This amount will be sufficient to operate the US military for just under four days.
Who died and left the US $7B?
71–80 of 589 posts
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Giving $7B to the gov changes zero. Not a single function of the government will change not a single thing. They should have just thrown it in the trash. At least go pay off student loans with a lottery until the money is gone or something, that could help. Maybe pay all the mortgages in a small town or something. What they did by giving it to the gov is the same as setting it on fire in the front yard. It’s kind of…
The logical conclusion of this line of thinking is that you must then believe there to be a moral
obligation to always pay service people in cash and avoid paying taxes at every possible opportunity.
Do I understand your position correctly?
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Where $1 billion is about 40,000 Honda Civics, I think most people would support limiting ownership of cars to 39,999. It doesn't even have to be a hard limit, just a luxury tax on cars that cost more than, say, $1 million, and on owning more than 40,000 cars. If you want a 40,001st car, your can do it but it means you're going to have to pay an extra fee that goes towards helping people with less.
Who cares what “most people would support”?
It’s right, or it isn’t.
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks ChatGPT.
Summarizing it to say it was Fayez Sarofim was useful to me.
Agreed, it was useful explaining what the article was getting at. It was written in such a way to be less than straightforward. Also, explaining the estate-tax and significance was helpful. The title indicating $7b was left to the US is accurate, but disingenuous.
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You can make just about anything a slippery slope if you wanted to - “they’re putting limits on guns, what’s next, kitchen knives?” Morally you should probably be spending more time figuring out how to get everyone their first car instead of worrying about your legal rights in owning your second.
Why yes, there are countries with limits on kitchen knives.
And if your focus is on providing that first car, then the system currently doing that en masse for billions of previously-poor people is called “capitalism” and your moral imperative is to speed it up, not slow it down.
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#76I 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.
Government has put up a bunch of roofs, troughs and channels to catch all the trickle. How much of your salary goes to something required by government? People making money by doing or making things other people want is not evil. Government setting up fences to protect the current winners is the problem.
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#77I was having this discussions the other day where my boss thinks these wiki list and Forbes list are some sort of ground truth.
The Forbes list only include people who Forbes want it to be listed and / or are public record. For example Michael Bloomberg is included but he is not even on the Bloomberg billionaires list, simply because Forbes want to expose him. And there were plenty of Billionaires in China who wasn't listed before lots of information becomes public. And I would imagine the same for Brazil, India or lots of other countries.
These list can only include people by their stock market cap or worth. It doesn't include people who are in the property market and basically own or operate via private equity. And there are plenty of billionaires in the property market. Along with many other asset that we dont even know or aware.
Another thing, if a person with $10B net worth of stock for 25 years, and the stock has been paying 3% dividends per year. You will still see him listed as $10B net worth. In reality he has $10B of dividends already. ( Although in US I think dividends are taxed ). And that is excluding any investment he made with those dividends and operate completely in the dark.
Basically because the ultra wealth are so opaque I argue that inequality is actually much wider than we thought or what we could calculate.
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#78Earlier 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?)
You don't become a vassal by someone else having a lot of wealth. The feudal systems arose as a way to organize military defense locally in the absence of a strong central power like the Roman Empire.
Feudal systems are better described as local organised threat of violence.
There are castle strongholds, control of choke points, a lower strata that are required to work the land and pay tithe upwards to the military heirarchy.
Feudal systems have existed in times and locations where there was little need for military defense against external forces, they persist in form as a polite, polished, chivalrous bikie club on horses, mafia with great houses.
Warrior nobility systems farm farmers.
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#79Pretty 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."
Why is that obscene? Presumably the person created something very valuable to the world. Sure there are zero-sum ways to generate wealth (e.g. suing people, theft, front running trades) but generally that kind of wealth comes from actually generating something that people value.
Re: Who died and left the US $7B?
#80I 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.
Me in developing country sure see that billionaire's wealths already trickle down to developed country's citizens.