Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wealth Shown to Scale

mkorostoff.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 147 posts

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#61

Post by ollifi »

matesz wrote: post #37
vishnugupta wrote: post #23

I'm learning economic concepts so some of my notions and questions end up being naive. Would appreciate if someone could clarify/answer this. It's a fair guess that vast majority of Bezos's wealth is in Amazon equities. Which are valued as such by the participants in US equity market. A thought exercise, what would happen if he were to liquidate all of that $180+B in equities? Safe to say he will get less than $180B…

People are keeping wealth in holdings because they are not taxed. If they would liquidate they would have to pay let's say for the sake of the argument half of it as tax. I don't think market is a problem here. The bigger problem is what are you going to with that money? Obviously not consumption. You are not going to buy more tshirts and burgers. You are going to invest in pet projects, like google glass or Bezos co…

Why 50%? Assuming we are talking about Bezos and AMZN the max tax would be 20% for long term capital gains?

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#62

Post by refurb »

dillondoyle wrote: post #25
kortilla wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely it. Any taxes on just the ultra wealthy raise so little money for the rest of the population that any large scale money raising requires taxes on doctors, lawyers, engineers, small business owners, etc. Pro-government spending advocates don’t like to emphasize this because people become a lot less supportive of these things when they see members of their own community getting hit.

I would say rhetorically that ex post facto (am i using that right? kind of like caused by definition) taxes on the ultra wealthy that don't achieve that aren't actually taxes that target the ultra wealthy, but rather just marketing. I think Biden has tried get ahead of that issue with his no higher taxes on 400k pledge. We'll wait to see the reality though.

Biden's promise has already morphed into "household's making more than $400,000", not individuals.

Suddenly all those dual tech worker couples in Silicon Valley are wealthy!

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#63

Post by refurb »

esarbe wrote: post #38
sooheon wrote: post #19

The rich aren't the enemy, rent-seekers are. They may overlap, and Bezos may be both, but wealth and capital on their own are orthogonal to justice. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHKZRLcW4AA1aju?format=jpg&name=...

Rent-seeking might not be the only problem. Worker exploitation is also a serious issue on my list. How on earth can someone defend not paying a living salary for a full time job? Add to that that the legal framework (talking about the USA) is seriously skewed to favor employers and disadvantages workers and any attempts to unionize. This has to stop.

What is a "living salary"?

If I'm a single mom with 3 kids, is the "living salary" the same as a single 20 year old who lives at home?

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#64

Post by kfprt »

durnygbur wrote: post #47
kfprt wrote: post #8

A society that is extreme in one category is likely to be extreme in other categories as well.

Europeans were very fond of killing each other in the first half of 20th century for the profit of the richest industrialists. Divide, agitate, conquer, reap the profits.

War is a Racket

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#65

Post by imtringued »

sooheon wrote: post #19

The rich aren't the enemy, rent-seekers are. They may overlap, and Bezos may be both, but wealth and capital on their own are orthogonal to justice. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHKZRLcW4AA1aju?format=jpg&name=...

I agree, Amazon isn't a public good. There is no way that Jeff Bezos owning Amazon shares makes me worse off.

Land is a public good. We have to compete for it but that doesn't mean private individuals should get a cut of the public wealth around the plot of land merely by owning it. It only makes sense to tax it or to turn it over to public ownership (the transition would obviously take decades).

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#66

Post by imtringued »

esarbe wrote: post #38
sooheon wrote: post #19

The rich aren't the enemy, rent-seekers are. They may overlap, and Bezos may be both, but wealth and capital on their own are orthogonal to justice. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHKZRLcW4AA1aju?format=jpg&name=...

Rent-seeking might not be the only problem. Worker exploitation is also a serious issue on my list. How on earth can someone defend not paying a living salary for a full time job? Add to that that the legal framework (talking about the USA) is seriously skewed to favor employers and disadvantages workers and any attempts to unionize. This has to stop.

