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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

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Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#451

Post by ttfkam »

roenxi wrote: post #431
ttfkam wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the wake of the 1929 crash and The Great Depression, a huge swath of regulations were put onto financial institutions so as to limit the riskiest investments with money in personal savings and checking accounts, aka Glass-Steagall. FDIC insurance was also born in this time. Prior to these changes, bank runs and financial crises occurred about every twenty to thirty years. By contrast there were none until the 1980…

> Prior to these changes, bank runs and financial crises occurred about every twenty to thirty years. That isn't in itself a bad thing. There needs to be a mechanism to punish people who give their money to charlatans and to reign in malinvestment. If there aren't occasional bank runs then that suggests an excessively cautious investment environment that is destroying potential wealth. Or a lot off government bailout…

Oh yeah, and Bitcoin mining alone is 2% of all electricity consumption in the US. Nonsense. Absolute insanity. The definition of wasted resources. Those are all EV vehicle charging numbers.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/over-2-percent-of-th...

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#452

Post by gottorf »

kagakuninja wrote: post #315
asadotzler wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual wants his class to be taxed. Telling the individual they can simply pay more does nothing for everyone else in the class. Your reply is unserious.

Not only do I want everyone in my "class" to contribute more to society, everyone significantly above me should be contributing a larger share. This is the basis of progressive taxation.

If we're just airing what we think about taxation, I think people with low incomes should pay more than they do currently in taxes, so that everyone feels like they have skin in the game. People generally don't take as much care of something that was dropped in their laps as something that they had to work hard for.

Currently, over half of all federal personal income tax collected is paid by under 5% of taxpayers, and the bottom 50% of income earners as a whole pay under 3% of all federal income tax collected.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#453

Post by gottorf »

poncho_romero wrote: post #207
lostlogin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adding this to my reading list. I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Wouldn’t a tax system that steeply ramps up, includes property and tends to it’s loopholes (family trusts, property etc) achieve most of this?

Yes I think so. I’m not the original commenter, but I’ve also landed on the idea of limiting wealth to the ballpark of $10-15 million, primarily using progressive taxation. The point is to prevent any one person or small group of people from accruing too much power within our democratic society or reaching levels where they stop using their wealth to contribute to the economy (by e.g. offshoring money).

> primarily using progressive taxation

It's all well and good to take away from the rich, but where does that tax money, once taken away, end up? You're saying it should be redistributed to those making less money, but what's stopping politicians from enriching themselves with that money?

> reaching levels where they stop using their wealth to contribute to the economy (by e.g. offshoring money)

Money in Cayman Islands numbered accounts generally only happens with illegally gained money (maybe by the likes of politicians I've described above), or by people in jurisdictions with harsh capital controls (like the sort you're describing). People like Bezos or Gates aren't stashing their money away like that. Most of the ultra-rich of America derive their net worth figures from ownership of publicly-traded companies.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#454

Post by roenxi »

ttfkam wrote: post #451
roenxi wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prior to these changes, bank runs and financial crises occurred about every twenty to thirty years. That isn't in itself a bad thing. There needs to be a mechanism to punish people who give their money to charlatans and to reign in malinvestment. If there aren't occasional bank runs then that suggests an excessively cautious investment environment that is destroying potential wealth. Or a lot off government bailout…

Oh yeah, and Bitcoin mining alone is 2% of all electricity consumption in the US. Nonsense. Absolute insanity. The definition of wasted resources. Those are all EV vehicle charging numbers. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/over-2-percent-of-th...

If people would rather burn 2% of the electricity in the US rather than deal with financial regulations, that does say something about the financial regulations. Although at this stage it is a bit unclear exactly what.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#455

Post by defrost »

gottorf wrote: post #452
kagakuninja wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only do I want everyone in my "class" to contribute more to society, everyone significantly above me should be contributing a larger share. This is the basis of progressive taxation.

If we're just airing what we think about taxation, I think people with low incomes should pay more than they do currently in taxes, so that everyone feels like they have skin in the game. People generally don't take as much care of something that was dropped in their laps as something that they had to work hard for. Currently, over half of all federal personal income tax collected is paid by under 5% of taxpayers, an…

> and the bottom 50% of income earners as a whole pay under 3% of all federal income tax collected.

