You Are Jeff Bezos • Hacker News Board

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#21

Post by BitwiseFool » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #11

kardianos wrote: post #4

This appears to either be a sincere product of a socialist Utopian who doesn't understand basic physical processes and tax concepts, or a cleaver work of satire. I'm unsure which at this time.

I think it's pretty a humorous method of stating what many progressives have been saying for some time: Being a billionaire is inherently immoral. That you simply cannot accumulate that much wealth without underpaying or overcharging others. I think the creator is aware that stock holdings are not legally bound to the income tax rate. That's not the point of the simulation. The point is that the rich have vehicles fo…

>"Being a billionaire is inherently immoral."

No it isn't, and that's no a self-evident assertion. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much.

>"without underpaying or overcharging others"

This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massively complex and chaotic as an economy there is no way for any business to pay/charge the "right amount". Not only is the fair amount an unknown value, anything resembling a fair price is only discovered through overpaying/underpaying until prices regress to some middle ground. And then something inevitably happens in the world that necessitates finding a new value and the process begins again.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#22

Post by triceratops » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

leesec wrote: post #9

marcellus23 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that much more complicated than that — politics-wise, sure, but all you really need is housing and money to solve homelessness.

I wonder what kind of incentive it would create if we just started giving homeless people houses

Housing, not houses. And they don't own the property. In most programs like this, the person gets a single room or (if they have a family) a small apartment. It's considered temporary - only until they can get back on their feet financially.

It's still only one step above complete destitution. Most people would prefer better and would still work hard.

It's a lot easier for a person to get a job, or beat any personal issues they have if they have a stable, safe roof over their heads. You gotta give people boots so they have bootstraps to pull themselves up by.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#23

Post by belval » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

marcellus23 wrote: post #7

iliekcomputers wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great observation. I'd really like to hope it's satire. >You eliminate homelessness in the United States. Every person living in the US now has the guarantee of a roof over their head. >This costs you $20 billion, or a trivial 12.8% of your starting net worth. You still have $136,000,540,000. I really really wish it was that easy.

It isn't that much more complicated than that — politics-wise, sure, but all you really need is housing and money to solve homelessness.

Of course it is! The market doesn't have 20B$ worth of contractors to build homes so just by injecting that much money your house prices will increase, making it hard for everyone else to build their own home.

To get 20B$ in actual money to pay the above-mentioned contractors, you need to sell an additional 7.4B$ in shares (to pay the taxes). Selling 27B$ of your portfolio would inevitably mess with Amazon's stock price, the value of the company would tank and now your 20B$ endeavour effectively cost you 40B$ (remember he doesn't have 136B$ in currency in a vault).

Those homes that you are building needs to have clean water and will consume electricity, this is a maintenance cost that homeless people might not be able to afford so there is a yearly price to this endeavour unless you want to go back to square one. On top of that, the grid can't handle the surge that all these new homes require, you need to scale the producing capacity. This puts an additional strain on the global supply chain, again raising your prices.

Of course the above is just one big conjecture, but the point I am trying to get across is that it is never simple when these amounts of money are involved because other constraints will emerge that will limit what you can do with your seemingly unlimited amount of money.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#24

Post by devoutsalsa » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

belval wrote: post #8

iliekcomputers wrote: post #2

I decided to "pay off personal taxes" >Here's where we get into the dicey business of what "personal worth" is, and how that translates to taxable income. >Answer: It usually doesn't, because rich people are master frauds and charlatans who exploit loopholes in tax code to avoid paying their fair share. >Jeff Bezos is worth $156 billion? You're using the top tax bracket of 37% and paying out $57.72 billion of that. Y…

This is just another piece written by someone who does not understand how income tax works and is unable to appreciate that this problem is actually complicated. If Jeff Bezos net worth increases by 1 billion over a year, he hasn't realized any of the actual gains and that profit it purely on paper. If he chose to live on 1M$/year then he only has to pay 370k$ in taxes that's how it works for you and me and that's ho…

The wealthy borrow against their assets at stupid low interest rates, and those loans are not subject to income tax. Got a billion dollars in stock? Borrow as much as you need to pay for that yacht.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#25

Post by unethical_ban » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #13

>"End homelessness in the United States (-$20 billion)" Wow! Someone tell congress. $20 billion is nothing to those folks. The solution was here all along! Were it so easy...

