Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
sociology.ucsc.edu
Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
1–10 of 207 posts
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#2Nice to know the numbers.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#3The author of this article seems to be trying to confuse things:
Membership in this elite group is likely to come from being involved in some aspect of the financial services or banking industry, real estate development involved with those industries, or government contracting.
What does "involved in some aspect" mean?
...built a small company and was acquired with stock from a multi-national. Stock is often called a "paper" asset...CEO of a medium-cap tech company...another was able to amass $12M after taxes by her early thirties from stock options as a high level programmer in a successful IT company.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#4There's a pretty simple solution: Abolish the capital gains tax, and tax all capital gains at the income tax rate. There is no more "capital gain". Only income. Whether your income was earned through labor or rents on capital that you own seems rather irrelevant to me.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#5There's a pretty simple solution: Abolish the capital gains tax, and tax all capital gains at the income tax rate. There is no more "capital gain". Only income. Whether your income was earned through labor or rents on capital that you own seems rather irrelevant to me.
Wait, what's the problem that you're solving?
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#6The author of this article seems to be trying to confuse things: Membership in this elite group is likely to come from being involved in some aspect of the financial services or banking industry, real estate development involved with those industries, or government contracting. What does "involved in some aspect" mean? ...built a small company and was acquired with stock from a multi-national. Stock is often called a…
I agree that those examples are not great at conveying the main point he's trying to make, but let's consider for a moment that the top .1% evaluates to a larger number than 5. Maybe he was calling out notable exceptions, or maybe it's just a poorly edited piece of writing.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#7This is encouraging. Want to know what a truly sick economy looks like? One where the top 1% inherited their assets/incomes. Ignoring the huge selection effects in talking about the top .1% of winners in the financial markets is silly.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#8I already knew the about the vast disparity in the top 1% of earners, but I did not know how difficult it is to retire comfortably. A 30-year retirement is quite a luxury.
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#9There's a pretty simple solution: Abolish the capital gains tax, and tax all capital gains at the income tax rate. There is no more "capital gain". Only income. Whether your income was earned through labor or rents on capital that you own seems rather irrelevant to me.
Wait, what's the problem that you're solving?
Tax avoidance.
(The marginal rate of tax on capital gains is generally much lower than the marginal rate of tax on an equivalent earned income. The investment professionals who strike it big do so by engineering their income to arrive in the shape of capital. Tax it as income and suddenly a whole lot more tax revenue shows up ... and the Gini coefficient in the society in question drops a little bit.)
Re: Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
#10There's a pretty simple solution: Abolish the capital gains tax, and tax all capital gains at the income tax rate. There is no more "capital gain". Only income. Whether your income was earned through labor or rents on capital that you own seems rather irrelevant to me.
Wait, what's the problem that you're solving?
The idea that it is possible for those that earn vast quantities of money more than your "standard joe" to pay _less_ tax on that considerably larger cash pile.
The line about lobbying for a new corporate exemption on "repatriating" cash from either tax havens or anywhere else abroad at the pitiful tax rate of 5.75% compared to the base 10% that someone that works at a diner has to pay illustrates the issue rather well.