Income and net worth are different concepts though. You can have a car and be too broke to buy gas.
I think you might be failing to envision just how much money a billion dollars is. If your net worth (Assets - Liabilities + Equity) = one billion dollars, you are among the wealthiest of the wealthiest people in the world.
Now, that probably isn’t all just sitting in investments. I’ll be very conservative and say half of it is. If you earned 4% annually on that $500M, which is a pretty decent average, you would gross $20 Million.
I don’t know about you, but if I had $20 Million, I would never have to work another day for the rest of my life. You see where I’m going with this?
You can always move to a town in Greece, in the mainland (something smaller than 5k people), close to the beach. You can live amply with 20k euros per year (about $22k) for you and your spouse. Buying a house is about $100k to $150k, taxes are rather low for most professions, and you can have your own vegetable garden, trees, and chickens. Fresh fish, goat meat (best kind of meat for humans). Car repairs and other repairs are much cheaper than in the US (my husband was expecting a $2500 bill to replace the car engine’s chain, and it was just $600).
If you’re in your 30s right now, and you’re going to live until you’re 100, that’s “only” 1.4 million euros. If you get a couple of kids, that’s 1.8 to 2 mil euros. Definitely not 20 million though.
Wouldn’t the $20 Million be subject to the 100% income tax at that point, meaning the net worth billionaire wouldn’t be able to earn any income as it’s all taxed away?
Sure, but let’s say they spent 20m. Then their net worth would be under a billion and the next couple of years of earnings would have a lower tax rate.
Even if they never were able to make money again, 20m goes into a billion 50 times. They could overspend for 50 years without making a cent on investments.
I’m sure they’d come up with fun new accounting loopholes though so their assets didn’t appear to increase.
