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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?

#361

Post by empiricus »

iflint wrote: post #348
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…

There is a fairly simple way to tax wealth: inflation. There are downsides to inflation of course, lower economic growth is a big one. But we are entering a higher inflation, higher interest rate environment whether we like it or not, and that will result in lower wealth inequality. Money will have less direct purchasing power, and assets like housing or company equity will decline in value due to higher borrowing co…

If you own land, shares, companies, then inflation will not affect you.

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

#362

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#363

Post by abnry »

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…

> Corporations and the super rich have bought out democracy, and what is crazy is that they are supported by the very groups they intrinsically hate and hurt through their policies.

Oh yes, the "they don't know what's good for them" argument.

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

#364

Post by mindslight »

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.

The problem with this hollowing out of the regulations government used to have, is that people react by jumping for extreme, impractical things like "wealth tax". Nobody is going to go for the idea that the government comes around and explicitly collects a significant percentage of everything you own every year. (And they already do much of what they can get away with through inflation and real estate taxes).

Rather, to continue the spirit of the top level comment, what is also now missing is the estate tax, which is/was around 40% (it's graduated too, but it tops out quickly). IIUC, the federal threshold used to be around $1M a few decades ago, and is now $10M - this was the anti "death tax" political issue you might vaguely recall. Furthermore, due to wider use of trusts, it's been basically eliminated unless your family is extremely unlucky.

Fundamentally, I'd rather just tamp down the amount of money given away to the rich - stop the government giving trillions of dollars to the financial industry to prop up the fictitious asset bubble pyramid scheme, and either let natural technological deflation happen or at least spend the money deliberately ala MMT.

But either way, something is required - the system we have right now has the government continually giving away gobs of money to asset holders, while doing very little to collect it back. This is exactly why these personal wealth bubbles continue to grow.

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

#365

Post by tluyben2 »

mikrl wrote: post #334
tluyben2 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who buys apartment complexes and houses on the company for his employees to live in; that seems not to be reasonable. In fact, it became more reasonable with wfh; now his colleagues living farther away, who he wants in the office 3 months a year, can live for cheap for both sides and without any long term contracts. Definitely cheaper and more convenient than hotels in his area.

>I have a friend who buys apartment complexes and houses on the company for his employees to live in When railroad and heavy industry did this exact thing in the 19th century we called them robber barons and broke up their obscenely powerful and corrupt monopolies via antitrust legislation.

Anything can be abused, but I don't know the history; I have heard of robber barons, but not in the context of housing and Google doesn't seem to give me more than just their own enormous mansions. It would depend on if it's abused or not, wouldn't it?

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

#366

Post by reallydontask »

543g43g43 wrote: post #167
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…

Ah, the mythical "super-rich" who could fund all of our solutions, if only we could prise their money out of their clutching hands! It's funny how they always exist, even in countries like the UK and France which in reality have taxed them out of existence, and payscales are absurdly compressed compared to the US. Careful what you wish for, you are someone else's "super rich".

While it's true that wealth is relative, this is so disingenuous that I can only presume that this comment is not made in good faith.

FWIW, I think multinational corporations that engage in all manner of legal tax avoidance are probably more of a problem than individual billionaires.

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

#367

Post by polygamous_bat »

bamboozled wrote: post #309
danaris wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something can be very simple, and still be very hard to achieve because of resistance to it.

Which is why I don't think it's very simple, you have to convince a lot of powerful people they should pay more tax to achieve said goal, that's not easy.

Simple and easy are not antonyms here -- something can be simple but difficult to accomplish depending on the time and place at the same time. For example, "respect women" is a simple enough phrase but getting the Taliban to follow it is anything but simple.

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

#369

Post by hestefisk »

prottog wrote: post #330
hestefisk wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”).

I see you have a bottomless appetite for taxing more and lots of imagination on how to do so. Do you have any answers on how that taxed money will be spent? How we can ensure that it's not just lining the pockets of the politicians and bureaucrats in charge of disbursing the money? How we measure the successes and failures of any taxpayer-funded program, so that we can be reasonably confident that the money is being…

Public healthcare, schools, universities, decent infrastructure. With proper checks and balances, those things are possible.

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

#370

Post by MetaMalone »

blakeburch wrote: post #368

Cool interactions on mobile. But the poor vs rich game ended up with the poor person going up to $1000 and the rich person going down below $100. I recognize it's just chance... but it's funny that the results directly conflicted the author's point.

Same thing happened to me. Lol
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