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Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

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Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#191

Post by ryandrake »

colpabar wrote: post #103

Does anyone seriously believe that if the US gov levied this tax that it would actually use the revenue in an efficient way? Remember when they "lost" 2.3 trillion dollars? $2,300,000,000,000. Whoops! As an aside, this [1] was extremely depressing to read. I was aware of the 2.3 trillion around 9/11 (what a coincidence!), but had no idea about the more recent discrepancies. [1]: https://www.city-journal.org/html/amer…

Honestly, I don't really care if the government even uses the money. Even burning the money in a furnace would be beneficial, as the act would at least take a small bite out of inflation. The point is to move away from the status where the richest 1% of the population owns 35% of the country's total wealth.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#192

Post by MichaelRazum »

bcrl wrote: post #73
MichaelRazum wrote: post #40

Honestly so much time is spent on taxes. In terms of avoiding, discussing and modifying. Will there ever be a simple and easy solution?

That's because it's not a discussion about taxes - rather, it's a discussion about the inequity present in capitalism as currently implemented.

Exactly. But nothing new. That stuff existed since mankind exists. Still we didn’t figured out a solution.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#193

Post by ben_w »

david927 wrote: post #165
dcolkitt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk was worth more than $20 million before taking over Tesla and SpaceX. Jeff Bezos was worth more than $20 million before Amazon started AWS. Sergey and Larry were worth well more than $20 million before Google launched Gmail. Jack Dorsey was well more than $20 million before starting Square. Stephane Bancel was worth much more than $20 million when he became CEO of Moderna. Steve Jobs was worth much more than…

- Elon Musk took over Tesla and SpaceX. He was not the innovator there. - Did Bezos think of AWS? I think not. It was literally selling excess processing capacity. - Gmail was not innovative; it was just a better client. Web-based mail had been around for a while. - I'm not sure how innovative Square is but I don't think any of it would have to do with Dorsey. - The NeXT was based on innovation coming from Alan Kay.…

> Elon Musk took over Tesla and SpaceX. He was not the innovator there.

I remember before Tesla: electric cars were a joke, nothing more. Even if the only thing Musk did was convince rich people they were not-terrible, this was worth it. (Same RE: the iPod, which was infamously dismissed on slashdot, yet did in fact revolutionise the MP3 player market).

When it comes to SpaceX, however, Musk is an actual rocket scientist.

And of course, the iPods being popular created a lot of jobs that would otherwise not have existed, both for rich people like us and for the industrialisation in the same area as the Foxconn factories in China)

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#195

Post by AnimalMuppet »

IgorPartola wrote: post #178
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation also needed for the opposite position - that the government will use the money well.

Sure. But here is the thing: what consequences to billionaires face if they use their wealth in stupid and unproductive ways? At least for the government we have some recourse (elections, protests, public hearings).

But to the degree that the reason for doing this is "the rich shouldn't have that much money", to that degree there's no pressure on the government to use the money wisely.

And I don't like your question. Sure, billionaires can use their wealth badly. Why should they face consequences (other than no longer having what they have wasted)? That someone could misuse something is not a reason to take it from them and give it to someone else who could also misuse it. That is, I don't like your question because it implies that they should only be allowed to keep it if they are using it "properly". I think that the rule of law calls for a higher bar than that before taking peoples' stuff.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#196

Post by randomhodler84 »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #5
david927 wrote: post #3

Until there's a wealth floor -- until everyone is fed, sheltered and has access to education, there needs to be a wealth cap. We, as a collective humanity, should not allow anyone to have more than, say, $20 million, until the basic needs of others have been met.

The problem is that inflation destroys the value of money quicker than you realize. Nice houses can cost $30M in alpha cities. $20M is a goal post that will need to be moved regularly. It’s too difficult to say what is “enough”.

How about this — we all agree that the entirety of wealth in the universe is made up of 21 Million bitcoin. Then the wealth cap is 21 million bitcoin. Of course, nobody can have it all, in fact, if they try they will only drive up the relative cost per unit.

