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When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

nytimes.com

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Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#131

Post by sharemywin »

jazzyk wrote: post #81
zip1234 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax evasion is illegally not paying the taxes that are due. If you are taking advantages of legal loopholes, it is not tax evasion.

What if you make the rules so simple that there are NO loopholes and there is no/little possibility for tax avoidance?

If you believe that too much wealth equates to too much power in a democracy then the simplest tax code would be all wealth over X is taxed at 100% all transgressions are punishable by death. Personally, I think that's a little harsh but some people only see black and white.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#132

Post by openasocket »

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece: The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways. Tax income more, they'll take it as dividends. Tax dividends more, they'll take it as capital gains. Tax capital gains, they won't realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they'll just get bank loans again't their stock holding…

This is the Nirvana fallacy. Because we can't fix everything, there's no point in trying to fix anything. For example: "what's the point in having seatbelts? People still die in car crashes." The reality is, just like a seatbelts reduce the number of fatalities in car crashes, each loop hole closed makes things a little more difficult for people to shelter their assets.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#133

Post by sol_remmy »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #85
cpursley wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A flat tax rate is not a good idea whatsoever Tell this to the nations which have successfully implemented a flat tax: http://www.economist.com/node/3860731 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_f... It's ironic that a number of former Soviet countries have moved on to the flat tax, while the west has a progressive income tax (#2 plank of the Communist Manifesto).

Idk about you but I can't think of many former soviet block countries that have a healthy distribution of wealth between working, middle, and upper classes. Furthermore the list of countries given there are not places where you want to be poor.

ex-Soviet countries like Romania and Poland are definitely on their away up.

Compare them to slowly declining western European countries like Italy and Spain.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#134

Post by ameister14 »

jrimbault wrote: post #129
ameister14 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First income tax in the UK was in 1842, first income tax in France was 1789 - could you find one that has been going since 1017 AD?

I'm talking about learning not "income tax"... The first "bank" was also founded much earlier than 1000 years ago (and wasn't a bank), but we did know a bit about financial systems even before then.

You replied in a discussion of income tax to a person talking about the history of income tax. Your objection appeared to be that the person you replied to was talking about US income tax history and your millennia of progressive income tax talk covered other countries.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#135

Post by sol_remmy »

quickConclusion wrote: post #42

"The theory behind all those high-end tax cuts [...] was that it would unleash entrepreneurial energy [...] The first half of that theory may well have come true. Many of the world’s most successful companies are American — not only Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, but also Exxon Mobil, Walmart, Johnson & Johnson and JPMorgan Chase." The article fails to mention that even when the tax code was 90% on the highest e…

> So increasing tax rate beyond a couple of millions a year, or even before, seems a no-brainer to me, at least until everybody gets healthcare and free education.

How much money do you think that will take? I'm willing to bet your estimate is too low by a factor of 100. I've known multiple family friends who have easily used $500k+ a piece in government healthcare.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#136

Post by harryh »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #117

As CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt earned $17,744,236 last year. GE has 330,000 employees. If Immelt decided to take $0 and share his income equally with the remaining GE employees, he'd increase each worker's income by $53.77 per year. That's not going to do much to close either the wealth or income gaps. Part of what we are seeing is simply that corporations are getting so much larger than they've ever been in history. T…

GE employed 304,000 people in 1955.

http://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/21/americas-biggest-c...

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#137

Post by carradjm »

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece: The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways. Tax income more, they'll take it as dividends. Tax dividends more, they'll take it as capital gains. Tax capital gains, they won't realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they'll just get bank loans again't their stock holding…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

I hope more people will research Georgism and start trying to spread the idea around. It's the only tax-system that comes anywhere close to closing up any of these loopholes.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#138

Post by mstade »

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece: The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways. Tax income more, they'll take it as dividends. Tax dividends more, they'll take it as capital gains. Tax capital gains, they won't realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they'll just get bank loans again't their stock holding…

This. I recently started my own business, and having an accountant explain to me all the different legal ways of optimizing the tax foot print of myself and my business has definitely been an eye opener.

It's also been humbling. When I was just an employee, I used to wonder why taxes couldn't just be a simple linear function of income. These days, I have a much greater appreciation for the complexities involved in designing taxes such that they maximize income for the state (local or otherwise) while still being a fair system by some measure, possibly determined by ballot boxes every four years or so.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#139

Post by chimeracoder »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95
chimeracoder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capital in motion and at a high velocity is generally good for everyone. Capital at rest serves very few and is very harmful to everyone else. This is dangerously wrong. No economist would tell you that a high velocity of money is an inherent good, or even that increasing the velocity of money is an unfettered good. Public infrastructure, mortgages, venture capital, small business loans - all of these are investmen…

> No economist would tell you that a high velocity of money is an inherent good You may be confusing money and capital. Money velocity is almost always good. If someone buys infrastructure bonds and then those proceeds are spent on contractors to build infrastructure (who in turn pay suppliers and employees) you have lots of money moving with velocity.

> You may be confusing money and capital. Money velocity is almost always good.

I am not confusing anything. Increasing the velocity of money is not always good. In fact, under some schools of thought, long-term increases in the velocity of money are neutral-to-slightly-bad.

> If someone buys infrastructure bonds

Increasing the expense of saving capital means increasing the expense of bonds, which decreases the incentive to buy them in the first place.

> you have lots of money moving with velocity.

Uh, no, the tail end of that process does describe consumption behavior, but this situation actually has very little to do with the velocity of money, since we haven't addressed the propensity to spend that money a second time within any finite timespan.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#140

Post by naveen99 »

baursak wrote: post #61
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece: The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways. Tax income more, they'll take it as dividends. Tax dividends more, they'll take it as capital gains. Tax capital gains, they won't realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they'll just get bank loans again't their stock holding…

There's a simple solution to it, no? Abolish all taxes on income, dividends, or capital gains. Introduce a single tax on wealth. Every year tax a certain percentage of one's capital holdings, whether capital gain is realized or not.

What about a business that is worth 10 million dollars but has a bad year and makes no profit. So now the owner has to pay a tax on the 10 million dollar wealth and liquidate his business ?
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