What percentage of annual cash flow in the USofA do they earn?

Is it more than 3%?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#456

Post by gottorf »

shkkmo wrote: post #290
naasking wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy While I'm sympathetic to this ideal, I don't think it works. All you'd do is add all the inefficiencies of politics into business-level decision making. Democratic processes should be reserved for governing shared resources, like water and air, where independent decision making has pathologies, and independent hierarchical systems are goo…

You're aware that all publicly traded companies are run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders? The only change here is who limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved.

> run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders

The more shares you hold, the greater your voice, when it comes to corporate governance. It's not at all the same as the typical idea of democracy as "one person, one vote".

Would you rather corporate governance be more like a political democracy, where no matter if someone has 30% of the shares or 0.0001%, they get the same vote? Or, perhaps the other way around, you'd like to change a political democracy to:

> limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved

where suffrage is limited to people who work and contribute to society?

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#457

Post by jaredhallen »

ahepp wrote: post #374
ebb_earl_co wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my naïveté, but if it’s riskless, how are you getting interest from investing in it?

Isn’t that confusing cause and effect? You’re getting interest because they’re paying it to you. They wanted to borrow, and even if there’s no risk, you won’t lend it out for free.

One might argue about the relative value of interest rates vs risk, but all lending incurs risk. Maybe very little, but non-zero.

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#458

Post by gottorf »

vonjuice wrote: post #417
rockemsockem wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be better to have fewer entities allocating large chunks of capital?

Wouldn't it be the opposite? In a hypothetical country, if there's 1B dollars and no limit, one person could own the 1B and everyone else in the country be dirt poor. If there is a 1M limit, then one person could own 1M tops, and the rest of the money is still there. Therefore there would be more entities capable of allocating large sources of money.

This hypothesis presupposes the "manna from heaven" concept of wealth, which isn't how it works. Wealth is what people want[0]. There isn't a real limit to what people want, so there's no real limit to what wealth can be created, either.

Even on a deserted with five people, there isn't a fixed amount of wealth that can be divided over those five people. A fixed amount of land? Sure. Maybe a fixed amount of rocks and trees? Okay. But there's no fixed amount of the ingenuity and labor that is required to convert those natural resources into things actually desired by people, like a roof over one's head or warmth during a cold night.

And some people are more industrious and clever than others and therefore are better at meeting people's needs and being compensated for it.

[0]: https://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#459

Post by briHass »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #86
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #19

Nobody should even be a millionaire it says. A small house in California is a million dollars ffs. The irony of charging 20 pounds for this is palpable.

Yeah, the blurb does literally say, "No-one deserves to be a millionaire." That threshold is the wrong choice, at least with prices where they are today. If you do the math, millionaire is just about where your assets start to balance your liabilities. By liabilities, I mean the cost of a modest and frugal life. In that fuller accounting, the millionaire is merely the freedman, the person who has climbed out of the d…

You forgot a big asset on this hypothetical balance sheet: the individual's (your) productive output over their lifetime. Until we get to a point where all existing, and all possible, human output can be done by machines at no cost to anyone, the 'indenture' is more of a reciprocal arrangement where you trade your output for others'.

The scenario you outlined is one of unimaginable privilege for most humans living today, and arguably most humans and non-human animals through history. A climate controlled, personal living space in a safe society, varied and effectively limitless food/clean water, modern conveniences like a car/internet/telephone, access to healthcare by highly-trained doctors -- completely free of drudgery and effort (i.e. work).

Re: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

#460

Post by gottorf »

defrost wrote: post #455
gottorf wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're just airing what we think about taxation, I think people with low incomes should pay more than they do currently in taxes, so that everyone feels like they have skin in the game. People generally don't take as much care of something that was dropped in their laps as something that they had to work hard for. Currently, over half of all federal personal income tax collected is paid by under 5% of taxpayers, an…

> and the bottom 50% of income earners as a whole pay under 3% of all federal income tax collected. What percentage of annual cash flow in the USofA do they earn? Is it more than 3%?

According to this source[0], the bottom 50% of income earners who paid 2.32% of all federal personal income taxes collected in 2020 comprised 10.18% of the share of income. So yes, it is more.

[0]: https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxe...

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