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My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

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Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#181

Post by Rusky »

tomp wrote: post #132
circlefavshape wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mostly everybody agrees with that What??? /me suddenly understands what's meant by "privilege"

Hm... can you find anyone who honestly disagrees with "inequality is good", and therefore claims that "inequality is bad" and so "equality is good" (and also proposes a reasonable and practical implemntation)? Even communists only preached, not practiced, this.

Depending on what you mean by "inequality" and "equality," loads of people. While I doubt you could find many people who want some artificial straw-man world where everyone is completely and totally equal in every way, you should have no trouble at all finding people upset about the vast difference in quality of life between the rich and poor of humanity.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#182

Post by minimuffins »

serge2k wrote: post #94

> We tried it. It didn't work. No reasonable person disputes this. I'd dispute that it was really tried, but I still don't think it would ever really work.

The "we already tried that" argument throws all the non state-capitalist ideas down the toilet with Soviet central planning though (it does belong there, of course, but so does American capitalism).

There's a pretty wide range of ideas between anarchism and social-democratic capitalism that aren't included in the false binary of US/USSR models.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#183

Post by stillsut »

If I could summarize PG's thesis (and his critics misunderstanding) in one sentence here it is:

    Beware any promises to cure social ills that make an appeal to economic inequality, just as you'd be cautious of a surgeon trying to cure you by releasing evil spirits.
I don't know why it's taking 100+ comments to get to the bottom of this 1% of the rich "have more wealth" than the Bottom 30%. It's simple: it's a misleading statistic and there's no defending it, or anyone who uses it to make their case.

The reason why it's misleading points to the inevitable problems of using summary statistics of wealth inequality to evaluate economic performance.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#184

Post by unprepare »

bko wrote: post #144
zepto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inheritance taxes on their own will do nothing to change the situation because then you'll simply concentrate all the wealth in corporate structures that transcend the death of their owners. Even if you make it impossible to 'pass down' these structures as property, you will have de-facto inheritance through nepotism and clan structures.

Inter-generational wealth is often wasted and doesn't last more than a few generations so perhaps it's not as big a problem as some make it out to be > Indeed, research shows that family money rarely survives the transfer for long, with 70 percent evaporated by the end of the second generation. By the end of the third? Ninety percent [0] [0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873246624045783346...

Even if its only 10% (and 10% of a billion is still 100 million dollars) do you really think its reasonable that 100[1] years after my death my family should still be spending the money that I myself earned?

To put that in perspective, people who died in 1916 are:

Hetty Green - the 'witch of wall street' one of the first ever successful women investors

Charles Taze Russell - the creator of a religion that would later be called 'Jehovahs Witnesses'

Saint Albert Chmielowski - a Polish religious leader who was made a saint in 1989

Grigori Rasputin - a faith healer and friend of the last Tsar of Russia Nicholas II

So we are talking about the modern day descendants of these people, still holding 10% of any wealth amassed over 100 years ago.

If you honestly think it would be reasonable for the descendants of these people to still be living off the wealth amassed by their forebears, I guess I just disagree.

[1]Wikpedia says a generation is in the low 20's in years, i'll assume 20 to keep from being seen as inflating the numbers

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#185

Post by ThomPete »

pc86 wrote: post #172
ThomPete wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not but it's a fair tax especially for those who apply to the "just work hard and reap the benefits" Also you can actually guard against that even in corporate structures. Denmark is doing it. However it's not IMO a good thing (and not fair as it taxes the company and removes capital from that company)

Of course it's not fair. Someone works hard and earns a million dollars. At that point they've paid just about every tax imaginable on the money other than sales tax. What is the "fair" argument to taxing it again just because they die? If you honestly believe that governments should tax every dollar every time any event happens to it, that's a valid opinion, but let's not pretend it has anything to do with "fairness…

You are not taxing them again (since they are dead) you are taxing their children/relatives who get the money without having done anything for it.

Plus if you are rich enough a lot of those money were not taxed like a normally family but most probably through things like capital gains or just appreciation (real estate) which rarely is a product of your specific work but rather societies work to turn an area into something thats valuable by building infrastructure etc.

When I buy something for my taxed money, whoever I give purchase it from is also being taxed on those already taxed money.

So by your logic its not fair to tax that either either.

