Every time I see wealth inequality being talked about, I remember this quote:
"It's not greed that drives the world, but envy.".
Just Be Rich
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Re: Just Be Rich
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an expatriation tax for people leaving the US. It is one of the more clear cut wealth taxes that we have in the US.
Currently people owe capital gains tax on all their assets as if they were sold when they expatriate, which is pretty modest compared to any annual wealth tax. In my case, since being an arbitrageur or market maker means you pay income tax rates on all your gains, the expatriation tax is roughly 0.
The marginal cost is 0.
But don't you lose out on a lot of benefits of citizenship as well (visa free travel, etc.)? If you want to trade in US markets you are still liable for US taxes regardless.
As a US citizen permanently living abroad, I'm really annoyed at having to file, but I'm not even contemplating renouncing my citizenship.
Quite honestly, I pay slightly higher income taxes in the country I live in, and I'm happy to do it. If I were ever eligible for a wealth tax (besides the property tax almost all middle class people pay, which is very much a wealth tax), I would be fine paying it.
Re: Just Be Rich
#53A lot of people who are just as smart and motived as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will never be able to start their own companies and get rich. Because they have family obligations that take priority. Because they live outside high-income countries. Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prev…
While I agree to some extent with the point your trying to make, the way you phrase and portray this sounds like more of an excuse than a strong argument. >Because they have family obligations that take priority This is on you. If your serious about it you should see this coming. Elons familial situation isn't exactly all flowers and roses. A lot of my friends who managed to start successful business started yong pre…
Well, I don't want to present my view in an absolutist manner, but there is a lot of survivorship bias in success stories.
People tend not to note positive environment factors if they lived all their lives with them. And if you got burned through externalities beyond your control, you tend to be a bit sceptical on fairness of the game.
Last, but not the least - "don't do anything stupid" is easy post-hoc, but think of your teenage mistakes and consequences of "doing stupid" during those years.
Re: Just Be Rich
#54It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
It was the epoch of self-made tech billionaires, it was the epoch of stagnant median wages.
It was the season of free knowledge, it was the season of credentialism.
It was the spring of Hope, it was the winter of Nope.
Re: Just Be Rich
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Currently people owe capital gains tax on all their assets as if they were sold when they expatriate, which is pretty modest compared to any annual wealth tax. In my case, since being an arbitrageur or market maker means you pay income tax rates on all your gains, the expatriation tax is roughly 0.
The marginal cost is 0. But don't you lose out on a lot of benefits of citizenship as well (visa free travel, etc.)? If you want to trade in US markets you are still liable for US taxes regardless. As a US citizen permanently living abroad, I'm really annoyed at having to file, but I'm not even contemplating renouncing my citizenship. Quite honestly, I pay slightly higher income taxes in the country I live in, and I'…
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Re: Just Be Rich
#56"tons of people are struggling to meet their basic needs"
That's just not true. There are billions less people struggling to meet their basic needs now, than there was in 1982.
World is much more equal now than it was in 1982.
Re: Just Be Rich
#57The author says that middle-class incomes have dropped since the 1980s, but the associated graph: (1) is pertaining to wealth, not income. (2) shows that middle-class wealth has increased since the 1980s, not "decreased"
The graph shows that middle class wealth increased from 1983 to 2001, then decreased from 2001 to 2016. The latter period (with the decrease) is the most pertinent considering the Graham essay is from 2021 and called "How People Get Rich Now " (emphasis mine).
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Re: Just Be Rich
#58Inequality by itself is not a bad thing. Let's start from there. If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic.
Inequality is only bad if you're in a zero-sum game. The rich do have the power to extract rents and "rig the system" to cement their wealth and power. Those are things Graham is clearly against. But an entrepreneur who gets rich by reducing waste and improving productivity by harnessing technology deserves our praise. They're not causing the "poor to get poorer".
And comparing the wealth distribution of today to that of 1980 is pretty silly. We're in a global economy now, so if you want to be fair, you need to look at it from a global perspective. Almost all Americans are going to fall in the top 10% of earners globally. And global poverty has collapsed since 1980. Yes, you no longer get a comfy middle class life just by virtue of being born in the US (regardless of skills) anymore. I personally don't believe that an unskilled worker in the US deserves to be paid 10X what an equivalent worker in Bangladesh makes just because they were lucky enough to be born here.
Re: Just Be Rich
#59Every time I see wealth inequality being talked about, I remember this quote: "It's not greed that drives the world, but envy.".
I hate that quote. Personally I’m not envious of the rich, I despise them. I hate the fact that there are rich people, not because I want to be one some day, but because they ruin the party for the rest of us. The climate disaster is disproportionately the fault of the rich, yet it is the poor who are disproportionately affected by it.
I don’t envy the rich. When I see the rich, I see pitiful humans that work too much, that have a miserably family life, who hate dogs, and have ugly houses built for them. If I ever become a person like that, I would hate my self.
Re: Just Be Rich
#60In the United States, the measures we use for income inequality are outrageously flawed In almost all measures of the Gini coefficient two significant flaws exist: 1. Incomes are counted on a pre-tax basis 2. Incomes are counted on a pre-government transfers basis The consequence of this is that income inequality appears to be increasing _regardless_ of the level of social subsidies and redistribution. When you corre…
These are not so much "outrageous flaws" but conscious and reasonable choices. For example, not counting things like SNAP as income makes sense because a government policy targeted at reducing inequality is not the same as that inequality not existing.
It is far more desirable for those programs to be minimized by eliminating the inequality in the first place.
Also, keep in mind that Gini is most useful as relative index.
Making the changes you suggest would obviously result in a better number in the US, but when recalculated for all thee other countries it would not change the situation much.
In fact, since both taxes and the social safety net are low in the US, it would probably drop the rankings.