Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who died and left the US $7B?

sherwood.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 589 posts

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#31

Post by AdrianB1 »

mmmpetrichor wrote: post #25
FredPret wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's draconian to have some upper limit on wealth? what if a small number of people managed to, legally, extract wealth to the point where we all became vassals? (Or is that what we've already gone very far towards?)

No. But it is a slippery slope of having limits on people, from wealth to anything you can think of (random example: limit ownership to a single car). In the end if it is all legal, it is nobody else's business. If it is illegal, setting an upper limit is not the moral solution.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#32

Post by dylan604 »

wahern wrote: post #24
dylan604 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even in your "correct" math, your comment doesn't really improve the ridiculously small amount of moving of a needle that this would make

I mean... so I just noticed the "US Total Interest Paid" clock. That takes about 45 seconds to tick over $1 million, so $7 billion covers ~1% of the interest payments in a year. That seems like a sizable contribution for a single person in a country of 330 million.

Great, so now all we need is another 99 people with similar donations and we could cover the interest for a year. Then you need to continue to do that every year forever because you have yet to make any movement on the principle

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#34

Post by disillusioned »

One of the funny takeaways here is: there are so many more billionaires out there, who spend considerable effort to remain off these lists and otherwise anonymous. I work with one, and he's not on ANY of the Forbes or Bloomberg lists, though articles about his projects and investments obviously make the news. That's, as the article alludes to, the funny thing about private equity: it does a very good job _staying_ private.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#35

Post by dools »

jmpeax wrote: post #29

What does being rich even mean? For us it might be the total sum of shares, realestate, cash, minus debts. If you're hiding your wealth then what does it mean to "have" that wealth if no one knows it belongs to you? I guess it comes down to the wealth you can control in your favour, but then how is that different to being in congress?

> but then how is that different to being in congress?

Less work, less risk, the ability to corruptly influence multiple people in congress by proxy rather than scrounging around for funds from corrupt private individuals out to influence policy in their favour.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#36

Post by umeshunni »

seb1204 wrote: post #28
niobe wrote: post #16

My takeaway: Forbes rich list amounts are basically fictional. Do you think they are devoting the kind of resources it would take to unravel each billionaire's finances? Clearly not. If it's mostly large sharehioldings they might be in the ballpark in some obvious cases.

How about the rich list is just a list of rich people that also desire others to know of their riches.

Famously, there was the Saudi billionaire who would pump up the price of his stocks in the months prior to when they published the rich list.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#37

Post by H8crilA »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #21

Matt Levine touched on this briefly today, and I liked his two cents: >It’s kind of cool? Like you could imagine a hierarchy, in roughly ascending order of wealth: >Too poor to pay taxes. >Rich enough to pay taxes. >Rich enough to not pay taxes. >Rich enough to not even bother with not paying taxes.

[flagged]

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#38

Post by daedrdev »

seb1204 wrote: post #28
niobe wrote: post #16

My takeaway: Forbes rich list amounts are basically fictional. Do you think they are devoting the kind of resources it would take to unravel each billionaire's finances? Clearly not. If it's mostly large sharehioldings they might be in the ballpark in some obvious cases.

How about the rich list is just a list of rich people that also desire others to know of their riches.

Probably more that it's easier to figure out wealth from public stocks compared to private businesses and real estate.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#39

Post by recursive »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #31
mmmpetrichor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's draconian to have some upper limit on wealth? what if a small number of people managed to, legally, extract wealth to the point where we all became vassals? (Or is that what we've already gone very far towards?)

No. But it is a slippery slope of having limits on people, from wealth to anything you can think of (random example: limit ownership to a single car). In the end if it is all legal, it is nobody else's business. If it is illegal, setting an upper limit is not the moral solution.

> If it is illegal, setting an upper limit is not the moral solution.

Any particular reason you believe that?

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#40

Post by kinghajj »

FredPret wrote: post #18
Kapura wrote: post #10

Pretty obscene that somebody could have so much wealth that $7,000,000,000 is just the tax bill. Also weird that it's framed as a "gift."

[flagged]

> For the transformation of money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must find the free worker available on the commodity-market; and this worker must be free in the double sense that as a free individual he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that, on the other hand, he has no other commodity for sale, i.e. he is rid of them, he is free of all the objects needed for the realization of his labour power.

> Why this free worker confronts him in the sphere of circulation is a question which does not interest the owner of money, for he finds the labour-market in existence as a particular branch of the commodity-market. And for the present it interests us just as little. We confine ourselves to the fact theoretically, as he does practically. One thing, however, is clear: nature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history, It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production.

Post reply on HN