Mark Cuban says ending billionaires would destroy the stock market

Mark Cuban says the only way to eliminate billionaires would be to destroy the stock market – which would wipe out the savings of ordinary Americans.

In a series of posts on BlueSky Thursday evening, the billionaire investor and former “Shark Tank” star pushed back against users who claimed wealth inequality could be solved by taxing or capping billionaires’ wealth.

Cuban — whose $6 billion fortune from tech startups, investments and ownership of the Dallas Mavericks makes him one of the world’s richest people — said extreme wealth is an inevitable byproduct of the market system.

“Billionaires will exist as long as stock markets exist,” he wrote. “Should we get rid of the stock market?”

When one user said he would like to see the market collapse if it meant preventing “disgusting examples of extreme wealth,” Cuban responded, “What should people do with the money they save?”

He warned that dismantling the market would have catastrophic effects for everyone, not just the rich.

Cuban was responding to another user who said that about 90% of the stock market is owned by the richest 10% of American households – a figure in line with Federal Reserve Data showing that the richest 10% hold approximately 93% of all stock market wealth.

He agreed with this statistic, but argued that forcing these investors to sell would hurt everyone, not just the wealthy.

“Absolutely true,” he wrote. “But that 90 percent represents billions and billions of dollars, owned by everyone. If you make the top 10 percent sell 90 percent of the market, how close do you think the property value of that 90 percent gets to zero? You would wipe out the economies of more than half the country.”

While Cuban argued that billionaires are a necessary byproduct of thriving stock markets that benefit savers, organizations like Oxfam and the World Bank say the accumulation of the ultra-rich is primarily driven by inheritance, monopoly power and worsens inequality.

The tax debate on billionaires

Cuban also argued that even if governments seized every dollar belonging to billionaires, it would not significantly improve public finances.

“You can take every penny that every billionaire has, and besides making a lot of people here feel better, it wouldn’t pay the interest on the federal deficit or single-payer (health care),” he said.

“And that would probably crash the markets and cause a depression. But other than that, the rich would have taste!”

Cuban nevertheless said he would support a “windfall tax” on people earning $1 billion or more in taxable income in a single year.

He also questioned the feasibility of a wealth tax based on stock valuation, asking: “If it’s the value of their stocks, will you refund the tax if the stock market corrects or crashes?”

Making capitalism fairer

At the same time, Cuban offered a glimpse of what he thinks a fairer capitalism could look like.

Responding to a user who suggested capping CEO pay, raising worker salaries and changing laws so companies prioritize employees over shareholders, he said, “I think every employee should have the same percentage of their income in company stock as the CEO.”

And when another commenter suggested that public anger stemmed from the selfish behavior of billionaires, Cuban agreed, responding simply with three checkmarks.

“I’m more concerned that no one is trying to figure out how to help everyone earn more,” he wrote.