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

American Equity

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 552 posts

Re: American Equity

#181

Post by vkou »

cperciva wrote: post #63
RivieraKid wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drawback of taxing wealth is that it distorts markets, it discourages saving. EDIT: Can't comment ("You're posting too fast, blah blah blah"). Here are some replies to the comments bellow: > It's encouraging people to make their money be productive instead of stashing it under a mattress. When you have money in the bank, you're effectively lending most of it to other people. Your money is "productive", which is e…

Indeed. And saving/investing is important! It's not a coincidence that the industrial revolution happened in a country with a secure established rule of law such that people could make investments without worrying about losing them at the whim of a dictator. Much better to tax consumption .

More importantly, it happened in a country which forced people off their land at gunpoint, into urban poverty, where they provided a huge supply of cheap, fungible, and utterly disposable factory labor.

But that would run counter to the neo-liberal narrative... After all, the rule of law serves to protect investments, not the peasant forced off his land.

Where was the rule of law to protect said peasants? Perhaps the rule of law isn't actually necessary for industrialization - as long as capital is protected, everything is all well and good. Unless you're a peasant.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

Re: American Equity

#182

Post by sethetter »

It seems like the idea of a universal basic income would achieve much of the same long term goals, while not getting things tied up in the complications of treating the US like a business.

The problem that's trying to be solved by this is legitimate, but I don't see much value here beyond it sounding a bit clever. There are ideas out there already that aren't making headway for the same reasons this idea wouldn't.

Re: American Equity

#183

Post by mrskitch »

kome wrote: post #156
mrskitch wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed. I think you are right. They prefer toying with childish ideas instead of dealing with the boring, difficult and dirty job of real politics. 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.

I do agree with you (we should be tackling problems that have plagued humanity since we've been a species). I think it's just incredibly tough to find motivation when the cards are already stacked against your from the start. Largely thankless work even when you are successful. Why fight to get healthcare accessible to all when you could make the world "more open and connected" instead (and become a billionaire in the process)?

Re: American Equity

#184

Post by maxerickson »

dsp1234 wrote: post #163
maxerickson wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just beating on the fact that I based the comparison on the total rather than the mean GDP available to an individual. But that was the point of my post, to compare the captured wealth to consumption. People always talk about how the wealthy are screwing the rest of us over and everything would be great if they weren't taking so much, but it turns out that consumption is also a huge portion of the economy. To…

You are just beating on the fact that I based the comparison on the total rather than the mean GDP available to an individual. I addressed the comment you made, not the comment you didn't make.

Feel free to explain how Something like $0.1 trillion out of several hundred trillion dollars. is not a comparison of Bill Gate's wealth to total GDP over the period he captured it.

I mean, I didn't painstakingly lay out my meaning, but there you go.

Re: American Equity

#185

Post by gaadd33 »

KirinDave wrote: post #76

Or... and I know this is crazy... why don't we make these benefits much more valuable by taking the total pool of money an negotiating collective strategies for services every human needs to varying degrees. Like health care, transportation, housing, food, and network connectivity. What if it was as easy to start a private small business in the US as it was in the UK _for the individual_.

What's the difficulty in starting a private small business in the US? Most states permit incorporation/LLC formation online pretty quickly and you can always do business as a Sole Prop.

What's easier in the UK?

Re: American Equity

#186

Post by dv_dt »

joncalhoun wrote: post #118
dv_dt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do tax wealth in a very limited way in the form of real estate property taxes. Though I would note that it hits the middle class and poor more disproportionately than the extremely wealthy. And I'd note that the tax cuts in front of congress propose making that scheme land even harder on the middle class by eliminating or curtailing the state/local tax (including property tax) exemptions from federal taxes.

Inheritance tax also taxes wealth, but it does so rarely and again the rich tend to find ways to avoid this. The problem with many "wealth" taxes is that they end up missing the top 1% and hurting the people who are building a business. Eg inheritance tax does a fantastic job of just screwing over family businesses that on paper are worth say $7mm+ because on paper the kids who inherit the business now owe taxes on m…

I think the effect on small businesses and farms are vastly overblown. In 2013, 20 small businesses and farms were affected. The idea that estate tax affects family businesses is mostly a stalking horse for extremely wealthy who just want to save themselves money and whose descendants would still receive plenty of money even with an inheritance tax.

https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-bo...

Re: American Equity

#187

Post by JonFish85 »

derefr wrote: post #176
koolba wrote: post #20

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…

From the perspective of trying to get the budget balanced, taxing wealth is probably the single most efficient way to do it. From the perspective of the tax code as an incentive system , taxing wealth is a strange thing—it makes people feel less interest in becoming wealthy, and thereby causes fewer GDP-building things to happen! (This is also, for a similar reason, why economists don't like corporate taxes or trade…

> From the perspective of trying to get the budget balanced, taxing wealth is probably the single most efficient way to do it.

Why? As a total layman, wouldn't it be incredibly inefficient? If we tax the wealth of, say, the top 100 richest Americans, wouldn't that cause some pretty terrible downsides? If we force them to sell their holdings, wouldn't that ripple through the economy?

Take Jeff Bezos--if you forced him to sell a significant portion of his stock, wouldn't that depress the Amazon stock price, which affects a significant number of other individuals and businesses?

Re: American Equity

#188

Post by nightski »

xapata wrote: post #89
gozur88 wrote: post #37

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. I don't understand why this is something people believe needs "solved". Did you build Microsoft?

> 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.

But you did not do so out of the goodness your heart. They provided a product which provided enough utility to justify the cost. Producing such a product is where the value is created, not in the purchase of said product.

Re: American Equity

#189

Post by blizkreeg »

Mahn wrote: post #160
blizkreeg wrote: post #114

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…

This used to be called an IPO, but as it turns out the companies themselves don't want it.

Certainly. But there is also an order of magnitude gain available (in theory, at least) if you can get in on an early round.

Re: American Equity

#190

Post by eksu »

Who is to decide the direction of our shared, aligned economy and development? Why is this alignment preferable to a more competitive free market or a command economy (China)?
Post reply on HN