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Wealth Shown to Scale

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Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#101

Post by sooheon »

LeonB wrote: post #78
imtringued wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> There is no way that Jeff Bezos owning Amazon shares makes me worse off. They use their market dominance to reduce the income of authors resulting in less choice and lower quality books for you to read, while increasing the price of available books. They use their vast wealth to buy out or strike deals with competitors, preventing any challenge to their hold on the industry. As market maker and participant they use…

Efforts to obtain monopoly rent ("supernormal profits by restricting output and hence increasing prices above its perfectly competitive level."[1]) is a subset of rent-seeking. The problem again, isn't the wealth itself, it is the fact that wealth is being expended to seek monopoly rent at great social cost.

[1] https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/assets/pdf/SER/1995/Alan_Dunne....

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#102

Post by cloudfifty »

refurb wrote: post #63
esarbe wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Pretty low quality question. Of course the salary will not adapt according to individuals expenses and neither will it here in Scandinavia. However, the father will of course be obliged to pay child support. The mother will also receive a monthly allowance for each child. She will also likely be eligible to rent support. So children is a special case, but a living wage doesn't involve that.

How did you think this would actually work?

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#103

Post by rogerb »

A lot of the comments (not all) really personalize the issue by using Jeff Bezos as the villain, when it's the system and laws that have allowed him to capture so much wealth that is the problem. And IMHO, that's the part that needs addressing, by putting a progressive tax in place.

Jeff's not the enemy - he's been amazingly successful within the rules that we as a society have made. Some of these rules are oppressive and bad and we should fix them.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#104

Post by LeonB »

sooheon wrote: post #92
LeonB wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 “prob…

I agree with all of your points and still believe that rent seeking is the root cause to be addressed, not wealth in and of itself. Wealth is just stored labor. It is value neutral, and everyone has the right to the fruits of their own labor. It is only rent, unjustly collected from others' labor via force or monopoly that is illegitimate.

Taxing the ultra-wealthy is possible, and they still get to be ultra-wealthy afterward. We already do it, the discussion is only “how much?” and what to do with the money. That’s a tractable problem. (Incidentally - the rich have been winning this argument for a long time, as their effective taxes fall and fall and fall.)

On the other hand, proving that a specific piece of income is “economic rent” - I think that’s intractable and only produces loss on both sides. It’s a fight to the death for the accused, a hill they’ll die on. The idea is appealing at a surface level but I can’t see any way forward with it.

Tax people who can afford to be taxed. The alternative is hardly going to work.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#105

Post by bb123 »

cloudfifty wrote: post #96
bb123 wrote: post #12

I disagree on the the thrust of the argument - that people (including comparatively wealthy individuals like doctors and lawyers) oppose changes to tackle wealth inequality because they don’t understand the gulf of wealth between them and the ultra rich. In my experience it has nothing to do with that - rather these people know that they will ultimately end up as the main target for any such law, not these billionair…

What this attitude says to me is that too many people have more solidarity with the ultra rich than their peers. Not to even mention those whose income is lower than their own. Hence, a tax on the ultra rich, is somehow very likely - in their mind - going to affect them as well. On the contrary however, a benefits cut, or perhaps a benefit grant, is just a waste of cash and will never benefit them somehow, even thoug…

Hah, I'm not from the US (I'm actually from one of those European nations you mention) and I see it from a different angle - the tax burden on higher income earners here is so enormous that people will find ways to work less to keep their earnings down, as the government just takes most of it. It has become a problem with doctors particularly - they will often opt to work fewer hours in order to earn less, as it simply isnt worth the extra time. This has made doctor access harder, which is a double disaster when you realise that the tax payer is the one who paid to train them in the first place. It is hard to argue that people paying tax in that bracket aren't doing enough already, and shouldn't be weary of any proposed increases in taxation.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#106

Post by pydry »

Folcon wrote: post #95
pydry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's slow because Bill Gates wants to spend the rest of his life spending his fortune. Your presupposition is seemingly that although he is doing this the wealth he is and will spend "isnt quite real" or "should be discounted" because he can't squeeze all that spending into one day. >Is that correct? Please, indulge me by answering this question directly. You did not answer the question. If you aren't at all concern…

Sorry, you added the question after I'd read and responded to a previous version of your question, I'm currently answering it.

