Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich • Hacker News Board

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#181

Post by megablast » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:21 PM UTC

seabee wrote: post #154

gabrielroth wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HOV-lane idea starts out in the wrong place. If you want to raise money from apportioning a scarce resource (in this case space on the road), you use prices, not taxes. Congestion charges have become very popular and successful in London—it's too bad Bloomberg's attempt to install them in New York failed.

> Congestion charges have become very popular and successful in London Popular and successful with who, exactly? I don't know a single person that likes it. Traffic was reduced for a few years but now it's just as bad as ever. And the cost of public transport continually rises above inflation. At least they recently shrank the chargable area. So what has it done, exactly, except raise income for the city and raise pr…

I like it, lots of my friends like it as well.

If they did not enact it, things on the road would be worse. They just need to make it more.

The cost of public transport is ridiculous, London has to be the most expensive city to travel around.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#182

Post by jarek » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:23 PM UTC

jpwagner wrote: post #170

jarek wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some legal ways for an individual to be compensated that wouldn't appear in the tax documentation of either the individual or the company in question? "Legal" is used here to mean "would stand up in a court of law in the relevant jurisdiction."

The fact is that if Eric Schmidt were fined 100% of his "net worth" he would be among the rich again within a year or two. Suppose a professional gambler made exactly the same amount as Eric Schmidt per year. This "system" would fine them equally. But the gambler relies on his bankroll as his asset, whereas Schmidt relies on his reputation and personal network. How can you make this fair?

1) Whether yearly income is representative of present and/or future net worth is entirely unrelated to whether the magnitude of said income is discoverable.

2) Everyone has a different definition of "fair." Which one are you using?

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#183

Post by cookiecaper » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:25 PM UTC

jws wrote: post #146

pmiller2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fines aren't the deterrent. The deterrent is that points on your license lead to higher insurance rates and eventual loss of driving privileges.

Except with wealth you can pay a local lawyer to plead it to a non-moving violation, a ludicrously inflated "court cost", and a "donation" to the local law enforcement retirement fund. (Kirksville Missouri, I'm looking at you.) The wealthy can opt for a "pay X now" instead of "Y over time where Y>X" option. Wealth buys you a discount.

And all of that is likely to cost much more than just paying the fine and moving on. It sounds like the rich guy got taken to task for his attempts to weasel out of it in the case you're referring to. He eventually got what he wanted, I guess, which is no points, but it sounds like it cost a lot of money (unless his donation to the pension fund and his lawyer's hourly rate was $25).

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#184

Post by WiseWeasel » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:27 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #138

WiseWeasel wrote: post #60

A low-hanging fruit would be to retool Social Security to be relevant to the needs of more affluent contributors; they might feel better about paying in if they are assured a payout that might actually support what they would consider to be a reasonably comfortable retirement. As it stands, Social Security is pretty much a total loss for higher income brackets. As for a power incentive, the only one I might envision…

You only pay SS on your first 105k or so of income (indexed to inflation).

A cap which would presumably be raised along with the payouts.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#185

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:27 PM UTC

georgecmu wrote: post #36

bluedevil2k wrote: post #2

I like the "rich" driving lane idea - put up X licenses for auction in each city, let people bid up the price, let the market decide how much time is worth.

I always thought that institutionalized speeding would be very successful both in terms of additional revenues and time saved. Right now highway speed limits are set to a sort of common denominator: safest for the worst car and driver on the road. But if you're driving a modern, well-maintained car and are adequately trained, there's no evidence that you'd be unsafe driving 20 mph over the speed limit. So, why not fo…

The thing that makes speeding unsafe (up to a point) is not so much the speed itself but the delta between the slowest and fastest cars on the road.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#186

Post by pistoriusp » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:29 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #76

Taxing the rich (even more than they are already which IMHO is a lot ) is just punishing success and rewarding failure.

Exactly, this kind of thinking freaks me out.

They want to take property from people who have earned it precisely for having earned it! It's theft, it's looting, and it's slavery!

You cannot take one man's property and give it to another based on need.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#187

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:32 PM UTC

teamonkey wrote: post #42

burgerbrain wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you similarly decry the people who spend extra money at amusement parks to skip lines? Seems like exactly the same thing as this. You pay more: you get more.

By skipping the lines at amusement parks, those who don't pay extra have to wait even longer for their turn than they would if that system wasn't in place. So in effect, those who pay more benefit and simultaneously penalise those who do not.

