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How to Steal a Billion

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Re: How to Steal a Billion

#131

Post by [deleted] »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #123
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point wasn’t to take a dig at M4A. (I'm a proponent of universal healthcare, though I'd prefer extending ACA.) I mentioned it because OP talked about sweating medical bills. The point is that the cost of providing healthcare to everyone is vastly more than the wealth of even billionaires. (By the way, the expert estimate linked from Warren's own site is $52 trillion/10 years, not $30 trillion.)

No, but her plan isn't the only one out there. Bernie's plan was estimated I believe at 23 billion over 10 years, which a right wing think tank actually (accidently) proved would cost less than we're paying now. But in 25 years how much does the system improve, what if it's like 50T over the 1st 10 years, then 30T the 2nd because of gains in efficiency? There's a lot of 'in the air' variables as well, where it could…

[deleted]

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#132

Post by Consultant32452 »

dls2016 wrote: post #125
Consultant32452 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The skewed distribution of wealth creates a situation where people don't have time and energy left over from their hustle to take care of themselves and to take care of each other in basic ways. Can you help me understand this better? Because I see this sentiment often. I'm just gonna do some quick math... Bezos + Gates + Musk + Zuckerberg = let's round up to $300 Billion. Divide that evenly among the 327 million US…

> Do you believe that I will take better care of myself or be a better father in the long run if I get a one-time bonus of $917? Your POV fails to take into account the utility and time-value of the redistributed dollars. It's the difference between some unelected doofus having tons of power because of their stationary dollars, or building a universal pre-k and/or healthcare system. I know I'd personally work less if…

It's still not clear to me how we are going to get the outcome you're looking for.

If the wealth is redistributed to the people (the mechanism isn't important) then that amounts to a few thousand dollars per person. This isn't the kind of money that would allow wide-spread reduction in work hours. My expectation is that most people will liquify that wealth and spend it over a long weekend. Do you have a different expectation?

If rather than being given directly to the people, instead the state keeps that money, are you predicting that Donald Trump will use it to build you a new school?

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#133

Post by rayiner »

enraged_camel wrote: post #122
rayiner wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My political views are pro-taxation and pro-public services. (Except we should have the Swedes or Singaporeans come over to run our public services.) Which is why I think waging a class war against billionaires for a piddling $275 billion in additional revenue, while not increasing taxes on people making up to $250,000, is pure insanity. European countries have figured out how to pay for public services with middle c…

Warren's tax plan starts at the $50 million threshold. Not sure why you are counting only billionaires, or only the top 400. Her math adds up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/05/warrens-p... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/opinion/did-warren-pass-t...

Warren’s wealth tax doubles to 6% at the billionaire level. (France’s and Sweden's highest wealth tax was 1.5% until they got rid of it.)

Warren’s calculations just prove why the whole fixation on billionaires and income inequality is a distraction. You're talking about a wealth tax that is unconstitutional, at levels that are completely unprecedented. You're talking about risking capital flight, and setting political capital on fire, to move the United States far to the left of Europe. (What a great campaign ad for Donald Trump! Warren is proposing to do something that even France realized was a bad idea.) And for what? Is it going to pay for M4A? Or balance the budget? No. Not even theoretically.

I say this all as someone who wants universal healthcare to be implemented (even though I'm pessimistic about it saving any money). I think Warren's proposal with respect to employer-side payments is actually pretty clever. But the wealth tax is a huge political liability, and it could take M4A with it. And when that happens, it won't be the fault of billionaires (the wealth tax wasn't going to raise the necessary revenue anyway). It'll be the fault of people making $200,000 who think they are "middle class" and shouldn't have to pay the same level of taxes their counterparts in Europe pay.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#134

Post by ksdale »

dls2016 wrote: post #128
Thriptic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that simple. Sure, money in a billionaire's possession probably isn't going to be used for consumption, but it's not like that money is chilling in a matress somewhere; it is invested. Those funds are a source of capital for public companies, seed funding for small businesses, VC investments for growing companies, charitable contributions potentially, even funds for countries through bonds etc. I'm…

Sure... but there are two simple facts: a) billionaires are unelected and b) they dictate the usage of vast quantities of resources. Personally, I believe this is immoral.

