351–360 of 879 posts
All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…
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> "Yes, this is a big part of why there's now a common argument that unrealized (but very large) capital gains should be taxed." So how will the person pay for those taxes WITHOUT selling the underlining asset. This is a huge problem in startup land with something called AMT. Where you "on paper" are a millionaire but have no ability to sell your paper shares since the company hasn't IPO yet. I'd hate to live in a wo…
I would imagine that what would end up being implemented would be more nuanced. If most of your on-paper net worth is unsellable assets, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say those wouldn't be subject to a hypothetical wealth tax. Tax law has plenty of examples of various assets having unaccessed value until it's sold. Publicly tradable shares have value because I can sell them to someone for a fairly vi…
So if I purchase a home and it's my primary dwelling, and the fair market value of my home goes way up (like more than what my homestead cap is) - I should pay INCOME taxes on this UNREALIZED gain?
See why this is so bonkers.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally in favor of the super rich to pay more in taxes ... but they are not using any "loop holes" here or getting preferential treatment. It's just that they have radically way more unrealized gains than ordinary people do.
It'd be interesting if all those people who had huge unrealized Bitcoin gains had to start paying ordinary income taxes on it.
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No ones saying otherwise, what we're saying is raise the taxes to something reasonable. >You have equal access to the same infrastructure. Feel free to start a trillion dollar company. And this is such a lazy cop-out that ignores that Bezos had parents who funded his company (to the tune of half a million in today's money) during a time where he was in the right place at the right time. It insane how ignorant people…
Who cares if he had parents invest in his company?!? Why do people jump to that immediately trying to prove what an “evil” guy he is. Guess what...Bezos’s parents paid their taxes on their incomes and saved the money and chose to invest in their son. Why is that a negative? Right place at the right time - there were millions of people in their 20’s in the late 90’s, thousands had $250,000 in cash to start a business,…
I just think this money shoulda been paid in taxes so we could collectively solve problems instead of some guy hand picking a couple lottery winners.
Given current level of disfunction in the US government, I'll take Bezos just picking who he thinks can do the most good with the money.
edit:
And by this I meant things like paying for poor kids college tuition etc. I guarantee no one in the media will be talking about this story, and where Van Jones puts the money, beyond this press conference.
All the critics lobbing cynicism against Bezos, Branson, and Musk saying, in essence, that their money is better spent here at home reminds me of a wonderful scene from The West Wing when one character asks why we have to go to Mars: "'Cause it's next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of…
"we pioneered the west" --- ouch. I guess "pioneer" is one way to say "rape and pillage".
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Genuine question because I'm out of the loop: it looks to me like the "Bezos doesn't pay taxes" argument is just pointing out that most of his wealth sits in unrealized gains in amazon stock. When he sells stock, he pays taxes. Is there more to it that I'm missing? Is the prevailing argument that we should be paying taxes on unrealized capital gains?
You or me would sell stock and pay taxes. He borrows against the shares, which keeps his votes while cashing out non-taxable income.
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The Earth is going to die one day. The Sun will die too. There is no guarantee that intelligent life will survive on this single planet, even if we do a perfect job of taking care of it. Catastrophic, species-killing events can happen at any time. If we wish to ensure the long-term survival of the only intelligent life in the universe that we know about (as well as the survival of all the other creatures on Earth, wh…
I think part of the negativity is the expectation that we'll eventually screw up any other plant we inhabit as well. Which I think is true, unless we make some fundamental changes to our society. But I agree that it's important to make planetary colonization a priority now rather than waiting. We can -- and should -- develop the technology and expertise needed to build a settlement on Mars while simultaneously trying…
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I don't think it's really fair to lump Bezos, Branson, and Musk into the same bucket. Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that wer…
I agree, Blue Origin at least was thoughtful enough to use fuel that doesn't emit CO2. Branson is more likable but does seem like he's just trying to defend his title of being the eccentric billionaire, rather than thinking too hard about the future.
I thought that too, but apparently the BE-4 engine uses LNG :/
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Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy. False. I hate to be "that guy" but neither Bezos or Branson made it to orbit. Those were sub-orbital flights with parabolic trajectories. To use your analogies: If Tesla were the Ferrari, then Virgin Galactic and friends would be…
You're correct, but that doesn't really change the point I was trying to make Since you've edited your post, I'll respond to the rest. > But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves. If Bezos or Branson had sent someone else up in their place, does that really change anything? Sure, it's expensive and only the super wealthy can afford to go into space right now, but th…
And I think if they'd sent up other billionaires instead, it would have made no difference. The truth is that a lot of people are hurting badly, and to watch others do extravagant things that don't make a difference for the bettering of humanity now just pours salt on the 'wound' of poverty. For many people, it's visible proof of the gaps getting wider and wider.
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Person dies, wealth gets inherited at new cost basis, heirs pay off loans with new (higher) cost basis, tax revenue isn’t collected. At least that’s the model as I understand it.
I assume this means the banks are giving > 40 years loans? Isn't inheritance tax fairly high? A quick search says 40% federal, with around 20% state.