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

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#281

Post by nitrogen » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 8:47 AM UTC

alsomike wrote: post #270

ericd wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Status markers are much more complicated than you imagine, and they tend to be extremely expensive to produce. If you think that the govt. could make a status marker that rich people actually care about, you're dreaming. The finer things in life really are finer, and it becomes nonlinearly more expensive to produce them the finer they are. A $500 meal at Per Se in NYC isn't just for signalling, if it is at all. It's…

Actually, I think status markers created by the government would be far, far more appealing to the wealthy. It's like Hegel's master-slave dialectic - a master doesn't feel like a real master because he knows all the struggles and difficulties of maintaining his position. If he really is a master, not just an ordinary man who finds himself with power, why does he have to work so hard to maintain it? The only time he…

I wonder if you're confusing reality with Rand novels. As far as I'm aware (since I'm not one of them), most wealthy people aren't trying to impress anybody. They're just enjoying their lives, relatively quietly. The incentive provided by wealth is not status, but enjoyment. A BMW is much more enjoyable to drive than a Buick. Go ahead and pry all the logos off my car, it'll still be more fun to drive.

What's more, "status" is only a proxy for wealth and power. Status is only as useful as the additional influence it brings. Consider it from an evolutionary biology perspective: higher status means higher capability to support mates and offspring. If you take away the additional wealth that brings higher status, then the higher status is lost as well, as it doesn't actually signal a higher capability to provide.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#282

Post by ericd » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9:01 AM UTC

alsomike wrote: post #270

ericd wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Status markers are much more complicated than you imagine, and they tend to be extremely expensive to produce. If you think that the govt. could make a status marker that rich people actually care about, you're dreaming. The finer things in life really are finer, and it becomes nonlinearly more expensive to produce them the finer they are. A $500 meal at Per Se in NYC isn't just for signalling, if it is at all. It's…

Actually, I think status markers created by the government would be far, far more appealing to the wealthy. It's like Hegel's master-slave dialectic - a master doesn't feel like a real master because he knows all the struggles and difficulties of maintaining his position. If he really is a master, not just an ordinary man who finds himself with power, why does he have to work so hard to maintain it? The only time he…

I think you have a pretty simplistic view of rich people - on average, they're much more complex than just wanting to show off to the masses. I fall into the same trap with a lot of things, but it's important to realize that a lot of them are extremely smart, and there are a lot of motivations there.

But with your original point on luxury goods, luxury goods are usually subjectively, if not objectively better than less expensive alternatives, even when noone knows which one costs more. Your govt. ID, if it's only a pure status symbol and carries no weight, might be valued by some, but truly rich people wouldn't care. They don't need validation from "people they consider inferior". You're describing a small subset there. In general, they just want the best of everything, and the marginal utility of the money they're giving up is meaningless in comparison.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#283

Post by ericd » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9:02 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #281

alsomike wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think status markers created by the government would be far, far more appealing to the wealthy. It's like Hegel's master-slave dialectic - a master doesn't feel like a real master because he knows all the struggles and difficulties of maintaining his position. If he really is a master, not just an ordinary man who finds himself with power, why does he have to work so hard to maintain it? The only time he…

I wonder if you're confusing reality with Rand novels. As far as I'm aware (since I'm not one of them), most wealthy people aren't trying to impress anybody. They're just enjoying their lives, relatively quietly. The incentive provided by wealth is not status, but enjoyment. A BMW is much more enjoyable to drive than a Buick. Go ahead and pry all the logos off my car, it'll still be more fun to drive. What's more, "s…

I was just going to mention BMW - when I drive one, I'm definitely not thinking about other people, just the machine and the road.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#284

Post by nitrogen » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9:05 AM UTC

davorak wrote: post #134

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.

With out the community and the government those opportunities to get rich would not exist. If the perfect world the rational rich person might realize this and protect and improve the system that allow people like himself to be possible.

Without the entrepreneurs and executives organizing companies and the engineers designing products, there'd be nothing for everyone else to work on but subsistence farming. Should providing something for the rest of us to do go unrewarded?

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#285

Post by benohear » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9:12 AM UTC

jimminy wrote: post #109

benohear wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying the industry as a whole failed.

