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What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

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Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#141

Post by etherael »

gwright wrote: post #139
etherael wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's more about limiting the amount of power that a person can accumulate over others. Does this not beg the question why not just limit power itself rather than limiting wealth with the target side effect that the wealthy will not easily purchase power as a result? Why is almost the entire species seemingly addicted to the idea that the power itself is not the problem? You can erect regulations on the corrosive in…

One rationale for limited government is that there is a direct, positive correlation between the power ceded to government and the incentive to control/steer that power. By limiting the power of government you reduce the incentive to usurp or corrupt that power. An extreme example of this would be a dictatorial regime where control of the government becomes a life-or-death concern for warring groups.

I agree, that's what I'm getting at. But instead contrast that idea with the more broadly accepted one that it's wealth that's the problem not power even though the former seems like a much more accurate description than the latter.

Maybe it's just a bug in humanity; control the world with this one weird trick.

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#142

Post by pydry »

germinalphrase wrote: post #104
wpietri wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might consider that your "it's all broken" feelings are exactly what is desired by the people who have worked to hamstring the IRS and generally tilt things in their favor. The more cynical individual voters are about the system, the easier it is for people with money and power to shift outcomes to the ones that benefit them. It's the political equivalent of a FUD strategy.

Next, you’re going to tell me that social security isn’t going to collapse any day now…

They've been saying it since the 30s. I guess eventually it has to collapse!

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#143

Post by mhuffman »

edouard-harris wrote: post #127
internetslave wrote: post #13

I have a conspiracy theory that there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe, also that most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich.

> there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe This is almost certainly true — apart from oligarchs, dictators, and crypto billionaires, it's broadly understood that "500 richest" lists also miss a fair number of anonymous Omaha residents, for example. > most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich I think this part is probably a mischaracterization (though I could also just be misinte…

>That means to the extent you believe the "prop them up" part of the theory, you must also believe that most wealth concentrations arise more from things like theft, and less from things like value creation. My experience has been that this seems untrue today and almost certainly becomes more untrue every year (but I do understand that reasonable observers may disagree).

It is pretty well demonstrated and accepted that both IQ and talent (in anything, business, sports, art, whatever) have a Gaussian (normal) distribution, but wealth does not. It has a Pareto (power) distribution.

So there is something more than just offering value (ie. the results of talent or IQ or even work) that contributes to the accumulation of wealth.

Some of this has to do with the "Snowball Effect" where it is easier to make more money at a faster rate, the more money you have.

But even that doesn't really get to the heart of the issue.

There is another surprising effect at play!

In a non-sophisticated version (ie. the version everyone is taught in the beginning economics classes) of economics, there is an assumption that someone pays money that they believe is equal to value of some thing that they want. And if this is true, no wealth actually changes hands. You paid $X for something that is worth $X to you ... and maybe others and the person that sold it to you got $X of value which is what they thought it was worth selling it at. The seller is richer by $X but you are richer by something worth $X, so it is really a wash.

But we have to pretend in this case that both sides know the worth of the item in question. And this is almost never the case!

If we allow for whoever "misjudges" the value to be the "loser" and the other to be the "winner" in the exchange as measured by one or the other getting a little more value out of the deal than the other, then something magical happens.

If you play out this scenario (and you can model it yourself in your favorite software) with many "agents" doing these deals, and if you give every single transaction a completely blind and fair chance of 50/50 of being the winner and loser in the transaction, and you do this many, many times ... one agent will always end up with ALL the money in the end!

And this is without theft (as the gp comment insinuated) and is also without there necessarily being any "real value" created (as you suggested).

There is very interesting and recent research in this area[1].

BTW, I used to think more like you than the GP comment (and I still don't really agree with the GP comment) but if you take the time to look into the research and understand the math behind what is going on, it is a real eye-opener and a different perspective on why wealth inequality seems to show up in basically every type of economy and society given enough time.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-ine...

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#144

Post by lapinot »

eloff wrote: post #131
lapinot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think any wealth (not income!) over something like 1M should be confiscated. :) There's no reason to have that much money and there's no way you personally have generated that wealth, most likely you just invested money early enough in something sucessful to extort money from it. This may sound provocating but it's actually quite a sound model, but which would also mean reconstructing what we mean by the economy...…

This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history. First off you can't buy a home in some parts with that kind of money. But that aside, you'd stifle most incentive to innovate, provide jobs, and live in your country. Anyone who thought they might pass your 1M limit will just leave to a country that doesn't do that. No offense, but I've never been interested in living in the U…

> This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history.

Thanks for the compliment. I guess you must know better than Picketty (he doesn't exactly say what i said, but does promote very aggressive taxation of capital, which is the same goal more gently said). Go study for yourselve before insulting right and left. I know i did, i'm reading monthly issues of "le monde diplomatique".

> First off you can't buy a home in some parts with that kind of money.

Perhaps instead of 1M$ you'd prefer if i say "the equivalent of 100K ton of wheat at retail price"? Obviously i'm talking from the perspective of my local living standard which is west-european 500M people city.

> No offense, but I've never been interested in living in the US

None taken, me neither.

> So if you chase away everyone with wealth you'll be left paying 100% of the taxes instead of 60% and with no jobs to pay them with. Good luck with that!

Ok so that's the only argument of your comment. It has been debunked time and time again that for individuals, fleeing a country because of taxes is minimal. Corporations do that. And it can be fought by taxing international transactions (which every sane economy but the EU does anyway). Yes, in the end, it becomes a frontal fight between the financial and industrial establishment and your local economy, which obviously will need some negotiation because they can hurt you, but let it be clear that without them, it would work quite well (and in reverse, in my economy, it would be quite hard to practically be capitalistic). I don't even want to eradicate capitalism, i'd just want to not mainly depend on it for living and tip the balance to a much more reasonable state.

