop of constant insecurity, guess whose mental health improves? Everyone's. Which means, fewer trauma episodes. Fewer parents hurting kids. Lesser Crime. Lesser abuse. Lesser addiction. Lesser war.
And all it takes is telling 3500 people, enough is enough.
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