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Do we need billionaires?

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Re: Do we need billionaires?

#111

Post by JKCalhoun »

shrubby wrote: post #13

Human being, with very few exceptions, is corrupted by power. And a billion dollars is immense amount power. You can make your opponent's life a living hell with a hundred thousand and buy or figure out a way to frame extortion material from almost any decision maker with a million. See how wars are being started tweeting from the toilet seat by a man who has never known anything but power to harm others. See the man…

Yeah, that's kind of where I am: Billionaires appear to be a net-negative for society, the planet.

Regardless of what you even do with the money, simply preventing people from ever having billions is going to be a good thing for the world, democracy, etc.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#112

Post by JKCalhoun »

RetroTechie wrote: post #107
slashdev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you add a very high tax (it would have to be a wealth tax, not income, because they don’t have much income.) Zuckerberg just moved to Florida for a tiny wealth tax in California. These people would just leave the state or leave the country. It’s been happening in Norway with just a small wealth tax. It’s not impossible, but it’s also not that simple to do. These kind of policies are risky, because you may dri…

As you said a wealth tax would be needed, as opposed to income tax. Taxes always have some optimum level: a point where benefit to society as a whole is maximized. Too high, and indeed investors / entrepreneurs could move away. Too low, and society leaves money on the table that could be better used elsewhere. The simple fact that a society allows individuals to amass $100B+ (or even a 'mere' $1B) shows that wealth t…

"Too high, and indeed investors / entrepreneurs could move away."

Has that happened? Has that been a problem?

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#113

Post by JKCalhoun »

atmavatar wrote: post #79
slashdev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you add a very high tax (it would have to be a wealth tax, not income, because they don’t have much income.) Zuckerberg just moved to Florida for a tiny wealth tax in California. These people would just leave the state or leave the country. It’s been happening in Norway with just a small wealth tax. It’s not impossible, but it’s also not that simple to do. These kind of policies are risky, because you may dri…

> These people would just leave the state or leave the country. It’s been happening in Norway with just a small wealth tax. Would they really , though? A lot of people say this, but I think one very important thing is being overlooked: should a billionaire leave the US, they'd also lose a significant amount of influence over US policy. Especially when their wealth is built significantly upon the stocks of major US co…

Is it even a problem if they leave?

(I understand there is at least one Billionaire that wants to occupy Mars—and I am 100% on board.)

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#114

Post by thrance »

Brendinooo wrote: post #49
d3ckard wrote: post #43

Controversially, yes. The right frame of comparison is not towards average Joe, but towards governments. Billionaires, for better or worse, are independent power sources, which IMO in grand scheme of things are useful. I think the problem with modern world is not that some people have lots of money, but that we allowed money to buy pretty much everything else.

Yeah I was gonna offer a similar hot take: in a world where government can have trillions, it's probably good on some level that some people have billions. Checks and balances.

Except billionaires are never on the side of the people. They functionally already own the US government, which is how they've been able to amass so much wealth while the rest of the world gets poorer and hotter.

They buy media to push their propaganda, buy politicians... They are not acting as "checks and balances" to power. They are power.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#115

Post by RhysU »

voidUpdate wrote: post #22

I heard a while back that the average person will see about a million of their currency over their lifetime. So we can take a million dollars to be about 1 lifetime's worth of money. Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money. I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? Of…

Suppose we did exactly what you suggest, preventing amassing incredible wealth.

The only substitute for wealth is power and for power is wealth (with a hefty conversion fee). Amassing power would be the alternative action taken by the driven billionaire types if you take away the possibility of amassing wealth.

A bunch of stymied billionaires amassing power leads us back to pre-nationalized Europe.

At least when people amass wealth, they generally do something valuable for others.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#116

Post by dm_ »

qaq wrote: post #105
dm_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's ironic about your statement is that it's this exact belief--that founders should remain in control--that has led to the widespread adoption of dual class shares, in which founders maintain control while ceding a majority of equity. And the irony here is, by that same token, founders could maintain in control while not having such large equity stakes, and not becoming so rich. So I do not think this is an argum…

if you look at actual proposals like in CA they focus on taxing based on control %

I don't think this is true of "proposals" in the plural. This is arguably true of the California ballot measure due, allegedly, to sloppy drafting.

But this isn't a fundamental aspect of wealth taxes; it's a choice. So I don't think it's a meaningful argument against wealth taxes in general.

(As an unrelated point, I think dual class shares are sort of bad and it makes sense to me to discourage them as a matter of public policy, but this doesn't seem like necessarily the best way to do it.)

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#120

Post by Snild »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #100
voidUpdate wrote: post #22

I heard a while back that the average person will see about a million of their currency over their lifetime. So we can take a million dollars to be about 1 lifetime's worth of money. Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money. I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? Of…

> you are worth more than like $20 million Nick pick ahead. I really dislike this phrasing about people's wealth. 'this person is worth $X', when they really mean 'this person has assets valued at $x'. They own things that have monetary value, they themselves are not assessed that monetary value. Some may think this is an innocuous shorthand, but I see it more of a Freudian slip revealing the the actual belief that t…

I hadn't thought about this until I recently saw it (lazily) translated to Swedish literally, where it would traditionally be written more akin to "net fortune".

And yeah, "worth" feels super weird.

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