Take a good look at the Forbes 400. The vast majority of them are entrepreneurs and though a sizeable number made their money from the financial industry it's no where near a majority - not even close.
Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
21–30 of 207 posts
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#22This is encouraging. Want to know what a truly sick economy looks like? One where the top 1% inherited their assets/incomes. Ignoring the huge selection effects in talking about the top .1% of winners in the financial markets is silly.
What planet are you from? This guy's mega-rich clients are mostly from "financial services, real estate and government contracting".
All of those things are either indirectly or directly subsidized by the US taxpayer. So the public is borrowing money and these folks are capitalizing it. And the Republicans claim to not be in favor of redistribution of wealth!
The bizarre thing is that if you looked at an analysis like this 25, 50, 100, 150 years ago, the picture would be different. The robber barons of the past built things, employed people. Investment bankers lobby for regulation to drum up business, and gouge people for their services, whatever they are.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#23I already knew the about the vast disparity in the top 1% of earners, but I did not know how difficult it is to retire comfortably. A 30-year retirement is quite a luxury.
Who knew that 'Live fast, love hard, die Young' would also be a fiscally responsible lifestyle!
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#24This is encouraging. Want to know what a truly sick economy looks like? One where the top 1% inherited their assets/incomes. Ignoring the huge selection effects in talking about the top .1% of winners in the financial markets is silly.
What planet are you from? This guy's mega-rich clients are mostly from "financial services, real estate and government contracting". All of those things are either indirectly or directly subsidized by the US taxpayer. So the public is borrowing money and these folks are capitalizing it. And the Republicans claim to not be in favor of redistribution of wealth! The bizarre thing is that if you looked at an analysis lik…
Things aren't great. I'm not saying that. I'm not an apologist for the pretend free-market. I'm just saying this isn't the doom and gloom the original author or the vast majority of readers will probably think. WHat do you think 99% of human history looks like anyway? It looks like a boot stomping on a human face. Decrying the winners of the financial game, rigged though it is, as villains is just laughable compared to anything except rich white people problems.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that those examples are not great at conveying the main point he's trying to make, but let's consider for a moment that the top .1% evaluates to a larger number than 5. Maybe he was calling out notable exceptions, or maybe it's just a poorly edited piece of writing.
He was calling out notable exceptions... | but it's infrequent to meet one whose wealth wasn't acquired through direct or indirect participation in the financial and banking industries.
I don't think he was calling out exceptions. The paragraph intersperses people working in finance (or their ex-wives) with people not working in finance and draws no distinction between them.
"One client runs a division of a major international investment bank..."
In fact, one particular sentence lists both financial wealth and non-financial wealth:
"Another client with a net worth in the $10M range is the ex-wife of a managing director of a major investment bank, while another was able to amass $12M after taxes by her early thirties from stock options as a high level programmer in a successful IT company."
But maybe noahth is right, and the article is just poorly edited.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that it is possible for those that earn vast quantities of money more than your "standard joe" to pay _less_ tax on that considerably larger cash pile. The line about lobbying for a new corporate exemption on "repatriating" cash from either tax havens or anywhere else abroad at the pitiful tax rate of 5.75% compared to the base 10% that someone that works at a diner has to pay illustrates the issue rather we…
If a non-US citizen works at a diner in a tax haven or anywhere else abroad, and brings money into the US, they typically pay 0% tax (to the US) on that money. This is the analogous situation to non-US corporations (possibly owned by US corps) leaving profits overseas.
But typically, they are working there, not setting up a virtual office. If these super rich are working in the US, they should pay tax. If they are not working, why don't they deserve to be taxed?
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#27The author of this article seems to be trying to confuse things: Membership in this elite group is likely to come from being involved in some aspect of the financial services or banking industry, real estate development involved with those industries, or government contracting. What does "involved in some aspect" mean? ...built a small company and was acquired with stock from a multi-national. Stock is often called a…
+1. A lot of his examples have nothing to do with financial services.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tax avoidance. (The marginal rate of tax on capital gains is generally much lower than the marginal rate of tax on an equivalent earned income. The investment professionals who strike it big do so by engineering their income to arrive in the shape of capital. Tax it as income and suddenly a whole lot more tax revenue shows up ... and the Gini coefficient in the society in question drops a little bit.)
Taking advantage of capital gains might be tax avoidance from a certain point of view, but it's also a useful for helping grow wealth and the economy in general. Having large sums of private capital helps the economy-- how does it help it? By making it easy to borrow money, like the VC that so many HNers are seeking.
It is not even clear that it is tax avoidance. In most situations the capital gains preference is meant to mitigate, and in fact only partially mitigates, income taxation at the corporate level.
Preferences for real estate and investment managers in the form of carried interest...well, that's another story.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#29Possible self-rectification
Elite keeps serfs ignorant by providing no economics education.
Voters fail to grasp debt situation.
US soft defaults, inflation etc.
Dollar loses preeminence, 50% of value, the unwarranted part.
Massive inflation affecting all imports, which is most of what people buy, since America makes very little.
Inflation acts as wealth tax, and transfers value from old to young. Many factories move (back) to US. More jobs. Less inequality.
So, I think the demand for dollars from overseas investors who want safety really hurts the US. You could do all this without the evaluation if you would start seeing China as a threat and get protectionist now. Autarchy, in fact.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, what's the problem that you're solving?
The idea that it is possible for those that earn vast quantities of money more than your "standard joe" to pay _less_ tax on that considerably larger cash pile. The line about lobbying for a new corporate exemption on "repatriating" cash from either tax havens or anywhere else abroad at the pitiful tax rate of 5.75% compared to the base 10% that someone that works at a diner has to pay illustrates the issue rather we…
This is cash that was taxed once in the foreign jurisdiction at whatever prevailing rate was in effect there. With the exception of the US, nearly all developed countries have territorial tax systems at which the rate on those foreign profits would be 0%.
A repatriation holiday would be a huge (and poorly targeted, considering nearly the entire benefit inures to about 10-20 firms) giveaway, but it's only discussed in the first place because of our strange worldwide corporate tax system.