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You Are Jeff Bezos

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Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#61

Post by padastra »

unethical_ban wrote: post #32
BitwiseFool wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Being a billionaire is inherently immoral." No it isn't, and that's no a self-evident assertion. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much. >"without underpaying or overcharging others" This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massiv…

I would argue that's the baseline disagreement right there. "No it isn't, and that's not a self-evident assertion" - I would say those on the further left think it is. The premise being "Is there an amount of wealth one person or family can have, that is so exorbitant in comparison to the average citizen that it is unjustifiable on its face?" - and the easily marketable answer is "billionaire". Do you think there is…

If you take the premise that there is a set amount of wealth, and that it changes hands from one person to another, then that is fair. However that's a false premise. The act of labor (including the act of organizing the labor of millions of people in a productive way) creates net new wealth.

Now, we can argue about Jeff Bezos specifically and we can debate what percentage of his equity is by creating new wealth versus what percentage was a transfer from e.g. underpaying his workers, but that's very different than saying being a billionaire is itself morally wrong.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#62

Post by padastra »

avianlyric wrote: post #16
leesec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what kind of incentive it would create if we just started giving homeless people houses

What are you trying to suggest? That people only work to avoid homelessness? That homeless people deserve to be homeless? That providing homes to the homeless would cause people to stop being productive members of society?

When you consider incentives, you have to think about more than just what one average person would do.

There are 300M Americans. If 999/1,000 people say "hey, free housing is great, but I'm going to keep working" and 1/1,000 people say "hey, free housing! I can just kick back", we now have an extra 300,000 people who are on the dole (almost DOUBLE the current number of homeless).

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#63

Post by dgb23 »

leesec wrote: post #9
marcellus23 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that much more complicated than that — politics-wise, sure, but all you really need is housing and money to solve homelessness.

I wonder what kind of incentive it would create if we just started giving homeless people houses

You don't have to guess and wonder. What happens is that a small percentage stays dependent, but the majority becomes economically productive by getting education and jobs.

If you can afford to keep people afloat, you should do it. The less complicated and less strings attached the more effective and cheaper is your solution.

There are people who steer the discussion to those who stay dependent. They claim that some of those are "incentivized" to do so, in other words: they are lazy and greedy. Well that's true, and it's a problem. Primarily because they can be used as an excuse and as a scapegoat to distract from the fact that capital _owners_ are extracting power and value that is generated by workers and small businesses.

What would I do if I were in that position? Be Jeff? I don't know, I'd probably be just as full of myself to believe that I deserve to be treated like a monarch and be able to buy what ever I want, while cheating my business partners, exploiting and surveilling my workers, manipulating my customers and ignoring my responsibilities as a citizen.

Power should be somewhat proportional with responsibility. I'm pretty sure it isn't, not at that scale.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#64

Post by hackflip »

ldbooth wrote: post #49
belval wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just another piece written by someone who does not understand how income tax works and is unable to appreciate that this problem is actually complicated. If Jeff Bezos net worth increases by 1 billion over a year, he hasn't realized any of the actual gains and that profit it purely on paper. If he chose to live on 1M$/year then he only has to pay 370k$ in taxes that's how it works for you and me and that's ho…

Buffet has argued for a Consumption tax, he is closest to the mark.

Is that not what sales tax is?

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#65

Post by UtopiaIsBadOk »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #21
unethical_ban wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty a humorous method of stating what many progressives have been saying for some time: Being a billionaire is inherently immoral. That you simply cannot accumulate that much wealth without underpaying or overcharging others. I think the creator is aware that stock holdings are not legally bound to the income tax rate. That's not the point of the simulation. The point is that the rich have vehicles fo…

>"Being a billionaire is inherently immoral." No it isn't, and that's no a self-evident assertion. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much. >"without underpaying or overcharging others" This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massiv…

> Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much.

Ah yes, like any other warehouse that has kept stagnate wages for decades, but still manages to squeeze even more efficiency out of its workers, i.e. underpay, overwork, and exploit its workforce (70% of its workforce are, essentially for all intents and purposes, warehouse workers)[1].

Have you worked in a warehouse before? Have you worked at an Amazon warehouse before? Have you atleast read any of the, some may say shakey, news coverage on Amazon warehouses?

It's immoral. It's inhumane. It kills the soul, and keeps poor people with no other options in a tragic 10+ hour death march 5 days a week. There's little time or energy to find a better job, you're too exhausted from working all day to even think. Even if you could, when would you find time for an interview? There's an obvious unwritten rule within this type of work that: 1). You're not getting a day off 2). If you take a day off, management will start looking to replace you for someone more "reliable."

> This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massively complex and chaotic as an economy there is no way for any business to pay/charge the "right amount". Not only is the fair amount an unknown value, anything resembling a fair price is only discovered through overpaying/underpaying until prices regress to some middle ground. And then something inevitably happens in the world that necessitates finding a new value and the process begins again.

