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Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

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Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#331

Post by valval »

zb1plus wrote: post #292
nerdponx wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(conts) infrastructure upkeep, managing various natural resources, emergency management, weather reporting/forecasting/research, economic reporting/research... There are so many valuable services provided by the US federal government. People just take it all for granted.

I've always said people should be able to directly allocate where their taxes go within the government expenditures, or be able to file an objection based on religious or philosophical beliefs to having their tax dollars fund morally objectionable things. I would be much happier to pay taxes if they went to funding schools, infrastructure, NASA, emergency management, poverty relief and other useful things instead of…

[flagged]

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#332

Post by GavinMcG »

valval wrote: post #329
adastra22 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah I’ve met a fair number of mega-high wealth individuals. They would go so far as to pick a materially worse deal that allowed them to pay no taxes, over a higher payout that required some taxes paid. It is nuts.

It might be they’re just against taxes. How could that be a surprising thing to you? In democracies, the massive bulk of people are voting to steal the money of the rich. That’s not cool.

They’re also voting for the policies that enable safe wealth accumulation and preservation, so “steal” seems like the wrong word—though there may well be some wealthy people who feel stolen from inasmuchas they’d rather live in a less secure society where they could try to be the winning warlord. Most capitalists see the value of a stable consumer class, though, backed up by a legal system and economic policy that injects money to prevent the collapse of their income-drivers.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#333

Post by valval »

barbazoo wrote: post #249
hollerith wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the government spend the additional tax revenue on, in your conservative expection?

Climate crisis alone will make maintaining our infrastructure much more expensive in a lot of places.

Pretty matter-of-fact tone for a subject of complete mystery to us.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#334

Post by frail_figure »

valval wrote: post #329
adastra22 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah I’ve met a fair number of mega-high wealth individuals. They would go so far as to pick a materially worse deal that allowed them to pay no taxes, over a higher payout that required some taxes paid. It is nuts.

It might be they’re just against taxes. How could that be a surprising thing to you? In democracies, the massive bulk of people are voting to steal the money of the rich. That’s not cool.

> In democracies, the massive bulk of people are voting to steal the money of the rich. That’s not cool.

Lol, yes, steal. Hi Elon!

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#335

Post by valval »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #304
barbazoo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now factor in the effects of climate change on many communities over the next decades. Maintaining our infrastructure i.e. lifestyle is going to be much much more expensive.

Minor correction: maintaining the lifestyle of billionaire coastal developers and their clientele will be much much more expensive. The poors will continue to be encouraged to eat shit and die as per usual.

Yes, typically poor people’s contribution to the economy isn’t as great individually. Groundbreaking stuff.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#336

Post by copperx »

valval wrote: post #329
adastra22 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah I’ve met a fair number of mega-high wealth individuals. They would go so far as to pick a materially worse deal that allowed them to pay no taxes, over a higher payout that required some taxes paid. It is nuts.

It might be they’re just against taxes. How could that be a surprising thing to you? In democracies, the massive bulk of people are voting to steal the money of the rich. That’s not cool.

That sounds really, really cool to me. And it's an abuse of language to call it stealing.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#337

Post by chii »

adastra22 wrote: post #313
ta_1138 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that minimizing taxes becomes their #1 priority? What actually happens is that they tell the guy handling your finances to save them some money, and that's their problem. And given their fee structure, they'll go as far as they need to, even though the rich person in question doesn't really think about their taxes all that much. This is the real multiplicative effect of being really rich: It's not kn…

Nah I’ve met a fair number of mega-high wealth individuals. They would go so far as to pick a materially worse deal that allowed them to pay no taxes, over a higher payout that required some taxes paid. It is nuts.

> They would go so far as to pick a materially worse deal that allowed them to pay no taxes, over a higher payout that required some taxes paid.

I find that hard to believe.

I highly suspect that the "materially worse" deal you speak of is simply less liquid cash, but more retained wealth.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#338

Post by valval »

WA wrote: post #94
TrackerFF wrote: post #85

It always puzzled me how tax-adverse some wealthy people are. I'm not talking about the wealthy people that have 100% of their wealth tied up to company (stock) that they operate - but the wealthy people that are just asset-rich, with zero operational duties. Their wealth is handled by wealth managers, they probably don't even know what they own. But minimizing taxes and hoarding wealth is priority number 1.

Plus complaining about "billions of taxes" (absolute, big and scary sounding numbers) and never mentioning the actual tax rate as a percentage of their gains (probably in the low single digits).

It’s unfortunate that your thinking has been reduced to this by democratic rhetoric. No, the country isn’t “the rich paying their fair share” away from thriving, here or anywhere else in the world.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#339

Post by LVB »

zb1plus wrote: post #292
nerdponx wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(conts) infrastructure upkeep, managing various natural resources, emergency management, weather reporting/forecasting/research, economic reporting/research... There are so many valuable services provided by the US federal government. People just take it all for granted.

I've always said people should be able to directly allocate where their taxes go within the government expenditures, or be able to file an objection based on religious or philosophical beliefs to having their tax dollars fund morally objectionable things. I would be much happier to pay taxes if they went to funding schools, infrastructure, NASA, emergency management, poverty relief and other useful things instead of…

I’ve gotten to see some of that at a local level and… I just don’t know. We barely managed to pass a local school levy to recoup from a major accounting error that would have meant massive layoffs for the district. It’s a pretty good district academically, and I was shocked at how many empty nesters (new ones, too) were vocal about voting no just because “no new taxes“, despite all of their kids consuming that very system with great benefit for the past 18 years.

A few counties away, the library district said without a tax increase, they’ll have to shut down. “No new taxes” carried the day. Library shut down. Now folks are howling. And again it’s the non-voting kids that suffer.

If this is the behavior of folks about issues affecting their neighbors, in their own town, I’m not too optimistic what sort of support we could see for any kind of longer-term issue, especially if it isn’t atop the media cycle.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#340

Post by zarzavat »

jalapenos wrote: post #295
TrackerFF wrote: post #85

It always puzzled me how tax-adverse some wealthy people are. I'm not talking about the wealthy people that have 100% of their wealth tied up to company (stock) that they operate - but the wealthy people that are just asset-rich, with zero operational duties. Their wealth is handled by wealth managers, they probably don't even know what they own. But minimizing taxes and hoarding wealth is priority number 1.

It puzzles you in spite of knowing that wealthy people are taxed more by default due to progressive tax rates etc?

Usually, wealthy people pay capital gains tax not income tax. People who pay higher rate income tax are just normal people with a larger salary. Not every country works like this however.
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