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We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

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Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#401

Post by Ericson2314 »

kristjansson wrote: post #388

The conflation of change in mark-to-market net worth with income has got a whole lot to do with the constant breathless reporting of "Bezos/Gates/Buffet/... made/lost x BILLION dollars today" every time the market moves by more than a point. Sure, I get they want to beat the drum on wealth inequality, and perhaps that's a drum worth beating. But its a disingenuous disservice to pretend that these people are sitting o…

Yes, it's a bummer common discourse does this. While making the billionaires wealth seem more liquid would seem to overstate their power, I think the real issue is quite opposite.

The popular understanding of capitalism is accurate prices and liquid goods, and only a few things (as contested in culture wars) are genuine separate axis. The reality is the real power of the billionaires isn't in their "net worth" (however good the accounting is), but in their power over the institutions they control. Look at the size of the flow in and out of those institutions, their capacity for investment. Realize also that even as we collectively have the wealth for much simultaneous investment, earlier investment has a profound and non-erotic effect on future history (e.g. car vs public transit, Unix being entrenched for 50+ years, etc.) This is the real travesty of billionaire power, not the ability of Bezos to buy big yachts or whatever.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#402

Post by metalforever »

bananabreakfast wrote: post #294
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the Bay Area's high prices are driven by scarcity + demand, not intrinsic cost. So if everyone had a higher tax burden, I'd expect costs to come down.

That's absurd. If everyone had a higher tax burden social mobility would be completely destroyed. Californians will never vote away prop 13 so property taxes will never go up, even in this imaginary increased tax burden scenario. With incomes taxed higher, prices would not come down at all. No one would want to sell their houses, as they could never afford a new one after taxes. Prices would continue to be propped up…

I bought in SF recently with a 5% down payment without waiving most of the contingencies.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#403

Post by mustafa_pasi »

marcusverus wrote: post #355
bwestergard wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the U.S. certainly has regional, class, and other subcultures, there is very clearly a national culture and "social fabric". The easiest way to see this, if you grew up in the U.S. and have not traveled much, is to read tourist guides for your own country.

Is this really the case? Imagine you're at a masquerade ball with 25 people from random countries around the western world, 5 of whom are Americans from various states. Everyone speaks perfect, mechanical, unaccented English, and you are not permitted to discuss dead-giveaway topics like geography, political parties/candidates, specific foods, etc. How confident are you that you could pick out the Americans?

IMHO there is a common theme in the philosophy of life of most Americans. For example, many people have remarked on the high levels of optimism found in most Americans. It is one of my favourite American attributes.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#404

Post by Ericson2314 »

dillondoyle wrote: post #391
lumost wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average citizen can't borrow to pay off debts indefinitely. At ~2% interest the billionaire can borrow against their assets and keep borrowing to pay off interest. The assets gain in value at 4-6% per year so they are actually coming out ahead and paying 0% tax. Even a middle class retiree typically needs to draw down their savings to pay expenses. Giving up 2% to avoid taxes wouldn't be viable. The bank would al…

or even at all! large amount of Americans don't even have access to banking. The loans they can get are insanely (i think disgustingly) predatory. payday loans with fees can ed up being like 664% APR!!!!! Your 500 loan becomes 2000 you have to pay back in a couple months, which you obviously can't.. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/16/map-shows-typical-payday-loa...

Right it's crucially important we leapfrog all this crypto and fintech nonsense by just doing "fed accounts for all" administered electronically and at the post office.

Boring commercial banking should be utility, and any private sector offering will have to compete with a new non-grifter baseline.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#405

Post by gota »

syshum wrote: post #379
kwhitefoot wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think the world needs a nation that continues to put personal freedom above everything else. And you think that the US does that? Exercising personal freedom necessitates having the material and mental resources to buy stuff, to be able to move from place to place, to change jobs, etc. It seems to me that a plausible proxy measure for personal freedom is social mobility, the likelihood that you will be better off t…

The US has pretty good Social Mobility as well, it is complete myth that the "rich" in the US is stagnate, most of the Billionaires in the US are 1st Generation Billionaires, this highlights there are income and social mobility. As a personal anecdote, I am many times better of income and wealth wise than my parents even though we have the same education level and seemingly the same income opportunities, yet I have m…

