Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires • Hacker News Board

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#221

Post by _greim_ » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #211

simonh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This assumes what needs to be proven. I think it has been, dramatically, over the last 120 years. Plenty of countries have tried radical appropriation and redistribution, and it failed spectacularly every time. Meanwhile a prominent Marxist country, China, turned to capitalism and within a generation has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into urban middle class lives. Meanwhile Cuba, Venezuela…

> I think it has been, dramatically, over the last 120 years. Plenty of countries have tried radical appropriation and redistribution, and it failed spectacularly every time. How about non-radical redistribution? In Capital in the Twenty-First Century , Piketty puts forward the idea of a (net) wealth tax on the order of something like: * 0-10M net worth: 0% * 10-100M: 0.1% * 100M-1000M: 1% * >1000M: 2% This would all…

> How about non-radical redistribution?

We arguably already have a weak form of this in capital gains. Invested wealth remains untaxed, since it's already working. Good. Liquidated investments are taxed on gains. Good. But I'd also support stronger forms of redistribution such as yearly re-taxation on uninvested wealth above a threshold, non-gains percentage tax on all liquidated investments above a threshold, a land value tax, and closing of tax loopholes. Just let invested wealth do its job!

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#222

Post by pmoriarty » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #144

vlunkr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because people view billionaires as mustache-twirling villains and have absolutely no idea what they do with their time or money.

Rather we do have some idea what they do with their time and money: influence politics, lobby for regulatory capture, lobby against societally beneficial regulation, bust unions, rent-seek, astroturf, form monopolies and oligopolies, have outsized carbon footprints, avoid paying anything back to society, commit crimes and get away with them, etc. We see them as mustache-twirling villains because, well, they act like…

They also form dynasties of generations of extremely wealthy children, grand-children, and grand-grand-children, etc.

It's arguable whether the people who originally accumulated all this wealth "earned" it (when many of them in large part merely took the wealth their employees made), but their descendants who just inherit their money certainly have in no way earned it. So should they get to keep it?

For an insightful look in to the world of inherited wealth, see the documentary Born Rich[1], made by the heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, where he interviews all his other friends, who, like him, were born in to enormously wealthy families.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sD3pG74Wv8

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#223

Post by _greim_ » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #178

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation also needed for the opposite position - that the government will use the money well.

Sure. But here is the thing: what consequences to billionaires face if they use their wealth in stupid and unproductive ways? At least for the government we have some recourse (elections, protests, public hearings).

> what consequences to billionaires face if they use their wealth in stupid and unproductive ways?

Well this one's easy at least. They lose the wealth.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#224

Post by ericd » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #181

ericd wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper value is not the same as realized value, and doesn’t make sense to be included as part of someone’s “fair share”. Especially true when assets are inflated to all time highs. People are willing to buy tiny fractions of Amazon stock at its current valuation, no one is offering to buy all or even most of it at that valuation.

Short of being in a recession - assets are almost always at all time highs dude.

Yes, I'm aware that all-time high prices are pretty normal, like anyone who's spent more than a couple of years investing. The current highs aren't just in nominal price terms, though, but also in a lot of normalized metrics, and that's not so normal.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#225

Post by protoman3000 » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #173

protoman3000 wrote: post #158

Why is there no extremely high VAT on luxury goods?

That would just punish people who can afford luxury goods - not billionaires. People who are wage slaves like the rest of us can afford luxury goods. Besides - what is a "luxury" good to you?

A 300 million dollar yacht is a luxury good for me.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#226

Post by dcolkitt » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #215

dcolkitt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along the points you bring up, John Cochrane had a fantastic series about why wealth taxes are such a terribly economic inefficient mechanism to raise revenue and why virtually no economists support them. https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wealth-and-taxes-...

