61–70 of 589 posts
I can't imagine something more useless than an estate giving money to the US federal government rather than secreting it away via legal tax loopholes and re-investments in new industry.
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Anyone can make a voluntary contribution to the United States Treasury: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
I always wondered if there was a way to effectively "burn" one's entire wealth, creating a small deflationary event that would increase the value of existing dollars. How could one do this? Donate to the Federal Reserve? Or would you literally have to cash everything out and burn it?
What puts a lid on how much money the Fed creates is the desire to keep inflation to reasonable levels, preferably 2% per year. Your burning your cash allows the Fed to create more while adhering to their inflation target. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that although the Fed decides how much money is created, the Fed is not allowed to keep or to spend newly-created money, but rather must give it to the Treasury (perhaps through some complicated or non-obvious mechanism) which makes it available for the government to spend.
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?
Arnold Schwarzenegger famously explained that he remains committed to a demanding bodybuilding regimen even long after becoming fabulously wealthy precisely because his physique is a form of wealth that cannot be bought at any price, and is available to almost anyone who wants it badly enough. A billionaire facing an acute and aggressive terminal cancer diagnosis has all the options anyone could want, but one.
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?
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."
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In the face of calling out someone else’s ignorance by saying we are all ignorant then going on to assume the thing you like is wonderful while assuming the thing you hate is terrible.
Classic. PG would be proud.
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I think anti-trust laws are generally more effective at dealing with that than wealth limits. When capitalism is functioning well, what cones up must go down, and the main trick is to make sure the ultra-wealthy can't leverage their wealth to prevent anyone competiting with them.
> When capitalism is functioning well, ... I recommend this question as an interesting conversation starter at parties: Is it in the self-interest of the most successful capitalists to have a well-functioning capitalism?
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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?)
The feudal systems arose as a way to organize military defense locally in the absence of a strong central power like the Roman Empire.
I can't imagine something more useless than an estate giving money to the US federal government rather than secreting it away via legal tax loopholes and re-investments in new industry.
TIL that in 2024 people are still trying to claim that trickle-down economics works. Given all the wealth at the top these days, I'll expect my trickle-down check in the mail any day now.
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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?