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Who died and left the US $7B?

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

#121

Post by MobiusHorizons »

hollerith wrote: post #63
mynameishere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered if there was a way to effectively "burn" one's entire wealth, creating a small deflationary event that would increase the value of existing dollars. How could one do this? Donate to the Federal Reserve? Or would you literally have to cash everything out and burn it?

According to my understanding, burning US dollar bills, donating to the Fed (if such a thing is possible) and donating to the Treasury are approximately equivalent in their effects. What puts a lid on how much money the Fed creates is the desire to keep inflation to reasonable levels, preferably 2% per year. Your burning your cash allows the Fed to create more while adhering to their inflation target. Someone please…

At least one way they do this is to buy treasury bonds. It is not clear to me what happens to the interest though .

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

#122

Post by frinxor »

Jedd wrote: post #94

A fascinating reddit post was mentioned here about a month ago - about the mildly famous (if a little macabre) 'Buy, Borrow, Die' cycle used by the obscenely-wealthy to - multi-generationally - avoid tax obligations. https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26... HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408772

ah missed this one, thank you!

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

#123

Post by zztop44 »

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

Why do you care? The country has never paid back this debt, will never pay back this debt and no-one expects it to.

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

#124

Post by cipheredStones »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #104
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.

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 outcom…

Yes, he was capturing value for his clients, and getting paid some of that. That isn't the same thing as doing something that increases the amount of wealth in the economy, which was my point.

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

#125

Post by zztop44 »

mcmoor wrote: post #80
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.

Me in developing country sure see that billionaire's wealths already trickle down to developed country's citizens.

How can you be sure it’s not wealth trickling up instead?

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

#126

Post by schneems »

mozman wrote: post #117
jimcsharp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ultra rich don’t get paychecks. If you’re thinking in terms of “paychecks” you’re not who they are talking about when they say “tax the rich.”

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

#127

Post by MobiusHorizons »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #109
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.

Obviously moving countries will change lots of things about your life. Do you attribute any of those changes to low government debt? I have personally always thought about it as more of a long term problem rather than a present day issue. Would be curious to hear your reflections.

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

#128

Post by dylan604 »

zztop44 wrote: post #123
dylan604 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you care? The country has never paid back this debt, will never pay back this debt and no-one expects it to.

That's my point. It is ridiculous to think that $7b is anything but a drop in the bucket. While $7b is a big number to mere mortals, it is chump change in terms of national debt.

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

#129

Post by glompers »

cipheredStones wrote: post #116
whatshisface wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trad…

Not GP, but if I recall correctly, "taking money away from mismanaged companies" only occurs if the companies choose to do another issuance of shares in the future to raise equity, or stock options in the future to compensate people, in which case they would have to issue shares at a lower valuation, or issue more stock options to provide a similar benefit, than if they were a desirable company.

But stock trading also penalizes well-managed companies in slow-growing or more mature industries by giving them a higher cost-of-capital, just as it would if they were poorly managed. It seems a haphazardly blunt instrument for allocating liquidity to value generation. It piles on where rewards seem ready to be reaped, and makes it harder for mature sectors to renew or reinvent themselves.

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

#130

Post by nomdep »

yughnior wrote: post #66
nomdep wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Peak HN. (I feel comfortable saying that considering the link to a pg article and “you are in the wrong forum”) In the face of calling out someone else’s ignorance by saying we are all ignorant then going on to assume the thing you like is wonderful while assuming the thing you hate is terrible. Classic. PG would be proud.

> Classic. PG would be proud.

That’s bad?

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