> […] and why virtually no economists support them. You mean besides Piketty, Stiglitz (Nobel), and Krugman (Nobel)? * https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/17/economists-stiglitz-and-pike... * https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1088529094478872578 While I'm sure he's good in his specialty, it seems like Cochrane does not understand macroeconomics and how debt-financed government spending works: * http://krugman.blogs.nyt…

Only 7% of surveyed top economists disagreed with the statement that a wealth tax would be much more difficult to enforce than the existing tax code.

https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/wealth-taxes/

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#227

Post by curun1r » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #216

curun1r wrote: post #119

The problem, as always, is implementation. Millionaires, especially those on the low end of that spectrum, tend to be fairly easy to tax. Their income sources are mostly regular and standard forms of income tax work pretty well. Billionaires are a very different animal. They have armies of lawyers and financial managers that help them navigate the movement of wealth through the global system to avoid taxation. They a…

> Billionaires are a very different animal. You don't go after the billionaires, but after the banks and such that the billionaires use. FACTA and the long arm of the IRS caused a lot of behaviour changes in the banking and finance industry: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...

That's only for evasion, I'm talking about avoidance. Most billionaires can easily spend their entire lifetime avoiding taxes. Taking out a low-interest ELOC against unrealized gains is 100% legal and a low-risk transaction for a bank. No amount of "going after the banks" changes that.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#228

Post by simonh » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #211

simonh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This assumes what needs to be proven. I think it has been, dramatically, over the last 120 years. Plenty of countries have tried radical appropriation and redistribution, and it failed spectacularly every time. Meanwhile a prominent Marxist country, China, turned to capitalism and within a generation has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into urban middle class lives. Meanwhile Cuba, Venezuela…

> I think it has been, dramatically, over the last 120 years. Plenty of countries have tried radical appropriation and redistribution, and it failed spectacularly every time. How about non-radical redistribution? In Capital in the Twenty-First Century , Piketty puts forward the idea of a (net) wealth tax on the order of something like: * 0-10M net worth: 0% * 10-100M: 0.1% * 100M-1000M: 1% * >1000M: 2% This would all…

Sure, it’s radical but not excessively. The US had a %90 tax bracket in the post war decades (not that I’m suggesting bringing it back) and the country and economy somehow managed to survive. There are countries in Europe that have wealth taxes.

I don’t think taxing more is an effective way of solving social and economic problems though and doing so doesn’t have to be cripplingly expensive. For example the US spends twice as much, per person, on health care than other OECD countries. You spend as much on health per person through the government, funded by your taxes, as Europe does just funding Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPS, etc, and then spend the same again through private health insurance. Why? Because the health insurance system drives costs across the board up through the roof. All you people with company plans you contribute thousands to, you already paid enough for a full first world health system in your taxes and got nothing for it, so you have to pay again for yourselves.

Why that isn’t issue number 1 for every American tax payer is beyond understanding. So don’t take my up thread comment to mean I’m some libertarian extremist, or this comment to mean I’m a radical socialist. It’s just a matter of looking at what works.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#229

Post by rufus_foreman » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #178

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation also needed for the opposite position - that the government will use the money well.

Sure. But here is the thing: what consequences to billionaires face if they use their wealth in stupid and unproductive ways? At least for the government we have some recourse (elections, protests, public hearings).

The difference is that governments don't spend their wealth in stupid and unproductive ways. They spend our wealth in stupid and unproductive ways.

Re: Millionaires call for an emergency tax on billionaires

#230

Post by simonh » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

david927 wrote: post #210

simonh wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole coconuts example is a terrible straw man, but I tried to make it at least a little less infantile and look at least slightly like economics. Yes these problems have been solvable for some time, but it’s not billionaires stopping that happening. Their job is creating companies, jobs, products and services not ending poverty. We have the resources in the public purse already. Richard Nixon came very close to…

> [The billionaires] job is creating companies, jobs, products and services not ending poverty They're being asked to pay their fair share of taxes and instead are using their wealth to find loopholes so that they pay nothing. The US has regressive taxation. > Too many Marxists on the left... I'm not sure that there really are any Marxists on the left and that's certainly not what's holding back addressing poverty. N…

Ok, appreciated.

I have to say, I’m not entirely convinced by the growing wealth gap argument. Pickety’s numbers are all before taxes and transfers, there are huge holes in the analysis. On the other hand, there are too many renty ways to grow wealth. I believe the right approach is to recalibrate taxation and the incentive system, not just slap huge punitive taxes on top of what’s already there.