What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by refurb » Tue, May 25, 2021, 12:28 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #16

ceejayoz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intentional budget cuts and a harder target. https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea... > For now, the IRS says, while it agrees auditing more wealthy taxpayers would be a good idea, without adequate funding there’s nothing it can do. “Congress must fund and the IRS must hire and train appropriate numbers of [auditors] to have appropriately balanced coverage across all income levels,” the report…

Budget increases will not increase enforcement of rich, politically connected individuals. It will just increase the number of "low hanging fruit" middle-class people they will go after. Besides, many of the best tax evasion strategies are legal -- you just need an army of lawyers and a large pile of cash to deploy them.

Tax evasion is by definition illegal so not sure what you mean.

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

#162

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, May 25, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #157

alistairSH wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal... my peers (upper middle-class in the US) generally realize the taxes they pay fund all the stuff we rely upon to stay upper middle-class. Good public schools, roads, etc. We just want the rich to pay their fair share too. Or, if you're a jaded cynic, the rich are mostly just greedy sociopaths. They want to minimize their own tax burden and give zero fucks about the betterment of society. They got theirs,…

Roads and schools is always a cop out because that’s typically funded through property taxes. Maybe $5,000 per year.

> Roads and schools is always a cop out because that’s typically funded through property taxes

A significant share of road and school funding comes from the federal government, which doesn’t levy property taxes. Another significant chunk usually comes from the State, which in many states does not rely on property taxes.

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

#163

Post by edouard-harris » Tue, May 25, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #138

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 contrast of value creation against theft is a false dichotomy. Reframing the latter as "value capture" or "wealth extraction" and treating it separately from value creation gives way to a far more robust analysis.

I agree terms like "value capture" or "wealth extraction" would probably be more descriptive. But note that I only mentioned "things like theft" in the gp, so I think we're really talking about the same sorts of activities.

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

#164

Post by whydoibother » Tue, May 25, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #159

lapinot wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"…

> Thanks for the compliment. I guess you must know better than Picketty (he doesn't exactly say what i said Yes, he didn't say anything remotely like you said. It's disingenuous to cite Picketty as if he would support your position. > has been debunked time and time again that for individuals, fleeing a country because of taxes is minimal. Because the difference in taxation is minimal. I used to live in Panama, I've…

You are quick to insult people's intellect while spouting western propaganda.

People love to trot out the USSR as a failure, ignoring that a major part of that failure was due to Perestroika and Gorbachev.

As for Cuba, the US has waged terrorist campaign against them for 70ish years. Venezuela has had to deal with US interference and attempted coups as well.

You can't talk about communist/socialist societies and completely ignore the external forces acting against them.

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

#165

Post by lapinot » Tue, May 25, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

eloff wrote: post #156

lapinot wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's pretty clueless about how jobs are created in the economy.

Yes, i too believe you are wrong and want to express it without substance.

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

#166

Post by refurb » Tue, May 25, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #162

refurb wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roads and schools is always a cop out because that’s typically funded through property taxes. Maybe $5,000 per year.

> Roads and schools is always a cop out because that’s typically funded through property taxes A significant share of road and school funding comes from the federal government, which doesn’t levy property taxes. Another significant chunk usually comes from the State, which in many states does not rely on property taxes.

Ok, but even adding in federal and state contributions we’re talking about a fraction of all govt spending.

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

#167

Post by lapinot » Tue, May 25, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #152

lapinot wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"…

>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). Well true, he doesn't say exactly what you said, because he doesn't anything like what you're saying. Taxing wealth above the relatively low ceiling of 1M USD at 100% would be ridiculous. He is, though, in favour of a progressive tax system t…

How would you reduce wealth inequality without directly or indirectly limiting the maximum amount of wealth? I believe the citation of Picketty is appropriate given that. I believe that the main solution is indeed limiting indirectly, but that there should additionally be a hard cap on the wealth an individual is able to control. 1M, 100M, i could've said any number, it's not the point (i said 1M because that's probably a level above which your lifestyle doesn't meaningfully improve, you're just having more luxuous luxury). One deep problem with current capitalism imho is the implicit goal of unending growth. Putting a hard cap would break that down. It's the same thing for corporation: they always want/need to get larger. It's not useful for anybody but the owners and actually it creates wrong incentives: optimizing for relative efficiency (result/resources) with no regard for constants instead of minimizing absolute resources for a given fixed production goal.

Also i'm not really sure what's so "ridiculous" about it. I'm not saying the next president of random country should do that. But after sufficient transitioning, in a state of the economy where we have "tolerable" inquality, we should lock it with a hard cap.

To make it even clearer, i believe most "things" should have a cap on how much you're able to posess (perhaps with exceptional derogations, or additional taxation): the number of houses, cars, land, gas, plane travels, eletronics, clothes. For most people it wouldn't be a constraint as the cap would be on the level at which you can realisticaly use it personally, but i think achieving that would prove a deep shift in mentality.

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

#168

Post by akiselev » Tue, May 25, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

edouard-harris wrote: post #163

akiselev wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That contrast of value creation against theft is a false dichotomy. Reframing the latter as "value capture" or "wealth extraction" and treating it separately from value creation gives way to a far more robust analysis.

I agree terms like "value capture" or "wealth extraction" would probably be more descriptive. But note that I only mentioned "things like theft" in the gp, so I think we're really talking about the same sorts of activities.

Theft is only the most extreme and one sided example of what I mean by "capture" or "extraction." The best example (and most common) is salaried employment - many people produce far more value than they are able to capture in the form of a salary because they don't have enough leverage. Value is decoupled from currency even though we far too often use the latter to measure the former (IMO, I'm not an economist).

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

#169

Post by cube2222 » Tue, May 25, 2021, 7:34 AM UTC

symlinkk wrote: post #42

koheripbal wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is that Americans owe money on more income than the gov't is aware of, and if you're going to omit income, they want you to explicitly lie about it so you can be prosecuted for it.

They could still send you a bill that lists your income and has a note that says “If you had any income that is not reported here, report it on irs.gov/…. Failure to do so is punishable by …” This would make things significantly easier for 90% of the population.

That's exactly how it looks like in Poland.

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

#170

Post by mhuffman » Tue, May 25, 2021, 9:15 AM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #147

mhuffman wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

No, it is a wash, and so is your scenario. It is not a 2X gain. They both had an X and swapped it with each other.

In you scenario, I am poorer of hotdog buns and you are poorer of hotdogs, but I am richer of hotdogs and you are richer of hotdog buns.

You insinuate, but don't state, that maybe the completed hotdogs are worth more than either of the parts individually (ie. if I had one bun and one dog they would be worth less (together but separated) than if I put the dog into the bun), and maybe that could be true, but it isn't necessary.