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Do we need billionaires?

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Re: Do we need billionaires?

#121

Post by rickydroll »

KyleTheDev wrote: post #83
hrunt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? It wouldn't matter, because the ultra-wealthy generally don't have much income relative to their wealth. Elon Musk (in the article listed at $817B of wealth ) was reported to have had $1.52B of net income between 2014 and 2018, and had no taxable…

Sort of agree, yea. The issue is we allow high wealth individuals to use their assets as collateral for low interest loans, without having that be a taxable event. They can cash in on their equity, effectively withdrawing from their stake in these companies, and avoid taxes altogether. I think just closing this loophole, and having personal loans over a certain % that are backed by specific equities (stocks, land, et…

I agree with you on closing the loophole. However, I would count any money taken through this loophole as income. Another limit I would remove is the current limit on Social Security/medicare taxes. It doesn't matter how much you make; you should pay that tax.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#122

Post by slashdev »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #112
RetroTechie wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you said a wealth tax would be needed, as opposed to income tax. Taxes always have some optimum level: a point where benefit to society as a whole is maximized. Too high, and indeed investors / entrepreneurs could move away. Too low, and society leaves money on the table that could be better used elsewhere. The simple fact that a society allows individuals to amass $100B+ (or even a 'mere' $1B) shows that wealth t…

"Too high, and indeed investors / entrepreneurs could move away." Has that happened? Has that been a problem?

We can see a little of that in California and also Norway. So, yes, there is some of that going on.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#123

Post by qaq »

dm_ wrote: post #116
qaq wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you look at actual proposals like in CA they focus on taxing based on control %

I don't think this is true of "proposals" in the plural. This is arguably true of the California ballot measure due, allegedly, to sloppy drafting. But this isn't a fundamental aspect of wealth taxes; it's a choice. So I don't think it's a meaningful argument against wealth taxes in general. (As an unrelated point, I think dual class shares are sort of bad and it makes sense to me to discourage them as a matter of pu…

I don't think it sloppy drafting. They are trying to close "loopholes".

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#124

Post by bobbytheblkbear »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #100
voidUpdate wrote: post #22

I heard a while back that the average person will see about a million of their currency over their lifetime. So we can take a million dollars to be about 1 lifetime's worth of money. Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money. I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? Of…

> you are worth more than like $20 million Nick pick ahead. I really dislike this phrasing about people's wealth. 'this person is worth $X', when they really mean 'this person has assets valued at $x'. They own things that have monetary value, they themselves are not assessed that monetary value. Some may think this is an innocuous shorthand, but I see it more of a Freudian slip revealing the the actual belief that t…

"Nick pick ahead" I have to ~nitpick~ your mis-phrasing here. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitpicking

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#125

Post by bobbytheblkbear »

qaq wrote: post #12

We need competent people to remain in control of companies they have created.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

I think the Peter principle applies here; what you view as "competent people" are actually beneficiaries of systems, that they themselves can never independently create due to the nature of organizations themselves.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#126

Post by tsoukase »

Forget about reasonable arguments about wealth distribution. Human greed is infinite and the belly is insatiable, so they will stop at no amount of money. The ultimate goal of a totally capitalist society, like the US, is to create a single mutli-trillionaire, while all others starve.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#127

Post by qaq »

bobbytheblkbear wrote: post #125
qaq wrote: post #12

We need competent people to remain in control of companies they have created.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle I think the Peter principle applies here; what you view as "competent people" are actually beneficiaries of systems, that they themselves can never independently create due to the nature of organizations themselves.

Would you elaborate how it applies here? To me it's much more pronounced in companies run by "professional CEOs".

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#128

Post by storus »

voidUpdate wrote: post #75
storus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% income tax would remove any incentive to go above and beyond and you end up with collapsing economy where everybody is doing the bare minimum. See Soviet economy outcome and tofu dreg buildings.

95% over 20 million . Average Joe is never going to see 20 million in his life, so it's not exactly a concern for him. You can adjust the value as necessary to only apply to the top 1-2% or so. You can still have 20 million, and even more on top of that if you keep earning. Just most of that extra money will go back to society instead of being locked away inside a bank account forever

20M is not sufficient to run a single LLM pretraining run these days. It's a stupid threshold.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#129

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

bobbytheblkbear wrote: post #124
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are worth more than like $20 million Nick pick ahead. I really dislike this phrasing about people's wealth. 'this person is worth $X', when they really mean 'this person has assets valued at $x'. They own things that have monetary value, they themselves are not assessed that monetary value. Some may think this is an innocuous shorthand, but I see it more of a Freudian slip revealing the the actual belief that t…

"Nick pick ahead" I have to ~nitpick~ your mis-phrasing here. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitpicking

You know what, I knew it was wrong when I was typing it but I just couldn't remember what the right way was so I just left it. So thank you for this.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#130

Post by JKCalhoun »

slashdev wrote: post #122
JKCalhoun wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Too high, and indeed investors / entrepreneurs could move away." Has that happened? Has that been a problem?

We can see a little of that in California and also Norway. So, yes, there is some of that going on.

But has it been a problem?
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