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Are super-rich people just better at making money?

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Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#241

Post by mcculley »

bmitc wrote: post #131
lelag wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buying a second, third, fourth home? It's too easy for the ultra-rich to find loopholes in any rules. If there is a tax on homeownership, they will simply not own any home but will own some corporate entity that own the asset. See ? No secondary residence. Just an investment in a corporation that happens to home a bunch of houses.

Why should corporations be allowed to purchase homes in the first place? Remove that or heavily tax it.

I am trying to imagine how such a proscription would work. Would there be a list of things corporations are disallowed ownership? Who would the seller be required to determine if the entity is appropriate? Or would the local property tax clerk just not allow registration by a non-human entity?

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#242

Post by nootropicat »

smilekzs wrote: post #21
bmitc wrote: post #3

To solve all this, it's pretty simple, and the U.S. actually used to do it: heavily tax the super rich. Heavy taxation and then appropriate use of those funds for education, R&D funding, infrastructure, etc. is actual trickle-down economics. And mega corporations should be heavily taxed instead of holding the country economically hostage. They jumpstart their companies off of government funding and R&D and then act a…

One thing I've noticed consistently, is when politicians talk about "taxing the wealthy", they almost always follow that with "earning more than $xxxk a year". This is conflating wealth with income. Being within this tax bracket myself, I do not deny that I am biased, but I do hope this bullshit gets called out hard whenever someone brings up yet another underhanded measure to milk us (typical SFBay SWE) above and be…

That's because the actual point of progressive taxation is to prevent class mobility.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#243

Post by Yizahi »

ben_w wrote: post #189
Yizahi wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make "almost illegal" financial activities really illegal in the law, prosecute people, and I suspect that 90% of the problems will disappear automagically. Number of people who can become billionaires without committing borderline illegal and completely illegal activities are vanishingly small I suspect, probably only founders of megacorporations and those are often doing illegal stuff too to stay ahead. USA is…

Not to defend corruption, and I'll agree absolutely that there's a lot if room for improvement, but far too many people break far too many laws for full enforcement of any of them; and even outside egregious violations, law itself is too esoteric for most people to understand either their obligations or their rights. With regard to the first part, the normal examples I give of this are road traffic offences (which if…

We should focus on the large scale offenses by big entities of course. E.g. if you have 50% market share of chicken production in the country (and another 50% is also a single corporation) then I'm sure that both of the corporations are breaking a lot of laws and utilising a lot of barely legal schemes to launder profits. Same for all sectors of economy. Examples closer to us - ISPs, Cell operators, providers of cloud computing, search, communications etc. All of that must be carefully examined, and then partitioned where monopolies or conflicts of interests arise.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#244

Post by robertlagrant »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #193
robertlagrant wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just an investment in a corporation that happens to home a bunch of houses. But what's the point? If they can't get money out then it doesn't matter. The only reason houses are worth holding as an asset is public bodies stopping the creation of more housing, driving the price up. You fix that with less state interference, not more.

That's the exact opposite of what happens in the real world. In the world the state builds and owns a lot public housing and this depresses rents and property values. Countries stop doing this when policy is captured by neoliberal dogma. The UK is a perfect example. Housing was relatively affordable before a disastrous "right to buy" policy in the 70s, with extra enforced restrictions on state house building, destroy…

Right to Buy didn't destroy the housing market. The same people who lived in council housing bought it under Right to Buy.

The problem was not building more housing to cope with increased demand. That would've happened regardless of whether the Right to Buyers were renting off the council or had bought their property.

> In the world the state builds and owns a lot public housing and this depresses rents and property values.

Public housing, but not housing. The state controls what can be built where, which can drive up demand enough that property becomes a valuable enough asset to let it stand empty. Giving the state more power on top of that to correct that incompetent use of power seems worth questioning.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#245

Post by brianwawok »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #122
underdeserver wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top 1% of salary earners. The CEOs, highly paid doctors, engineers. The real capitalists - those who hold the assets and pay for their yachts with stock-backed loans - they don't pay 40% of the federal tax revenue. Their salary is $1/year.

How are stock-backed-loans paid back? If in cash, they have to get the cash from somewhere, right? Supposedly selling the stocks. That can be taxed then and there. If they transfer the stocks to the lender, that means the stocks in question are valued at $x, since that's the value of the loan. So tax that value.

After you die your estate sells stocks

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#246

Post by klgkjghkjh »

hestefisk wrote: post #235
bawolff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a practical matter, it is very difficult to tax wealth (and even harder to do it fairly.) I don't think the issue is lack of will but lack of plan that actually works in the face of assets with unclear value and/or difficult to liquidate. And this doesn't just affect the ultra rich but people like SWE too. How much is the stock you have in the non-public company you work at really worth? SWE are probably one of th…

Why is it hard? Tax capital gains, tax inheritance, tax corporate super profits, tax consumption (vat), tax FX / currency / speculative securities trading (Tobin tax), etc. It’s not hard, our politicians just lack the will and would rather drive a race to the bottom (“tax reforms”).

The rich won't leave? See Europe

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#247

Post by flawn »

lozenge wrote: post #48
strstr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero-sum assumption and lack of returns on bets seem suspicious. Betting is a bad deal for everyone in this model (even the rich person) since each coin flip is variance for no expected gain. Kelly betting implies you should bet nothing in this game.

If you increase the payoff of the bet, it might prevent the poorest from becoming destitute, but the relative effect (where wealth concentrates in a few people) intuitively would still be present.

That's what I meant. It just comes down to the inequality being there and rich people having more capital to bet/invest/whatever and relatively get richer just though them having a bigger starting capital.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#248

Post by robertlagrant »

Yizahi wrote: post #215
robertlagrant wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Assuming you get what you want, what will be the downsides?

For independent financial auditor - none that I can think of. For offshore restrictions - you as a country lose all existing assets already there. A lot of people will move their business to a better countries, providing less restrictions and eventually taxes for them. Probably election loss and further dismantling of all these laws by disgrunted businessmen using their pocket political forces. If will hugely depend…

I think inheritance tax has huge downsides. Past a certain age, if you've done reasonably well, and are thus most likely to make a huge impact for the better in your latter working years, why do that most useful useful work if you can't pass it on?

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#249

Post by klgkjghkjh »

bmitc wrote: post #131
lelag wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buying a second, third, fourth home? It's too easy for the ultra-rich to find loopholes in any rules. If there is a tax on homeownership, they will simply not own any home but will own some corporate entity that own the asset. See ? No secondary residence. Just an investment in a corporation that happens to home a bunch of houses.

Why should corporations be allowed to purchase homes in the first place? Remove that or heavily tax it.

How would apartment complexes be sold then?

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#250

Post by joemazerino »

bmitc wrote: post #3

To solve all this, it's pretty simple, and the U.S. actually used to do it: heavily tax the super rich. Heavy taxation and then appropriate use of those funds for education, R&D funding, infrastructure, etc. is actual trickle-down economics. And mega corporations should be heavily taxed instead of holding the country economically hostage. They jumpstart their companies off of government funding and R&D and then act a…

Tax the rich and they leave.

OP has made a fundamental mistake in their logic. Poverty and earnings aren't based on "coin flips".

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