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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?

#571

Post by danny_codes »

robertlagrant wrote: post #192
spinchange wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The working poor pay into FICA which is a greater percentage of their cash flow. They get it back upon annual tax reconciliation. The same entitlement programs nonetheless have lots of unfunded liabilities so the money has already been allocated even if it's not currently "there" -- 'The Rich' are beneficiaries of entitlement spending too.

It's a simpler situation than that. Regardless of proportions of payment, we already have a percentage of the population whose public services are paid for by someone else, either directly through income or divided tax or indirectly through higher prices from corporation tax, or more indirectly through inflationary monetary policy. In other words: we don't need to invent taxing people with more money more. We have th…

Oh I'm not implying it's be revolutionary, just that we should.

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

#572

Post by berniedurfee »

chii wrote: post #528
popcorncowboy wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. It doesn't have to be a perfect model to still be a useful one. It's precisely because it's so unintuitive that it's interesting. Your introduction of a positive sum mechanic doesn't invalidate the model. Introducing a $new_value component still begs questions around who gets access to that value - and if the yard sale model holds, even perfectly equal distribution of that $new_value suffers from exponentia…

> value is disproportionately captured by the already wealthy value is generated using both capital from the already rich, and labour from the poor. Over time, labour isn't increasing in productivity. It's capital that's increasing productivity, such as by improving labour's efficiency. With this in mind, why is it that the rich shouldnt be the ones to capture the new/increased productivity? After all, it is their in…

Labor, both unskilled and skilled, drives all economic growth. Ideas have no value until labor creates the tangible embodiments of those ideas.

That laborers, both skilled and unskilled, tend to be fungible, is the reason that they typically have no individual leverage to earn their fair share of the value created by their efforts.

Laborers end up having to unionize to gain the leverage to claw some additional fraction of the true value of their efforts.

The value distribution pyramid is upside down. Ideas have no value until laborers produce a sellable product.

Management ought to be far more grateful and gracious to those who labor day after day to produce the goods we want and need.

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

#573

Post by mister_tee »

tluyben2 wrote: post #365
mikrl wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Quick PBS summary of company towns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7AOWLOOT-U

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons

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

#574

Post by naasking »

nickpp wrote: post #551
naasking wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

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

No, mainly because of the risk of capital flight.

> It's exactly this kind of people that you will alienate and drive away with these of wealth-hostile policies.

I disagree. If a good or service is truly valuable, someone will provide it. The value of an unmet need will increase until it becomes attractive, and if it never meets that bar, then by definition it wasn't valuable enough.

The only exceptions are goods or services that capitalism isn't effective at solving anyway, either because they are common goods that capitalism would exploit to exhaustion, or because they would yield only natural monopolies that are rife with abuse. A state-run corporation is a good option here, and wealth flight isn't an issue.

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

#575

Post by nickpp »

naasking wrote: post #574
nickpp wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> Pretty much every country that tried to tax wealth had to back up exactly because of wealthy and capital flight. No, mainly because of the risk of capital flight. > It's exactly this kind of people that you will alienate and drive away with these of wealth-hostile policies. I disagree. If a good or service is truly valuable, someone will provide it. The value of an unmet need will increase until it becomes attracti…

I lived in a country lacking capital (first because it was robbed by communists and then due to the risk of the transition managed by a deeply corrupt political elite) and I can tell you existing demand was only met through imports.

It sucked for everybody - without local capital the entrepreneurship was very limited, jobs remained scarce, specialists emigrated and the trade deficit became unmanageable. In the end multinational corporations slowly entered and bought various state-granted monopolies (the only real monopoly entrepreneurship can't solve) on the cheap. But that tiny capital started a snowball effect that eventually raised the living standard to unhoped-for levels. Now we have both billionaires and a wealthy middle-class. It took a long time though.

Careful what you wish for - a country without successful entrepreneurs and local capital(ists) is an easy prey on the international markets.

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

#576

Post by jmeister »

danny_codes wrote: post #558
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 paramet…

This is fair. Piketty thinks even 10x spread is sufficient to incentivize the entrepreneurs.

I’m suggesting that villainizing the rich is silly. Even in a perfectly meritocratic system according to OP, there’s going to be massive inequality.

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

#577

Post by Valakas_ »

wtcactus wrote: post #210
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…

Your assumption is that the state will apply that money optimally (or at least more optimally than the super rich - also, notice you didn’t define what super rich are). Looking at historical and present data, I can be absolutely sure that the state will mismanage that money in almost every country. I’m Portuguese, my government is collecting more ~ 25% taxes than it collected 6 years ago when the current ruling party…

If the state doesn't apply the money optimally, i.e. it's not doing its job, then that's the problem that needs to be fixed.

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

#578

Post by Valakas_ »

jmyeet wrote: post #197
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…

The idea of the “middle class” is propaganda. The whole point of this as well as any number of wedge social issues is to sow division and direct your anger at marginalized groups instead of the wealthy and powerful. There are only two groups when it comes to economic status: labor and the capital-owning class. Labor is anyone who derives their income from their labor and goes all the way from the janitor to doctors a…

I don't think it was *invented* to sow division, but I agree with you that it can definitely be used for it.

There's different ways to categorize things - lower-class, middle-class and upper-class is a sort of intuitive way which throughout history has made some sense, somewhat, with different names. However, I get that maybe it's not the most useful currently, because there's such a ridiculous divide between upper-class (rich) and the other two, that we, belonging to the bottom 2, should band together to bring change favorable to us.

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

#579

Post by Valakas_ »

WalterBright wrote: post #62
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…

The top 1% pay 40% of the federal tax revenue. The top 5% pay 60%. California has the highest income tax at 13.3%, the highest federal tax rate is 37%. That makes the top income tax rate 50%.

Billionaires should not exist. When one gets to a certain amount of wealth, TBD, there they should get a golden plate saying "Congratulations, you won capitalism" and from them on, tax rate is 100%.

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

#580

Post by mint2 »

newZWhoDis wrote: post #495
mint2 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because without an income stream no one loans to the government, or at least not at current rates. Interest rates would explode. Funnily enough Britain just demoed that for everyone. the prior pm tried to reduce taxes a ton and everything nearly went to hell in a hand basket. So at least we can be confident the taxes are actually doing things.

> Because without an income stream no one loans to the government The government prints whatever money it needs to pay its bills, and does so already with impunity. It also pays interest on money loaned to it (bonds) with printed fiat. Also, you completely missed the point. Of course taxes “do things”, and ending them would also “do something”. That wasn’t the question. The question is simple, why pay taxes at all wh…

Why so should people answer or respond if the responses are ignored in order to repeat posting the same wrong preconceptions… preconceptions that were already addressed and even provided a contemporary example that was also ignored.
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