> As a personal anecdote, I am many times better of income and wealth wise than my parents even though we have the same education level and seemingly the same income opportunities

Slightly off topic - I'd wager the overwhelming majority of the HN posters are signficantly better-off than their parents, solely by virtue of being tech-workers. We tend to forget, but at no point in capitalism's history has such a numerous caste of white-collar knowledge workers been so well compensated as we are now

In your case it may well be mostly because of better financial decisions (especially if you are orders of magnitude better off, which is hard to do without consistent investment in any case), but for most of us this is also true just by 'placement luck'

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#406

Post by ksec »

kristjansson wrote: post #388

The conflation of change in mark-to-market net worth with income has got a whole lot to do with the constant breathless reporting of "Bezos/Gates/Buffet/... made/lost x BILLION dollars today" every time the market moves by more than a point. Sure, I get they want to beat the drum on wealth inequality, and perhaps that's a drum worth beating. But its a disingenuous disservice to pretend that these people are sitting o…

Yes. Most people dont think about it that way. I am wondering if there are any simple free bitcoin / cryptocurrency making services? Get people to apply one crypto of their own, make 1 billion coins. I buy one for one coin for $1. Now that person is instantly a billionaire.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#407

Post by whakim »

ping_pong wrote: post #361
teachingassist wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically zero support for it. Wealth taxes are extremely well-supported, despite the media as an industry [and politicians] being owned by people strongly motivated to campaign against it all costs, e.g.: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-p...

Wealth taxes don't work. It was tried in Europe in many countries and they ended up rolling them back.

It's true that a number of European countries that previously had wealth taxes no longer do. However, European countries only collect taxes on residents. If you wanted to avoid wealth taxes you could simply move to another country (and the bar to doing so is very low in the EU...), whereas the IRS collects taxes on US citizens regardless of where they live. So the situations are not totally analogous and it's not clear that a wealth tax in the United States would also fail.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#408

Post by Ericson2314 »

mlac wrote: post #24

I would really just like a flat tax. No loopholes or deductions. Very simple. It should not take a masters degree to understand the tax code. I recognize this is one of the main ways Policy is implemented (incentives can drive certain behavior), but we’ve got hundreds of years of complexity going on and I wouldn’t mind simplifying this. I don’t know where to start though.

That misses the point. The problem isn't income. The problem is there is no "simple" way to assess wealth.

Actually, simplest thing to do mathematically is to skip the dollar-denominated accounting entirely, and just pay the government in kind i.e. asset forfeiture / putting the means of production in partial state control.

e.g. the gov owns stock in a company based on the distribution of private ownership (is it equal like ESOP or unequal like Facebook and Google?), and without regard to the market price of the stock.

I challenge the mathematically literate in America to really think through this.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#409

Post by Spooky23 »

fallingknife wrote: post #300
Spooky23 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My giving a shit about household capital gains went away when a partisan congress decided to buy redneck votes with punitive SALT rollback.

Why should 2 people with the same income, who get the same services for the federal government pay different federal tax rates? That's what SALT does, and it should have been eliminated entirely.

I live in New York, which has a net outflow of Federal revenues that makes life in many states possible. Most of the states impacted have outflows like that.

So frankly, I think it’s fair for some Midwest farmer with land left barely fertile due to mono cropping to pay the full shot of capital gains on his farm, after all, the farm would be worthless without federal price supports, irrigation, levee systems, and direct payments for the corn. Likewise, the Floridian using the homestead laws to launder money in property should be paying the full shot on the Miami condo.

When demographics starts shifting the congress in a few years, I’m sure similar scorched earth policy will happen, which sucks, becuase it will utterly destroy whatever rural economy exists in these states.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#410

Post by Ericson2314 »

ianbicking wrote: post #262
BarkMore wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See the Fair Tax proposal for one way to address this problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax

A large UBI would address this OK, but FairTax seems to really work to keep the tax as regressive as possible without being quite so bad as a flat VAT. A "welfare payment" for "low-income earners" means you have to be in the system ("earner"), that income still has to be calculated, and that the payment is stigmatized ("welfare") instead of presented as an entitlement. This also seems bad: "The proposed Fair Tax Act…

Yes thanks. That thing sounds like a Trojan horse; VAT and UBI is much better.
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