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Who died and left the US $7B?

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Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#101

Post by ryandvm »

ksec wrote: post #98

This may be off-topic. >Billionaires are like black holes. We deduce their existence from the fundamental laws of capitalism, see their gravity pull politics into their orbit, even detect signals of their existence in the public markets. I dont know about others. This is very beautifully put. But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Because this basically means money > power; > "As gravity pulls politics…

The more money you allow into politics, the more politics becomes about money.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#102

Post by whatshisface »

ksec wrote: post #98

This may be off-topic. >Billionaires are like black holes. We deduce their existence from the fundamental laws of capitalism, see their gravity pull politics into their orbit, even detect signals of their existence in the public markets. I dont know about others. This is very beautifully put. But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Because this basically means money > power; > "As gravity pulls politics…

The pull of oligarchs is more real in Russia than anywhere else in the world.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#103

Post by chgs »

sneak wrote: post #71

This amount will be sufficient to operate the US military for just under four days.

How much of that would be spent directly on wages for people working for eh US military and how much sent to external firms?

On the other hand how much is sent to external firms where most of their expenditure is in the US and thus comes back rather swiftly in taxes, and how much is siphoned off to overseas stores of wealth.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#104

Post by CityOfThrowaway »

cipheredStones wrote: post #88
bko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article says that he made it by stock trading. It is, at best, difficult to articulate how that could be creating value rather than capturing it. Many of the world's billionaires made their money that way. Doing something positive-sum is a way to become a billionaire, but many people are very handsomely paid to ensure that their clients are on the good side of zero-sum transactions.

He did it through offering a _money management_ service to large institutions and wealthy individuals.

That money management service includes, amongst other things, picking stocks. But that's the tactical "what". The value-added element is that he preserved and grew that wealth instead. It turns out that is hard to do, and is indeed a positive sum service to customers. They get to relax _and_ make money. Great outcome.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#105

Post by whatshisface »

cipheredStones wrote: post #88
bko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article says that he made it by stock trading. It is, at best, difficult to articulate how that could be creating value rather than capturing it. Many of the world's billionaires made their money that way. Doing something positive-sum is a way to become a billionaire, but many people are very handsomely paid to ensure that their clients are on the good side of zero-sum transactions.

Taking money away from mismanaged companies, and giving it to well-managed ones, is a net positive of stock trading. Another net positive of stock trading is making buyers and sellers available all day, for anything on the market. Yet another benefit of stock trading is to make it more difficult to manipulate the market - there's a reason why pump and dump scams only occur with assets that see very little attention (i.e. are low-volume).

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#106

Post by TacticalCoder »

ksec wrote: post #98

This may be off-topic. >Billionaires are like black holes. We deduce their existence from the fundamental laws of capitalism, see their gravity pull politics into their orbit, even detect signals of their existence in the public markets. I dont know about others. This is very beautifully put. But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Because this basically means money > power; > "As gravity pulls politics…

> But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument.

Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%.

France's public spending is 60% of the GDP, the situation in France is totally catastrophic (6% deficit atm) and... We should listen to Piketty because he's only ever worked public jobs and... He's french? And came up with an ultra-simplistic formula using bogus data?

I mean... If Piketty says it, obviously government spending representing 60% of the GDP ain't enough. Let's make it 100% and called it a planned economy. Because we saw a lot of fully functioning communist societies on earth?

Ponder this.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#107

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #74
renewiltord wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whether it's useful or not, the moderators have said that machine generated submissions and comments are not welcome on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#108

Post by chgs »

manquer wrote: post #48
yieldcrv wrote: post #14

I hope this is educational for people, indeed the forbes rich list is inaccurate and there is no way to know how much anyone is worth, with just 5 minutes of planning it all goes opaque if you so desire Although there is the aspect of the immigrant being grateful for American opportunities, its far more likely that Fayez Sarofim didn’t expect to die and had these naked assets outside of the trusts and nonprofits. Sin…

inaccurate or incomplete ? The latter is to be expected. Forbes only covers certain type of wealthy people for logistical if not also political reasons. It does not cover powerful people who control enormous wealth but ownership maybe murky what is personal wealth and what is state owned, royal families or dictators like Putin or Kim Jong Un or their extended family will never make the list. Beyond those kind of peop…

On the other hand perhaps the keys to that 70B have been lost, in which case bitcoin has deflated even more than expected.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#109

Post by TacticalCoder »

jmpeax wrote: post #29

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?

> What does being rich even mean?

To me it means living in a country where the government's debt ain't more than 30% of the country's GDP. So I moved to such a country.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#110

Post by chgs »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #27
bombcar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Left means a gift via inheritance, which is the exact opposite of an estate tax (it's not a gift or via inheritance, it's a tax on the value of an estate and paid before distribution).

They could have squandered the money or given it away. They could could have blown it on building a pyramid to house their corpse. The government is not entitled to the assets.

They aren’t entitled to their assets. They only have worth because of civilisation. How well do you think bill gates would survive in a mad max utopia that Randians fantasize about?
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