Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke • Hacker News Board

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#841

Post by wang_li » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #783

gambiting wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>They leave us suckers to pay. Except that's not true at all. Vast majority of taxes come from the richest. They might pay less percentage wise than me and you, but they pay the most in absolute terms. >>I think more of people who pay their fair share. I think more of people who pay more tax, not of those who pay more percentage wise. Ie - someone who makes a million dollars and pays 100k in tax seems to be contribu…

That’s far from accurate. Income taxes contribute ~$1.932 trillion, but payroll taxes add $1.373 trillion and are often ignored in these calculations. As social security is capped at relatively low income levels the tax burden on the rich is much lower than often suggested. Further, the often quoted top 1% is hardly the rich in the US, if you compare the income vs taxes paid of the top 0.01% their paying a lower perc…

CBO did an analysis of household income, all federal taxes paid, and transfers and services. On a net basis, the top 40% pay for everything at all levels of government. The bottom 40% pay for only a portion of what it takes to keep themselves alive. The middle 20% splits between the two groups, but the portion that are net payers, pay very little.

> They receive a functioning society which is economically worth far more to themselves than lower income earners.

This is not obvious. Historically, the lower classes have very little rights and are subjected to oppressive behaviors from the kings and nobles and other well to do.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#842

Post by TheIronYuppie » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

clinta wrote: post #297

smillbag wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. Is there something virtuous about hoarding wealth?

Those who "hoard" wealth do not do so by filling a swimming pool with gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. They invest in companies that provide jobs and the goods and services that the rest of us enjoy. Yes that is virtuous.

This also implies that only the person investing would provide that function of providing goods, jobs and services. Since he government does the same (produce goods, jobs and services), does that the government is also moral? Why is one more moral than the other?

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#843

Post by frabbit » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

newguy1234 wrote: post #630

bedhead wrote: post #240

I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are…

Curious, what exactly stops these rich families from simply moving their wealth off shore? I'm sure there are many other countries that would bend over backwards to have these uber rich families living in their country instead of the USA.

What makes you think they haven't? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-been-almost-a-100-year...

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#844

Post by frabbit » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

young_unixer wrote: post #659

bedhead wrote: post #240

I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are…

What's wrong with leaving your wealth to your offspring? What I find sickening is people trying to meddle in other people's pockets.

There's absolutely nothing wrong in you leaving your average suburban house and penny stocks to your indebted children. Go for it. Live the dream.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#845

Post by Retric » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

wang_li wrote: post #841

Retric wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s far from accurate. Income taxes contribute ~$1.932 trillion, but payroll taxes add $1.373 trillion and are often ignored in these calculations. As social security is capped at relatively low income levels the tax burden on the rich is much lower than often suggested. Further, the often quoted top 1% is hardly the rich in the US, if you compare the income vs taxes paid of the top 0.01% their paying a lower perc…

CBO did an analysis of household income, all federal taxes paid, and transfers and services. On a net basis, the top 40% pay for everything at all levels of government. The bottom 40% pay for only a portion of what it takes to keep themselves alive. The middle 20% splits between the two groups, but the portion that are net payers, pay very little. > They receive a functioning society which is economically worth far m…

That’s amazingly misleading, people receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits tend to have lower earnings than they did while working full time. Effectively, averaging people who pay lots of taxes and receive minimal benefits with others who are receiving massive benefits gives a very distorted view of what’s going on.

Similarly, lumping everyone in the top 40% with the Rich completely hides how little the rich pay by lumping them in with the highest effective tax rate groups.

PS: It gets even crazier than that when you consider Trump for example qualified as having zero income for multiple years.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#846

Post by GreenWatermelon » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:00 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #618

gringoDan wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make that argument, and in doing so you are implicitly stating either: (a) I believe that the government will use its money to impact the world in a better way than billionaires do, or (b) I concede that (a) is false, but I don't care. It's not about the impact we make with the money, it's about dragging billionaires down. Personally, I'm interested in impact. I have little faith that paying taxes to the US…

If you give more money to the government, doesn’t that implicitly mean you are giving/donating about 15% of that money to the military industrial complex?

Then vote for officials who wont put that money into the military industrial complex.

If you live in a real democratic country, then you have no excuse. YOU* chose that government.

* obviously a generalization, but in the end enough people chose that outcome.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#847

Post by gridlockd » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 9:15 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #840

gridlockd wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could give away houses, it stands to reason that I could also afford to pay my workers properly so that they do a good job.

You could do either. Real world economics and history, however, suggests you would do neither, because the incentives of the labor market mean you can get adequate work for far below the cost of a living wage, and you didn't get rich by throwing good money after bad, so to speak. Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $100,000 and still be the richest man in the world. He could also afford to pay every employee…

> You could do either. Real world economics and history, however, suggests you would do neither...

