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American Equity

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: American Equity

#231

Post by gibsonf1 »

theptip wrote: post #180

Matt Levine has been musing on some issues adjacent to this one over the last year, e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-24/are-index... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-26/maybe-ind... The basic observation being that if we can get the benefits of capitalism when most equity is owned by a passive investment fund like an index tracker, then what's the problem with the state owning all t…

Provocative in the sense that we have far too much evidence of the destructive force of communism, most recent example Venezuela.

Re: American Equity

#232

Post by hvo »

RivieraKid wrote: post #46
smeyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>do what nobody has the balls to do: tax wealth Just to clarify, nobody in the US is doing this, but it's not unheard of elsewhere. For example, Norway has a wealth tax of about 0.85% and there are some other examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples .

The drawback of taxing wealth is that it distorts markets, it discourages saving. EDIT: Can't comment ("You're posting too fast, blah blah blah"). Here are some replies to the comments bellow: > It's encouraging people to make their money be productive instead of stashing it under a mattress. When you have money in the bank, you're effectively lending most of it to other people. Your money is "productive", which is e…

Frankly,the trickle-down economics is not working.Plain and simple. Giving the rich lower tax and expecting them to invest the money back to the economy has been proved not to be working.

And we know now that the ultra-rich folks tend to take the money,windfall from lower tax, and hide it in Virgin-Island, Panama,Cayman Island and other offshore tax havens.

Re: American Equity

#233

Post by Matumio »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #139

Oh, no. We tried that in Russia one hundred years ago. At first it was good. More opportunities for the little men, yay! Second generation was like: why do I have to work this complicated job? Strive? Mathematicians live no better than janitors. Overcrowded not-so good resorts with bad attitude (remember, no one have incentive to be polite, servicing others, since there is little money to get from eath individual cus…

I think you are confusing "give everyone the same income" with "give everyone a basic income". Basic income is a floor, not a ceiling. It doesn't change much about the wealth distribution (except at the bottom).

Re: American Equity

#234

Post by wu-ikkyu »

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?

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, worked hard, and yet he still gave his hard work to the public.

Re: American Equity

#236

Post by crankylinuxuser »

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.

It is and isnt capitalist.

There's only a limited amount of stuff at any one time. Rarity and usage can make its worth different than other things. So it makes sense to track these things. Ideally, recycling allows recoup of most or all the material, which returning should provide the credits back.

It really then matters how much credits people get and thus how much resources and where. But then again, socialism and communism never talked about personal effects - but instead it talked of the machinery to create.

What the UBI enables is a migration that everyone gets the spoils of the machines of creation. The Story of Manna by Marshall Brain discusses more of how this might be possible.

Re: American Equity

#237

Post by rdl »

bcoates wrote: post #142
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…

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…

That's a good argument for the land value tax as primary revenue source.

Re: American Equity

#238

Post by rdl »

Balero wrote: post #217
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is basically no tax advantage for startups in being based in Delaware -- you end up registering as a "foreign corporation" and paying in-state taxes whenever you're actually located. Delaware is chosen because of the body of corporate law and efficient secretary of state.

Re: American Equity

#239

Post by kgwgk »

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…

You want to forbid loans?

Re: American Equity

#240

Post by Retric »

kgwgk wrote: post #239
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…

You want to forbid loans?

No, you can still make a loan by buying a bond etc.

I simply feel banks have conflicting goals as they need to be 'good at' customer service and making loans. This creates a lot of poor incentives and economic distortions.

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