The whole industry didn't fall. It was about a dozen extremely large insitutions, and the extremely small institutions that depended on that group. There were institutions in the middle who weren't involved in the mess. See BB&T, as an example, they were actually forced by the government to accept a bailout, as to make it seem like the whole industry failed.

By the way, as I understand it, there's a difference between "the whole industry" and "the industry as a whole"

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#286

Post by nitrogen » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9:21 AM UTC

ry0ohki wrote: post #6

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.

These were kind of proposed in DC (I think they may actually exist in San Diego or somewhere), where you pay a variable rate to use the carpool lanes based on demand. So during rush hour it would cost $6 and 11am on a saturday it would cost $.50. People didn't like the idea because they would be "Lexus lanes" giving special privileges to the rich. Scott Adams is right that if we really want to solve the budge problem…

Utah recently installed variable-toll express lanes. It seems to me they make overall congestion worse by creating traffic jams at the entrances/exits to these lanes.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#287

Post by benohear » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9:32 AM UTC

pistoriusp wrote: post #186

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.

I have a theory:

In the good ole days, taxation consisted of the lord owning the land (the means of production) and taxing the peasents.

This is pretty much what happens when you're employed - someone else owns the means of production, and you are paid less than the value that you create (hopefully for the company, anyway). For me this is a form of taxation - The main difference is that insead of being paid the gross amount and being hit for x%, you get the net amount.

On a macro level, it's similar. The country IS the ultimate means of production, and you pay a tax to use it.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#288

Post by ars » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 9:44 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #171

abrenzel wrote: post #89

Scott Adams, like the politicians in Washington DC, is living in a dream world. Cut all discretionary and defense spending to 0, and we would still be running a deficit due to entitlements. Tax "the rich" at 100%, and we would still be running a deficit. Tax corporations at 100%, and we would still be running a deficit. On the left, politicians make it sound as though we're just a few tax hikes and some defense cuts…

> Cut all discretionary and defense spending to 0, and we would still be running a deficit due to entitlements. Defense spending is an entitlement program for weapons makers.

Defense spending is a jobs program: There are about 1.5 million people in the armed forces! (Down from over 2 million 15 years ago.) And an even large number are employed indirectly.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#289

Post by jff » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 10:18 AM UTC

A salient note about how government austerity works: the Department of Energy labs have decided that as a cost-cutting measure, they will enact a 2-year pay freeze for all employees (except the top-level managers who work for Lockheed, not DoE). Hail the great cost-cutting measures! Except the government will still be putting the same amount of money into the labs andyway; we've been getting emails talking about how they're now trying to come up with ways to spend this windfall of excess cash. So far it sounds like they're going to go for some pseudo-green initiative; maybe we'll just get a new Greenification Department, which inspects all of our workspaces and penalizes us when we're not green enough. (This particular pay freeze is because Dr. Chu wants to make Obama look good. Good policy for a Democrat, screw the researchers but keep the $2 million salary for the head of the lab... wait isn't that what Republicans are expected to do?)

The talk about an across-the-board 10% cut made me think of that--unless it's specified that employee wages and benefits must not suffer, such a cut will probably just end up boning the minions.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#290

Post by Create » Sun, Jan 30, 2011, 10:29 AM UTC

The bad version is that anyone who pays taxes at a rate above some set amount gets to use the car pool lane without a passenger. Or perhaps the rich are allowed to park in handicapped-only spaces.

This is all over the place: e.g. London congestion fee (rich have no trouble paying, and it clears the lanes for them as an added bonus). Same for all other: parked in the wrong place? The secretary will send off the fine.

IKEA: Kamprad insists, that he and his family have no control over Ikea, which went entirely to Stichting Ingka Foundation and its subsidiary Inka Holdings, based in Liechtenstein. Billions are spread through Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Virgin Islands (travel Branson :) and Cyprus. When confronted, Kampard has declared, that Ikea respects the law and pays its taxes, but he added that it doesn't want to pay too much (GOOG comes to mind with Irish-Dutch-Bermuda triangle money laundering scheme).

It is just a structure optimisation, which gives the possibility and flexibility to use capital towards new markets to develop business without the burden of double taxation ...declared Kamprad. [src: SVT]