Mark Cuban Says Ending Billionaires Would Destroy the Inventory Market

Mark Cuban says the one strategy to get rid of billionaires can be to destroy the inventory market — and doing so would wipe out the financial savings of unusual People.

In a string of posts on BlueSky on Thursday evening, the billionaire investor and former “Shark Tank” star rebuffed customers who argued that wealth inequality may very well be solved by taxing or capping billionaires’ wealth.

Cuban — whose $6 billion fortune from tech startups, investing, and proudly owning the Dallas Mavericks makes him one of many world’s richest individuals — stated that excessive wealth is an inevitable byproduct of the market system.

“Billionaires will exist so long as inventory markets exist,” he wrote. “Ought to we eliminate the inventory market?”

When one person stated they’d prefer to see the market go if it meant stopping “disgusting examples of maximum wealth,” Cuban replied: “What ought to individuals do with the cash they save?”

He warned that dismantling the market would have catastrophic results for everybody, not simply the wealthy.

Cuban was responding to a different person who stated that roughly 90% of the inventory market is owned by the richest 10% of US households — a determine consistent with Federal Reserve information displaying that the highest 10% maintain about 93% of all inventory market wealth.

He agreed with the statistic however argued that forcing these buyers to promote would damage everybody, not simply the rich.

“Completely true,” he wrote. “However that 90 % is trillions and trillions of {dollars}, owned by everybody else. In case you make the highest 10 pct promote 90 pct of the market, how near zero worth do you suppose the possession of the 90 % goes? You’ll wipe out the financial savings of greater than half the nation.”

Whereas Cuban argued that billionaires are a needed byproduct of thriving inventory markets that profit savers, organizations like Oxfam and the World Financial institution say ultra-rich accumulations are primarily pushed by inheritance, monopoly energy, and worsen inequality.

The billionaire tax debate

Cuban additionally argued that even when governments seized each greenback owned by billionaires, it would not considerably enhance public funds.

“You possibly can take each penny that each billionaire has, and apart from making lots of people on right here really feel higher, it would not pay for the curiosity of the federal deficit or single-payer [healthcare],” he stated.

“And doing so would in all probability tank the markets and trigger a melancholy. However apart from that, the wealthy can be tasty!”

Nonetheless, Cuban stated he would help a “windfall tax” on individuals incomes $1 billion or extra in taxable earnings in a single 12 months.

He additionally questioned the feasibility of wealth taxes primarily based on inventory valuations, asking: “If it is the worth of their inventory, will you refund the tax if the inventory market corrects or crashes?”

Make capitalism fairer

On the similar time, Cuban provided a glimpse of what he thinks fairer capitalism would possibly seem like.

Responding to a person who steered capping CEO pay, elevating employee wages, and altering legal guidelines so firms prioritize staff over shareholders, he stated: “I feel each worker needs to be the identical % of their earnings in firm inventory because the CEO.”

And when one other commenter steered that public anger stems from billionaires performing selfishly, Cuban agreed, replying merely with three checkmarks.

“I am extra involved that nobody is making an attempt to determine the right way to assist everybody else make extra,” he wrote.