71–80 of 727 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Musk paid $11B in a year his wealth went up $86B on his way to likely being the first trillionaire. Are we supposed to cry about it? The median net worth in the US is ~$200k. A lot of middle-class folks have likely paid more taxes in their lifetime than their entire net worth .
Nope. Just not post things like "billionaires pay no taxes."
If you want to understand why someone would even propose taking from the rich and complain about inequality, this post titled "Inequality Talk Is About Grabbing " is illuminating: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/inequality-is-about-grabbin...
I think 1% wealth tax should be a replacement for income tax. That way only the wealthy will pay taxes.
How do you propose we measure a person's wealth, when wealth is easily hidden? When it needs to be done now, it is usually a years long audit.
I think it's underestimated how important ease of enforcement is for taxes and laws in general. Laws that are hard to enforce require more powerful law enforcement agencies, more invasion of privacy, more punishment, more restriction of freedom. Enforcing a death tax, for example, necessarily requires limiting and tracking of all transfers of money or assets between people including personal gifts. A property tax merely requires keeping track of land ownership, which is a function governments already do, and in the worst case you can simply physically go to the land and see who is using it or seize it.
Lots of confusion and misunderstanding in these comments. Not surprising, given the highly charged nature of the subject. I highly recommend Ray Madoff's book The Second Estate [1] to learn more about the topic. [1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo256019...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't speak for others, but this doesn't match my thinking at all. I want to heavily tax the ultra rich because money is power, and vast inequality in power is undemocratic and just plain dangerous. I don't really care if somebody buys ten massive yachts. It's annoying and seems wasteful but it's not worth too much of my attention. But it's another matter if somebody buys politicians, laws, social change. The issue…
Easily solved, remove the power centers and then the billionaires will have no power to buy or influence with their money.
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Please make higher quality posts -- what in specific do you think pg has missed or does not understand?
Income (or revenue), what is left over freom the paycheque (profits) and net worth (market cap) - applying a simple ratio to companies of revenue to market cap doesnt work, why would applying a simple ratio of income to net worth for people who live hand to mouth and billionaires work any better.
If you want to understand why someone would even propose taking from the rich and complain about inequality, this post titled "Inequality Talk Is About Grabbing " is illuminating: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/inequality-is-about-grabbin...
The comparison to _literal super heroes_ from comic books definitely made me roll my eyes
My problem with billionaires is that their gains are in part from exploitation. I just don't believe that one person can actually produce billions of dollars of value all by themselves. They extract that value from other people and our whole system is structured to promote this.
There are probably millions people who could have been Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Elon Musk or whoever. A million people with the right skills who maybe were born a few years too late or didn't have the right connections or just didn't have rich enough parents. It's a little too "winner take all" for my taste. And then those few winners end up having disproportionate affect on politics and issues that affect us all. It's just not a great system.
> In fact the conversion rate between them is about 20. A wealth tax of 1% is equivalent to an income tax of 20%. Sure, but you actually have to work for continued income. Wealth accumulates with no input once established. Wealth has the ability to increase (capital gains) without having to pay tax until it changes hands, whereas when income increases it is immediately taxed at a higher rate. Additionally, wealthy pe…