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Why Inequality Matters

gatesnotes.com

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Re: Why Inequality Matters

#351

Post by sfk »

johnpenton wrote: post #282
masklinn wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gates is still blind to an important point- he came from a middle-class background Gates didn't come from a middle-class background but from an upper-class one. His father was a highly successful lawyer and cofounder of Shidler & King (then Preston Gates & Ellis, now K&L Gates), his maternal grandfather was an affluent banker (national bank president) and his mother was a Seattle power serving on the boards of Unit…

That sounds pretty middle class to me. Professional people - lawyers, bankers, management, etc. The US doesn't really have an upper class at all - just lots of rich middle class people. Maybe it's a British thing, but to me class is only minimally about money, so you can't just say the Gates family are rich so they're upper class. In Britain you can be penniless but still be upper class, or a billionaire but still wo…

Greenspun claims that Gates had a $1000000 trust fund. It does not sound like middle class at all:

http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/

Re: Why Inequality Matters

#352

Post by yequalsx »

refurb wrote: post #347
yequalsx wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as a double tax as you put it. All money is double, triple, quadrupled so on and so forth taxed. The principle for fairness behind taxation is that whenever you get money (or wealth) there is a tax. Regardless of where is comes from. There are exceptions and loopholes to this principle. If I work very hard and earn $100,000 in a year I get taxed. If someone else dies and I inherit $100,000 (in…

Yet "more equitable" and "socialist" countries like Canada have no estate tax whatsoever.

In Canada the estate pays the tax not the beneficiaries. In Canada the estate is considered a sale.

"The deceased is considered to have sold all of his or her capital property for fair market value immediately prior to death. This includes, with certain exceptions, all the deceased person’s non-registered assets (personal belongings, cars, investments, business assets, etc.).

If any of these assets have gone up in value since their acquisition, the estate will owe taxes on the capital gain in the year of death. Capital gain is the difference between the fair market value of the item when purchased and the fair market value item of the same item at the date of death."

See this website:

http://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/inheritance-tax.jsp

Re: Why Inequality Matters

#353

Post by waps »

zo1 wrote: post #334
guelo wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Representative democracy is the elitist idea that elites will run the government but with an escape valve to let average people have some input into the system to prevent the elites from becoming too insulated and ignoring the needs of the average people. But representative democracy breaks down when moneyed elites take control of the voting system. Then it's just elites all around with no input from the population.

If the noble concepts supposedly behind democracy had any traction with governments, they would have led us to a direct democracy, not a representative one. Instead, we get a half-assed attempt at letting free-people to rule themselves. Forget money as some sort of concept that breaks democracy by allowing people to game the system. The bigger problem you have to worry about is the smooth-talkers, the influential lea…

What about the fact that most direct democracies, aside from making representative democracy look practical, all failed when confronted with the real world ?

Besides, having read the history of Athens, direct democracy can be described as mob rule, and there the problem of 51% of the population votes to kill off the 49% others was a very real problem. Every American probably can imagine the problems guilds created in medieval Europe, right ? Athens was a state where the equivalent of guilds could literally and legally decide to kill the competition (which they did, several times).

Besides, let's not lose sight of reality here. America would be a near-theocracy if it was a direct democracy.

Re: Why Inequality Matters

#354

Post by taejo »

judk wrote: post #97
protonfish wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no supply-side economist, or advocate of Brave New World consumerism, but I believe that taxing the purchase of actual consumer products would not have a positive effect on the economy of the country. I believe a healthy economy is an active one. An incentive to remove money from active circulation (hoarding) could have long-term negative repercussions. And a country where the government encourages the average pe…

Paying someone to do worthless work (lavishing luxury on someone) does not help society much. That's just gaming the numbers, like saying "going to war" helps the economy. Paying someone to alleviate basic needs does. Not all consumption is equal.

> In these days, however, no one will deny that most enterprises fail. That means that a large amount of human labor, which might have been devoted to producing something that could be enjoyed, was expended on producing machines which, when produced, lay idle and did no good to anyone. The man who invests his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt is therefore injuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface cars in some place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a frivolous person.

