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

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

#271

Post by fetbaffe »

pessimizer wrote: post #251
fetbaffe wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is buying stock always taking other people's work, or just when the state does it?

But you buy stock with your own money, the state doesn't.

The state does not have any money, it takes money in taxes we all agreed on to use it in fair way, and that is not to use the power of the state to buy up your livelihood and give that to a party member, that would be unfair.

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

#272

Post by vec »

fetbaffe wrote: post #271
pessimizer wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is buying stock always taking other people's work, or just when the state does it?

But you buy stock with your own money, the state doesn't. The state does not have any money, it takes money in taxes we all agreed on to use it in fair way, and that is not to use the power of the state to buy up your livelihood and give that to a party member, that would be unfair.

For a value of "we all agreed" that expands to "was decided via a free and fair democratic process", then it appears that the Swedes did all agree, at least for a time, that this was a fair way for their government to use their tax money.

For any other value of "we all agreed" then it sounds like you're arguing that the vast majority of government expenditures are unjustified. That seems like a much more expansive claim than what you're trying to make.

Why should it be okay for the state to use tax money to purchase a tank or a mile of road but not to purchase a share of stock?

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

#273

Post by dang »

zamber wrote: post #183
pc86 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even less time not to type this meaningless and unnecessarily rude comment. My meaningless and unnecessarily rude comment, on the other hand, took quite a bit longer.

That's why I too often have that xkcd strip about people being wrong on the internet in mind _before_ writing a comment on HN. StackOverflow is for "well, actually...".

That's a brilliant use of that xkcd classic because it also dampens the chance of posting it yet again here.

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

#274

Post by belorn »

bmelton wrote: post #104
gaius wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

willing to pay more taxes than you are legally required to There is a material difference between that and actively seeking loopholes that are not available to ordinary people. Ikea is only possible because of the physical and legal infrastructure paid for by those ordinary people after all. Not that they will do anything of course, the Viking spirit is long dead.

If you aren't seeking out the loopholes that apply to you, then you are paying more in taxes than you are legally required to. "legally required to" does not incur a balancing test between what is practicable vs the time it takes. If you're a regular, mid-income citizen, then there isn't likely to be a good ROI on hiring a dedicated accountant to find you loopholes. If you're making $200k a year, and you save 10%, ho…

One of those loopholes that small mid to low income citizens can do is by majority elected revolutions and majority voted wealth reallocation. Should we scorn them for doing that, and on what moral principle is that different from a company exploiting loopholes or using political lobbying to disregard majority opinion in order to create laws with loopholes in them.

Scorn or moral objections is not the same as legal. If 51% voted to take the land and property of the 1%, then that is a democratic decision and the publicly published law. It would also be overwhelming scorned by those effected. Should we just tell them that they too would redistribute the wealth if they could and its stupid for anyone to not take wealth if they could.

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

#275

Post by noetic_techy »

dagw wrote: post #189
kolla wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He owned several luxury houses and most certanly never bought 2nd hand clothes even if he wore simple clothes. So it was a carefully crafted image, not what he actually did.

It was obviously a well crafted image, but hardly one invented out of whole cloth. For example non of the three homes he owned[0] would classify as luxury by any reasonable rich person standard. His 'luxury' house in Switzerland was probably not even among 10 most expensive houses in town and was significantly smaller than most billionaires garages. His house in Sweden is in the middle of nowhere, the sort of place w…

Looks like an average upper middle class house in the US. Hardly swanky.

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

#276

Post by fetbaffe »

vec wrote: post #270
fetbaffe wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reason why I wrote in moderation, e.g. 100% tax is not moderation and therefore theft. Intent here was to take control over the ownership of the companies, that would have been same as 100% tax, they where just using a more complicated scheme but the end result would been the same.

It appears the intent was to purchase control over the ownership of the companies at prevailing market rates. As far as I can tell, the existing stock owners were entirely free to refuse the state's purchase offer and maintain control indefinitely, if they so chose. That doesn't sound like a tax at all.

I'm sorry, I see now that I mismwrote on the original version of löntagarfonder, I wrote buy, the correct word should be take.

Original idea was to take the dividend as new stock. Nothing voluntary, no buying at market rates.

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

#277

Post by runeks »

etskinner wrote: post #269
viraptor wrote: post #45

> The foundation owns itself, so no Kamprad family members hold shares. Late stage capitalism... Anyway, I don't really get why the article claims he didn't care about money. It's known for a while that IKEA avoids taxes in many dodgy ways. If he really didn't care, the connected companies could pay a reasonable amount.

If he believed that his foundation was better suited to appropriate that money than the government, then avoiding taxes is a rational thing to do, and doesn't necessarily mean that their claim about his not caring about the money is false.

Also, if the consumer picks the cheapest item on the store shelf, then companies can’t afford to be philanthropic, as the company most skilled in avoiding taxes will be able to offer the same products cheaper.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

jessriedel wrote: post #257
ryanlol wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Porches are still modest for a mega-billionaire...

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by vanderZwan »

dagw wrote: post #189
kolla wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He owned several luxury houses and most certanly never bought 2nd hand clothes even if he wore simple clothes. So it was a carefully crafted image, not what he actually did.

It was obviously a well crafted image, but hardly one invented out of whole cloth. For example non of the three homes he owned[0] would classify as luxury by any reasonable rich person standard. His 'luxury' house in Switzerland was probably not even among 10 most expensive houses in town and was significantly smaller than most billionaires garages. His house in Sweden is in the middle of nowhere, the sort of place w…

> reasonable rich person standard

If what you say is true, his standard for living as a rich person seems exceptionally reasonable to me.

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

#280

Post by fetbaffe »

vec wrote: post #272
fetbaffe wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you buy stock with your own money, the state doesn't. The state does not have any money, it takes money in taxes we all agreed on to use it in fair way, and that is not to use the power of the state to buy up your livelihood and give that to a party member, that would be unfair.

For a value of "we all agreed" that expands to "was decided via a free and fair democratic process", then it appears that the Swedes did all agree, at least for a time, that this was a fair way for their government to use their tax money. For any other value of "we all agreed" then it sounds like you're arguing that the vast majority of government expenditures are unjustified. That seems like a much more expansive cl…

Swedes did not agree, hence losing the following election.

State can of course buy stock. State owned companies can work just fine.

But there is a difference in intent. Intent here was union controlled ownership of all major companies. Creator of idea explicitly quoted Marx.

It think also we got bit sidetracked in this discussion with the word buy that I misused, it was not buying at the stock market, it was "buying" with legislation, exchanging profits for stock.

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