Billionaires Build • Hacker News Board

Re: Billionaires Build

#601

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #448

rufus_foreman wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> However he does pay less taxes than his secretary No, he does not. He claims he paid $1,850,000 in federal taxes in 2015, do you think his secretary earned that much, let alone paid that much in taxes? In addition: “In 2019, Berkshire sent $3.6 billion to the U.S. Treasury to pay its current income tax,” Buffett said in his annual letter to shareholders. “The U.S. government collected $243 billion from corporate i…

>> However he does pay less taxes than his secretary > No, he does not. He claims he paid $1,850,000 in federal taxes in 2015, do you think his secretary earned that much, let alone paid that much in taxes? I think it was clear that they meant as a fraction of income, not as an absolute value.

If that was the intention [0], it's helpful in discussions to actually say that rather than something quite different.

[0] - I agree it most likely was; the most likely other option being comically misinformed.

Re: Billionaires Build

#602

Post by Miraste » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #402

throwaway09223 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a straw man, it is an extremely common belief and it deserves to be addressed and debunked. My social media is stuffed to the brim with people posting exactly this sentiment. It is true that there are other, more reasonable beliefs.

I disagree. PG's statement: > The second is about something politicians sometimes say — that the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people — and why this is mistaken. He is framing it so he is debunking an absurd claim: that the only way (no other ways are possible) to become a billionaire is by exploiting people. This is distinctly different from whether "exploiting people" (opinions vary on what this…

Data isn't sexy, data doesn't sell. The "common man" neither cares about real numbers nor has the education and ability to interpret them, even in very simplified graphical form. Look at the percentage of people who can answer extremely basic questions about charts and be horrified: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/stupid-people/

Re: Billionaires Build

#603

Post by arrosenberg » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #512

arrosenberg wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the government has enough money, maybe it doesn't. It's the structural disparity that Jeff Bezos' wealth represents that is the problem. His wealth also gives him disproportionate power to shape the incentives of the government, the economy, and the media narrative. Taxation is the proper remedy for breaking this power. We won't know what's possible until we stop letting barons write the laws.

The general structure is that people are allowed to own the things they make. If you start a company, it belongs to you. Your company might become very valuable and mine might not, which might create some disparity. There are other systems, like where everybody owns everything, but historically when you allow it so one person can own something that someone else has to create it doesn't work out very well. People don'…

The general structure is that all businesses rely on the government to maintain the courts and enforce contracts, and they are all built upon public commons. Taxation is not theft, pay your share.

Entrepreneurialism is at an all-time low in this low-tax, finance-happy environment, so I don't see how you can conclude that low taxes are good for creativity. It seems like it's been pretty good for concentration - low taxes means more money for acquisitions and buybacks.

Re: Billionaires Build

#604

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

istjohn wrote: post #531

kevas wrote: post #312

About to write some possibly controversial stuff... My early life, I grew up and had middle to upper middle class all around me. In my late teens and early twenties, there were times I had to scrounge my cushions and rummage through my car to find enough change to eat a meal. We live in a society where everyone has access to a computer—personal or local library. We have all the information we need to bring (the major…

There was a study that found that blue collar and white collar parents have distinct parenting styles. Blue collar parents are more authoritarian. They teach their children to obey authority, which as it happens is what is generally required to succeed in a blue collar job. White collar parents teach their children to think for themselves and be assertive, behaviors that are--perhaps not coincidentally--rewarded in w…

This is a really interesting observation. I also had to look up whether school teachers were considered blue or white collar, because my first-hand experience (which I suspect generalizes) is that they also tend towards training compliance and deference to authority, despite being on the white-collar side of that line.

Re: Billionaires Build

#605

Post by hnracer » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #475

hnracer wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Familial wealth disperses and collapses pretty quickly, eventually being split up between 2 to the n heirs thereabouts. Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. If they want to give it all to their kids, to a charitable cause, or just destroy it, that should be their right as owners of that property, it is not just for the state to steal that propert…

"voluntary" is pulling a lot of weight here. Let me know when food and water become voluntary things for people

I made my money by creating software and engaging in voluntary transactions with people (mostly wealthy people) who wanted to transact with me and would've been worse off having not done so. It was totally positive sum with no harmed third party. A very large proportion of transactions (plastic surgery, sports cars, entertainment, holidays, restaurants, personal trainer, Netflix, etc) are of this nature where the rebuttal that "it's not really voluntary" doesn't apply in the least.

