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California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

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Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He as a human is worth exactly the same as the workers, of course. But that changes nothing about his right to the wealth he created. The others could create their own wealth, Bezos wasn't in a privileged position when he started. If his money gives him political power, the solution is to fix the political system, not steal his money.

> But that changes nothing about his right to the wealth he created. I'm not talking about his worth as a human being, but exactly about his contribution to the wealth he now owns. His individual contribution to that wealth is not 188 billion times greater than that of any of his employees. It's just that the entire economic and political system as it exists today allows him to extract much more wealth from the enter…

> His individual contribution to that wealth is not 188 billion times greater than that of any of his employees.

It's all in the realm of "numbers to big for our primate brains to comprehend" anyway, but Amazon as a whole only pulls in as much _revenue_ as 13 million warehouse workers, 14 thousand times less than you're implying.

Beyond that, Amazon has over a million employees. Using a simplistic model of their contributions that Bezos is irreplaceable and each worker is fungible, you'd get Shapley values for the whole organization along the lines of Bezos getting half and the workers splitting the rest. In terms of profits before wages the workers are getting far more than half, and even in terms of revenue before expenses they're only getting a few times less than half. As a crude ballpark, compensation doesn't seem to be disproportionate.

Valid counter-arguments include Shapley values not being an appropriate way to allocate payment (which necessitates choosing which one (or more) of their payout properties you'd like violated, e.g. symmetry among equivalent workers or that payment should depend on value added), my model being so simplistic that it can't possibly be right even to an order of magnitude, declaring that even a factor of 2 is actually important in examining Bezos's income, etc. Appealing to a gut reaction based on numbers that are "obviously" too big is misleading at best.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#322
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I disagree with the whole idea of income taxes. You should be taxed for owning things, because the government enforces your property rights, not just for labor, for which the government doesn't directly contribute at all. I should be able to earn money for my labor without the government taking a fraction every time it moves around. Even if you move to the woods, you're still taking military protection fr…

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has had his house smashed into an all of his stuff stolen, none of which was recovered and no meaningful attempt to do so was made, I don't particularly buy the argument that government enforces property rights. In certain cases, maybe. But mostly property rights exist because we all kind of agree they exist, and we generally don't go burglarizing each other.

The point being made above about property rights is much bigger than “does my local police do a good job finding burglars?”.

The point is that the government maintains an entire system for tracking, resolving disputes, and enforcing ownership. Think about who has the final say in a dispute over whether you own your car or your house or your company. The government adjudicates ownership disputes and then enforces that adjudication via people with guns.

It’s easier to notice this system if you imagine the counter-factual: if you lived in a failed state, and you wanted to keep your your home or car you would probably need to hire some guys with guns.

(When you think about it this way, you notice that the “value” of the government’s “service” is much higher for people who own a lot rather than for those that own a little.)

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#323
post #272
post #68

Well I guess I'll take the apparently bold stance here that this isn't the end of Silicon Valley or California and yes this is fair and further, good. When people are getting 5-6% returns on investments (minimum), 0.4% is still not even stopping the rich get richer effect. Not to mention that it's almost certain no one here will ever be touched by this tax. If you're going to move where you live or significantly alte…

Thing is we’ve done the experiment and it doesn’t work. France had a wealth tax (called the ISF, impôt sur la fortune) and it never actually garnered the expected revenues. This is because wealthy French people moved to Brussels, where you still have a pretty nice city and you can still speak French. Macron got rid of it and there was a mini-crash in Brussels real estate as people move back. There’s nothing stopping…

Yes, but we've also run the race-to-the-bottom experiment and it doesn't pan out well either.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#324
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! California had had a lot of tax revenue over the last couple of decades but doesn’t seem to have much to show for it. Where is the explanation for how the money was spent, why it hasn’t paid off, and what would be different? As far as I can tell it’s not ‘earmarked’ it’s just more tax for the general fund. Also, Earmarks have never been trustworthy so it wouldn’t matter even if it were earmarked.

The California state budget is here, in pretty good detail: http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/budget/2020-21EN/#/BudgetDetail Reports here go back over 10 years, so there's plenty of data to analyze.