> Look to Soviet Russia, Cuba, Venezuela for examples of how that plays out.

You realize that my arguments were communist-ish? You're not gonna scare me off pointing at these countries! Obviously things went bad because the liberals virtually control the world, so these countries had to fight for everything, which breaks at some point. And obviously i'm not defending dictatorship (and please note i'm not using this strawman of the numereous capitalistic dictatorship against you).

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#145

Post by importantbrian »

internetslave wrote: post #13

I have a conspiracy theory that there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe, also that most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich.

I've lived in Fort Lauderdale which is sometimes called the world's yachting capitol. After seeing my first boat show I was actually kind of shocked by the number of people in the "own a large yacht" wealth bracket.

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#146

Post by monkeycantype »

edouard-harris wrote: post #127
internetslave wrote: post #13

I have a conspiracy theory that there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe, also that most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich.

> there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe This is almost certainly true — apart from oligarchs, dictators, and crypto billionaires, it's broadly understood that "500 richest" lists also miss a fair number of anonymous Omaha residents, for example. > most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich I think this part is probably a mischaracterization (though I could also just be misinte…

hello Edouard,

> the aggrieved parties are the people he stole his wealth from, as opposed to, e.g., the waitress who ends up serving him drinks on a Caribbean island.

I understand your logic here, but I think in these scenarios we are all losing - if the dictator's money is the only game in town you have to play his game and by his rules.

When the efforts of the waitress, and all the other effort and resources directed to fulfilling the dictators whims, it creates a network of economic activities around a single person's will.

If that money was being spent by the population he stole it from, the choices of the spenders will be more diverse, reflecting the desires of a that whole population, this creates a more complex network of economic activity and it also means that people supplying that demand have greater choice in how they participate.

it reminds me of the ant article from the other day.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/05/ant-tape...

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#147

Post by alasdair_ »

mhuffman wrote: post #143
edouard-harris wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe This is almost certainly true — apart from oligarchs, dictators, and crypto billionaires, it's broadly understood that "500 richest" lists also miss a fair number of anonymous Omaha residents, for example. > most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich I think this part is probably a mischaracterization (though I could also just be misinte…

>That means to the extent you believe the "prop them up" part of the theory, you must also believe that most wealth concentrations arise more from things like theft, and less from things like value creation. My experience has been that this seems untrue today and almost certainly becomes more untrue every year (but I do understand that reasonable observers may disagree). It is pretty well demonstrated and accepted th…

> The seller is richer by $X but you are richer by something worth $X, so it is really a wash.

It’s NOT a wash though - 2X is a bigger absolute number than the sum of the two pre-trade inputs. Or put another way, if I trade some of my giant stack of hotdogs for some of your giant stack of hot dog buns, we are BOTH better off and value has increased.

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#148

Post by lapinot »

lapinot wrote: post #144
eloff wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history. First off you can't buy a home in some parts with that kind of money. But that aside, you'd stifle most incentive to innovate, provide jobs, and live in your country. Anyone who thought they might pass your 1M limit will just leave to a country that doesn't do that. No offense, but I've never been interested in living in the U…

> This is a terrible idea put forward by people with no grasp of either economics or history. Thanks for the compliment. I guess you must know better than Picketty (he doesn't exactly say what i said, but does promote very aggressive taxation of capital, which is the same goal more gently said). Go study for yourselve before insulting right and left. I know i did, i'm reading monthly issues of "le monde diplomatique"…

forgot to answer about jobs:

Jobs don't need to be "created". Either there's stuff to do for people to live correctly or there isn't. If there is, try to find people who'd like to do it. If nobody wants, either people don't really need it, or it's a chore and organize it fairly and locally (division of labour makes no sense for non-qualified chores, it's just a byproduct of inquality: i'm not taking out my neighboors trash, what we could do tho is mutualize our chores). Then distribute the result of this work fairly. Everything else than life-support can be done without too much constraints, but i strongly believe that even that won't "naturally" be too much capitalistic.

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#149

Post by andrepd »

watertom wrote: post #125
eloff wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's factually incorrect. It's easy to make a list of rich people specifically saying tax the rich more. Leaving that aside, the 1% pay 38.5% of taxes, which seems quite fair as is. We already tax the rich quite heavily. I'd rather the focus be on compliance. Close the loopholes and catch the tax evaders. Wealth taxes, if you look at examples elsewhere both present and historically, are hard to do well. I worry the…

The tax code is lopsided in favor of the rich, it's not about paying a fair share, it's about the burden of the taxes. The burden of taxes on the non-rich is significantly greater than it is on the rich. If I make $400K and I only need $75K to live, the burden of my taxes is negligible. If however I make $80K and I need $75K to live, taxes are an unimaginable burden. We fix the problem by evening out the burden, forg…

A surprising number of things wrong with the world today started in the Reagan/Thatcher/etc era.

I agree with the general sentiment of your post (though I disagree that capital and labour should be taxed the same way). I'll also add the following: implement an LVT. It is the most economically “efficient” tax there is, and morally perfect at the same time. Then with the money you collect through LVT you can lower income tax.

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#150

Post by andrepd »

ccn0p wrote: post #92
geggam wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leaving that aside, the 1% pay 38.5% of taxes, which seems quite fair as is. We already tax the rich quite heavily. Given the fact the top 1% hold 43% of the global wealth I think they aren't paying their fair share... There is no need for someone to have 100 billion dollars they an struggle by with 10 billion easy enough .. or even 1 billion https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/top-1-percent-of-household...

so what's fair? 50%? 60? who decides? when does it stop?

>who decides? when does it stop?

Us? The people? That's how you do decisions in a democracy.

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