No because if the fast line didn't exist the regular line would be longer. total waiting, on average, is the same.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#188

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:34 PM UTC

LiveTheDream wrote: post #173

alsomike wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tax plan is to eliminate income tax up to $90,000. After that, income is taxed at 100%. The government awards tax credits for everyone making less than that, so that everyone's salary + tax credits = $90,000. "But wait," you say "How will we incentivize entrepreneurs if they can't earn more money?" For everyone making over $90,000 (approx. 11% of the population), their pretax salary is used to assign them national…

If the plan provides for everyone to earn 90k regardless of what they actually do, there is no incentive to be productive at all, (much less to be productive enough to account for those who produce very little). Having my name on a list as the X most productive person is not incentive. Being able to spend the money I earn, is.

What do you need to spend money on that you can't afford with $90K? And why do you want to buy it over something that you could afford?

In my experience, virtually everything that falls into that category is some sort of status symbol. The grandparent poster is suggesting replacing these implicit status symbols with an explicit one.

The part about his proposal that I'd miss is the ability to save up your high income for a few years so that you could compensate for a low income the next few years, and then do something more interesting during that time. But if you're earning $90K regardless, that wouldn't matter, because you'd be able to do the more interesting stuff anyway.

Actually, that leads to the real problem in his proposal: you lose the information-carrying capacity of money. I'm basically ambivalent about most of my income over a number that's a lot less than $90K; I don't spend it anyway. But if I'm faced with two jobs that look equally interesting, I'll take the one that pays more; the additional money is a proxy for how much that business is valued by the marketplace, and I'd rather work on things that will make lots of people happy. Same with when I start a business: there're lots of projects that are interesting, but profit is a way of telling which ones are interesting and useful to others.

OTOH, a stack ranking does that as well. The problem with the stack ranking is that you can't pass along that surplus down the value chain. So, for example, if you provide some useful service and that service would be made more useful if you could hire a graphic designer to make it pretty, you wouldn't be able to, because the government would take the money you would otherwise have paid the graphic designer.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#189

Post by jpwagner » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:35 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #182

jpwagner wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that if Eric Schmidt were fined 100% of his "net worth" he would be among the rich again within a year or two. Suppose a professional gambler made exactly the same amount as Eric Schmidt per year. This "system" would fine them equally. But the gambler relies on his bankroll as his asset, whereas Schmidt relies on his reputation and personal network. How can you make this fair?

1) Whether yearly income is representative of present and/or future net worth is entirely unrelated to whether the magnitude of said income is discoverable. 2) Everyone has a different definition of "fair." Which one are you using?

(1) The original question is ["elsewhere it's like [this], is that better?"]

I merely point out a major caveat.

(2) From the article: "In reality, fairness is not so much about the actual distribution of loot as it is about the psychology of how you feel about it."

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#190

Post by gjm11 » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 10:37 PM UTC

alsomike wrote: post #137

yummyfajitas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's hard to create a high status item. Say you invent the "US Govt. Certified Top 0.1% Badge" - do you really think Peter Thiel, John Paulson or Alex Rodriguez will really give a crap? Taxing existing luxury status symbols could work, and is very likely a good idea. Creating new status symbols is likely to fail horribly. Also, the tax on certain neighborhoods neglects the very large non-status re…

My tax plan is to eliminate income tax up to $90,000. After that, income is taxed at 100%. The government awards tax credits for everyone making less than that, so that everyone's salary + tax credits = $90,000. "But wait," you say "How will we incentivize entrepreneurs if they can't earn more money?" For everyone making over $90,000 (approx. 11% of the population), their pretax salary is used to assign them national…

> The government awards tax credits for everyone making less than that [...]

> [...] dividing the total US income by the number of workers [...]

So, for that $90k figure to be attainable, you need those who aren't "workers" not to get any of this money. Which means that becoming a "worker" will suddenly mean getting an extra $90k/year, whatever the job. Which means that there will almost certainly suddenly be a lot more "workers". Which means you can't manage $90k/year after all.

Also: Your system relies on taking away a great deal of money from rich people in order to give it to a larger number of people who would otherwise be much less well off. I have no problem at all with this as a general approach, but the more you do it the harder those rich people are going to try to avoid paying; and rich people can generally afford a lot of expert assistance with not paying, arrange for a great deal of lobbying to get the rules changed, etc. -- which means that you probably can't get nearly as much money out of them as just looking at their salaries suggests. For instance, duh, suppose that every employer that currently pays anyone $(90k+x)/year decides to pay them, say, $(90k+0.1x)/year. Suddenly 90% of that tax revenue has gone. Whoops, everyone else's annual salary is now $9k/year.

Also: as others have pointed out, it is ... not obvious ... that being given a low number in some official government ranking would be as strong a motivator as actually getting rich. Yes, one reason why people want to get rich is because wealth brings high status. But there is some reason to think that they also want to get rich because wealth brings large houses, good food, nice holidays, fast cars, and all the other stuff that one can buy if one has enough money.