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American Equity

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: American Equity

#211

Post by smileysteve »

whataretensors wrote: post #23

A better thing to do would be to campaign the SEC to remove the accredited investor regulation so that we can choose what we want to invest in, instead of forcing us all into this America bucket while the rich and connected get first pick on every opportunity. I'm tired of sitting back and seeing companies that I liked but couldn't invest in become > 500m market cap successes. If I spent 4 years at one of these compa…

This would have more of a case if the average American were already maxing out on equities allowed by the SEC (and in more than just retirement accounts).

It also seems to give much more credence to luck than statistical evidence (Random Walk) that diverse passive investments outperform active investments, especially when accounting for costs.

Re: American Equity

#212

Post by gozur88 »

slimshady94 wrote: post #119
xapata wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Would Bill Gates have worked so hard (presumably) if he didn't have that specific understanding of ownership and casuality? Isn't that type of motivation and incentive necessary, to grind through the obstacles?

People like Gates don't get rich because they work hard (though most of them do). They get rich because they're willing to risk what they have build something more.

Gates could have sold out to IBM or Apple or whoever and retired as a multimillionaire without taking the chance Microsoft would end up like Wang or Altair or hundreds of other companies.

Re: American Equity

#213

Post by nerfhammer »

aerovistae wrote: post #88

I really don't understand this idea. The GDP isn't like an actual account or something that the government can pay into or out of. It's "a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period of time," to quote its Wiki definition. That is, we're summing up the value of everything we made that year. It's like a hypothetical number meant to evaluate what we accomplished. It's not l…

A VAT tax is sort of like a tax on productivity, so I guess it's sort of like a universal VAT tax that would get collected then and paid back to everyone split evenly.

Re: American Equity

#215

Post by badestrand »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #45
jacquesm wrote: post #16

People already have a share in the GDP. That's what it is, the total domestic product, the sum of all the little parts. The problem is not that people don't have share in it (and this goes for every country, not just for the USA), but that they have a disproportionate share in it. 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 rai…

Currently, most [EDIT: many] people's share of the GDP is (mostly) their income from labor. Y Combinator / Sam Altman worries that increasing automation will make many people's job obsolete; merely lowering taxes on the salary of a McDonald's worker won't help if said worker will soon be unemployable. (Whether this will actually happen is a separate topic; but there's a reason why Sam Altman doesn't just propose your…

> Currently, most people's share of the GDP is (mostly) their income from labor

"Most"? According to [1] only around 50% of the US citizens do get a paycheck (155 of 322 mio). The others probably mostly are kids, senior people and housewives, but they make up a significant portion.

[1] https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000

Re: American Equity

#216

Post by user5994461 »

shawnee_ wrote: post #198
derefr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> taxing wealth is probably the single most efficient way to do it. It's not taxing wealth so much as taxing the mechanisms that create undue inequality that would work: yes, I'm talking about taxing rental income. The number one driver preventing people from building savings is draining their income through rent. The solution is sort of obvious, but hated by people who love the AirBnB model: https://news.ycombinator…

Pardon me but the solution you claim is already in place, well understood and totally ineffective.

Income is already taxable, including rental income. On top of that there are various taxes for owning/occupying a property. It varies with what state/country you live in.

Generally speaking, a property is a poor investment if you already have the money, they have poor returns and they don't grow in value outside of a few bubbles.

That being said, I agree that the pressure of rent is unbearable and growing for most of the population. The rebalance historically happened with wars. Properties ain't worth much when people die and buildings are bombed.

Re: American Equity

#217

Post by Balero »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #196
bcoates wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of balls, it's a matter of understanding that the most important part of tax policy is compliance, that is actually collecting the taxes . Even our current methods of evaluating quantities and distribution of wealth are vague estimates, and that's without people incentivized by taxation to hide or minimize it. A wealth tax that turns into anything but a buildings-and-cars tax is a fantasy from an en…

There is an option for enforcement you're not realizing here, called the Commodore Mathew Perry method, it goes like this. --Location: Tax Havens-- > Knock Knock Its the United States With huge boats, with guns, gunboats. >Open your banks' records, stop having them be closed and theres not much they can do about. So they sign a treaty making sure their banks' records are not closed. ----------------------------------…

Are you suggesting the USA does this to tax havens like Ireland, The Netherlands and The City of London?

Is it not a thing for startups to be based out of Delaware for a tax advantage? Would the ships even have to leave the harbor to do this?

Re: American Equity

#218

Post by koolba »

benmanns wrote: post #105
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.

Capital gains tax + inflation is a wealth tax. Each year you have to grow your money by inflation for it to maintain buying power. 2% inflation * 20% top rate LTCG tax means the wealthy pay a deferred 0.4% wealth tax yearly.

Inflation is only a tax on wealth that is not invested. Literally cash under mattresses.

Investments in real estate, equities, commodities etc all increase in notional value to factor in the devalued currency.

Re: American Equity

#219

Post by EGreg »

Sam: I like this idea. It's pretty much what everyone says when they mean "Basic Income" on a national level. A safety net and no cap on wealth. The question is about governance -- who will decide how much of a "dividend" to pay. The Alaska Permanent Fund already does this.

However, doing it at a national level requires a lot of changes, including implementing a national ID (social security numbers already do this but they have no password) and then you are in danger of being tracked by this id and so on, like China does.

However, why do it at the level of a nation? Why not communities small and large, local and virtual? That is what my company's been building since 2011. Well, not necessarily American Equity but a platform that any Community can run, to have its own social network, currency, and so on.

Take a look at these two links:

https://qbix.com/communities

https://intercoin.org

Re: American Equity

#220

Post by megaman22 »

JonFish85 wrote: post #187
derefr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
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