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It’s better to be born rich than gifted

washingtonpost.com

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Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#181

Post by mrep »

gnicholas wrote: post #170
mrep wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is generally taxed anytime it changes hands so an inheritance tax seems fine to me. Although, a 90% one would be ridiculous. Also, if you are in the US, the estate tax is now $11.18 million per taxpayer (so 22 million for a couple) due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. As a result, only approximately 2,000 people (or 0.0006% of the population) in the US are currently liable for estate tax [0] so you should…

> if you are in the US, the estate tax is now $11.18 million per taxpayer I think you mean estate tax exemption.

Oops, wrong wording. You are correct, you are only taxed on any money passed down after the first 11.18 million.

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#182

Post by conanbatt »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #61
Qworg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely inequitable. However, it is also how humans work - we want to advantage our inner group over other groups. This cuts directly to the heart of the meritocracy argument (most strongly in technology, but it exists everywhere): how can you claim that everyone is judged by their merits (directly related to how hard they work and how smart they train themselves to be) when being lucky (in genetics, in birt…

I had a meeting with a very successful guy who is CIO at a major tech startup who was looking to acquire our company. Because we were friends for a while I said something to the effect of "I just want to make sure this doesn't look like nepotism" His response was basically, "Who cares? I love Nepotism. that means me and my friends do better and help each other out." Kind of shocked me to be honest, but after thinking…

Nepotism in a private company is very different to nepotism in government.

The price in the first case is paid by the litigious investors. In the second one, by the unwilling tax payers.

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#183

Post by conanbatt »

cm2012 wrote: post #102
ageek123 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should society be allowed to try to give the poor but genetically gifted children a boost in life? Nobody’s suggesting that parent’s shouldn’t use whatever resources they have. But to a certain extent it is zero-sum. The way you boost smart poor children is by taking money from non-poor parents. So you really are suggesting that non-poor parents "shouldn't use whatever resources they have." I don't think anyone fun…

Luckily, there are massively diminishing returns to money's effect on educational outcomes and overall happiness, so a dollar taxed from the rich is worth much less to them than to the poor it is given to.

The famous utilitarian argument. Beware, it is also much better to seize your phone and computer to provide food to a starving african child.

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#184

Post by conanbatt »

jwatte wrote: post #139
jesssse wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see inheritance as a problem. My motivation for accumulating wealth is largely driven by a desire to provide for my future family members. Inheritance tax is theft.

Not paying taxes is theft from the society that lets you accumulate and keep wealth.

And when you are taxed for services you dont use, or are used against you, what is your recourse?

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#185

Post by conanbatt »

perfunctory wrote: post #76
anonymous5133 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, exactly which is why the rates for capital gains are reduced. If you make the capital gains high enough the reward you get for taking the risk won't be high enough. I think it has a bigger deterrence effect with non-capital gains income. Once you start getting in the higher income tax brackets, it isn't really worth it to put in more hours for additional income when 50% of it is taken in income tax off the top.…

I am paying 52% income tax rate in the upper bracket. I doesn't stop me from trying to increase my income. Clarification - I am not making any claims as to whether I support this tax level or not. I am just saying it doesn't discourage me from trying to get ahead.

In economic modeling of course it does, and in terms of individual experience, which can vary from that , Im willing to challenge it as well.

If they told you that if you volunteered for government on saturdays, they would exempt you from income tax altogether, would you do it?

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#186

Post by conanbatt »

perfunctory wrote: post #49
1999 wrote: post #41

I think this article sets up the paper against two incorrect worldviews: 1. America is a genetic meritocracy -- you achievement is based on your potential. My interpretation of "traditional" American values is more focused around hard work, toughness, and foresight ... this sort of thing: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/lifetimes/farm.htm . I'm pretty sure the idea that your academic performance determines your place i…

I never really understood why lower tax is pro-wealth. What does it really mean? I am not trolling, I am really curious. Let's say I see some opportunity to grow my wealth, am I going to look at the current tax level and if it's above certain threshold I am just gonna say screw it, I am not taking it?

Yes, in microeconomic modeling you find that when your income increases, two competing forces go into effect: that you want to work more because you make more money for each unit you provide, and the "consumption" of leisure goes up because it is now affordable.

Which one wins is something to figure out empirically, but look at the fact that europe has more leisure than the US does, even at the same level of income.

