California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state • Hacker News Board

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#541

Post by xtiansimon » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #96

Personally I disagree with the whole idea of wealth taxes, you should be taxed when you do things, not taxed just because you own something worth money. I should be able to go live in the woods alone and not have the government take some percent of my net worth just because I exist. I mean I don't have a tonne of sympathy for people with tens of millions of net worth, but it just seems wrong in principle. If I start…

> “ I should be able to go live in the woods alone and not have the government take some percent of my net worth just because I exist.”

Reminds me of stories about people losing their homes for unpaid property taxes. I recall a story about some paultry amount of unpaid tax (Even owning a home in the woods isn’t safe.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#542

Post by dang » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

frogblast wrote: post #190

This is fearmongering. The bill was introduced a year ago, went nowhere, and is now dead. This WSJ article was published a month after the bill was officially killed… The broader legislature has no interest in such a tax. This is the bill in question: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xht... Edit: also note that this article is on the WSJ opinion page, and didn’t come from the news desk.

Thanks. This is a common pattern:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#543

Post by jelliclesfarm » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #527

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hatred towards the ultra-rich is not based in jealousy but in a moral stance. there is nothing 'moral' about hatred. or covetousness. one wealthy person has created more jobs and taxes and created benefits for society in goods and services than the 99% that already benefit from them. see that smart phone in your hand? the blazing internet speeds? the nice roads? the electric car rebate you get. the cheap cheap food…

What the hell? The parent comment tried to explain why this isn't a stance based in jealousy, and you compare it to sexual assault based in some kind of bodily avarice? The phones and the internet and the jobs are great. Why are you taking it for granted that the people who created those things should have more money than most countries do?

obviously it wasnt meant for the parent then.

i dont understand what you mean. can you expand?

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#544

Post by syshum » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #535

syshum wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> much smaller impact than me pushing for everyone to give. The problem here is the fact you are not pushing for everyone to "give", giving is a voluntary act, taxation is compulsory done under the explicit threat of violence. It is not an act of "giving" it is an act of taking. >"don't the bottom 95% know they'll experience a steady decline of income and purchasing power if we don't tax the wealthy more?" History d…

> History does not show this to be the case at all, The World is becoming a better place for everyone [1] Driven predominantly by growth, which will taper off. We are an unusually explosive period of growth at the moment, and it's already starting to recede. Growth is fueled in many cases by population expansion which has almost completely stalled in many places. For an introductory read on the topic, I recommend Tho…

WOW, where to even begin.

Money is not a resource like water, money is a medium of value exchange. In the case of income money is the medium where I exchange my Time, Knowledge, and labor for a given quantity of money which I then use for trade to obtain things others have used their time, money and knowledge to create

It is a simpler and more abstract instead of me having to grow wheat to exchange with a baker for bread

Given this, I do 100% believe I am entitled to 100% of my Labor, time and knowledge. You seem to have the belief that I am a subject or property of the government, as this the only conclusion one can draw in order for your world view to square with what money really is.

I believe it is unethical to take by force or taxation a persons labor, and thus by extension it is unethical to take a person income by theft or taxation

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#545

Post by rufus_foreman » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

em500 wrote: post #452

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got several concerns with wealth taxes in general too: 1) They are difficult to enforce. How to measure the value of a famous painting? What if the value does down? Is there a refund of wealth taxes? 2) They are an entirely new class of taxes that will give politicians the ability to increase the overall tax burden over time. At first, they will only impact the very wealthy, but it is much easier to adjust the t…

> 1) They are difficult to enforce. How to measure the value of a famous painting? What if the value does down? Is there a refund of wealth taxes? The Netherlands has had a general wealth tax since 2001 and there have not been many practical issues AFAIK. There are separate regimes for (1) primary residence (which get yearly assessments based on comparable sales/house price indices), (2) significant (>5%) business ow…

>> The value is assessed on 1 Jan every year. Whatever happens during the year is ignored.

Oh, the games they will play!

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#546

Post by jelliclesfarm » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

OminousWeapons wrote: post #124

tsimionescu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important point of taxing the top ~1% is to simply bring their wealth more in line with their contributions, and to reduce their outsized power on the political system. Jeff Bezos isn't "worth" a million times more than his warehouse workers, and he shouldn't have that kind of money either as a matter of principle, or as a matter of democratic power. It's not a matter of punishment, but a matter of ensuring…

I think it's worth asking why compensation is the way it is. If we assume that people's compensation is based on the value they generate for an organization, then what you are asking is basically "can a million warehouse workers together in a collective be as effective as Jeff Bezos at producing value for Amazon?" Alternatively, you could ask "can a given warehouse worker given one million times his current compensat…

>I'm not saying that what warehouse workers are being paid now is "fair" or "reasonable"

its not a question of "fair" or "reasonable". such jobs shouldnt exist. i come from the side of ag jobs and there are a lot of repetitive manual jobs that should simply be automated.

