Are super-rich people just better at making money? • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by nickpp » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 12:05 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #497

WalterBright wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make taxes too high, and who is going to invest in America? It will be a Pyrrhic victory for you. We already see wealthier people fleeing California for Texas and Florida, the same for New York. It's not the government that produces the wealth in the economy, it's business. Confiscatory taxes will wind up with everyone poorer, including you.

Most business revenue in America is still from small to medium sized businesses, so this investment you speak of doesn't sound too important. So yes, I agree that business produces wealth, but the business that matters isn't going anywhere because they're largely local. The larger corporations are still going to do business here as well because of the market power. As for wealth flight, it's overblown. First fleeing…

Pretty much every country that tried to tax wealth had to back up exactly because of wealthy and capital flight.

> local competitors will immediately spring up

What is your experience starting new businesses? It is a highly difficult and risky endeavor and few people find it more attractive than simply getting a job. It's exactly this kind of people that you will alienate and drive away with these of wealth-hostile policies.

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

#552

Post by gnull » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 12:59 PM UTC

didgeoridoo wrote: post #498

gnull wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we made it much much easier to build housing then then rental housing market would be like the used car market: viable but not an easy place to sit back and make passive income. You're overthinking it. Sweden made renting out apartments unattractive without all this sophistication, they just regulate the prices and keep them low.

…and has consequently created a housing shortage so severe that their decade-plus waiting list was at one time being considered for the Guinness Book of World Records[0]. Price controls leading to shortages and rationing is basically the microeconomics version of the First Law of Thermodynamics. It has had the same result literally everywhere it has been tried. The solution lies in the supply. Always. If you want mor…

Totally agree. My previous comment was sarcastic, of course.

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

#553

Post by dennis_jeeves1 » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

wholinator2 wrote: post #527

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had 2 people fall for this already, fellow HNers, my above statement was said in sarcasm. Of course there are people here who are stupid enough to suggest it for real.

You should be aware then that HN is a place for sincere and kind discussion. If you're going to speak sarcasm you must mark it, that's how it goes here. You shouldn't come here calling people stupid because you're not following proper social etiquette. In case you aren't aware, placing a \s at the end of your comment is enough to properly denote sarcasm. Communicating intentions is very important and I think you'd be…

If you are the admin/owner of HN I'll buy your argument. I'll even go away. If you are not, bugger off.

Calling out stupidity is important. In your 'kind' world, every idiot will have his say to the detriment of everyone else.

I mean what a surreal and disturbing thread - people calling for the robbing the rich, via taxes. Robbing is what thugs do, not thoughful, 'kind' people.

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

#554

Post by xg15 » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #513

xg15 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A very simple distribution solution therefore is to stop privileging capital gains and tax all income equally. But of course this has been considered and hasn’t gained traction. A reason why it hasn't gained traction though is that wealth doesn't just give you buying power but also political influence. So especially those who already have excessive wealth would be in a position to block such a measure.

That, and economists broadly agree that taxing businesses and investment is a bad idea, and that the most efficient thing is a consumption tax: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... . Note that this article is from NPR of all things.

Most efficient in archieving what exactly?

They only gave actual objectives for 3 of the 6 proposals - and those objectives where "fairer markets" and "create more jobs".

Reducing inequality was not mentioned anywhere.

Indeed they acknowledge it will hurt lower-income households but handwave that away with some unspecified measures to "minimize" harm to those households.

> Eliminating the deduction will drive up costs for people with workplace healthcare, but makes the health-care market fairer.

...

> Instead, impose a consumption tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower-income households.

...

> [carbon tax] can be structured to make sure it doesn't disproportionately harm lower-income Americans.

Oh, and of course:

> Three: Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people.

Because no wealthy person ever thought of ways to restructure their assets so they are poor on paper...

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

#555

Post by AuthorizedCust » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #447

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice strawman. I wrote “extremism”. You’re responding to something else.