You digress.

> Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $100,000 and still be the richest man in the world.

Jeff Bezos doesn't have that much cash. I guess he could award that much in stock though. True enough.

> He could also afford to pay every employee far more in wages than he does, and Amazon would still make money hand over fist.

Wrong enough. Amazon is already spending most of its income in the areas where it employs most people. Turns out shipping cheap junk for free across the globe isn't that profitable. That business is cross-subsidized by other more profitable areas like AWS.

If Amazon were to use those remaining profits and put them into fulfillment workers' salaries, the company would be pointless from an investment perspective, the stock price would tank, the company would have trouble raising capital, and Jeff Bezos wouldn't be the richest man in the world.

It's similar for other companies like Wal-Mart that work on razor thin margins but employ a lot of people. Sure, all of these people earn a low income, but at the same time they benefit from low prices.

> Many people living in low income housing are already employed, and the market has already decided the value of their labor is worth just enough to scrape by with government assistance, and no more.

Sure, but "the market" is society as a whole, not just some billionaires. Billionaires aren't forcing down their wages, it's the ordinary people consuming their labor, who only buy at the lowest price.

The least productive people are always going to be poor in relative terms. In absolute terms, the salary of an Amazon warehouse worker puts you close to the global 1%.

You may believe the narrative that all these profits go into the pockets of a few rich people, and if only those people left some of that money on the table, everybody would be way better off, and it's all capitalism's fault. It just doesn't add up. Capitalism doesn't tolerate high profit margins over an extended period of time, it drives prices down for everybody, which benefits those the most who don't have a lot of income in the first place.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#848

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

SeanLuke wrote: post #782

CaptainZapp wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're on a very thin line between a donation and a bribe.

It's a large portion of major donations. If Bob Johnson donates $20M to a hospital to create the Johnson Cancer Wing, he is in benefiting himself: he is buying his name on a building. If Bob donates $20M to a local symphony orchestra that he attends, he is benefiting himself by buying better music for him to listen to. If Bob donates $20M to a candidate for office whose policies would ultimately benefit Bob, well...…

Fair enough.

Thanks for the clarification.

Even though I disagree with the candidate for office. It may be legal and technically not a bribe, but it does have a really bad stench and is arguably one of the reasons why US politics are so fucked up.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#849

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #708

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your objection falls flat. We can definitely analyze everybody else’s behavior another time - it’s not relevant here and only serves to distract. This one person had a huge fortune and explicit goals to spend it in efficacious charities. From that point of view, this particular story is one of exorbitant waste and missed opportunity, the magnitude of which should stupefy people. We’re not talking about some other joe…

I guess I’m still don’t understand the fundamental shock and sense of waste you describe. Frenzy didn’t hurt anyone here and provided a net benefit to society.

Failure to optimize is equivalent to directly perpetrating harm, especially when the stakes are high ($8 billion) and optimizing is jaw-droppingly simple and easy (read recommendations from Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, GiveWell, etc., and spend some ultra tiny fraction of time comparing the impact on lives between e.g. donating $1 billion to fucking Cornell vs $1 billion to a cause like Against Malaria or SCI).

Tell the children who have died and will die from directly preventable malaria or waterborne parasites that Feeny’s negligence has done no harm.

By not spending the money on them, he literally facilitated their deaths. For what? Cornell has a fancier campus? Obamacare had a nicer grassroots website? It’s sickening.

And it’s no defense to distract by saying nobody can be perfectly ascetic or optimize away every wasteful purchase or discretionary spending. That’s not at all related or up for discussion. We’re talking about one guy with a stated goal of funding efficacious charities with $8 billion of available funds to do it over time. Just about as pure a thought experiment of negligence as there ever was.

Re: Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

#850

Post by rapind » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #751

rapind wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9. When the donation wouldn’t occur without a tax break.

I never understood why people keep pointing out that charity donations "might" qualify as tax brakes, as if that's something bad or even worse - some way to cheat the system. Can someone explain this to me? As far as I understand - by donating X amount of money, the most you can possibly get, is an X deduction from your taxes. But the total amount of money spent at the end is still X. You haven't saved anything anywh…

I didn't say it was "bad", I just classified it at the bottom of parent's list in terms of selflessness. I'm arguing that when you get the money back in tax it's less selfless than the other donation scenarios mentioned.

There's definitely an argument to be made about whether or not it's better for an individual to choose how to spend their tax dollars rather than a countries people to decide. It's definitely less democratic (I can't see how you can debate this), but I'm not sure the good of it is clear cut... That being said, as the class gap increases, individuals choosing how to spend a large portion of their taxes contributes to a concentration of power in the upper caste.