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Who died and left the US $7B?

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

#111

Post by FanaHOVA »

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.

Do you really think a single individual could make $7B of profits from stock trading? They'd need to be trading $30-100B. Point72 manages $35B and has almost 3,000 people on staff.

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

#112

Post by chgs »

dylan604 wrote: post #32
wahern wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... so I just noticed the "US Total Interest Paid" clock. That takes about 45 seconds to tick over $1 million, so $7 billion covers ~1% of the interest payments in a year. That seems like a sizable contribution for a single person in a country of 330 million.

Great, so now all we need is another 99 people with similar donations and we could cover the interest for a year. Then you need to continue to do that every year forever because you have yet to make any movement on the principle

This wasn’t a donation. This was a fee for providing a society that allows him to accumulate so much.

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

#113

Post by whatshisface »

disillusioned wrote: post #34

One of the funny takeaways here is: there are so many more billionaires out there, who spend considerable effort to remain off these lists and otherwise anonymous. I work with one, and he's not on ANY of the Forbes or Bloomberg lists, though articles about his projects and investments obviously make the news. That's, as the article alludes to, the funny thing about private equity: it does a very good job _staying_ pr…

Does the IRS know?

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

#114

Post by chgs »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #86
dweinus wrote: post #62

Earlier 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.

You think investment = trickle down economics? Is your 401k trickle down economics?

401k is a massive Ponzi scheme where people working today hope that people in the future will value their work.

Imagine a world where you had 15 billionaires and 5 people working. How much are are. Those billions worth when they are fighting each other to have one of the 5 useful people wipe their ass in their care home?

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

#115

Post by Dalewyn »

Kapura wrote: post #10

Pretty 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."

>Also weird that it's framed as a "gift."

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

>The gift tax is a tax on the transfer of property by one individual to another while receiving nothing, or less than full value, in return. The tax applies whether or not the donor intends the transfer to be a gift.

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

#116

Post by cipheredStones »

whatshisface wrote: post #105
cipheredStones wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

> Taking money away from mismanaged companies, and giving it to well-managed ones, is a net positive of stock trading.

Where "well-managed" means "good at delivering money to its shareholders", which is at best obliquely related to a positive impact on the world. (Also, I'm skeptical that the stock price in itself makes that much of a difference to what the company is able to do.)

> 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).

In other words, the benefit-to-the-world of stock trading is that it makes it easier to trade stocks? And both of these are the result of unprofitable trading as much as profitable trading, so they can't be the proof that the money comes from the value delivered!

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

#117

Post by mozman »

jimcsharp wrote: post #85
somethoughts wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly a lot of the larger philanthropic organizations are just as administration heavy as the US government and suffer from the same mission creep and the same obfuscated, bureaucratic decision making process, etc. Not to mention the leadership is often richly compensated (i.e. $1M in salary) and non-elected. In fact we should probably celebrate gifts to the US government more than we do.

My hunch is that taxes are the most efficient 'charity', even with the bloat, and everyone's too busy sniffing farts in their corner to see it.

No thanks, I’d rather keep more of my paycheck.

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

#118

Post by schneems »

somethoughts wrote: post #51
Kapura wrote: post #10

Pretty 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."

Interestingly a lot of the larger philanthropic organizations are just as administration heavy as the US government and suffer from the same mission creep and the same obfuscated, bureaucratic decision making process, etc. Not to mention the leadership is often richly compensated (i.e. $1M in salary) and non-elected. In fact we should probably celebrate gifts to the US government more than we do.

> we should probably celebrate gifts to the US government more than we do.

I had the idea that we should put a donation box on tax forms. The 100 top donators get on the “US 100” list (like Forbes) but it’s based ONLY on how much you donate, not how much you claim to be worth.

It’s one thing to claim to be rich to a Forbes reporter, it’s another to have the (tax) receipts to back it up.

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

#119

Post by enos_feedler »

jimcsharp wrote: post #85
somethoughts wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly a lot of the larger philanthropic organizations are just as administration heavy as the US government and suffer from the same mission creep and the same obfuscated, bureaucratic decision making process, etc. Not to mention the leadership is often richly compensated (i.e. $1M in salary) and non-elected. In fact we should probably celebrate gifts to the US government more than we do.

My hunch is that taxes are the most efficient 'charity', even with the bloat, and everyone's too busy sniffing farts in their corner to see it.

Not only that but it’s also the structure that enabled the riches in the first place. I don’t see why more people don’t do this.
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