--Bertrand Russell, [In Praise of Idleness](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

Re: Why Inequality Matters

#355

Post by couchand »

jasode wrote: post #101
enraged_camel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being a bit too harsh on couchand. First of all, I didn't interpret his comment as attacking Shinkei. I think he posed it as a general question for the audience. Secondly, I don't see it as nitpicking. It's a reasonable discussion to have. Piketty himself spends a fair amount of pages discussing how a global wealth tax might be implemented, and people's attitudes towards taxation in general have to be…

>, I didn't interpret his comment as attacking Shinkei. I'm not saying he attacked Shinkei. couchand criticized the message and not the messenger which is certainly acceptable. I'm pointing out that he's criticizing a figure-of-speech by stating to us the legal literal definition of "punish". Because couchand didn't parse Shinkei's "punish-as-in- sentiment ", he made the mistake of equivocation[1] and talks about pun…

I'm not equivocating at all. People use the term punish when they feel like they've been punished. I'm trying to figure out why people immediately think they are being punished by taxation somehow completely forgetting the police and fire protection, nice roads, pretty parks, clean water, etc. that comes along with it. Taxes are not a punishment, they are an admission ticket to society.

Re: Why Inequality Matters

#356

Post by couchand »

davidw wrote: post #81
couchand wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people always use the term punish when talking about taxes? Taxes are levied, you're only punished if you fail to pay.

Taxes, among other things, can be used to discourage "bad" behavior - like smoking, or burning carbon, or other stuff that has costs for society at large ("externalities"). By and large, the more you tax something, the more you discourage it.

It is true that by taxing something you usually discourage it, but that's a simplified view that's not always the case. It assumes normal goods and a particular relationship between taxation and interest rates that doesn't necessarily bear out.

In particular, in a discussion of wealth tax vs. consumption tax, you can't rely on the naive assumption that elasticity of consumption has a significant bearing on the net effect of a consumption tax.

See, e.g. http://ntj.tax.org/wwtax/ntjrec.nsf/4E562450B2F268D985256AFC...

Re: Why Inequality Matters

#358

Post by nickff »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #326
nickff wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the state is a more efficient investor of capital." Do you have evidence for this claim? If this is the case, shouldn't the countries with the biggest governments (as a percentage of total economy) also be the ones which grow the fastest, and if not, why? How can states be so efficient when they never admit to making mistakes, (almost never) give up on failed projects, or go out of business like private investors…

There's no evidence needed because it's a political opinion. Efficiency doesn't boils down to having the biggest GDP growth, sometimes it's not at all about the money. The HDI is probably a better metric.

Do you have evidence that states with higher government spending as a percentage of the economy have a more quickly increasing (or even a higher) HDI? It seems that efficiency of spending would influence the trajectory of your metric of interest more directly than the metric's current level (this seems obvious to me, but I can explain why in detail, if required). I can think of a few examples which would support your case, and many counterexamples, but would be happy to hear your case.

I would also think that a system's efficiency would affect the economy as well as all other indices of interest (though perhaps in varying proportion), as a healthier, happier citizenry or one with more capital goods, and better investments would grow economically as well as in other metrics.

Re: Why Inequality Matters

#359

Post by notahacker »

dragonwriter wrote: post #336
johnpenton wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I sort of see what you're saying. But then do you have a different term for what I'm talking about? What would you call someone who comes from a well known family lineage, speaks with a refined accent, was privately educated, went to Harvard, listens to classical music, collects french poetry first editions, but earns a pittance as faculty in the classics department at a college somewhere and has no savings or i…

> They don't earn anything, but you can't lump them in with a poor fast food worker can you? There's a meaningful economic class distinction to be made, probably, between a tenured faculty member at a university and a fast food worker, even if somehow their income ends up similar (the former having greater economic security than the latter, likely). But I think the distinction you are making is more about subculture…

I presume the example university employee doesn't have the luxury of tenure. The distinction is actually pretty straightforward. The "well-spoken" junior assistant librarian with their 2:2 in Latin from Exeter could get a job at McDonalds, if need be. The pretty-smart high-school leaver earning a fair percentage above minimum wage as a store manager at McDonalds would struggle to get a job as a junior assistant librarian at a university library even if they were willing to accept the pay cut.

Needless to say there are also plenty of "uneducated" plumbers whose skills earn them well above the national average wage whilst many marketing graduates embark on serial unpaid internships updating Twitter feeds in the hope someone will eventually deem their university-enhanced flair for on-brand 140 character communication worth paying for.

In the UK more so than most places "economic class" owes as much to Veblenesque notions of the luxury status of jobs as it does to how much employees actually earn and whether real opportunities for progression exist.

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