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When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

nytimes.com

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Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#191

Post by djrogers »

carlob wrote: post #143
chimeracoder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capital in motion and at a high velocity is generally good for everyone. Capital at rest serves very few and is very harmful to everyone else. This is dangerously wrong. No economist would tell you that a high velocity of money is an inherent good, or even that increasing the velocity of money is an unfettered good. Public infrastructure, mortgages, venture capital, small business loans - all of these are investmen…

Piketty argues we need a low worldwide universal capital tax. At the very least one of the advantages would be to have a census of wealth, just like we have for income.

Note the ‘worldwide’ here - otherwise you have capital leaving the country which decides to tax it.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#192

Post by moretai »

sharemywin wrote: post #41
moretai wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It represents freedom, that's why people look up to it.

I'm not talking about financial freedom. At around 10M you have financial freedom. I think competition is a great tool for personal growth, but would you run the score up on your child in a game of basketball or would you try an teach him a few tricks to up his game so the next time you both enjoy the game more. At the end of the day I think we need to spend more time sharing a little more. ME included.

I'd hope future me runs up the score in basketball. I don't really enjoy zero sum games unless I am winning. Maybe our society is fucked up, but a lot of people get immense pleasure over dominating others. Best to let your child know that's the world you are walking in.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#193

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

sokoloff wrote: post #178
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk about you but I can't think of many former soviet block countries that have a healthy distribution of wealth between working, middle, and upper classes. Furthermore the list of countries given there are not places where you want to be poor.

What is the list of countries where one would want to be poor?

Obviously there isn't a list where you'd want to be poor , but I'd definetly rather be poor living in Sweden than poor living in Russia.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#194

Post by aaronchall »

sokoloff wrote: post #176
aaronchall wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be an ideal world: > What if you make the rules so simple that there are NO loopholes and there is no/little possibility for tax avoidance? Then we could lower tax "rates", reduce dead weight loss, and increase tax receipts. But no, we've decided, for example, that home ownership is important for everyone so we subsidize home ownership by letting people write off mortgage interest. This has the unintended…

Home mortgage interest deduction serves to put the financing of private home ownership on the same footing as financing of commercial house ownership (wherein the interest on loans for income-seeking activities is deductible). Eliminating the MID without eliminating the deductibility of commercial loans' interest makes commercial purchasing of real estate cheaper than private purchasing. IOW, eliminating the MID is a…

> Home mortgage interest deduction serves to put the financing of private home ownership on the same footing as financing of commercial house ownership (wherein the interest on loans for income-seeking activities is deductible).

Sounds fair. Can I also reduce my income by furnishing my building (home) with equipment (e.g. furniture and appliances) in the same way that commerce can? Would that make sense?

> Eliminating the MID without eliminating the deductibility of commercial loans' interest makes commercial purchasing of real estate cheaper than private purchasing. IOW, eliminating the MID is a big handout to commercial landlords and serves to keep even more people renting rather than owning their housing.

There's only so much housing stock. If more are renting, there's more business in renting, but that mostly affects the mid to upper classes. Do we really want to subsidize urban sprawl? Maybe we do. Maybe we should. Should we do it forever? I... don't like it.

Maybe all subsidies should have a phase-out/sunsetting period to avoid economic shocks while reducing the plethora of loop-holes and market distortions that they create.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#195

Post by djrogers »

the_gastropod wrote: post #96
cpursley wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A progressive national sales tax. Because you can't avoid buying goods and services, and not everyone gets a W2 paycheck (Buffet, Gates, Trump).

A progressive sales would be very difficult to implement and maintain. Virtually every good / service would need to have a tax associated with it. How much do you tax a Honda Civic vs an Acura RSX? A BMW? Bentley? How much do you tax a 33ft yacht? A 60ft yacht? This thing would also need to be updated very often as new technology comes out. Think about Apple Watches, VR headsets, etc. You'd need a small army of tax l…

Why would you need to tax each of those at a different rate? You make a consumption tax progressive by providing an advance rebate (prebate) to everyone in an amount that covers the consumption tax for a defined standard of living. Any consumption above that level burdens the consumer, and when averaged out over a quarter or year will be progressive.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#196

Post by baursak »

djrogers wrote: post #190
baursak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple solution to it, no? Abolish all taxes on income, dividends, or capital gains. Introduce a single tax on wealth. Every year tax a certain percentage of one's capital holdings, whether capital gain is realized or not.