If we could just concentrate them in some kind of camp, it would make their administration so much more efficient.

But seriously, it creates serious ethical questions for our country. If someone is a public nuisance, has no place to go and no caretakers, no money, and the only alternative is jail, should we or should we not involuntarily commit certain people to mental hospitals or facilities to help them get clean, get counseling, and keep them off the streets?

Is it impossible to set up such a system with transparency reports, an adversarial watchdog for rights and patient advocacy, etc.?

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#26

Post by lovecg » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

noja wrote: post #19

belval wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just another piece written by someone who does not understand how income tax works and is unable to appreciate that this problem is actually complicated. If Jeff Bezos net worth increases by 1 billion over a year, he hasn't realized any of the actual gains and that profit it purely on paper. If he chose to live on 1M$/year then he only has to pay 370k$ in taxes that's how it works for you and me and that's ho…

> Does it mean that we should tax wealth? Absolutely not. If he takes out a loan guaranteed by his wealth, how should that be taxed?

By taxing the income he has to generate to pay off the loan. And yes, we should close the intergenerational loopholes.

Also, this is not as huge an issue as it was made out to be. Check out the actual income and taxes paid by some of the billionaires. It’s not clear why they would need to do the infinite loan trick on top of that.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#27

Post by betwixthewires » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

The person who made this doesn't have a single clue what they're talking about.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#28

Post by edge17 » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #12

iliekcomputers wrote: post #2

I decided to "pay off personal taxes" >Here's where we get into the dicey business of what "personal worth" is, and how that translates to taxable income. >Answer: It usually doesn't, because rich people are master frauds and charlatans who exploit loopholes in tax code to avoid paying their fair share. >Jeff Bezos is worth $156 billion? You're using the top tax bracket of 37% and paying out $57.72 billion of that. Y…

You are correct. Much of his personal wealth is equity in his companies, primarily Amazon. That’s tied up in Amazon’s business, not a piggy bank, and leaving that money in Amazon does leave it subject to rises and falls in the market valuation of Amazon. Realizing those gains from his initial investment and any subsequent personal investments in Amazon, or cashing out means selling on the market; and the act of selli…

Not really without moving the price of the stock. You can try it yourself by trading some illiquid securities. It goes with anything you trade - if you trade enough you move the price.

It's also not working capital, it's just a personal asset - albeit unrealized gains. Taxing unrealized gains is like you paying taxes for an increase in value in the house you purchased. Until you sell the house, you may not have the money to even pay it.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#29

Post by lapetitejort » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #14

belval wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just another piece written by someone who does not understand how income tax works and is unable to appreciate that this problem is actually complicated. If Jeff Bezos net worth increases by 1 billion over a year, he hasn't realized any of the actual gains and that profit it purely on paper. If he chose to live on 1M$/year then he only has to pay 370k$ in taxes that's how it works for you and me and that's ho…

> Does it mean that we should tax wealth? Absolutely not. I'm not so sure. Maybe we should. Wealth hording is a real issue. I'm at least open to the idea. I agree with the rest of your comment.

Taxing wealth acts as an incentive to spread the shares around the company instead of hoarding them. Don't want your wealth taxed? Let the workers enjoy the fruits of their labor.

The same goes for ~90% brackets. Don't want your salary to be taxed at such a high rate? Put that money into R&D or worker's paychecks.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#30

Post by leesec » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

Such an unrealistic game, doesn't have the option anywhere to create jobs for 1.3 million employees while also providing an immense service to the world.

I hope people really don't believe anything like the contents of this game, but I know some do.