Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 246 posts

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#161

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

flyinglizard wrote: post #142
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally they wouldn't care much about the day to day operations of a company or even that it is profitable and they would use their voting shares only to prevent decisions that actively cause societal harm or to favor ones that actively benefit society. Like I said, there's still a lot that could go wrong with that scheme, but it isn't like the current scheme doesn't have its problems too.

How would you manage this very site by these criteria? Would you still cover cryptography, freedom of information, civil unrest and bills which damage fundamental rights?

Does this site even make money?

Ok, assuming that we're treating HN like a business and that business is large enough to have significant government voting share under this scheme:

The government voting with its shares to silence those stories would potentially be actual censorship under the US constitution, and therefore illegal. The same cannot be said about private owners.

Of course, the government could opt to transition the site away from those topics entirely, but again that's something the private owners could do too.

And none of this prevents small competitors from coming in to run those stories.

Let me turn it around: Would Facebook have more or less freedom of speech with government control?

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#162

Post by ericd »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #125
ericd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds hilariously demoralizing. Talk about Pavlovian training in the wrong direction, every time I find a way to boost the value of my company, I have to sign more of it over the government.

Yes, that's kinda the point I think. You could save a bunch of money by filling your product with asbestos and making employees pee in jugs, or you could just, you know, not do that because then you have to hand over more control of your business to the government. Granted, this also disincentives societally beneficial efficiency increases.

You realize that those examples are the extreme exceptions that the press has made hay out of, and aren’t representative, right? Most company value boosting actions are much more boring.

I wonder how much of this backlash is just a result of people being propagandized to by the media’s steady drumbeat about corporate abuses since the GFC.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#163

Post by filoeleven »

colpabar wrote: post #103

Does anyone seriously believe that if the US gov levied this tax that it would actually use the revenue in an efficient way? Remember when they "lost" 2.3 trillion dollars? $2,300,000,000,000. Whoops! As an aside, this [1] was extremely depressing to read. I was aware of the 2.3 trillion around 9/11 (what a coincidence!), but had no idea about the more recent discrepancies. [1]: https://www.city-journal.org/html/amer…

It should be noted that all of that money was for military use, and the article says that the Pentagon is the only agency which still does not comply with a 1996 law that would prevent this.

The obvious answer to that is to force compliance from the Pentagon. I’d personally add cutting military budget by “the amount that goes missing per year,” but that will never fly.

In any case, it’s important to specifically call out the Pentagon rather than blame the entire government.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#164

Post by AnimalMuppet »

arrosenberg wrote: post #50
bigyikes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policies like this will cause the rich, who have extreme mobility, to leave your country. Maybe to some people this sounds nice, but generally it will lead to worse companies and less innovation.

Does it though? It seems to me that if the rich fled, the vacuum would probably be filled by smarter, more ambitious people who were being suppressed by incumbent wealth.

It won't be just the rich. It will be people like me who are upper middle class and see the writing on the wall - who strongly suspect that, when taking wealth from the billionaires didn't give you enough money, you're going to start on the millionaires and then the hundred-thousandaires.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#165

Post by david927 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #109
david927 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> came from entrepreneurs seeking to build great fortunes $20 million per person is a great fortune. Show me any innovation that came from someone wanting more.

Elon Musk was worth more than $20 million before taking over Tesla and SpaceX. Jeff Bezos was worth more than $20 million before Amazon started AWS. Sergey and Larry were worth well more than $20 million before Google launched Gmail. Jack Dorsey was well more than $20 million before starting Square. Stephane Bancel was worth much more than $20 million when he became CEO of Moderna. Steve Jobs was worth much more than…

- Elon Musk took over Tesla and SpaceX. He was not the innovator there.

- Did Bezos think of AWS? I think not. It was literally selling excess processing capacity.

- Gmail was not innovative; it was just a better client. Web-based mail had been around for a while.

- I'm not sure how innovative Square is but I don't think any of it would have to do with Dorsey.

- The NeXT was based on innovation coming from Alan Kay. The iPod wasn't innovative; it was just a hit. The iPhone was already underway when Jobs came back. The iPad is a bigger iPhone.