I think you made great points in your comment above, but I would point out that the thought experiment indicates that the resources they control are actually not that vast, compared to the wealth that would actually be required to raise everyone in the world to, say, the current average American standard of living more than temporarily. It may be moral to take that money and put it to better use, but it would run out a lot faster than most people think.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#135

Post by TrinaryWorksToo »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #70
ksdale wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially interesting, because although a billion dollars is a staggering amount of money for one person to possess, if you distributed the wealth of the world out to every single person evenly, it would only be something like $50,000 per person (based on some quick Googling), which is a life changing amount of money, to be sure, but it's a one time deal. It's not $50,000 per year of income, it's $50,000, perio…

>distributed the wealth of the world In the limit of a single individual wealth works in a naive fashion where such distribution is possible. But on the scale of the economy, such a thing is not possible without inventing a better distribution mechanism than capital itself. If you redistribute each peace of your car's engine to each passenger, you will be forced to walk. Even as a thought experiment, evenly distribut…

That's a fallacy. It doesn't consider Knock on effects of that money moving very rapidly to pay debts and trade

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#136

Post by JohnFen »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #121
hanniabu wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my calculations of a total redistribution of money, which will be more than just redistributing funds from the wealthy, you'd have this: Global money: $90,400,000,000,000 Global population: 7,742,131,000 Money per person: ~$11,650

Except some countries 10k is like 100k in U.S.A if you calculated for local costs of living and adjusted you could get away w/ giving 2-3 billion $1k, and then higher amounts to those in the U.S.A. -- you could skip China because they're already a socialist country and should have all their needs met, and skip bad actors like N. Korea, Iran, etc... Might be able to get it up to something like 150k-200k per person in…

> Except some countries 10k is like 100k in U.S.A

In some parts of the US, 100k would make you crazy wealthy. In other parts of the US, it wouldn't even make you middle class.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#137

Post by JohnFen »

simonh wrote: post #126
JohnFen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I understand what he was saying, and I also understand the sentiment. I disagree that all of that collateral damage should be written off as "they should have seen it coming", though (although I'm OK with that stance for the major investors). This part: > Contractors may not have known, but certainly had access to the same information everyone else had and could have known had they actually reviewed the informat…

They got work they wouldn’t have otherwise had. I’ve been made redundant before, but don’t hold any grudge. I don’t expect a contract for life, if my employer can’t or doesn’t need to pay me anymore I don’t feel they owe me an eternal salary, I’m grateful for the work and compensation I got. This attitude that any employment is immoral if it’s not for life makes no sense to me.

> This attitude that any employment is immoral if it’s not for life makes no sense to me.

Nothing I said expressed this attitude.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#138

Post by lordnacho »

asdfman123 wrote: post #114
lordnacho wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you were in his shoes, would you go back and do things any differently? Maybe not hire a famous DJ for the announcement of layoffs.

Oh man, that's awful, have a link for that? If this were reddit I would link to /r/aboringdystopia.

https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-adam-neumann-layo...

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#139

Post by oblio »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #105
oblio wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from a former Communist state (one of those states that became Communist at Soviet-tank-barrel-point :-) ). So Communism doesn't have much appeal to me. My personal perspective is that equalizing things fully doesn't work. You want incentives to motivate people. However, it's quite amazing what motivates people - after all, for the average billionaire going from $62bn to $63bn isn't really some sort of milestone,…

Let's imagine the US govt takes 10% of the shares of Amazon. These are non-voting shares. Amazon doesn't pay a dividend as far as I know, so what is the point? The government doesn't have control over the company, the government doesn't get any revenue. The government can't sell the shares because then it just has to come confiscate 10% more shares from Amazon. How do I, as a regular citizen, benefit from this? Is th…

Amazon won't pay dividends for a while. A country lasts centuries.

Secondly, that's why I was also thinking of a variant where employees get shares, too.

Re: How to Steal a Billion

#140

Post by Consultant32452 »

oblio wrote: post #139
Consultant32452 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's imagine the US govt takes 10% of the shares of Amazon. These are non-voting shares. Amazon doesn't pay a dividend as far as I know, so what is the point? The government doesn't have control over the company, the government doesn't get any revenue. The government can't sell the shares because then it just has to come confiscate 10% more shares from Amazon. How do I, as a regular citizen, benefit from this? Is th…

Amazon won't pay dividends for a while. A country lasts centuries. Secondly, that's why I was also thinking of a variant where employees get shares, too.

What is the difference between Amazon giving me, an imaginary Amazon employee, $100 in cash vs $100 in stock? Amazon is a publicly traded company, so any employee can choose to buy stock. Is the idea to force the employees to hold the stock without being allowed to sell it? If they can't sell it, what value do they get from it?

As an investment strategy, I never hold stock in a company I'm working for. That puts too many eggs in one basket. If the company fails for some reason, not only have I lost my job but I've also lost my retirement savings. I would personally oppose being compensated in company stock and would sell it ASAP if given the option.

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