Under your proposal, the roughly 50% of Americans with zero net wealth would pay nothing. That’s fine on paper, but it would actually incent people to stay in debt and dis-incent the accumulation of savings. Look at it this way, I can either buy a bigger house with more debt whenever I have some extra money laying around, or I can save that cash and have the government take some of it every year. You also incent peop…

I wouldn't start taxing any wealth below a certain threshold at all. Like $200K or something.

If you buys a bigger house, if equity portion of that house is above a taxable threshold -- say a $1M house, and you have $200K equity, then that equity will be taxed. Very minimally I might add.

> do not tax activities you want to encourage, and tax those which you want to curtail.

That's not working out currently. Unless you want to encourage massive wealth inequality.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#197

Post by sokoloff »

aaronchall wrote: post #194
sokoloff wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home mortgage interest deduction serves to put the financing of private home ownership on the same footing as financing of commercial house ownership (wherein the interest on loans for income-seeking activities is deductible). Eliminating the MID without eliminating the deductibility of commercial loans' interest makes commercial purchasing of real estate cheaper than private purchasing. IOW, eliminating the MID is a…

> Home mortgage interest deduction serves to put the financing of private home ownership on the same footing as financing of commercial house ownership (wherein the interest on loans for income-seeking activities is deductible). Sounds fair. Can I also reduce my income by furnishing my building (home) with equipment (e.g. furniture and appliances) in the same way that commerce can? Would that make sense? > Eliminatin…

> There's only so much housing stock. If more are renting, there's more business in renting, but that mostly affects the mid to upper classes.

I'm not following you here. Rental market dynamics affect the lower and middle classes and the rent/buy margin affects the middle class. If the gulf between renting and buying widens (by buying becoming relatively more expensive), how does that not help landlords (mostly upper-middle and upper class), who in turn achieve increased power over the poor and middle classes (vs the status quo)?

Every 750 credit score, 2 steady income, $100K household income family who doesn't buy a house but instead rents put pressure on someone worse off in the economic stack-rank.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#198

Post by djrogers »

nicktelford wrote: post #26
qaq wrote: post #15

I think the thing we keep forgetting is if "everyone" makes more the only thing that is going to change is housing and food prices and you will gain 0.

The issue here is not the exact value of earnings (which changes with inflation), but the income distribution, which has become massive. To cite the article, in the 50s and 60s, CEOs earned on average 20 times the average workers' salary; this is now 247 times the average workers' salary.

So what problems does this 247x gap cause for someone earning a median income?

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#199

Post by djrogers »

onion2k wrote: post #54
qaq wrote: post #15

I think the thing we keep forgetting is if "everyone" makes more the only thing that is going to change is housing and food prices and you will gain 0.

If everyone makes $10,000 a year more then rich people will barely notice. Poor people would be able to afford to heat their homes and buy insurance. I think everyone who's poor would consider that much a gain.

If everyone earns an extra $10k, prices in the most basic consumption items will rise, including housing.

Re: When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

#200

Post by panarky »

program_whiz wrote: post #130
sharemywin wrote: post #3

I'm not sure why so many people look up to the rich. They fail at kinder-garden. I have to work very hard to help my 4 year old to understand how to share. If your using money to keep score your probably using the wrong system to keep score. I've been using weight watchers lately and keep score with the right system helps a lot.

The rich typically make donations and support charity far more than any normal person could. How is 90% taxation "sharing", sounds more like "give me all your money or you go to jail", followed by "now I get to spend it however I want". Show me the huge/efficient benefits that have been gained by the huge government expenditures. We're $20T in the hole, has it really benefited people that much. Real wages stagnant fo…

Actually, it's well established that poor people are more generous than rich people.

"Poor children more generous than their rich counterparts, study finds" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/1164877...

"Why the Rich Don't Give to Charity" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/why-the...

"Study: Poor Are More Charitable Than The Wealthy" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1290682...

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