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Just Be Rich (2021)

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Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#101

Post by tim333 »

feedforward wrote: post #71

It's not that complex - there are workers who work and spend their hours creating wealth, and there are heirs who expropriate surplus labor time from those who do work. It's a parasitism of a class of parasitic heirs on those of us who work and create wealth. Nothing could make that more clear than the past year and a half. For tech workers we had FAANG layoffs, hiring freezes, lowball offers if any offers at all etc…

Tech workers at the FAANGs have salaries that are multiples of those typical in the EU say. If those who employ them are parasites they are still doing quite well for the host. Of course you could sweep away the parasites completely to let the workers enjoy the glorious rewards they do in Cuba and N Korea.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#102

Post by WalterBright »

rvrs wrote: post #80
WalterBright wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden, France, California, Washington state and NYC have discovered once again that taxing the heck out of rich people causes them to leave. And when they leave, they take their spend/invest/hire money with them.

Ah yes California, Washington, NYC — places where rich people famously do not live

All have seen an exodus of rich people, mostly leaving for Texas and Florida, which are booming.

Musk famously decamped from California to Texas. Bezos from Washington to Florida.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#103

Post by DaoVeles »

WalterBright wrote: post #53
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is unelected power, a bug. It’s reasonable to say there should be limits on wealth, considering most wealthy people were lucky (either by birth or “right place right time”) but attempt to post rationalize it as anything else. Would you want someone who won a lottery ticket to have power over your life at scale? Because that’s what excess wealth is, a power dynamic powered by a suboptimal system masquerading as…

If people cannot accumulate wealth, we wouldn't have SpaceX.

Such a declarative statement is very reductionist. Yes, some folks will accumulate wealth but there needs to be some additional limits on it.

I am in favor of progressively increasing tax brackets that eventually get up to near 100$. Spend it or lose it. And if you lose it, it goes in to the very bottom income bracket where it will be used imediately. Trick up economics if you will.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#104

Post by marmadukester39 »

WalterBright wrote: post #53
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is unelected power, a bug. It’s reasonable to say there should be limits on wealth, considering most wealthy people were lucky (either by birth or “right place right time”) but attempt to post rationalize it as anything else. Would you want someone who won a lottery ticket to have power over your life at scale? Because that’s what excess wealth is, a power dynamic powered by a suboptimal system masquerading as…

If people cannot accumulate wealth, we wouldn't have SpaceX.

No, but we do get NASA

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#105

Post by feedforward »

WalterBright wrote: post #63
TrackerFF wrote: post #56

I live in a country with wealth tax (Norway), and I'm a bit conflicted on it. On one side, it is effectively the only real tax a many in the "ownership class" are paying - relative to their wealth. On the other side, it is a really problematic tax for entrepreneurs. It is downright horrible for startups and scaleups - critical funds that should be used to grow your company, has to be given out in dividends to founder…

Sweden, France, California, Washington state and NYC have discovered once again that taxing the heck out of rich people causes them to leave. And when they leave, they take their spend/invest/hire money with them.

The US had a tax rate of over 90% for the wealthy in the 1950s (although with loopholes they could push it lower, like now). Didn't seem to have much of an effect on the wealthy, and the US working class did very well.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#106

Post by robocat »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #28

> Wealth inequality is just a radical left fairy tale to villainize the hard-working 1%. The problem with that mindset is that we know how it's going to end up: it's not only the 0.1% or 1% that are going to suffer the wealth tax. It's the 30%. At first the "tax on billionaire" was supposed to be that: a tax on billionaires. But then there are already publications explaining how "taxing anyone who has more than a mil…

Wealth tax 2% at $1million was a platform policy of the very left Green Party in New Zealand - and NZD $1M is about USD600k! Although they did increase it to NZD2million asset limit.

Governments (or maybe voters) don't seem to understand incentives: New Zealand government and its taxation structure discourages building or growing a profitable business. Why should anyone build a business when any winnings will be slowly taken from you over the years? However the NZ government plays/pretends to be supporting innovation - lots of innovation "dress-up play" (the sham appearance of innovation) and taxpayer money dumped into ineffective programmes: e.g. https://youngenterprise.org.nz/ https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/study/academic-study/business/a...

Some countries lead political changes - I'm not sure New Zealand is one of those - but the crap we do could be the crap your government does next...

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#107

Post by Devasta »

aorloff wrote: post #18
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is unelected power, a bug. It’s reasonable to say there should be limits on wealth, considering most wealthy people were lucky (either by birth or “right place right time”) but attempt to post rationalize it as anything else. Would you want someone who won a lottery ticket to have power over your life at scale? Because that’s what excess wealth is, a power dynamic powered by a suboptimal system masquerading as…

What about wealth you build for yourself ? Many of the duplexes in town were built by small builders who passed them on to family. Now they are treated like rich landowners but in reality grandpa built the wealth.

But if they are receiving free houses from their grandpa, they didn't build the wealth themselves.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#108

Post by WalterBright »

feedforward wrote: post #95
WalterBright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I know a low level person at Nvidia who has made somewhere near $100m on his stock options. And if the workers aren't getting stock options, they can still buy stocks on the open market. How much would $10,000 invested into AMZN at the IPO be worth today? $13,000,000

> they can still buy stocks on the open market Well that's my point - people who do the work and create the wealth don't get that wealth in wages, it is parasitically expropriated by stockholders. I am arguing on the side of those who work, that the wealth they create is kept by them. You argue for idleness and parasitism - that those who don't do the work can be rewarded via these various mechanisms, by being parasi…

That is the notion that the only value in a business is that of labor, i.e. the labor theory of value.

Business needs two other things:

1. capital

2. taking a risk

in order to function. To get capital requires a source of capital, which are investors. Investors take a risk in exchange for possible gain.

No gain => no investors => no capital => no business

Let's say you want to start a business. Where are you going to get the startup capital from?

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#109

Post by evilduck »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #93

I find discussions of economic desert rarely get anywhere since everyone has a different idea of what is deserved. I like to talk about incentives. We have a massive under supply of housing across the developed world, in part because so much labor is training for desk jobs rather than construction jobs. If you want to solve the housing problem, you need to change the incentives for young people to shun construction j…

Manual laborers (distinct from skilled labor like plumbers or electricians) will never have high status because the job is, relatively speaking, easy to attain. The pay will certainly fix the staffing problem but it will never be a high status career unless the pay gets you to a cushy retirement 15 years earlier than a desk job.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#110

Post by eigart »

WalterBright wrote: post #63
TrackerFF wrote: post #56

I live in a country with wealth tax (Norway), and I'm a bit conflicted on it. On one side, it is effectively the only real tax a many in the "ownership class" are paying - relative to their wealth. On the other side, it is a really problematic tax for entrepreneurs. It is downright horrible for startups and scaleups - critical funds that should be used to grow your company, has to be given out in dividends to founder…

Sweden, France, California, Washington state and NYC have discovered once again that taxing the heck out of rich people causes them to leave. And when they leave, they take their spend/invest/hire money with them.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. To me it looks like a race to the bottom. We have a very nice society, and most people are happy to pay taxes.

We also don’t tax rich people more in relative terms, it’s just that it creates a threshold level of wealth where you can choose to move.

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