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American Equity

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: American Equity

#271

Post by cryptonector »

taxtherich wrote: post #125
cryptonector wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. And whence the money for the share? Taxes. So this is just a UBI. This, like all UBI proposals, seems like a way to dress up a massive tax hike: "but you'll be getting your share of GDP!". The only way to get me to like a UBI is to have UBI replace absolutely all (and I do mean all) welfare programs so that we can just haggle at every election over one headline UBI number + necessary taxes. And the initial UBI an…

There are wealth taxes in Switzerland, Norway, France, and the Netherlands, amongst others in Europe. They've been repealed in countries like Sweden and Austria, not because they were disasters, but because exceedingly wealthy people have a lot of influence. That's the only story. As such your claim that no such taxes exist is wrong; and your claim that they've been a disaster is also fallacious. p.s. your "ready for…

Can you show us a comparison of GDP growth rates, before and after wealth taxes were promulgated (and, where it happened, repealed)? Also, please, a comparison of GDP history between countries that have and lack wealth taxes.

Near as I can tell Europe has lagged way behind the U.S. in economic growth since the 1980s. I remember back in the 90s when catching up to the U.S. was stated goal of the incipient EU. How did that go? How does that relate to overall tax rates, public spending as a proportion of GDP? Are fertility rates artificially lowered by a high tax burden? Are they improved by the welfare state? Or is something else the matter with Europe?

I think "disaster" is an appropriate adjective for wealth taxes.

Re: American Equity

#272

Post by Gargoyle »

Interesting. I've thought for a while now that this is the only long-term solution that works at all.

But getting there is going to be a huge mess, with the establishment fighting every inch of the way.

So it's nice to see someone whose voice will be heard saying it's the way to go.

Re: American Equity

#273

Post by giacaglia »

Why not start with issuing equity for cities/states instead of a country? It would be nice to start small and it seems that finding a mayor that supports easier to make the President to support it.

Re: American Equity

#274

Post by tmccrmck »

kolbe wrote: post #84
idlewords wrote: post #53

Something very similar was tried in Russia after the fall of communism, as voucher privatization. The vouchers were immediately bought up at a discount and concentrated wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs. A similar dynamic led to massive pyramid schemes in Albania, which badly eroded public trust in government. A common thread in Altman's proposals for a better world are their ahistorical presentation, as if no o…

Yeah. I respect Sam's ambition. But there's a meaningful difference between him being a good investor in a bull market and the type of people who could really add some insight into these issues.

This was the sentiment of everyone outside of SV when Altman was considering running for governor this year. I'm glad Sam actually cares about helping people, I really do, but it reminds me so much of Obama's quote about tech entrepreneurs giving him advice:

The final thing I’ll say is that government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with.

So sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences -- setting aside my Syria and Yemen portfolio -- then I think those suggestions are terrific. (Laughter and applause.) That's not, by the way, to say that there aren't huge efficiencies and improvements that have to be made.

But the reason I say this is sometimes we get, I think, in the scientific community, the tech community, the entrepreneurial community, the sense of we just have to blow up the system, or create this parallel society and culture because government is inherently wrecked. No, it's not inherently wrecked; it's just government has to care for, for example, veterans who come home. That's not on your balance sheet, that's on our collective balance sheet, because we have a sacred duty to take care of those veterans. And that's hard and it's messy, and we're building up legacy systems that we can't just blow up.

Re: American Equity

#275

Post by Gargoyle »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #267
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…

>what's the problem with the state owning all the equity in that tracker, and redistributing the proceeds to the population? Hierarchical, centralized corruption of the state is the problem, as evidenced by failed communist implementations. If a more distributed model could be devized, perhaps it could avoid such problems.

So get rid of the state. If automation can take over every other job, there's no reason for a state that employs humans either.

Re: American Equity

#276

Post by dibujante »

tomtimtall wrote: post #221
dibujante wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's an abstraction. You can tax people/things at a rate that causes a number of dollars equal to 20% of the GDP to end up in the state coffers (which brings up its whole own class of issues - what, exactly, do you tax to get that money? Income? Wealth? Stocks? Vanity license plates?).

Re: American Equity

#277

Post by dv_dt »

tomtimtall wrote: post #221
dibujante wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would phrase that more as how does Sam propose to specify a tax or set of taxes such that it represents 20% of the GDP.

Re: American Equity

#278

Post by pdonis »

The basic analogy underlying this article is wrong. The US is not analogous to a joint-stock company, and the US GDP does not correspond to the revenue or income or profits of a joint-stock company.

The US government could be considered somewhat analogous to a joint-stock company, but the US GDP does not correspond to the revenue or income or profits of the US government either. The proper analogue would be the US government's revenues from taxes and other sources, but of course that just makes this proposal into universal basic income. It doesn't give anyone "ownership of a share in America".

If you want people to feel ownership of a share in America, then owning land in America is indeed one way to do it (as the Homestead Act did, which the article refers to). Another way would be to own a share in a US company. One could even corporatize the US government and give every US citizen a share in it. But none of those things would correspond to giving out shares of the US GDP.

Frankly, I'm disappointed to see Sam Altman making such an elementary mistake.

Re: American Equity

#279

Post by cryptonector »

cryptonector wrote: post #106
jacquesm wrote: post #16

People already have a share in the GDP. That's what it is, the total domestic product, the sum of all the little parts. The problem is not that people don't have share in it (and this goes for every country, not just for the USA), but that they have a disproportionate share in it. 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 rai…

+1. And whence the money for the share? Taxes. So this is just a UBI. This, like all UBI proposals, seems like a way to dress up a massive tax hike: "but you'll be getting your share of GDP!". The only way to get me to like a UBI is to have UBI replace absolutely all (and I do mean all) welfare programs so that we can just haggle at every election over one headline UBI number + necessary taxes. And the initial UBI an…

Also, this is why the fantastically wealthy tend to be for increasing the income taxes: they pay none of that, but they pay those incomes, the growth of which they hope is restrained by higher marginal taxes.

Trust capitalism, but not capitalists.

Re: American Equity

#280

Post by sova »

leifaffles wrote: post #265
dzonga wrote: post #256

this is not Communist or Left wing propaganda. But once you understand the dynamics of how economies work, you can appreciate that Capitalism is fundamentally broken. For the US to work, they would've to break Capitalism as we know it. And bring forth a hybrid system. You can't have a functioning system when half the citizens can't afford healthcare.

Why does basically every economist disagree that "capitalism is fundamentally broken"? Is that because they don't "understand the dynamics of how economies work"?

Be cause the incentives are not ethically nor morally guided.
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