151–160 of 552 posts
The hard part, which barely gets any discussion is:
* How do incentives work? How do you incentivize the production of new wealth?
* How does immigration work? You can't have open borders and mountains of free stuff.
* Does this replace or augment existing welfare programs?
* Does this actually make people's lives better? How do you know? What happens if it doesn't work out?
And so on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Did you build Microsoft? Yes. I purchased several of their products, thereby increasing the capitalization of Microsoft. I expect you intended the answer to be "No," implying that Bill Gates (and a few others) built Microsoft. However, that rests on a specific understanding of ownership and causality that not everyone shares.
Would Bill Gates have worked so hard (presumably) if he didn't have that specific understanding of ownership and casuality? Isn't that type of motivation and incentive necessary, to grind through the obstacles?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bill Gates' (to name a random American citizen) has a far larger share in the GDP than most other Americans. If you want to solve that raise your taxes on the rich and lift up those that are at the lowest end of the scale. That will have a lot more effect than some fiction where you get to do a bunch of make-believe bookkeeping. Or go a step further do what nobody has the balls to do: tax wealth That's what all the…
>do what nobody has the balls to do: tax wealth Just to clarify, nobody in the US is doing this, but it's not unheard of elsewhere. For example, Norway has a wealth tax of about 0.85% and there are some other examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples .
Note, they break out agriculture and animal products into a lot of categories
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Capital gains tax + inflation is a wealth tax. Each year you have to grow your money by inflation for it to maintain buying power. 2% inflation * 20% top rate LTCG tax means the wealthy pay a deferred 0.4% wealth tax yearly.
That's sort of true, but I'm not sure if that the inflation effects are truly a "tax on wealth". Inflation is a tax on everybody, holding a wide range of assets in that sense. Also because it's driven by inflation, those proceeds to the government are also just growth of proceeds needed to buffer against inflation in the goods that government purchases. Edit: Thinking about it a bit more. Inflation would also tend to…
American tech élite is funny... USA can't even a normal healthcare BUT the tech élite is all about Universal Basic Income, Transhumanism, the dangers of AI, going to Mars and saving the suburbs/car lifestyle. Can't they just wake up and put their mental energy and money on something that actually make sense?
Playing devil's advocate: I'm assuming that's because the things you have listed don't have a lot of (or any) laws/regulations around them. At least not to the degree that fixing wealth distribution does. Can you image all of the tax restructuring you'd have to achieve? Plus the fact that all of the lobbyists and other deeply entrenched parties that will oppose you. If I were in a similar position I'd likely opt for…
And in fact, perhaps it's better like this.
Edit: that said, their ideas do have real political consequences: keeping the status quo as it is.
Can someone actually explain what Sam wants to do here? I've read the post 4 times and I still can't see an y sort of plan, numbers, etc to actually critique, Which is odd because he specifically ask you to give feedback but never follows through on presenting the actual idea. He does motivate why he thinks a share of the GDP is so he gets the why, but never actually gets into the what, and how. I mean the GDP isn't…
It's basic income branded in a way that's more attractive for economically right-wing people (aka "capitalists").
It's useful to try out different metaphors and see what sticks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's sort of true, but I'm not sure if that the inflation effects are truly a "tax on wealth". Inflation is a tax on everybody, holding a wide range of assets in that sense. Also because it's driven by inflation, those proceeds to the government are also just growth of proceeds needed to buffer against inflation in the goods that government purchases. Edit: Thinking about it a bit more. Inflation would also tend to…
How is inflation a tax on people who has zero wealth?
I have a better (may be slightly insane) idea. Open up startup investing (VC rounds especially) to a wider audience through some kind of index fund. Retirement and pension funds, endowments etc are too roundabout a way of actually benefitting from the windfall in the now. While this is obviously risky, in the 2/10 chance where the startup IPOs or gets acquired, everyone stands to benefit a big deal. I recently heard…