Regrettably you still did not commit to a direct answer.

"I'm merely pointing out" was a response of evasive prevarication in spite of me asking you to be direct.

Three comments later all I'm reading is a very strong implication of disagreement with no concrete reasons mixed with a lot of sowing of doubt based on ancillary points.

I think this is a good time to end this discussion. If you do truly still disagree with me and wish to start again, please could you write a response to the parent comment with specific reasons? Thanks.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#107

Post by cloudfifty »

bb123 wrote: post #105
cloudfifty wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this attitude says to me is that too many people have more solidarity with the ultra rich than their peers. Not to even mention those whose income is lower than their own. Hence, a tax on the ultra rich, is somehow very likely - in their mind - going to affect them as well. On the contrary however, a benefits cut, or perhaps a benefit grant, is just a waste of cash and will never benefit them somehow, even thoug…

Hah, I'm not from the US (I'm actually from one of those European nations you mention) and I see it from a different angle - the tax burden on higher income earners here is so enormous that people will find ways to work less to keep their earnings down, as the government just takes most of it. It has become a problem with doctors particularly - they will often opt to work fewer hours in order to earn less, as it simp…

> people will find ways to work less to keep their earnings down

Even if that is true and significant, I don't really find high income people skipping overtime to be major problem?

But I'm curious to read more about the claim that doctors skipping overtime due to high taxes, can you share a link?

Furthermore, the aim can't be to institutionalise overtime through tax cuts (I don't believe it would work either and those would in turn have other effects) but to increase the amount of doctors.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#108

Post by bb123 »

cloudfifty wrote: post #107
bb123 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, I'm not from the US (I'm actually from one of those European nations you mention) and I see it from a different angle - the tax burden on higher income earners here is so enormous that people will find ways to work less to keep their earnings down, as the government just takes most of it. It has become a problem with doctors particularly - they will often opt to work fewer hours in order to earn less, as it simp…

> people will find ways to work less to keep their earnings down Even if that is true and significant, I don't really find high income people skipping overtime to be major problem? But I'm curious to read more about the claim that doctors skipping overtime due to high taxes, can you share a link? Furthermore, the aim can't be to institutionalise overtime through tax cuts (I don't believe it would work either and thos…

Sure: this is about a slightly different specific of taxation here, but its sums up the arguments the doctors have: https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/bma-says-the-chancel...

Also to clarify - it isn't about overtime. Previously full time (40 hours a week)doctors have switched to part time (2-3 days a week), to avoid hitting the 60% rate.

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#109

Post by opheliate »

refurb wrote: post #62
dillondoyle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Context: According to [0], $400,000 is in the top 1% of individual income across the US. It's in the top 3% of household income within California [1] and top 2% in SF/Oakland/Fremont [2].

0: https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

1: https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-state-calculator/

2: https://dqydj.com/2018-income-percentile-by-city-calculator/

Re: Wealth Shown to Scale

#110

Post by pydry »

dragonwriter wrote: post #87
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.

> 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. That's very much untrue. What is true is that no one even bothers reducing the favorable tax treatment of the ultrawealthy, only taxing high-end labor income and pretending. As long as both long-term capital gains and p…

>The reason that isn't done isn't that you can't raise enough revenue that way

Nah, it's coz any bill that attacks the ultrawealthy can be spiked to attack the moderately wealthy instead (ideal) or as well as (failing that it's better to make them allies).

This is where lobby $$$ really pays off - when tweaking the less overtly visible finer details of bills.

This pairs with a PR campaign of:

* We simply dont have that much money.

* You'd be better off not taxing it because then we wont innovate and then youll be sorry.

* We will leave the country entirely and then youll be sorry.

* You're next on the government hitlist (weirdly this one works even seems to on people who earn, like, $40k a year).

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