231–240 of 320 posts
> You would think, after having been on the side of labor in its fight with capital for almost two centuries, that the far left would be happy that labor has finally prevailed. But none of them seem to be. You can almost hear them saying "No, no, not that way." This one really threw me for a loop. Do startup founders making or seeking a big exit really think of themselves as "labor"?
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Sweden, France, California, Washington state and NYC have discovered once again that taxing the heck out of rich people causes them to leave. And when they leave, they take their spend/invest/hire money with them.
This is patently false for the only case I have data on. The wealth tax in France had quadrupled its collections in a time where the French GDP had doubled, and all this was without an exit tax. Unfortunately Macron got rid of it a few years ago and replaced it with something that only applies to real estate.
If it were EU wide it might work somehow but with so many ultra rich high in politics there is no way this could happen. There is always going to be tax haven countries taking advantage of this situations.
New French gov will want to reintroduce these taxes but i think they have to find different ways.
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This is patently false for the only case I have data on. The wealth tax in France had quadrupled its collections in a time where the French GDP had doubled, and all this was without an exit tax. Unfortunately Macron got rid of it a few years ago and replaced it with something that only applies to real estate.
The thing is lots of the ultra rich moved to Luxemburg so this happened and this is going to keep happening. Its same why every tech company has european HQ in Ireland. If it were EU wide it might work somehow but with so many ultra rich high in politics there is no way this could happen. There is always going to be tax haven countries taking advantage of this situations. New French gov will want to reintroduce these…
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The US had a tax rate of over 90% for the wealthy in the 1950s (although with loopholes they could push it lower, like now). Didn't seem to have much of an effect on the wealthy, and the US working class did very well.
Very few paid those rates, because there were a large number of tax shelters available. For example, a lot of your personal expenses could be covered by your business. Reagan, as part of the deal to lower the top rates, traded away those tax shelters. The thing about tax shelter investing, however, is they only make sense as a tax shelter. They are poorly performing investments otherwise. A tax policy that encourages…
And where US gov grew? Army. Where that money goes? To few weapon contractors = to ultra rich. Its not like US put those investments in some other pocket than top 10%
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Totally agree. One of my biggest critiques of entrepreneur and hacker circles is how much they ride PG. dude is rich, not some sort of genius policy maker. The difference between a lot of hackers now and PG isnt talent, it is that someone was making a good website when the internet pretty much was empty lol. Google was still a baby compared to yahoo. edit: since i was pretty negative here, i will sing some praise. Gr…
Right now, there is a guy in a garage founding the next billion dollar company, doing something we all will wish we thought of.
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The highest NASA's budget has ever been as a percentage of the federal budget is 4.5% during the Apollo program, totalling 650b nominally over the years. Saying anyone here now has paid "plenty" of taxes to nasa sounds … disingenuous at best.
4.5% is a terrific amount of money. You paid $zero for SpaceX.
so this sort of messaging reminds me of the cutthroat competitiveness that folks from working-class backgrounds, especially in developing countries, get drilled down on from a young age.
too bad it is not something everyone can achieve at the same time.
The part everyone always glosses over is: If the rich are taxed more, will the government equitably distribute that money to the middle class? Defense contractors make hundreds of millions of dollars from government funds. We just assumed that tax money will go to the middle class but it's also likely to go to another rich person.
Even worse, it'll be spent buying votes (Biden's student debt relieve). Billions will be allocated for building electric chargers and almost no chargers will be built. Billions will be allocated for connecting poor people to internet and no people will be connected. Hundreds of millions will be spent on homeless and will result in increasing homelessness. A public toilet will be built for $2.5 million. McKinsey will…
At the same time students should be allowed to bankrupt out of their loans like any other loan on the planet.
Student loans are the only loan one is not able to bankrupt out of and it's literal debt slavery.
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I don't understand how you can see videos like https://youtu.be/925wmb-4Yr4 of skid row and conclude, y'know what? American Capitalism is the best thing ever and there's no possible way theres anything wrong with it so anybody trying to say that, hey, it's not perfect, is automatically a Stalinism Communist because that's the only way there could remotely be any sort of problems with American Capitalism. There's a ho…
The free market in the US turned the country from subsistence farming to superpower. It's been very successful. A video of skid row doesn't change that. Drunks and drug addicts choose their poor lives.
You are a despicable person, Walter Bright.
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Define wealth. I wouldn't confine wealth to just the billionaire class; I'd say wealth is anyone with 5 million+ USD in liquid assets (specifically, that sum of money in stocks, bonds and cash). The poorest of the poor in the United States (that have to pay tax), make around $12K per year, and pay more in tax, percentage-wise, for their work than an individual doing absolutely nothing but passively investing in the m…
Basically, capital gains tax should be much higher than income tax. That seems obvious to me. Someone working for a paycheck should pay a smaller tax rate than someone who randomly bought NVDA stock a few years ago and watched the number go up.
Then you would in effect discourage investing. Investing, which creates jobs and promotes innovation. Is as simple as that.