Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

Post by pessimizer » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

fetbaffe wrote: post #241

vec wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A someone who is broadly sympathetic to the idea of labor ownership of the means of production, could I trouble you to explain what's so obvious about the stupidity of this plan? Taxes on corporate profits are generally seen as reasonable in the abstract, and they're common all over the world. I could see setting an unusually high tax rate being problematic, but that doesn't appear to be what happened. And it doesn't…

Version that was introduced in 1982 was a water downed version of the original plan, the Social democrats lost an election because of the original plan in 1976 against the popular opposition leader and farmer Thorbjörn Fälldin. Fälldin broke a 40 year long social democratic rule. Fälldin described the plan as DDR style economics with the subsequent removing of personal freedoms. Original plan was to create funds to w…

Post by jessriedel » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #250

coderholic wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take away from your interesting comment, but it's not written "70-ties", just "70s" - the first one reads as "seventy-ties", which is odd :) EDIT: Updated "70's" to "70s" because of the great child comment that links to an article showing that while 70's is technically correct it's much more usual to exclude the apostrophe.

As long as we're exploring punctuation, the apostrophe in that case is valid and correct, but it's growing obsolete as it becomes more normal to write "70s". https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/9199/do-decades-ever...

Post by L_Rahman » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 6:57 PM UTC

aomurphy wrote: post #224

fetbaffe wrote: post #188

One have to remember why this was setup in the way it is, to protect the company forever. In Sweden during the 70-ties 80-ties the Social democrats was pushing a radical socialist agenda ('löntagarfonder') to take over companies by taxing profits and then buying shares with it, all controlled by trade unions. Result of these policies was that many companies left Sweden to protect itself (of course). IKEA, Tetra Pak a…

I'm not Swedish, but I find this area relatively interesting. The idea is fairly straightforward: Sweden's model created low income inequality between the poor and the rich, but did not create low wealth inequality. A large proportion of Swedish capital was controlled by 15 families, and most wealth his still controlled by a small inherited class (many descended from the old Swedish nobility), and 80-90% of wealth is…

Post by jessriedel » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #181

dagw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't really care about money personally, or at least not the material things money can buy. At least that's the image he worked very hard to portray by driving an old Volvo, living in a modest house and wearing clothes bought in a second hand store etc. He obviously cared a lot about his companies making as much money as possible. Although if you asked him he'd probably say that all that tax avoidance was just h…

"It was not exactly so, as reporters found. His home was a villa overlooking Lake Geneva, and he had an estate in Sweden and vineyards in Provence. He drove a Porsche as well as the Volvo. His cut-rate flights, hotels and meals were taken in part as an exemplar to his executives, who were expected to follow suit, to regard employment by Ikea as a life’s commitment — and to write on both sides of a piece of paper." ht…

Post by pmoriarty » Fri, Feb 02, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

fetbaffe wrote: post #241

vec wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A someone who is broadly sympathetic to the idea of labor ownership of the means of production, could I trouble you to explain what's so obvious about the stupidity of this plan? Taxes on corporate profits are generally seen as reasonable in the abstract, and they're common all over the world. I could see setting an unusually high tax rate being problematic, but that doesn't appear to be what happened. And it doesn't…

Version that was introduced in 1982 was a water downed version of the original plan, the Social democrats lost an election because of the original plan in 1976 against the popular opposition leader and farmer Thorbjörn Fälldin. Fälldin broke a 40 year long social democratic rule. Fälldin described the plan as DDR style economics with the subsequent removing of personal freedoms. Original plan was to create funds to w…