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Who died and left the US $7B?

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

#131

Post by missedthecue »

zztop44 wrote: post #125
mcmoor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't think you can consume your way to a higher standard of living. The only way to sustainably increase the standard of living is to increase productivity. This can only come from investment into hard capital and into human capital (education).

So to me, it would be very hard to make an argument that it trickles up. It has to come from investment. And investment in the private sector is usually done by rich people, because you need money in the first place to invest and also because investing well makes you rich.

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

#132

Post by ckemere »

mynameishere wrote: post #58
jrockway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can make a voluntary contribution to the United States Treasury: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html

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?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_KLF

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

#133

Post by kortilla »

whatshisface wrote: post #113
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?

The IRS doesn’t track assets, so unlikely. They don’t really even know how wealthy small business owners are

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

#134

Post by internetter »

schneems wrote: post #118
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.

> 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.

This is sorta genius. I could totally see Musk and Bezos engulfed in an ever escalating leaderboard feud:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2021/09/28/elon-musk...

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

#135

Post by zztop44 »

dylan604 wrote: post #128
zztop44 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh okay, that makes sense, and I agree with you. That said, paying tax is still important for a number of reasons; and ultimately the national budget is a large bucket made up of small drops.

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

#136

Post by ipaddr »

cipheredStones wrote: post #124
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The entire point of the stock market is to get capital to companies to allow them to do things that may increase wealth (could be local, state, country or globally). Successfully doing this means the companies he supported did well.

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

#137

Post by leprechaun1066 »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #21

Matt Levine touched on this briefly today, and I liked his two cents: >It’s kind of cool? Like you could imagine a hierarchy, in roughly ascending order of wealth: >Too poor to pay taxes. >Rich enough to pay taxes. >Rich enough to not pay taxes. >Rich enough to not even bother with not paying taxes.

In 2021/2022 there were 60 people in the UK who probably fall into that last group. Together their taxes accounted for about 1.4% of the UK tax bill despite being something like 0.002% of the population.

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

#139

Post by advael »

enos_feedler wrote: post #119
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.

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.

Mostly because of a very successful propaganda campaign by people who sought to loot the post-war economic boom

Generally speaking, the sad truth of a complex economy is that coordination is hard, and there's usually a short-term privatized gain to be had by someone willing to poison the future and the commons. No amount of benefit to humanity overall or even the specific society such a person lives in will convince a person who simply doesn't care about anyone else. Fortunately for humanity, a very small minority of people actually operate like that. Unfortunately for humanity, some of them have managed to accumulate a lot of power

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

#140

Post by BobAliceInATree »

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…

He was 93 when he died. I think he knew his time was coming soon.
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