If this seems insane to you, consider the insanity of trying to define a fixed container size with an infinite flow of water.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#197

Post by ryandrake »

eightysixfour wrote: post #71
yayr wrote: post #45

This may be unpopular, but the hard thing in this discussion is to differentiate between consumption and investment. It does not help much to take wealth in terms of equity paper money away from people who know how to invest it efficiently and distribute it. On the other hand, there are minimum basic needs for consumption of food, health services, shelter, education etc. I agree that the system to finance those servi…

While I think you hit the nail on the head, I think what we're seeing is a belief that the money being invested by billionaires is not doing anything useful, that's why people are calling for it to be taken by the government and redistributed.

> I think what we're seeing is a belief that the money being invested by billionaires is not doing anything useful

I mean, is it doing anything useful?

"Money Invested" is basically a number sitting in a giant key-value store at a brokerage, associated with a stock ticker or some other ownership totem. If I buy 100 shares of Walmart, it's not like Walmart suddenly has an extra $15,000 in their bank account they can suddenly use to improve the world. Those 100 shares or $15,000 are not really doing anything useful. They're ones and zeros in a database associating my name with a number and the string "WMT".

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#198

Post by ericd »

jayjader wrote: post #179
ericd wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company value is decreased when earnings are dividended out “into your wallet” or paid out in salaries, so I’m talking about neither.

obviously, just like I'm talking about what you _do_ with the increase. Are you really just saying to leave the increase in value alone? Then why pursue it? I'm under the impression that an increase in company value is not an end to itself, it's a means to an end (more investment, more dividends, higher sell-off/buy-off price, increased stock price, etc - all are more probable when company valuation increases). So wh…

Basically, for most founders past the point where material comfort stops mattering, I think it’s power. The power to do what you want in the world. More ambitious projects, especially. Eventually that can get to extreme heights, like trying to design rockets that go to Mars, or trying to stamp out malaria.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#199

Post by simonh »

david927 wrote: post #135
simonh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose that's the only person who knows how to grow and harvest coconuts, and those coconuts are the seeds for next year. That's what real economies look like, not the simplistic naivety of so many Marxists who think that everyone is equally good at managing resources, and spreading out resources equally is just as good as investing them strategically. There are no simple answers to questions like this.

Billionaires building toy rockets when others starve is equivalent to "seed coconuts"? That's a terrible straw man. There have long been simple answers but we have been to greedy to look at them. We have been able to eradicate hunger, homelessness and educational poverty for a long time. We have just chosen not to. I find it funny that so many people are terrified of being capped to $20M/person and so few are concern…

The whole coconuts example is a terrible straw man, but I tried to make it at least a little less infantile and look at least slightly like economics.

Yes these problems have been solvable for some time, but it’s not billionaires stopping that happening. Their job is creating companies, jobs, products and services not ending poverty. We have the resources in the public purse already. Richard Nixon came very close to announcing a basic income.

The problem is political. Too many Marxist on the left that are economically illiterate and don’t know how wealth works or even what it is (hint it’s not piles of money); and too many radical libertarians on the right that think western European style liberal welfare is communism.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#200

Post by arrosenberg »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #164
arrosenberg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? It seems to me that if the rich fled, the vacuum would probably be filled by smarter, more ambitious people who were being suppressed by incumbent wealth.

It won't be just the rich. It will be people like me who are upper middle class and see the writing on the wall - who strongly suspect that, when taking wealth from the billionaires didn't give you enough money, you're going to start on the millionaires and then the hundred-thousandaires.

I generally take that as an empty threat for the following reasons:

(1) Strongly suspect based on what? There's 0 precedent for the scenario you suggested, but plenty of examples of right-wingers using this idea to scaremonger.

(2) Where are you actually going to go? European countries already take higher taxes, and most other countries have higher inequality and lower general standards of living than the US. I don't doubt that some of the wealthy consider themselves "global citizens", but the majority of people aren't going to leave their home country over marginally higher taxes - especially at today's pitifully low rates.

(3) Most of the upper middle class people I know will stop being hysterical about paying higher taxes after a moment, and recognize that a billion is 1,000x more than a million, and 10,000x more than 100K. American's don't hate wealth, they hate aristocrats, which is what the billionaire class has become. The same logic does not apply to people with "mere" eight-figure wealth.

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