Money is a public good as well. Money taken out of circulation is bad for the economy and drives a big chunk of economic problems in society. It's easy to tax so the valuation argument doesn't even make sense. There are companies with $100 billion or more in their bank accounts. That's a million paychecks that didn't happen.

Isn't it weird how it is possible to prevent other people from working by simply withholding money? Meanwhile we expect the people who couldn't work as a result of this withholding of money to keep working, we consider them lazy and not worthy of sympathy.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#67

Post by Folcon »

pydry wrote: post #28
vishnugupta wrote: post #23

I'm learning economic concepts so some of my notions and questions end up being naive. Would appreciate if someone could clarify/answer this. It's a fair guess that vast majority of Bezos's wealth is in Amazon equities. Which are valued as such by the participants in US equity market. A thought exercise, what would happen if he were to liquidate all of that $180+B in equities? Safe to say he will get less than $180B…

You're hypothesizing that he might want to spend 180 billion dollars in a single day ? If you don't assume that it makes no sense to assume he'd want to liquidate it all at once. Liquidity != wealth Illiquid wealth != unreal wealth. It's really odd how many people seem to have been led to believe it is equivalent though... I'm curious to know where they all picked up this misconception.

I mean that is broadly how we come to compare wealth, we don't spend much time going into the weeds of how that number came into being and what assumptions were made there. So I'm not surprised that some people think that of money.

That being said he has gone through a divorce, he did lose a good chunk of his assets pretty quickly. Sure it was just a reallocation of assets, but unless you specifically want all of that money in cash you don't need do actually sell it. Banks for example will give you cash against the value of shares, allowing you access to liquid funds while you're slowly selling the equity.

Anything specific cause you want to spend all of that money on will probably have a limit at which you can spend at, there just isn't enough stuff in the world or people offering services to absorb all that wealth instantly. Trying to cure all the world's diseases will very quickly consume all lab and relevant researcher capacity, which will only grow at the rate people start skill retraining to this new lucrative career.

So I'm not sure it matters? I mean assuming the underlying share value doesn't freefall for some reason.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#68

Post by onion2k »

vishnugupta wrote: post #23

I'm learning economic concepts so some of my notions and questions end up being naive. Would appreciate if someone could clarify/answer this. It's a fair guess that vast majority of Bezos's wealth is in Amazon equities. Which are valued as such by the participants in US equity market. A thought exercise, what would happen if he were to liquidate all of that $180+B in equities? Safe to say he will get less than $180B…

His wealth is locked up in some form which though is valued in USD won't translate 1-1 to other forms of wealth.

You should also consider that Bezos can access his wealth in more ways than simply selling his stock. It can be used as security against debt for example. Should Bezos decide he wanted to he could borrow many billions of dollars secured against some of his Amazon stock today (assuming his contracts with Amazon don't preclude doing that). Bezos could also donate stock to a charitable trust, which could then sell it with much less market disruption. Or he could use dozens of other financial mechanisms available for accessing his wealth.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#69

Post by LeonB »

sooheon wrote: post #19

The rich aren't the enemy, rent-seekers are. They may overlap, and Bezos may be both, but wealth and capital on their own are orthogonal to justice. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHKZRLcW4AA1aju?format=jpg&name=...

I’m surprised that people continue to share that graphic with a straight face.

If “rent-seeking” contributes to people becoming wealthy then the two notions don’t remain orthogonal. The chances of finding more rent seeker among the wealthy is far higher than more rent seekers among the non-wealthy.

Additionally the size of “problems” that a single low-wealth rent-seeker causes is not equivalent to the amount of “problem” created by a single high-wealth rent seeker.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#70

Post by Tycho »

I can think of no better illustration of the inequality in our society than this: the poor and middle class drink £5 bottles of wine purchased from Aldi, while the rich drink £50,000 bottles of wine. It’s truly shocking.
Post reply on HN