If you buy the argument that we should tax businesses for the things they sell you are basically approving taxation of inheritance too.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#186

Post by [deleted] »

pc86 wrote: post #172
ThomPete wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not but it's a fair tax especially for those who apply to the "just work hard and reap the benefits" Also you can actually guard against that even in corporate structures. Denmark is doing it. However it's not IMO a good thing (and not fair as it taxes the company and removes capital from that company)

Of course it's not fair. Someone works hard and earns a million dollars. At that point they've paid just about every tax imaginable on the money other than sales tax. What is the "fair" argument to taxing it again just because they die? If you honestly believe that governments should tax every dollar every time any event happens to it, that's a valid opinion, but let's not pretend it has anything to do with "fairness…

[deleted]

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#187

Post by gwright »

tomp wrote: post #10

PG's simplified essay seems like attack on a strawman; he's mainly arguing that inequality is good, but then mostly everybody agrees with that. The issue people see (and PG conveniently ignores) is increasing inequality - not locally increasing (i.e. an enterpreneur becoming rich because of a successful business idea), but globally increasing inequality, which happens because of rent-seeking, tax avoidance, buying po…

In the simplified essay, PG explicitly states that some causes of economic inequality are bad:

> But economic inequality per se is not bad. It has multiple causes. Many are bad, but some are good.

He is not "conveniently" ignoring that point.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#188

Post by tezza »

flannelcatering wrote: post #58
tezza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is further ridiculous that the wealth itself is circularly defined with being rich. Own a house in Denver = Awesome Own a house in Manhattan = Super Rich Own a Dinghy = Awesome Own a Super Yacht = Super Rich So by this simple example the Denver Dinghy owner is much less wealthy on paper than the Manhattanite with a Super Yacht. But you can see that the Denverite has both a house and a vessel and may not need a yac…

> The extra 'wealth' is of no impact to the happy Denver guy. No one is making any arguments based upon happiness or "Awesome"ness or cost of living. And yes, the Denverite is less wealthy than the Manhattanite, supposing that they both own houses that were sold to them at the median price of their geographic area.

Well they should be making arguments on those bases.

If non-'wealthy' people have a lot of both the stuff they want and all the stuff they need, then why should we worry that the 1%ers have Patek Phillipe watches with diamonds everywhere and 3 Lamborghinis.

I am saying that the 'wealth' reported as being half of all wealth includes so much overpriced opulent stuff we'd never contemplate buying ever.

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#189

Post by pc86 »

ThomPete wrote: post #185
pc86 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's not fair. Someone works hard and earns a million dollars. At that point they've paid just about every tax imaginable on the money other than sales tax. What is the "fair" argument to taxing it again just because they die? If you honestly believe that governments should tax every dollar every time any event happens to it, that's a valid opinion, but let's not pretend it has anything to do with "fairness…

You are not taxing them again (since they are dead) you are taxing their children/relatives who get the money without having done anything for it. Plus if you are rich enough a lot of those money were not taxed like a normally family but most probably through things like capital gains or just appreciation (real estate) which rarely is a product of your specific work but rather societies work to turn an area into some…

> you are taxing their children/relatives who get the money without having done anything for it.

Is your argument anything other than "they got money and I want the government to take some!"

> if you are rich enough a lot of those money were not taxed like a normally family but most probably through things like capital gains

"We probably didn't get it right the first time around so we'll take another whack at it after you die."

Capital gains tax being lower than it should be is not an excuse for other different taxes.

> When I buy something for my taxed money, whoever I give purchase it from is also being taxed on those already taxed money. So by your logic its not fair to tax that either either.

Just proof that you have no idea what my argument is in the first place, because that's ridiculous. We're talking about changing the name on a bank account. Property moving from parent to child or brother to sister. It's not a business transaction.

> If you buy the argument that we should tax businesses for the things they sell you are basically approving taxation of inheritance too.

wat

Re: My simplified response to Paul Graham's simplified essay

#190

Post by jdmichal »

snowwrestler wrote: post #174
jdmichal wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The numbers are equatable, even if they don't measure what you would prefer they measure. I never claimed otherwise. I claimed that the number as measured excludes many things that are relevant to the discussion. And, therefore, using that number as the basis of an argument is flawed. > But if you'd like to supply alternate unemployment data, I'm sure many readers would appreciate it. As it is, your post is hypothe…

> Specifically, I did not claim that we are on a precipice. I did claim that using the official unemployment calculation is not necessarily sufficient for claiming that we are not on a precipice. This is a good point: you're right that those are not the same claims. Sometimes I am imprecise about who said exactly what in HN threads. We still haven't resolved whether or not we're on a precipice, though. :-)

> We still haven't resolved whether or not we're on a precipice, though. :-)

Indeed. We've had a lot of social wins recently, so I personally still hold out hope. I think navigating automation is going to be one of the defining points of this age, as navigating mechanization and industrialization was of the preceding age. Humanity will survive, but not necessarily all the structures that we've become accommodated to.

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