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American Equity

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: American Equity

#221

Post by tomtimtall »

dibujante wrote: post #173
chollida1 wrote: post #3

Can someone actually explain what Sam wants to do here? I've read the post 4 times and I still can't see an y sort of plan, numbers, etc to actually critique, Which is odd because he specifically ask you to give feedback but never follows through on presenting the actual idea. He does motivate why he thinks a share of the GDP is so he gets the why, but never actually gets into the what, and how. I mean the GDP isn't…

Universal basic income. He wants to (numbers _entirely fabricated here_) tax 20% of US GDP and then give that money evenly to all adults, therefore giving every adult American an equal share of 20% of the GDP (which would be about $14,000 per year per adult).

You can't tax the GDP, it's a calculation on the state of the exonomy not a cash flow to the state.

Re: American Equity

#222

Post by gehwartzen »

chimeracoder wrote: post #85
throwawayjava wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea is basically UBI couched in capitalist terms. If every American gets a share of GDP, and GDP is concentrated, then that means that either 1) the share of GDP that each person gets is tiny and inconsequential (see: GOP-style tax cuts) or else 2) you need progressive taxation. Another difference, aside from wording/marketing, is that the UBI is implemented as a progressive redistribution of future wealth gene…

> This idea is basically UBI couched in capitalist terms "Universal Basic Income" is already a radically capitalist idea. It's often discussed using terminology borrowed from Marxism and socialism, but it couldn't be any more capitalist of a construct. We're just not used to hearing it discussed with that language.

Could you clarify what you mean? a UBI seems like pretty straight forward wealth re-distribution which I generally don't see described in most capitalist philosophies.

Everyone gets $10k. Obviously not everyone is going to pay $10k in taxes otherwise the system would be pointless and we could instead just eliminate taxes altogether. Those at the bottom would benefit, those at the top would pay more in taxes, and somewhere between is a break even point.

Re: American Equity

#223

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

touchofevil wrote: post #206
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example, abolish the Senate, end the electoral college, end gerrymandering, and reform campaign financing. I can get behind a lot of those but the Senate? What's your problem with it? Seems like the founders had very good reason to create it.

The Senate doesn't reflect majority rule based on population. California has 38.3 million residents, Wyoming has 600K residents [1] but both states have 2 senate votes. Due to this, Wyoming residents have much greater voting power in the Senate than residents of CA. Edit: And since bills must be passed by both the House and the Senate, Wyoming residents have much more power over what becomes law than CA residents do.…

Hmm, well perhaps (I'm venturing into the unknown here) the problem isn't really protecting the majority from the minority (or vice versa) but protecting the weak from the powerful. When I see proposals like:

>end gerrymandering, and reform campaign financing

I think those are good because they weaken the powerful (the current majority party and the rich) to enable the weak. But I also believe that without the senate the political power of Wyomingers (Wyomans?) is going to be a lot weaker than the political power of Californians so I see the senate as overall good.

Why should we focus so much on the majority and not the relative power of those that compose the majority (or minority?)

Re: American Equity

#225

Post by dv_dt »

kgwgk wrote: post #200
dv_dt wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prices they pay for goods go up...

The salaries do go up as well.

Wage data seems to say that it's growth does not match the amount that corporate valuations nor their profits. Nor does it match the growth of costs for longer term societal needs such as healthcare nor education... On the other hand large accumulations of wealth have had no such growth problems - let alone vs inflation.

So yes salaries go up, but not in concert with people's costs nor with the value that is generated by people's labor.

Re: American Equity

#226

Post by sharathr »

Start by re-defining what Government is.

Framed any other way, this has been done before. You could argue that Universal Health Care attempted exactly this but instead of providing money back, it went to a universal pool for care. Same for Social Security, Education and other endowment programs.

Re: American Equity

#227

Post by enraged_camel »

Retric wrote: post #161
kgwgk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money in a savings account is money invested.

> money invested Only in the most inefficient way possible. The 'problem' is banks are limited in what they can do with this money which ends up creating investment bubbles and other market distortions which hurt the economy overall. If you slowly transitioned banks so they could not invest this money over say 100 years the net result would not be harmful. In the end money is not actual wealth, it's simply a represen…

>>The 'problem' is banks are limited in what they can do with this money which ends up creating investment bubbles and other market distortions which hurt the economy overall. If you slowly transitioned banks so they could not invest this money over say 100 years the net result would not be harmful.

Um, no. The type of investing you suggest includes the risk of losing the money. This doesn't work with commercial banks because they are insured by the federal government, i.e. the taxpayer. When people put money in the bank they expect it to stay safe. That's why the concept of a bank exists in the first place. If there was the risk of it evaporating due to bad investments, that would basically be more of "privatized gains, socialized losses."

Re: American Equity

#228

Post by justinpaulson »

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…

I think becoming wealthy is incentive enough to become wealthy. No one is going to stop trying to be wealthy just because they might get taxed for that wealth. If anything, they will just try to hide it in another state. But the argument that a wealth tax would remove any incentive to become wealthy is not very strong.

Re: American Equity

#229

Post by dv_dt »

joncalhoun wrote: post #102

> cost of living crisis I know this is a major issue in CA, NYC, and probably a few other cities, but I'm not really well versed on how much of an issue it is elsewhere. Where could I learn more about this? Preferably sources with data and not just journalistic fluff.

Is healthcare part of cost of living?

Re: American Equity

#230

Post by Retric »

enraged_camel wrote: post #227
Retric wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> money invested Only in the most inefficient way possible. The 'problem' is banks are limited in what they can do with this money which ends up creating investment bubbles and other market distortions which hurt the economy overall. If you slowly transitioned banks so they could not invest this money over say 100 years the net result would not be harmful. In the end money is not actual wealth, it's simply a represen…

>>The 'problem' is banks are limited in what they can do with this money which ends up creating investment bubbles and other market distortions which hurt the economy overall. If you slowly transitioned banks so they could not invest this money over say 100 years the net result would not be harmful. Um, no. The type of investing you suggest includes the risk of losing the money. This doesn't work with commercial bank…

I think you misunderstood my comment. Banks are currently allowed to loan out a percentage of their deposits IE: they need to keep say 10% cash on hand and can loan say 90%.

I am saying if your raise that percentage to 11% cash on hand not much changes. Then next year that becomes 12% cash on hand... until banks can no longer lend money.

At no point in this process is physical wealth destroyed only shifting how loans are created.

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