Then who are the southern religious extremists? name them.

Look at the main Christian denominations associated with extremism, then look at where their main strength is. You’ll find a correlation to the US south.

As an example, look at the Global Methodist Church, which is liberating bigoted congregations from the United Methodist church. So far, it’s main (but not exclusive!) strength is in the south.

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

#556

Post by multiplegeorges » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

lelag wrote: post #99

bmitc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich buy stuff, do they not? Tax those things to force realization and thus tax of unrealized wealth. Buying a second, third, fourth home? Here's your increasingly high tax and interest rate penalty. Instead of throwing up our hands with "they don't have cash", force them to realize investments into cash and deincentivize being able to keep everything hidden being investments and purchasing things with unrealized…

> Buying a second, third, fourth home? It's too easy for the ultra-rich to find loopholes in any rules. If there is a tax on homeownership, they will simply not own any home but will own some corporate entity that own the asset. See ? No secondary residence. Just an investment in a corporation that happens to home a bunch of houses.

This is solved by a beneficial owner registry where you must register the actual human who owns and benefits from the assets of the corporation.

This has the added benefit of injecting a ton of extra transparency and sunlight into corporate dealings.

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

#557

Post by matthewdgreen » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #540

matthewdgreen wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every economic action you take can be viewed as an investment or bet. Getting up in the morning and going to work represents a bet that your compensation will be worth the time spent. Sending your kids to school/college is an even more obvious example. For self-employed people all of this gets much more literal: every job involves a tradeoff of time and resources that could be spent on different projects. Even…

> but you can't just claim "this effect must go away" without articulating a clear reason that it would. If the effect is that, all else being equal, people with a lot of money can make more money in an absolute sense than people without a lot of money, then of course it doesn't go away. It's not that that isn't real (it's simply how percentages work) it's that it's not actually a problem because the model is so far…

Again, you are talking about a world where the economy is not static: where there is room for overall economic growth that exceeds the wealth-concentrating effect. That’s the world we’ve lived in for at least the past few decades. But there’s no immutable law that says we’ll be able to maintain 3-10% GDP growth forever. There have been many periods of economic stagnation in the recent past where wealth concentrated exactly the way this model suggests. And there will be similar periods in the future, whether that’s the near future (demographic decline) or slightly more distant future (exponential growth can’t continue forever.)

In either case it is useful to understand the underlying concentrating effect even if one believes it is tolerable because other effects dominate.

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

#558

Post by danny_codes » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

jmeister wrote: post #70

This focus on super-rich individuals is totally misguided. What's important is the economic system. Rich individuals are simply a nauseating side-effect of capitalism. Nobody really likes it, but there simply isn't anything better. The burden of proof is on the complainers. Even Marxist-sympathetic Peter Singer gets it. >Look, I think it would be better if you had an economic system in which we didn’t have billionair…

I mean, we could just tax people more and redistribute to the bottom.

Basically create a society with some high income spread, say 100x. So a low salary would be like 40k as a floor, and 4milliom as a ceiling. Wealth can be capped via a similar scheme.

That way, people are highly incentived via capitolism just as they are now, but wealth is constrained.

Imo it's not that the mechanics are wrong, it's that the parameters are ill-tuned

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

#559

Post by 29athrowaway » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #555

29athrowaway wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then who are the southern religious extremists? name them.

Look at the main Christian denominations associated with extremism, then look at where their main strength is. You’ll find a correlation to the US south. As an example, look at the Global Methodist Church, which is liberating bigoted congregations from the United Methodist church. So far, it’s main (but not exclusive!) strength is in the south.

I am more worried about the ideology that has killed the most humans: communism.

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

#560

Post by kasey_junk » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #477

dragonwriter wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“But, yes, in the limit case estates aren't the tax-optimal way to transfer capital to survivors, which is why other vehicles are used for people for whom the estate exemption is small potatoes.”

Like what?

GRAT’s are common for volatile assets like tech shares.