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#187

Post by radiantswirl »

dahart wrote: post #160
jesssse wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the trends in public budgets directly funding colleges, but... Government backed student loans for anybody who wants them has inflated the cost of college in the United States. Your plan I refer to, is when you said the government could entirely pay college costs for every willing student. With all that free money, where is the motivation for schools to improve? > we could fund university education…

> Government backed student loads for anybody who wants them has inflated the cost of college in the United States. I heard it the first time. Do you have anything new to add, any evidence, or any explanation of how your theory actually works, given that total public funding has declined? Is it possible you’re assigning causation where there is only correllation? Tuition hikes certainly correllate with loan programs…

Norway (and other Scandinavian countries) are bad examples that do not apply to the USA, because they have relatively racially and culturally homogenous populations with cultures that didn't evolve in response to the challenge of paying for college in the first place.

Free college in the USA would not work because no middle class person's life would have any meaning -- currently the only meaning that a lot of middle-class people have to sustain them is motivation to pay for their kid's college -- take that away from them, and they really got nothing.

Norway never had the financial barrier to entry to college so it's society's motivations and ethos didn't form in symbiosis with that barrier, but ours did. If you remove the financial barrier to entry to college you also remove the fundamental driving motivation of a huge portion of the middle class.

The reason we can't make college free in America is because we need to keep the middle class working, bro. A college degree is the carrot and student debt is the stick, if you take away the stick the carrot actually becomes less appealing. It's counterintuitive but deeply true.

Making college free in America would have massively demoralizing effects on both youth and adults because our entire youth and adult cultures have evolved in response to the financial barriers to entry into college.

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#188

Post by CuriouslyC »

jesssse wrote: post #131
jacobolus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just educational outcomes. More money has massively diminishing returns to happiness, health, fitness, longevity, creative output, ... The biggest constraint is often individual people’s time/attention; additional money is only slightly (if at all) helpful for the already rich. But a little bit of money goes a long way to help people who are not eating well, don’t have a place to live, need to work 3 stressful pa…

I do not see inheritance as a problem. My motivation for accumulating wealth is largely driven by a desire to provide for my future family members. Inheritance tax is theft.

Attach whatever label to it you want. The only thing that matters is whether it makes society happier overall. It certainly makes you unhappy, but the people who receive the money are made happy, and histories have shown us the stratified societies that result from a lot of hereditary wealth/position are less happy than the ones with high social mobility. You might think this is unfair. Being born in an underclass in a stratified society is unfair too.

If you really believe in individual sovereignty, a society that maximizes social mobility should be inherently attractive to you. The John Galt type that the right idealizes would have been nothing if he'd been born an untouchable in pre-British India.

That being said, I recognize that a tax would discourage some people from being as productive as they might otherwise be. At the same time, I suspect that many people will work harder under more fair conditions. It's hard to say what the net effect will be.

Of course, if you have other ideas for promoting a fair society with social mobility along with realistic methods of paying for them, I'm happy to hear them.

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#189

Post by brorfred »

socketnaut wrote: post #178
perfunctory wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about risk-adjusted return. That's right. So as I long as expected risk-adjusted return is positive, a rational investor is supposed to invest regardless of the tax rate. I would think.

It's not that simple because taxes modify gains but not losses. Imagine we bet $1 on a coin toss. The expected value for either of us is $0. Now imagine the winner is required to pay 10% tax on his proceeds. The expected value becomes (-$1.00 + $.90)/2 = -$0.05.

But aren't business losses tax deductible?

Re: It’s better to be born rich than gifted

#190

Post by Hydraulix989 »

_kxbd wrote: post #107
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mean IQ world-wide (and also in America) is 100. Software engineers here in San Francisco are nowhere close to average intelligence across the US. Data shows differences across professions for IQ, and software engineering lands firmly on the 2 stddev (130 IQ) mark. Remember, populations aren't distributed evenly, and smarter people than average tend to end up in SF Bay. It's difficult to be well-calibrated if you hav…

I'm open to being wrong here, but where can I find a source on this? I only found this one chart [1], and the mean averages seem to be lower than 130. I have no idea how reliable this is. I can't speak to San Francisco at all, but I can't find the data. I'd also include "web developer" with software engineer, and everyone with no knowledge of CS theory, just all software developers in my opinion. [1] http://www.iqcom…

Without doing too much digging, one of the first results in my quick Google search suggested a 128 IQ average:

https://www.electronicproducts.com/News/Engineer_vs_engineer...

Google and Facebook engineers even push 140 IQ when you look at how selective they are. For example, many Top 10 university graduates work there, and just based on SAT score acceptances alone, the average IQ at a top US university crosses 140-150 easily.

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