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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?

#311

Post by prottog »

greedo wrote: post #291
sgjohnson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the total world population is completely meaningless. This is because fertility rate in virtually every developed country is below 2, however there are extremely poor countries where the population is exploding with fertility rates above 8. > To put it another way, as of 2010, 388 individuals possessed as much household wealth as the lower half of the world's population combined—about 3.5 billion people; t…

Bezos may not be able to sell his shares in significant amounts, but he can sure use them for collateral. This is a very basic strategy for the super rich...

It'll be interesting to see if that strategy continues to work in a rising-rates environment, where the value of AMZN or TSLA may not be infinitely appreciating.

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

#312

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#313

Post by therealdkz »

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…

the problem is the taxeg go to funding military and healthcare. education is futher down the list.

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

#315

Post by prottog »

pigsty wrote: post #41
hackerman123469 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But tell me, how are you going to tax the super rich? It's incredibly difficult to tax someone who's actually poor on paper. Most super rich people actually don't seem to have much wealth officially declared, all of their wealth is sort of like "pseudo" in that it's all tied up in assets, and sometimes assets that aren't directly owned by them but their companies etc. and they have a lot of shortcuts for tax breaks o…

It’s a problem of choosing not to enforce it. Some rich person says “teehee, I actually have no money! It’s all in (some country)!” and the US gov says “oops! Guess you really are poor!” They take a letter of the law instead of a spirit of the law approach with taxes. If they start seizing mansions because clearly they have no money and the only way they could afford it is through ill-gotten means, people will start…

> They take a letter of the law instead of a spirit of the law approach with taxes.

Do you think it's a bad thing that the letter of the law is enforced over the spirit of the law, whatever the latter means?

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

#316

Post by dumpsterlid »

dontreact wrote: post #304
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…

It’s hard problem that can only be solved through attempts and iteration. The fact that a wealth tax is difficult is not a good enough reason to not try, because the problem of wealth inequality is so severe now.

Bingo

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

#317

Post by Eisenstein »

mcculley wrote: post #241
bmitc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are lists of chemicals people cannot own, why can there not be lists of things corporations cannot own?

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

#318

Post by dumpsterlid »

robertlagrant wrote: post #132
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.

> 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.

....what?

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

#319

Post by kelseyfrog »

mcculley wrote: post #241
bmitc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Do you suppose laws and the legal system provide the social infrastructure to support the corporate ownership of housing as property? If so, that - outside of political will - can be modified, deleted even. Without legal support, it will collapse.

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

#320

Post by manimino »

lelag wrote: post #99
bmitc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich buy stuff, do they not? Tax those things to force realization and thus tax of unrealized wealth. Buying a second, third, fourth home? Here's your increasingly high tax and interest rate penalty. Instead of throwing up our hands with "they don't have cash", force them to realize investments into cash and deincentivize being able to keep everything hidden being investments and purchasing things with unrealized…

> 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.

Yes, there will always be workarounds, but those come with prices of their own (such as time spent getting around them, people to hire, etc.)

As an analogy, we catch more dumb criminals than smart criminals - but overall it's still worth having police, even if a few bad guys get away.

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