These are a very handy-wavey 3 sentences. It's not impossible to figure out whether or not you're underpaying workers. It's pretty simple: who makes up the bulk of your workforce? Are they people with options or people without? People without options will take anything.

[1] https://assets.aboutamazon.com/01/fb/29cebd144ec59269fe8ffda...

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#66

Post by takinola »

coldpie wrote: post #14
belval wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just another piece written by someone who does not understand how income tax works and is unable to appreciate that this problem is actually complicated. If Jeff Bezos net worth increases by 1 billion over a year, he hasn't realized any of the actual gains and that profit it purely on paper. If he chose to live on 1M$/year then he only has to pay 370k$ in taxes that's how it works for you and me and that's ho…

> Does it mean that we should tax wealth? Absolutely not. I'm not so sure. Maybe we should. Wealth hording is a real issue. I'm at least open to the idea. I agree with the rest of your comment.

What exactly is "wealth hoarding" and why is it a problem? I keep hearing this term and realize I just tune it out because it sounds like a political slogan. I am open to understanding though just in case this is a blindspot for me.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#67

Post by deelowe »

coldpie wrote: post #60
deelowe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only applies in the very limited scenario where you personally own the shares. What's to stop someone from setting up a trust, shell company or similar and then giving them all of the "wealth" while maintaining a controlling interest? From there, the individual simply extracts what they need when they need to. We're basically back to the original scenario only with more steps added in between. I assume there isn…

> I assume there isn't going to be an argument against companies "hording wealth." Mm, I dunno. Why not? Maybe Apple shouldn't be sitting on a massive pile of cash which could be put to some useful purpose.

Because business continuity is an important aspect of running a business. Who's to say what is hording and what is simply risk management?

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#68

Post by breuleux »

unethical_ban wrote: post #32
BitwiseFool wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Being a billionaire is inherently immoral." No it isn't, and that's no a self-evident assertion. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much. >"without underpaying or overcharging others" This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massiv…

I would argue that's the baseline disagreement right there. "No it isn't, and that's not a self-evident assertion" - I would say those on the further left think it is. The premise being "Is there an amount of wealth one person or family can have, that is so exorbitant in comparison to the average citizen that it is unjustifiable on its face?" - and the easily marketable answer is "billionaire". Do you think there is…

If personal ownership of the whole or part of a corporation is possible, and that this ownership can be traded or sold, the existence of multi-billionaires follows rather directly. "Not allowing" billionaires to exist essentially amounts to dispossessing founders from their company whenever it starts getting successful enough.

I'm not necessarily against that, mind you, but it's important to see that such a policy would have wide-ranging effects on the stewardship of many companies, and to think it through: if the result of the law is to force founders to sell off most of their stake to other capitalists in order to spread their "wealth", their companies could become even more immoral or exploitative as a result. I think it might be better to simply nationalize something like 0.5% of every company every year, but that may also have unforeseen consequences.

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#69

Post by misiti3780 »

belval wrote: post #8
iliekcomputers wrote: post #2

I decided to "pay off personal taxes" >Here's where we get into the dicey business of what "personal worth" is, and how that translates to taxable income. >Answer: It usually doesn't, because rich people are master frauds and charlatans who exploit loopholes in tax code to avoid paying their fair share. >Jeff Bezos is worth $156 billion? You're using the top tax bracket of 37% and paying out $57.72 billion of that. Y…

This is just another piece written by someone who does not understand how income tax works and is unable to appreciate that this problem is actually complicated. If Jeff Bezos net worth increases by 1 billion over a year, he hasn't realized any of the actual gains and that profit it purely on paper. If he chose to live on 1M$/year then he only has to pay 370k$ in taxes that's how it works for you and me and that's ho…

You are usually required to pay taxes when you buy high price items. Sales tax, etc.

In NYC, if you buy a condo that is worth more than 1MM, you have to pay a "mansion tax". etc

Re: You Are Jeff Bezos

#70

Post by aoeusnth1 »

deelowe wrote: post #54
lapetitejort wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing wealth acts as an incentive to spread the shares around the company instead of hoarding them. Don't want your wealth taxed? Let the workers enjoy the fruits of their labor. The same goes for ~90% brackets. Don't want your salary to be taxed at such a high rate? Put that money into R&D or worker's paychecks.

This only applies in the very limited scenario where you personally own the shares. What's to stop someone from setting up a trust, shell company or similar and then giving them all of the "wealth" while maintaining a controlling interest? From there, the individual simply extracts what they need when they need to. We're basically back to the original scenario only with more steps added in between. I assume there isn…

Is it possible to either tax the individual for owning a controlling interest, or tax the trust directly as an individual?
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