Re: Billionaires Build

#606

Post by asciimov » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

travisoneill1 wrote: post #553

nicoffeine wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a sheltered view of poverty. When you live in poverty, there is no such thing as peace or thinking about the future. You are trying to cope minute-by-minute with hunger, abuse, fear, and limitless insecurity. You know someone who is in jail, someone who has been shot/stabbed/murdered, and plenty of people who did all the right things and still failed to make it out. In a nutshell, there's no such thin…

Why do I meet so many happy poor people when I'm out of bubble, then?

Happiness is a choice. Being poor doesn't mean your sad all the time, it means life is tough, tougher than the lives of the rich. Even in the toughest of times, there is plenty to be happy about.

Re: Billionaires Build

#607

Post by Kye » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

travisoneill1 wrote: post #553

nicoffeine wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a sheltered view of poverty. When you live in poverty, there is no such thing as peace or thinking about the future. You are trying to cope minute-by-minute with hunger, abuse, fear, and limitless insecurity. You know someone who is in jail, someone who has been shot/stabbed/murdered, and plenty of people who did all the right things and still failed to make it out. In a nutshell, there's no such thin…

Why do I meet so many happy poor people when I'm out of bubble, then?

I guarantee you don't have the whole picture. People are good at putting up a front so other people don't know how bad things are.

Re: Billionaires Build

#608

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #533

drewrv wrote: post #235

This essay uses a weak straw-man: the only way to become a billionaire is by exploiting people I think the "principle of charity" or "steel-man" criticism of billionaires isn't that every single billionaire is directly exploiting people. It would be closer to something like this: The problem is that our society has feedback loops that make it hard to escape poverty, and feedback loops that let the wealthy amass more…

Which billionaires have become billionaires without exploiting their labour? Who's becoming a billionaire outside of the ownership class?

I suspect most of the workers for Ray Dalio, James Simons, and David E. Shaw would strongly disagree with the characterization that they are being exploited.

Disclaimer/source: I worked for D. E. Shaw & Co and have close friends who work at RenTech. My personal experiences were amazingly positive and friends at RenTech say similar things.

Re: Billionaires Build

#609

Post by arrosenberg » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

robswc wrote: post #569

arrosenberg wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the government has enough money, maybe it doesn't. It's the structural disparity that Jeff Bezos' wealth represents that is the problem. His wealth also gives him disproportionate power to shape the incentives of the government, the economy, and the media narrative. Taxation is the proper remedy for breaking this power. We won't know what's possible until we stop letting barons write the laws.

>Maybe the government has enough money, maybe it doesn't. This is exactly the problem I have with this "taxing the wealthy will fix it" arguments. What happens if it is the latter? What happens if taxing the rich doesn't fix it and actually makes things worse? >His wealth also gives him disproportionate power to shape the incentives of the government, the economy, and the media narrative. Disproportionate to what? >T…

> What happens if taxing the rich doesn't fix it and actually makes things worse?

How is it going to be worse if Jeff Bezos is worth $50,000,000,000 instead of $180,000,000,000? I don't get it - America doesn't have a Communist party, what are you picturing happening here?

> Disproportionate to what?

Me. If he wants a policy to change, he has lobbyists and the Washington Post. If I want to change a policy I have to spend my whole life building a coalition. That's unacceptable for a democracy or a fair capitalist economy.

Lots of "what if" and narrow examples here, but we've tried this experiment before, in this country. It worked really well! Economic prosperity, a broad middle class — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal. We've also seen some really gruesome examples of what happens when concentrated wealth is allowed to run amok for too long — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I.

Keep nitpicking individual policies, you are missing the bigger picture.

Re: Billionaires Build

#610

Post by hnracer » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

thiagotomei wrote: post #277

hnracer wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Familial wealth disperses and collapses pretty quickly, eventually being split up between 2 to the n heirs thereabouts. Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. If they want to give it all to their kids, to a charitable cause, or just destroy it, that should be their right as owners of that property, it is not just for the state to steal that propert…

This is a common hard-libertarian talking point. Consider point 13.6 of Scott Alexander's (Slate Star Codex) Non-Libertarian FAQ: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta... If you assume that "individual property earned through voluntary exchange" is the ultimate value to be upheld, you may end up having to defend a hellscape world. You need at least to temper it with something along the lines of…

I fully agree with this, I see it as one value to be upheld among many others in a Pareto-like trade-off. Optimizing for only a single value is going to lead to pathological outcomes as you rightly point out.

But I do consider it an important value since a lot of the motivation behind redistribution is self interest and jealousy (this is a finding in social science research), benelovant compassion only explains a small proportion of the variation.