It shouldn't be the responsibility of the taxed to analyze the budget. If the government proposes a higher tax, they need to be transparent about where the shortfalls are that require such a tax, so those paying the tax aren't left guessing.

People want to know how their tax money is going to address society's problems. Is that so much to ask?

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#325
I think this whole thing could be simultaneously more palatable, more progressive and actually more effective if it was coupled with a commitment to actually meaningfully redistribute the proceeds, rather than just treat them like any other part of the general fund.

The UK has discussed the idea of a "Universal Inheritance", provided to young adults, from a dedicated sovereign wealth fund. Their proposal was that the whole thing should be funded by inheritance taxes, but I don't see why a wealth tax wouldn't be just as appropriate. California already has CalPERS and CalSTRS. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/universal-minimum-inher...

If the motivation of a wealth tax is to decrease actual inequality, that goal might be more tangible putting cash into the hands of a 20 year old kid than being poured into some mismanaged capital project.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#326
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! California had had a lot of tax revenue over the last couple of decades but doesn’t seem to have much to show for it. Where is the explanation for how the money was spent, why it hasn’t paid off, and what would be different? As far as I can tell it’s not ‘earmarked’ it’s just more tax for the general fund. Also, Earmarks have never been trustworthy so it wouldn’t matter even if it were earmarked.

The California state budget is here, in pretty good detail: http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/budget/2020-21EN/#/BudgetDetail Reports here go back over 10 years, so there's plenty of data to analyze.

Unless I’m missing something that just gives an apportionment of money to departments.

It doesn’t have any data about what the goals of spending that money was, not what the outcomes have been relative to those goals.

On it’s own it’s essentially useless for determining whether more or less money should go to any of those departments, let alone the state as a whole.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's why they put in the provision that you have to keep paying the tax for 10 years after you move.

That's probably the stupidest part of it, because then you convince all the people who imagine they're going to be Elon Musk in ten years that they should leave California immediately.

The interesting part is the next question you have to ask yourself- could Elon have built what he did somewhere else?

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#328
post #311
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is we’ve done the experiment and it doesn’t work. France had a wealth tax (called the ISF, impôt sur la fortune) and it never actually garnered the expected revenues. This is because wealthy French people moved to Brussels, where you still have a pretty nice city and you can still speak French. Macron got rid of it and there was a mini-crash in Brussels real estate as people move back. There’s nothing stopping…

Is this also your perspective on something like unit testing when your first regression slips through? No, you fix it. Law is code, and needs tuning. When people as so inclined to give up on first failing, then I feel it says more about their underlying worldview than it does about what's possible in the world.

I'd say taxes are less comparable to something that would justify a unit test and more comparable to UX. There's a huge human element that you're just never going to be able to fully control.

Entee is just outlining why this approach probably won't work, not saying we shouldn't adjust laws at all to serve all people. TBH, I think your comment says more about your worldview than his.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#329
post #68

Well I guess I'll take the apparently bold stance here that this isn't the end of Silicon Valley or California and yes this is fair and further, good. When people are getting 5-6% returns on investments (minimum), 0.4% is still not even stopping the rich get richer effect. Not to mention that it's almost certain no one here will ever be touched by this tax. If you're going to move where you live or significantly alte…

The taxes from the "1930's-1970's" were not particularly high, that is a misunderstanding of how the structure of the tax code has changed. Net of deductions, taxation hasn't changed that much. You can't look at the nominal tax rates in isolation while ignoring the scope of deduction against those rates. Eliminating deductions for high-income earners while reducing tax rates on that income is revenue neutral, and gen…

The evidence for this is that federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has been 15-20% since World War 2. Massive swings in tax policy have not changed this number, proving that those policy changes were more restructurings than tax cuts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#330
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is we’ve done the experiment and it doesn’t work. France had a wealth tax (called the ISF, impôt sur la fortune) and it never actually garnered the expected revenues. This is because wealthy French people moved to Brussels, where you still have a pretty nice city and you can still speak French. Macron got rid of it and there was a mini-crash in Brussels real estate as people move back. There’s nothing stopping…

I think that's why they put in the provision that you have to keep paying the tax for 10 years after you move.

There's zero chance that gets enforced.
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