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How to convert between wealth and income tax

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#681

Post by lazide »

analog31 wrote: post #416
lazide wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The issue I’d see is in 20 years inflation might mean that applies to almost everyone, like AMT, but that is a future us issue. The biggest personal complaint I have is why should the government be getting more tax money when all they seem to use it for is blowing up random countries in the Middle East and spying on law abiding citizens for whatever random reason.

Yeah, I appreciate the sentiment. Being a liberal, perhaps I was assuming that competent governance was possible. At the same time, the opposite tack, "starve the beast" was a failure.

Nobody starved the actual beast (military industrial complex) that I can tell

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#682

Post by lazide »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #588
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That sounds like a one-time thing. Repeatedly pushing the "destroy the world economy" multiple times per day is most likely not going to be a "one-time thing". But who knows... maybe you're right and economics doesn't work like it has been documented to work by the world's experts for the last 100 years or so.

Because that's not what the button does... Especially because every push shrinks the number of people affected by the button.

If your goal is to reduce the number of rich people this way, boy are you going to have a rough time.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#683

Post by roenxi »

ethbr1 wrote: post #647
roenxi wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in terms of real resources - who do you expect to have less and what do you expect them to have less of? Because "excess profit" is an economic concept, not a real thing.

By using progressive taxes, either wealth or income, those who benefited from the current system get to keep some of those excess benefits, while keeping less than they would under a no tax system.

No, I mean real resources as in tangible ones. Although in this case I'd also be interested in redirected labour even though that isn't really a tangible asset. Like if you were explaining to someone who didn't speak english and you had to point at the things that the wealthy control that you want to tax away from them, what real objects do you point at?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource#Tangible_versus_intan...

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#684

Post by Nasrudith »

well_ackshually wrote: post #625
credit_guy wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the government has that goal too. But the government has many tools, and using taxes for that is using the wrong tool. Or maybe you think that billionaires owe us not only to pay taxes, but also to play nice, and pay those taxes with a smile on their face?

>and pay those taxes with a smile on their face? Considering the alternative for them over the past millennia has been, inevitably that they get caught, hanged, quartered, beaten and other various violent methods: yes, they should smile, they're buying their lives with all that money :)

You clearly don't understand psychology at all. Rule by fear has a major downside that Machivelli warned about. If you keep people under threat all the time, as soon as the threat fails and you can no longer point a gun at your head they preemptively kill you and feel good about it.

Threatening violence to get what you want always ends with you being out-violenced by a bigger thug.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#685

Post by Nasrudith »

ethbr1 wrote: post #520
roenxi wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no consensus on what is "fair" to tax, you can find people arguing from 0% to 100%. And if we're talking about measures of fairness. A much better measure is something like trying to maximise the median living standard without sacrificing any one demographic. > And for those particular people you're talking about the answer is very little, next to none... So... where are the real resources coming from then?…

> If we give one person enough money out of the tax pot to pay rent, that means the resources were redeployed from somewhere else that was about 1-rentworth of something. Yes, and that "somewhere else" is others' excess profit. That excess profit comes from (a) inventing or investing capital with a return or (b) paying less for goods / labor than they can be sold for. Capitalist profit has always been equal parts ing…

Excess profit is a stupid fairy tale told by the bearded idiot. It is literally impossible to not retroactively 'exploit' somebody. Not just in the practical 'need to know what the end user will do with it to avoid them making an excess profit' but if the value changes over time they need to somehow predict that perfectly or else be guilty of exploitation. The notion itself always assumes that the capitalist should get absolutely nothing because he isn't doing "real work" and then ignores how things fall apart without them, or how much that the worker would have to do to substitute for them.

Ironically the communists have managed to out-greed the capitalists through this one fantastical concepts. Capitalists accept that they need to pay people to get their inputs and try to make the most of it one way or another. Communists are kept up at night at by the thought that somebody else may have made a penny off of their labor, and think that they need to murder them for it.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#687

Post by rtgfhyuj »

abcd_f wrote: post #347

> You can tell from the way they talk about the subject that they don't understand the momentousness of what they're proposing. All proposals focus on ultra-wealthy individuals. This "momentousness" wouldn't really touch the absolute vast majority of the taxpayers. But, yeah, I bet the targeted people are getting nervous.

the author part of them. Condescending dick

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#688

Post by mannanj »

credit_guy wrote: post #678
mannanj wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding the government, which has the goal to create a more just society, means taxes should support that. If you're not using your funding to support your goals, thats corruption.

This is wishful thinking. Billionaires can vote with their feet, or can pay expensive lawyers and accountants to find all the possible loopholes to not pay those taxes. California wants to tax Elon Musk for his trillion dollars. But how much of that trillion dollars was generated in California? He has a very valid claim that a lot of it was generated in Texas, and he'll go all the way to the Supreme Court with that.…

It's wishful to ask the system designed for a goal, to do the goal?

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#689

Post by mannanj »

Nasrudith wrote: post #684
well_ackshually wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and pay those taxes with a smile on their face? Considering the alternative for them over the past millennia has been, inevitably that they get caught, hanged, quartered, beaten and other various violent methods: yes, they should smile, they're buying their lives with all that money :)

You clearly don't understand psychology at all. Rule by fear has a major downside that Machivelli warned about. If you keep people under threat all the time, as soon as the threat fails and you can no longer point a gun at your head they preemptively kill you and feel good about it . Threatening violence to get what you want always ends with you being out-violenced by a bigger thug.

This is how alpha chimps function in their tribe. They resort to war and violence to prolong their rule, and it works for long enough, thats all they need for the cost-benefits to be worth it on their side.

In humanity, being the alpha chimp, you can actually just run away from the tribe with all your wealth instead of outright die and form a new identity and start a life elsewhere and change your last name and go somewhere not well known, and if you and your family does this for enough generations you are forgotten.

I think this might explain the rotten apples at the tip-top of our industrial/societal wealth classes. I think they are these people, played out over generations, having somehow survived the system that used to make it impossible to do this when at the chimp level (or even medieval maybe, maybe this new form of evasion only arose in the industrial age).

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#690

Post by mbgerring »

anon291 wrote: post #654
mbgerring wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I buy a home, I’m likely going to use saved post-tax income. What makes the money you’re using special?

Im building more homes in a market lacking homes where no outside group wants to invest. If you're building more homes on your property, by all means. No one is though and people are being priced out.

Just to be clear: you think you deserve a tax break for becoming a for-profit landlord? Isn’t the money you’re going to make by renting the homes sufficient incentive? Why should you also get a tax break?
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