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

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

#581

Post by rufus_foreman »

Pfhreak wrote: post #576
rufus_foreman wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I can. I do give to charities. I don't think that's what syshum is talking about. You said, "Send the tax man to my house and all my peers. We can afford it just fine". There is no need for the tax man to come to your house. Go to https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html . There's a link there, you can even use PayPal if you want. Figure out what the additional amount is that you think you shoul…

This is a strawman that gets leveled at people that want to increase taxes. It's an attempt to paint me as a hypocrite and therefore not acting rationally. It's flawed reasoning. I invite you to consider: If my stated goal is to increase the tax on wealthiest folks with the intent of distributing more to the lower class and reducing wealth inequality. Should I: a) Spend 100% of my surplus income on gifts to the tax a…

>> If my stated goal is to increase the tax on wealthiest folks with the intent of distributing more to the lower class and reducing wealth inequality

That's not exactly "Send the tax man to my house" now is it?

You want the government to take my money and use it for your ideological purposes that I do not believe in, to implement socialism in America, that's what I think you're saying. Am I wrong here? Sending the tax man to your house vs. doing that, those are two very different things.

We can find common ground here, send the tax man to your house, we can agree on that at least can't we? And you can do that right now, this very minute, PayPal over what you think the correct amount is.

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

#582

Post by pashamur »

Pfhreak wrote: post #358
xtian wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite - he paid a wage to labor based on the current competition in the labor market and the cost of a worker to provide for his/her necessities. Then he sold the end product of the workers' collective labor for its value, determined by the sum of the value of all the labor that went into producing it. He pocketed the difference between the former and the latter. That's where profit comes from.

In either case, the workers produced more value than they were compensated for.

The thing about this logic is it breaks down once you replace "workers" with robots (which companies of the future will).

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

#584

Post by seanmcdirmid »

csa wrote: post #255
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That trope is really annoying. California has become more liberal because conservatives have left, so putting all of them into the same basket is dumb. Though I guess conservative Californians aren’t moving to ultra liberal cities like Austin for ideological reasons.

In my network of professional friends and acquaintances, I see more moderate liberals leaving the Bay Area for Austin than I do conservatives. The conservative folks seem to look more towards Montana and Idaho. Relatively small n, but still...

Not sure. There aren’t that many conservative software developers, and those that are are more likely to wind up in Provo or Boise. On the other hand, there are lots of conservative Californians outside of the Bay Area and outside of tech who have left the state, they are more likely to have wound up in Texas.

Let’s hope the Bay Area can lose a million or two people to bring some sanity back to traffic and housing prices.

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

#585

Post by pashamur »

amscanne wrote: post #131
tsimionescu wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is exactly their reasoning - not some fantasy of balancing the budget by taxing the rich, but a rationally supported (in history and economic theory) belief that reducing the wealth gap increases economic productivity. Wealth taxes (if they can be enforced, which is a significant problem) are especially powerful in this area, as they reduce the incentive for rent seeking behavior - it stops people from simpl…

No billionaire is just sitting on their money. It’s certainly tied up in assets or being actively managed. I don’t see in what universe a wealth tax could be effective, given that people can simply move. Wouldn’t it just cause large-scale capital flight, as it did in France?

The U.S. has the world's police force, if they wanted to find you, they could.

And for renunciation of citizenship, there's a one time liquidation tax where you pay taxes on all of your gains (so Bezos would have to pay a flat ~20% on his Amazon holdings to renounce). So the U.S. is the only country in the world that could get away with a global wealth tax on their citizens (they already tax Americans' incomes irrespective of country).

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

#586

Post by pashamur »

lifeformed wrote: post #163
GavinMcG wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because you are effectively not a member of that community anymore People have the choice of giving up their U.S. citizenship. > Yet simply to retain the right to return the US at some point, they must pay taxes every year in the middle? Yes? Or do we allow everyone who isn't participating in our society as a citizen would to come and go as they please?

But why not have that expectation of literally any other country in the world? Except for the US and Eretria.

Other countries can have that expectation, but they can't enforce it - that's the main difference. The US can.

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

#587

Post by emteycz »

Pfhreak wrote: post #579
sdfin wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using that definition, why would you say that emteycz has special rights or advantages or immunity?

Some advantages, I'm making assumptions here: A car? Access to the internet? Their mental and physical health? No dependents? It's unclear how emteycz fed, cleaned, and clothed themselves while they had debt and no home, but plausibly there's some assistance there. And the parent poster was talking about their privilege today in any case.

> a car

$200 one

> access to the internet

McDonalds and KFC

> Their mental and physical health

Both nope

> how emteycz fed, cleaned, and clothed themselves

Black market jobs, and sometimes not much to eat. I had clothes from before. Zero assistance, that's how it is in our little social democratic republic.

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

#588

Post by pashamur »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #581
Pfhreak wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strawman that gets leveled at people that want to increase taxes. It's an attempt to paint me as a hypocrite and therefore not acting rationally. It's flawed reasoning. I invite you to consider: If my stated goal is to increase the tax on wealthiest folks with the intent of distributing more to the lower class and reducing wealth inequality. Should I: a) Spend 100% of my surplus income on gifts to the tax a…

>> If my stated goal is to increase the tax on wealthiest folks with the intent of distributing more to the lower class and reducing wealth inequality That's not exactly "Send the tax man to my house" now is it? You want the government to take my money and use it for your ideological purposes that I do not believe in, to implement socialism in America, that's what I think you're saying. Am I wrong here? Sending the t…

No, this is a bullshit argument. It's the same as telling people who want to fight global warming to buy recyclable containers (when we know that most of the damage comes from companies and not individuals) or telling people who are concerned about ocean pollution to use reusable straws or not to use paper bags (when fishing nets are actually responsible for >50% of ocean pollution and straws are less than 1%).

This is actually a tactic that climate change denialists push for (accuse people of not doing enough personally so they don't go after the real source of the problem and blame themselves instead)

It's a milquetoast argument intended to defend the status quo by attacking the people that want to change it.

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

#589

Post by giantrobot »

1123581321 wrote: post #458
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm dubious about both the legality and wisdom of this proposed tax, I confess I'm having trouble seeing "paying a 0.4% tax on wealth over $30M" as being "slave to a state." Yes, metaphor, but it's a metaphor of "reducing my $50M estate to $49.92M might as well be forced servitude," and, uh, no. C'mon. Put that $50M somewhere that averages even a modest 4% annual return and you could pay the tax, draw out $600K…

If it’s so small as to not be meaningful, why collect it? How could it benefit the state to have so little money? If the state professes a genuine need for such a small marginal increase in its revenue, then shouldn’t the individuals being taxed be able to make a similar case? This is like the conversation over signing NDAs, where one party pressures the other by saying it doesn’t matter...

Taxes are not punishment. It's not meant to impoverish individual rich people. It's meant to get some money into the state coffers which pays for the infrastructure they use.

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

#590

Post by jandrewrogers »

tylerhou wrote: post #494
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) For assets hard to value, the owner would have to declare the value of the painting. They would pay taxes on that declared value. To prevent the value from being too low, anyone would also have the ability to purchase that asset at the declared value.

You clearly haven’t thought through the implications of that policy. It is literally forcing the owner to write a call option against their asset that anyone can exercise and without the owner receiving a risk premium. Speculators and arbitrageurs would make a fortune acquiring these assets if the call option was written at fair market value.

It would be like r/wallstreetbets but with everyone’s private property. That will end well.

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