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Who died and left the US $7B?

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

#141

Post by FredPret »

mmmpetrichor wrote: post #25
FredPret wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's draconian to have some upper limit on wealth? what if a small number of people managed to, legally, extract wealth to the point where we all became vassals? (Or is that what we've already gone very far towards?)

How can you not see that it's draconian?

You may think it's no biggy since the limit will be so high.

1. First of all, when party A contracts with party B, party C (that's you) does not have a moral right to dictate an upper limit on how many times they can do that or what the terms can be as long as the transaction is legal and A and B are willing participants.

Thus, either A or B can build up an arbitrary amount of wealth and you have exactly zero to say about it. Would you have similar concerns for people who have a disproportionate number of friends, or sex partners, or hit songs, or hell, even votes?

2. If there were to be an upper limit, what is the limit? Today it's a billion dollars. What if it's 100m next, then 10m, then 1m, then 100k? What happens after a couple of decades or centuries of inflation? I suspect you don't care about this because the limit seems far out of reach to you. And so it might be - for now.

3. If there was a limit, who will decide what it should be? What are their incentives? Do you really want a jury of your peers reviewing your financials and drawing lines through it?

4. If there was a limit, who will enforce it? And how? Hand over a check or you go to prison?

There's no way to implement this without an authoritarian regime that has unlimited power over its citizens.

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

#142

Post by BobAliceInATree »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #96
IAmNotACellist wrote: post #54

I can't imagine something more useless than an estate giving money to the US federal government rather than secreting it away via legal tax loopholes and re-investments in new industry.

Agreed, they should have just set $7 billion on fire in the middle of the street. This is an inconsequential amount to the US gov, but a tremendous amount to schools, communities hit by devastation or other terrible events, non-profit hospitals, etc.

You literally listed all things that are funded by taxes (schools, FEMA, medicare/medicaid). Sigh.

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

#143

Post by dh2022 »

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.

Billionaires flaunt their wealth via yachts, mansions, space rockets and super-PACs. Which to me seems way more fun than getting your name on a tax list…

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

#144

Post by dh2022 »

rKarpinski wrote: post #47

Elon Musk or another person pre-paying some of their future estate tax, don't buy the other angle.

The author certainly makes this a plausible explanation. And yet I am thinking- if this is indeed the case, why we did not see similar payments this size more often?

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

#145

Post by cycomanic »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #106
ksec wrote: post #98

This may be off-topic. >Billionaires are like black holes. We deduce their existence from the fundamental laws of capitalism, see their gravity pull politics into their orbit, even detect signals of their existence in the public markets. I dont know about others. This is very beautifully put. But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Because this basically means money > power; > "As gravity pulls politics…

> But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%. France's public spending is 60% of the GDP, the situation in France is totally catastrophic (6% deficit atm) and... We should listen to Piketty because he's only ever worked public jobs and... He's french? And came up with an ultra-simplistic formula using bogus data? I mean..…

what a weird argument. > Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%.

so in other word confiscating the wealth of < 1000 people would reduce the US (a nation of ~300 M people) debt by nearly 20%. In other words we could significantly reduce the budget (much less interest payments) by taking away the wealth of ~0.0003% of the population. That seems like a no-brainer in terms of policies (the government makes decisions that takes peoples wealth away every day).

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

#146

Post by chubot »

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?

I don’t really understand the question, because based on the details in the article, SOME people knew he was wealthy, but he wasn’t a public figure

Most people aren’t public figures, wealthy or not

He had a job, a bunch of kids, multiple wives, and a 250 M divorce, among other things.

Obviously some people knew this. It just wasn’t in the public interest, like 99.99999% of things that have ever happened :-)

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

#147

Post by juunpp »

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."

Gift tax is a tax on gifts. It's not a tax that happens to be a gift.

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

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

#148

Post by vanjajaja1 »

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.

reminds me of the way dubai auctions off the 3 digit car license plates, then hotels do things like only letting low number license plates park out front

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

#149

Post by iJohnDoe »

BobAliceInATree wrote: post #142
iJohnDoe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, they should have just set $7 billion on fire in the middle of the street. This is an inconsequential amount to the US gov, but a tremendous amount to schools, communities hit by devastation or other terrible events, non-profit hospitals, etc.

You literally listed all things that are funded by taxes (schools, FEMA, medicare/medicaid). Sigh.

[flagged]

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

#150

Post by vlovich123 »

leprechaun1066 wrote: post #137
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.

What percentage of the wealth did they control?
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