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Just Be Rich (2021)

keenen.xyz

211–220 of 320 posts

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#211

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…

Yeah the problem is that europe is doing the right thing BUT the US says fuck it do what you want. So it forces europe to have to compete on the same bs market as the US.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Rust Belt long predated Amazon. How is Bezos extracting money from the middle class?

I refuse to believe the Rust Belt existed before 1995. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

....You might want to look it up before making such extraordinary claims of your own.

It's called the "Rust Belt" because it's where we had booming local manufacturing (the iron) in the postwar years that gradually declined over the course of the Cold War (turning to rust).

Hell, by 1995, some parts of the Rust Belt were already starting to recover, though others remain hollowed out to this day.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Rust Belt experienced industrial decline starting in the 1950s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt

And? Amazon is still an avatar for the neoliberalism that killed the Rust Belt. They didn't start the fire, they just pour gas on it every day.

This is called "moving the goalposts", and however good your underlying point about Amazon's perfidy might be, it does nothing but make you look like you're wrong and you know it.

You were wrong about the Rust Belt, and it's OK to admit that and move on.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#214

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…

A consumption tax can avoids some of the ills of this - it is undodgeable for the wealthy (unless they commit fraud) and it is very progressive

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#215
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people think wealth is just a large Scrooge-McDuck pile of money sitting in someone's vault and a wealth tax means just sharing some of that money with others. But most wealth is owning and running extremely valuable companies. So taxing someone like Elon 2% or whatever of his 'wealth' per year, would mean some random Blackrock bozo passive investors running the companies after a few years. You're basically…

Define wealth. I wouldn't confine wealth to just the billionaire class; I'd say wealth is anyone with 5 million+ USD in liquid assets (specifically, that sum of money in stocks, bonds and cash). The poorest of the poor in the United States (that have to pay tax), make around $12K per year, and pay more in tax, percentage-wise, for their work than an individual doing absolutely nothing but passively investing in the m…

> 10% long-term capital gains

That is not the long-term capital gains rate in the US.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Amazon is still an avatar for the neoliberalism that killed the Rust Belt. They didn't start the fire, they just pour gas on it every day.

This is called "moving the goalposts", and however good your underlying point about Amazon's perfidy might be, it does nothing but make you look like you're wrong and you know it. You were wrong about the Rust Belt, and it's OK to admit that and move on.

Seems more likely you don’t process sarcasm well.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#217

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…

Housing problem is more about politics + zoning and minimum parking requirements. To build more housing you need space and demand and usually zoning+pk mins are the opposite. Also, in other areas like EU housing is a problem for another reasons like bureaucracy, few authorisations from city council, the lobby of home owners to keep supply low, the lobby from car companies (no parking and more density means cars less needed)

The construction jobs even if in demand, usually can be filled with ppl from poorer countries, so it's not such a big problem

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#218
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define wealth. I wouldn't confine wealth to just the billionaire class; I'd say wealth is anyone with 5 million+ USD in liquid assets (specifically, that sum of money in stocks, bonds and cash). The poorest of the poor in the United States (that have to pay tax), make around $12K per year, and pay more in tax, percentage-wise, for their work than an individual doing absolutely nothing but passively investing in the m…

> 10% long-term capital gains That is not the long-term capital gains rate in the US.

You're right, it's actually 0% with any amount invested, $100,000 or $1,000,000,000,000,000, doesn't matter, provided you don't sell more than roughly $40k, or, god forbid, generate additional income through, say, work.

That flat tax rate certainly scales nicely the wealthier you happen to be, paying a max of 20% if you hold for more than a year and decide to cash in on this now several year massive run up in the markets.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#219
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of a discussion about wealth, its true that the financialization of real estate and runaway values of the greater Silicon Valley were a stroke of luck, but when talking about building wealth, housing has intrinsic value that I think takes a lot of that kind of SV luck out of the picture.

Housing value is land value. Did you buy or build in the right location? Luck! Did commercial real estate know WFH post Covid was going to obliterate CRE values? Again, bad luck.

This is true, many people got hung out to dry who happened to hold office properties when COVID hit.

But the housing could have just housed the family members if times were tight. For at least the first generation, it did. That's intrinsic value, not valuation according to a market.

Re: Just Be Rich (2021)

#220
post #204
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> most people are happy to pay taxes Source? I hate paying taxes.

No source, it’s just my impression that most Norwegians feel they get a fair deal.
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