More efficiency in spending? We have newer tools and equipment, technology, automation etc. Do more with less, that is called productivity.

You don’t understand the natural order of things: productivity for you(the worker constantly told to do more), not for me(governments of all sizes, middle management & execs, dumb owners).

There is no way to take anything like that. Net worth is quite similar with me saying you are worth 1 billion dollars, but you have zero money in the bank. What do you take, super-rich billionaire person?

The net worth is simply the sum of assets minus the sum of liabilities. Take away the assets and you take away the net worth. I can't think of an asset category that you can't transfer if you are willing to sacrifice its value (which presumably doesn't matter, because it's not real anyways)

In the rare cases where contract law makes the transfer impossible legally the government could trivially step in to make it possible

You take control of the shares and distribute the proceeds and make it impossible to leverage them for loans, credit etc.

Is it Zuck's networth or salary that makes it possible for him to own his ranch in Hawaii?

which thing of mine are you saying is worth a billion dollars? the lawnmower? take that then?

whats the complication? if its not worth anything whos gonna worry, especially if the government then compensates you in dollars

Your 1 billion dollar dog that will die 2 days after someone takes it from you. Tax that, please.

Why not? Net worth is the estimated sell value of a list of assets. It is entirely possible to take those assets, or charge a tax based on that estimated sell value. Why would it even be a little difficult, let alone impossible?

And certainly ceejayoz was being a bit glib by suggesting we take all of it, but it would not be remotely insurmountable to tax billionaire wealth.

Net worth is the estimated value, not sell value. For example, Tesla shares owned by Elon don't have the same value if Elon is leaving, they are less worthy.

> For example, Tesla shares owned by Elon don't have the same value if Elon is leaving, they are less worthy.

This is, ironically, more of a guess/estimate than determining Musk's net worth is. We don't actually know that!

I checked the comments to see if anyone pointed to this: I can imagine so many memes with this line :)

I don't think that most competent IT people are pushing for digital-only systems. The people that I see pushing for digitalization are either clueless politicians or corrupt or incompetent IT people selling snake oil. The sad part is that the snake oil sellers are probably a majority already, so fighting against politicians and snake oil sellers is a tought one.

It is not corruption. Or not just corruption.

A close relative, government employee, was in charge of building a new application. They have nobody in that entire organization of several thousands people that know how to write specifications for an IT application, nobody that knows how to design, test and deploy it. This is because some government employees have decent salaries, but in IT the private sector is paying a lot more, so almost anyone remotely competent is going to the private sector. So in this case an organization of non-IT people had to deal with the contract and all the associated problems - there is no need to guess, it did not go well. That kind of project could have been done properly with ~ 10% of the budget in the same timeline.

I have a friend that worked as a developer in such a government IT project. The project cost was ~ 5-10 times what was worth, a chain of sub-contractors did the work, less than ten competent people doing the project, charged by the bid winner for over 100 people and actual staff was around 70 at most, for a short period of time.

Both projects above are in Romania. Lack of competent people in the projects, especially in decision roles, was the main problem.