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

Who died and left the US $7B?

sherwood.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 589 posts

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#201

Post by olalonde »

cycomanic wrote: post #145
TacticalCoder wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%. France's public spending is 60% of the GDP, the situation in France is totally catastrophic (6% deficit atm) and... We should listen to Piketty because he's only ever worked public jobs and... He's french? And came up with an ultra-simplistic formula using bogus data? I mean..…

what a weird argument. > Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%. so in other word confiscating the wealth of < 1000 people would reduce the US (a nation of ~300 M people) debt by nearly 20%. In other words we could significantly reduce the budget (much less interest payments) by taking away the wealth of ~0.0003% of the population. That seems like a no-brainer in terms o…

And guess who's going to renounce to US citizenship and/or start companies outside the US after that? Are entrepreneurs still going to immigrate to the US knowing that their wealth will be confiscated once they become successful? Who is going to fund the startups? etc.

If the US were to implement such measures, get ready for an exodus of talent and capital.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#202

Post by enos_feedler »

advael wrote: post #139
enos_feedler wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but it’s also the structure that enabled the riches in the first place. I don’t see why more people don’t do this.

Mostly because of a very successful propaganda campaign by people who sought to loot the post-war economic boom Generally speaking, the sad truth of a complex economy is that coordination is hard, and there's usually a short-term privatized gain to be had by someone willing to poison the future and the commons. No amount of benefit to humanity overall or even the specific society such a person lives in will convince…

Well said! I feel better already

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#203

Post by hollerith »

cycomanic wrote: post #145
TacticalCoder wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%. France's public spending is 60% of the GDP, the situation in France is totally catastrophic (6% deficit atm) and... We should listen to Piketty because he's only ever worked public jobs and... He's french? And came up with an ultra-simplistic formula using bogus data? I mean..…

what a weird argument. > Confiscating all the US billionaires' wealth wouldn't even lower the US's debt by 20%. so in other word confiscating the wealth of < 1000 people would reduce the US (a nation of ~300 M people) debt by nearly 20%. In other words we could significantly reduce the budget (much less interest payments) by taking away the wealth of ~0.0003% of the population. That seems like a no-brainer in terms o…

Yes, and after we confiscate their assets, we turn them into delicious meat pies. Surely this is not unethical because each billionaire, turned into meat pies, will feed many dozens of us.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#204

Post by Jedd »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #159
Jedd wrote: post #94

A fascinating reddit post was mentioned here about a month ago - about the mildly famous (if a little macabre) 'Buy, Borrow, Die' cycle used by the obscenely-wealthy to - multi-generationally - avoid tax obligations. https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26... HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408772

Can you explain to me what a post about avoiding taxes has to do with a post about not avoiding taxes?

I don't expect you were genuinely seeking an answer, however I'll point out that the crux of the mystery described in TFA was that it was such a rare event - someone tremendously wealthy didn't avoid this tax - that it was note-worthy.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#205

Post by sologoub »

geysersam wrote: post #188
_bin_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, and still entails interest payments. It exists in part because you don't want someone who inherited his parents' house and wants to move in to go broke trying to pay taxes, or have to re-mortgage it, with an even stronger case with family fa…

> The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, This is a bad argument. Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc. It's a very common fallacy of people criticizing public spending to point to the stock market and say "Look! Imagine how rich we would be if we had just invested the public spending instead." Completely falling into the trap of disc…

> Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc.

Not presently. Most tax dollars are spent elsewhere and infrastructure/education get less than 7%: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Even that spending is not effective. Drive California roads and you’ll often see fixes that aren’t much better than the damaged roads they replaced. And let’s not talk about our wonderful train projects…

In theory, this money would make a lot of difference. In practice, it’s heartbreaking.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#206

Post by cheema33 »

disillusioned wrote: post #34

One of the funny takeaways here is: there are so many more billionaires out there, who spend considerable effort to remain off these lists and otherwise anonymous. I work with one, and he's not on ANY of the Forbes or Bloomberg lists, though articles about his projects and investments obviously make the news. That's, as the article alludes to, the funny thing about private equity: it does a very good job _staying_ pr…

And then there are those who try very hard to get on the list. I know at least one famous one.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#207

Post by cheema33 »

whatshisface wrote: post #102
ksec wrote: post #98

This may be off-topic. >Billionaires are like black holes. We deduce their existence from the fundamental laws of capitalism, see their gravity pull politics into their orbit, even detect signals of their existence in the public markets. I dont know about others. This is very beautifully put. But I am wondering if anyone has an counter argument. Because this basically means money > power; > "As gravity pulls politics…

The pull of oligarchs is more real in Russia than anywhere else in the world.

> The pull of oligarchs is more real in Russia than anywhere else in the world.

It may have been true at some point. But, Putin put an end to it. He killed oligarchs when they fell out of line. There are some ex-oligarchs living outside of Russia, no longer super rich, after Putin took away their wealth.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#208

Post by pembrook »

FabHK wrote: post #87
bko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that obscene? Presumably the person created something very valuable to the world. Sure there are zero-sum ways to generate wealth (e.g. suing people, theft, front running trades) but generally that kind of wealth comes from actually generating something that people value.

The word “Presumably” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. That Econ101 justification is harder and harder to keep up as you learn more about both economics and the real world. For detailed counter arguments, see Branko Milanović Global inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization , James Kwak Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality , Walt Bogdanich & Michael Forsythe When McKinsey Comes to T…

[flagged]

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#209

Post by VirusNewbie »

willcipriano wrote: post #82
mynameishere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered if there was a way to effectively "burn" one's entire wealth, creating a small deflationary event that would increase the value of existing dollars. How could one do this? Donate to the Federal Reserve? Or would you literally have to cash everything out and burn it?

A big part of modern monetary theory is taxing the newly printed money and putting it towards (wasteful) government programs to "burn it" in a sense. Predictably, politicians who support MMT only did the printing part and skipped that bit once inflation started.

How does that burn the money? If the government is spending the money, it's going to federal employees and purchasing good and services from the general economy.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#210

Post by endgame »

patwolf wrote: post #158
sdenton4 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, dragons are important stabilizing influences in dungeon economics. The hoard of gold isn't inflationary until the adventurers liberate it and start buying wands and stuff.

Reminds me of something I read years ago about how Ultima Online would create "gold sinks", super expensive items that served no purpose other than help remove gold from the economy and prevent inflation.

This is a problem with all kinds of virtual world economies. Players accumulate so much gold that some substitute becomes more useful. Diablo II had the Stone of Jordan, for example.
Post reply on HN