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Do we need billionaires?

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Re: Do we need billionaires?

#131

Post by klatchex_too »

Gud wrote: post #102

Literally no single person has produced "a billion dollars value". 99.999% of the times, the people who reach billions come from a privileged position in society and are using their position to gain wealth for themselves. We live in a society built for the powerful. It is paramount that we decentralize and democratize the power. Look at Switzerlands system of governance. Tear down the giant empires(USA, EU, China, Ru…

>> Literally no single person has produced "a billion dollars value".

How has someone like Taylor Swift not produced a billion dollars value?

Some of her tours have brought in more than 2 billion in revenue, she makes many millions a year in merchandise sales, millions selling streaming rights to her music, she has re-recorded the albums she didn't own the rights to and bought back the rights to others. She has a net worth of over 2 billion, how has she not produced "a billion dollars value"?

What does she do that you think you should be able to tell her that she can't do? And where do you think you get the right to tell her she can't do that?

If she wants to do concerts and concert goers want to go to them, who should stop her? If people want to stream her music and she gets a cut, you're going to tell her she can't do that? If she wants to sell vinyl records and I want to pay for one of them, you should be the boss that says no? Is that what you're saying?

I don't think so. A single person, Taylor Swift, has produced multiple billions of dollars of value.

This is not a problem to be solved. This is America. This is no country for everybody. It's a country for me. For people like me.

This ain't Switzerland.

I'm not saying Taylor Swift never did anything wrong. But mostly, she earned that. You're still allowed to do stuff like that in America. Sorry, not sorry.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#132

Post by dimava »

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…

1. Owning your own company stock is not having money, it's merely ability to control the company. Elon tries to be BDFL of his companies, so selling the stock is not really an option.

2. Stock valuation and money are not the same thing. As you could've noticed from the recent Bitcoin price drop, the moment you start selling it it starts to worth less. Tesla is bubble-priced, so it's sell price is at least 5 times less then valuation

3. Even if you get the money, distribution is much harder problem then you think after agreeing with this sensense. IIRC it was Musk who said "So you say you can fix the world hunger for $nnn? Bring me the plan how you are going to do it. Noone brought me a plan so far".

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#133

Post by tstrimple »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #129
bobbytheblkbear wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Wait. So is this or is this not an eggcorn?

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

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#134

Post by tstrimple »

dimava wrote: post #132
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…

1. Owning your own company stock is not having money, it's merely ability to control the company. Elon tries to be BDFL of his companies, so selling the stock is not really an option. 2. Stock valuation and money are not the same thing. As you could've noticed from the recent Bitcoin price drop, the moment you start selling it it starts to worth less. Tesla is bubble-priced, so it's sell price is at least 5 times les…

Sure. If you completely ignore the ability to borrow against your assets at extremely low rates. And those assets include stock.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#135

Post by tstrimple »

rickydroll wrote: post #121
KyleTheDev wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I and many other HN participants are in the privileged few who would actually see higher taxes from that change in SS and Medicare taxation. I'm on board. But most probably are not. It is weird and still somewhat foreign to me that my paycheck increases in the late fall / early winter. I appreciate the extra money coming in, but realistically it wouldn't make a material difference in my life if it didn't.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#136

Post by tstrimple »

storus wrote: post #128
voidUpdate wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because this is what the average person is doing. This is what's necessary for a happy and fulfilling life. What a fucking ridiculous claim.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#137

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

tstrimple wrote: post #133
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wait. So is this or is this not an eggcorn? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

It was indeed an eggcorn, and I knew it was but it had so completely replaced the correct phrase in my mind that I just looked at it like 'that's not right, but I don't know what exactly is wrong about it'

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#138

Post by dm_ »

qaq wrote: post #123
dm_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I'm not a tax lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt, but yes, I think they were trying to close loopholes, but did so sloppily.

Read the text (https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/25-0024A1%2...), specifically 50303 section c.

It seems to me that the authors were, as you say, trying to close a loophole, namely that where I set up a Nevada LLC to which I hold 99% of voting shares but 1% of outstanding equity, put my assets in it, and just direct the LLC to spend on things I want it to--but in the process, they failed to realize that non-public super-voting shares (like Google class B shares) seem to fall into category (3) of section (c) (i.e. neither sole proprietorships nor publicly traded assets).

I don't think that's a great design, though it's still worth noting that it doesn't rule out privileged shares in general--GOOGL, to give an example, are privileged voting shares that trade publicly, and thus are obviously under category (1), and assessed per their FMV.

But in any case, I stand by my broader point: this is a specific detail of how the California proposal has been written; it's not a fundamental aspect of wealth taxes. Switzerland has a wealth tax that does not have this aspect, for example.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#139

Post by deepsummer »

voidUpdate wrote: post #86
deepsummer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Tesla without Musk isn't worth much. It's not that profitable. Tesla's P/E ratio is 350 or so - absolutely crazy. Ford's and Toyota's are about 10. The largest Chinese electric car maker's (BYD) PE/ratio is 20. People are buying Tesla shares because they believe in Musk. The moment he announces that he is out, his wealth is going down by 90% or more.

If he wanted to get out and sell his stocks, why would he care if it collapses after he leaves? He sells his stocks when the value of the company is still high

> If he wanted to get out and sell his stocks, why would he care if it collapses after he leaves?

"Selling the stock" is not a single transaction. The moment he leaves Tesla, or starts selling shares (which would take weeks or months), the stock collapses.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#140

Post by storus »

tstrimple wrote: post #136
storus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because this is what the average person is doing. This is what's necessary for a happy and fulfilling life. What a fucking ridiculous claim.

So you cut ambitious people moving society technologically forward off because "20M ought to be enough for everybody".
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