We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001% • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by carapace » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #299

WalterBright wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has happened before. After the end of WW2, the Allies decided to repudiate the ReichsMark (the German dollar) and issue a new Mark. Everyone who held ReichsMarks saw it go to zero. To get the economy going again, everyone was issued 50 of the new Deutsch Marks. Within a couple weeks, the people who had been wealthy before were rapidly moving ahead, and the ones who had not been were again at the bottom. I.e. the…

This is why the system has to be designed to prevent concentrations of wealth or power.

How? (I'm not trolling, I'm sincerely curious. I respect and appreciate your viewpoint pmoriarty even though I don't always agree with you.)

I feel like it's probably a bad idea to let individuals acquire so much wealth and power that they rival some nations, yet I haven't been able to frame an ethical way to prevent it if the "0.001%" have acquired their wealth legitimately, that is, by the rules we all must follow.

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

#412

Post by ineptech » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

rascul wrote: post #394

ineptech wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raising capital gains would be a decent idea that forces the rich to pay more. Basically zero support for it. Zero support among whom, the wolves or the sheep? Taxing the rich more is generally popular[0] and this would accomplish that; it would seem like that's support. > Taxes on the sale of a primary home is not as rare as you think. I would need to see a source on this; I can't imagine a scenario in which any m…

> I would need to see a source on this; I can't imagine a scenario in which any middle-class person pays any tax on their home at all, unless they live in an extreme-outlier of a neighborhood or find gold in their backyard. Could you elaborate on why they wouldn't pay tax on their home?

Because there's a tax shelter for that case - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_Relief_Act_of_1997

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

#413

Post by Retric » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #397

Retric wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even adjusting for inflation from 1996 half the population had 1.0 - 1.6 million. That translates to ~$1.7M - 2.7M, or an income of ~68k to 108k which is still not that significant.

Where do you get half the population from? According to the statistics that they gave, an estimated 3.5 million Americans were that wealthy. In 1996 the US population was around 270 million so we're talking about the top 1.3% of Americans by net worth. For more about what this group looked like, read https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/c... .

That’s what a a median of $1.6 million and a minimum of 1.0 million means. Half of their population was 1.0 to 1.6 Million the other half was over 1.6 million.

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

#414

Post by ksec » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

bwestergard wrote: post #7

In Finland, everyone's taxable income is a matter of public record. One theoretical benefit of such a policy is that it eliminates information asymmetries between workers and employers in wage bargaining.

>eliminates information asymmetries between workers and employers in wage bargaining.

WOW! Never heard of this as an argument. I think it is a very good one for working class.

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

#415

Post by triceratops » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #362

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.

SALT deductions are a massive tax break for the wealthy. Your own partisanship that would see them restored is just as powerful, and the tax policy you advocate here is more regressive.

> SALT deductions are a massive tax break for the wealthy.

How?

The point of being able to deduct state and local taxes from federal ones is to devolve power to as local a level of government as possible. You've already paid the local authorities some taxes, so now you owe the federal government less.

SALT limits do the opposite of that.

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

#416

Post by motohagiography » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

RC_ITR wrote: post #243

motohagiography wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who live in hot real estate areas for years made them the hot real estate areas. Real estate appreciation isn't free money. It's people who risked moving into an area and brought their culture with them. This is what creates the value. Just because middle class people benefit from the subsidy of low interest rates that create asset bubbles does not mean that the people who raised families in a neighbourhoo…

>brought their culture with them. Yikes. Do you really think places like SOMA, SLU, DTLA, etc. got better because rich people brought their 'culture' there? I'd recommend you visit said places and see for yourself, most of the 'culture' is in adjacent (usually historically minority) neighborhoods.

Specifically, I said that rich(er) people go to those places because the people who were there before them made those places appealing. Poor(er) people who made due and built a community with businesses and neighboors that attracted others. As for why people who say 'yikes' seem to scare so easily, the concern is noted and ignored.

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

#417

Post by influx » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #167

iooi wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like a win-win. It's not a win-win, there's significant risk. > fully collateralized This is not true! The underlying asset fluctuates in value and is open to lowering significantly in value, leaving the bank holding the bag.

> leaving the bank holding the bag You probably underestimate the ability of banks to evaluate risk. Yes, they absolutely could end up underwater on an asset backed loan, but you also shouldn't assume that you can take out $1 in loans on every $1 of stock. On Schwab's page, they say: "Schwab Bank, in its sole discretion, will determine what collateral is eligible collateral and the loan value of collateral". So, if y…

LOL, yeah the banks have been so great at leverage in the past couple of decades in the USA that they have to get bailed out repeatedly.

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

#418

Post by a1369209993 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

frockington1 wrote: post #351

madsbuch wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kidnapping problem is on a whole other level. Denmark is known for "leaving babies in strollers outside of cafes". The Nordic social-liberal countries (Finland included) solve this problem not by opacity but by having social support and trust.

Dumb person here. What is "leaving babies in strollers outside of cafes"?

When going into a cafe to order something, they leave their child (in a stroller) outside with the (allegedly justified) expectation that nothing bad will happen to it. (To be fair, babies aren't especially easy to liquidate if stolen, and strollers are inconveniently bulky, so this arguably says less about the amount of crime than about how petty, blatant, and asinine the criminals are.)

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

#419

Post by HWR_14 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

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…

I never followed this chain of logic. The whole point behind the stock market is to treat any commonly traded stock as a liquid asset. Why do you think that this fails with respect to Bezos and Gates?

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

#420

Post by HWR_14 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #233

dangus wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. The working class doesn’t get stock options, vesting cliffs, inheritance, or capital gains! Or much of a savings account or 401k, for that matter. The option to stop working for more than a few weeks or months takes you squarely out of the working class. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that the parent comment to ours is attempting to advocate for taxing just the billionaires and not to tax the…

> The working class doesn’t get stock options, vesting cliffs, inheritance, or capital gains! robinhood.com would beg to differ. Anyone can invest in the stock market and get capital gains.

Not at the 500k level most of them aren't getting capital gains. Or is this "anyone can be a multimillionaire - just play the lottery and get lucky" level of technically true?