in the place of low paying jobs, new higher wage jobs should be created. eventually, with more people being skilled and having good earning potential, the number of work hours will also come down leaving people to do other things than just work 40 hours/day and wasting 2 hours in commute.

this is how we should live. we should live our lives and work a little bit to support that life style. life shouldnt be drudgery where work is how we survive. creating high value items and high wages with robots and automation taking care of menial tasks will also bring out the creativity and potential of human beings. there will always be those who will fall through the cracks and thats when the social net should catch them.

current system is the expectation of the social net to catch everyone on a low wage. for example, you cant increase wages for ag. it would mean cost of food would go up. so we end up making cheap food, cutting corners, having a low wage worker class and then subsidising them through welfare paid through our taxes. its messy and complicated and inefficient.

my fav example is that of automobiles replacing horse carriages as the preferred urban transport system. it erased all the jobs like the guy who drove the carriage, the kid who picked up the horse poop on the streets, the stablemen, the horse groomers..the farriers...i mean..how many people want to take up equine hoof care as a profession these days. all those jobs. gone. in its place, came a new set of jobs..the factory worker, the mechanic, the gas station owner (and with it 711)...not to mention the sweet relief for the poor overworked horses. and our lives are better.

of course, the flip side is the pollution, dependence on fossil fuels, exponential population growth ..but we grow by leaps and bounds. and we fix our missteps as we move along. but some jobs..it is inevitable that they will disappear. they have to. or we will become stagnant.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#547

Post by WitCanStain » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #414

sacred_numbers wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of true, but also not quite true either. If you earn income from capital you are only taxed when you sell that capital. Theoretically this means that if you want to spend money on living expenses or luxuries you have to sell capital to fund your lifestyle. However the super rich can borrow money at extremely low rates with their assets as collateral, bypassing taxes and allowing their capital to keep earn…

> Honestly, my major problem with wealth inequality is not that rich people get to have money; it's that wealth concentration leads to power concentration. That's not healthy for democracy. This is probably extremely controversial, but I say go ahead and collect a wealth tax and then burn everything you collect. It's not about the budget, it's about limiting the power of billionaires and the corporations they control…

Wealth and power are not divorced in a capitalist society. Jeff Bezos is powerful because he controls Amazon. He is also powerful because he has 200 billion dollars. He has 200 billion dollars because he owns a large portion of Amazon. If Bezos had only 1 billion dollars, he'd still have a lot of power, but much less of it. Further, the rest of his wealth could go to other good things (to the people living in the state/country or to Amazon workers, who I believe are more deserving (collectively) of it than Bezos.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#548

Post by pedrosorio » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

secabeen wrote: post #273

nthj wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument seems to make sense on the surface, but California already has some of the highest income taxes in the country. To make an appeal to extremes, if California had a 40% income tax they wanted to raise to 45% asking, “show me how you have demonstrated good stewardship in what you are already taking” would be, I imagine, somewhat common. Reasonable people can of course debate that percentage, and can do so…

California does have high income tax, but property taxes are some of the lowest in the nation, and a recent attempt to reform those taxes failed. That leaves California 12th in state tax burden. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur...

> property taxes are some of the lowest in the nation

That's like citing the average rent in San Francisco. Great if you've been living in a rent controlled apartment for 30 years, but irrelevant if you've moved there recently.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#549

Post by therealdrag0 » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #500

therealdrag0 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know many conservatives/Republicans?

I guess socialists crave what conservatives fear. My prediction is that as Texas becomes more democratic (lower case and capital D), the conservative’s fear will be increasingly realized.

Yeah could be. I just disputed your other comment that lots of middle class people wouldn't mind taxing the rich. Whereas most of the conservatives I know are ardently against tax increases by principle even if the tax wouldn't affect them. But sure if Tx changes politically then ya.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#550

Post by tacitusarc » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

topher515 wrote: post #322

tacitusarc wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has had his house smashed into an all of his stuff stolen, none of which was recovered and no meaningful attempt to do so was made, I don't particularly buy the argument that government enforces property rights. In certain cases, maybe. But mostly property rights exist because we all kind of agree they exist, and we generally don't go burglarizing each other.

The point being made above about property rights is much bigger than “does my local police do a good job finding burglars?”. The point is that the government maintains an entire system for tracking, resolving disputes, and enforcing ownership. Think about who has the final say in a dispute over whether you own your car or your house or your company. The government adjudicates ownership disputes and then enforces that…

Or, alternatively, you'd need to buy a gun and defend your property yourself. Which many people do, and has become even more prevalent with the spate of looting in major cities with no police response last summer. You seem to be approaching this from a highly theoretical and ideological position, but that ignores the reality of the current situation, and the fact that the proposed law does not exist in some hypothetical world. The problem with tax impositions is rarely the theory (there's always a reasonable justification), it's the practical realities surrounding policy.