Big companies don't mean innovation; they often mean acquiring innovation and monetizing it.

All the big innovations of the 20th century were accomplished by individuals who did not do so based purely on financial incentive. That's a myth.

"Let's not feed kids crying themselves to sleep at night from hunger because that might mean we won't get iPads with blue casing." Shame on you.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#166

Post by pwinnski »

simonh wrote: post #152
bwestergard wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It does not help much to take wealth in terms of equity paper money away from people who know how to invest it efficiently and distribute it." This assumes what needs to be proven. Namely, the degree to which the wealth of billionaries under the status quo regulatory, financial, and tax regime reflects their outsized contributions to welfare. If we make a number of assumptions (e.g. perfect information, perfect comp…

>This assumes what needs to be proven. I think it has been, dramatically, over the last 120 years. Plenty of countries have tried radical appropriation and redistribution, and it failed spectacularly every time. Meanwhile a prominent Marxist country, China, turned to capitalism and within a generation has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into urban middle class lives. Meanwhile Cuba, Venezuela…

This is a radical oversimplification of what has happened and is happening in China, conflating several things into one.

China is still very much a communist country, and the raising of many people out of poverty is in large part a result of the government distributing the gains that have come from "special economic zones" into rural areas on a scale that would make a "tax on billionaires" seem like a quaint half-step.

Allowing people to own and control private enterprises is a big step for China, but the gains from those private enterprises are still very much under the control of the Chinese government.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#167

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #159
antaviana wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I believe you are missing is that this will not meet basic needs of others. If you distribute the excess wealth, you will create a lot of inflation because if people have twice the money they will be prone to pay a twice bigger rent or a twice bigger restaurant check, or twice the money for the same land plot. If you decide to somehow destroy the excess wealth (for example, burning cash or the houses they d…

That's such a simplistic view of economics, as to not bear the slightest examination. E.g. the free market depends entirely upon the amount of money people have? And nothing to do with supply/demand and the elasticity of the market? In a more nuanced view demand creates supply, efficiencies of scale reduce cost, and everything is cheaper. Folks love to throw out the "More money means prices go up!" as if it's a truis…

Most people, at least on this site, seem to have a severe Dunning-Kruger effect going on when it comes to economics. It's like they took Econ 101 and didn't realize it's an intro course with simplified models.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#168

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #132
david927 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one owns a car factory; it's divided into shares. And anyone now with $20M can retire. And I don't think the problem would be that so many people hit $20M that everyone retired.

But people did own a $20M car factory. And it grew and grew. Once it hits $20M, you're basically forced to sell a part of it, and once those parts grow over, you have to sell another part, and another part...

You don't have to sell any physical piece of it, only shares in it. The company can still grow, but individuals would not be able to hoard the wealth it creates.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#169

Post by flyinglizard »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #161
flyinglizard wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you manage this very site by these criteria? Would you still cover cryptography, freedom of information, civil unrest and bills which damage fundamental rights?

Does this site even make money? Ok, assuming that we're treating HN like a business and that business is large enough to have significant government voting share under this scheme: The government voting with its shares to silence those stories would potentially be actual censorship under the US constitution, and therefore illegal. The same cannot be said about private owners. Of course, the government could opt to tr…

I’d assume Facebook would be appointed a partisan czar during each administration, much like many government agencies. Unlike the EPA or FCC though, controlling Facebook has huge political implications.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#170

Post by Geee »

eightysixfour wrote: post #71
yayr wrote: post #45

This may be unpopular, but the hard thing in this discussion is to differentiate between consumption and investment. It does not help much to take wealth in terms of equity paper money away from people who know how to invest it efficiently and distribute it. On the other hand, there are minimum basic needs for consumption of food, health services, shelter, education etc. I agree that the system to finance those servi…

While I think you hit the nail on the head, I think what we're seeing is a belief that the money being invested by billionaires is not doing anything useful, that's why people are calling for it to be taken by the government and redistributed.

That is because every good investment causes deflation, which in other words is increased economic efficiency. Capital must be misallocated in order to create inflation.

It's a huge misconception that inflation is good for the economy. What actually happens, is that the economy on the whole gets more inefficient and wealth concentrates.

Post reply on HN