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The Landlord's Game

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Re: The Landlord's Game

#81

Post by yreg »

Jasper_ wrote: post #39
wombatmobile wrote: post #23

Monopoly was popular with kids on my block back in Palo Alto in the 60's. At least, it was omnipresent in collections, and we'd attempt to play it every so often... I can't remember one game that didn't feature (a) disputes about rules and the administration of the bank; (b) animosity and dissatisfaction upon exit; and (c) hollow emptiness for the (newly friendless)"winner".

That's the whole point, yes. You're supposed to hate the banker who has the easiest ability to cheat and thus control the game. There are parallels and metaphors being laid here...

I'm not so sure that the whole point of monopoly is to be banker and cheat.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#82

Post by kuang_eleven »

jusssi wrote: post #58
midasuni wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Smith was great. Why is inheritance moral? One person gets something for free, the other works and has to pay tax?

Many places in the world you pay a tax for inheritance. For 100% (or otherwise significant) inheritance tax, the issue is how to implement it. If you know it's happening, you'll just gift what you own to the preferred recipients before you die. If gifts are also 100% taxed, you sell your property to them (and then spring up a company and hire them to do "work", so they get the money back). If sale of property and wor…

This is something I've certainly thought about, as another proponent of as-high-as-possible inheritance taxes.

What about taking inheritance and gifts as ordinary income to the recipient? Ideally this would be coupled with a reform on capital gains tax, but even as is, should target high taxes only on large amounts or amounts given to people that are already rich.

There would certainly need to be some tweaks, but it should diminish the inherent injustice of inheritance.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#83

Post by sneak »

hnick wrote: post #16
thedudeabides5 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of like how crypto was started as a reaction to broken financial institutions and is now being marketed as a get rich quick scheme. Sometimes we become what we set out or destroy.

> marketed as a get rich quick scheme I am seeing bus stop ads here in Sydney with a tagline from a BTC exchange saying something like "If you're seeing bitcoin on a billboard, it's time to buy". Now I'm hardly an astute investor but I thought the usual rule is that if your cabbie starts talking about it, it's time to get out of the market.

> Now I'm hardly an astute investor but I thought the usual rule is that if your cabbie starts talking about it, it's time to get out of the market.

My stripper friends first started asking me if they should buy cryptocurrencies in 2017. Had you bought btc at the $17k it was priced then, you'd have more than tripled your money in the following four years.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#84

Post by dasKrokodil »

Every time this comes up I wonder whether the Landlord's Game can be played with a regular Monopoly set. Is it just the rules that have changed, or did the original game also contain different pieces/cards?

Re: The Landlord's Game

#85

Post by elzbardico »

cies wrote: post #75
gmueckl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a good understanding, but is it actually socialist when it is about increasing personal wealth at the core? It does rather sound like a constrained version of capitalism to me.

Socialism tries in increase wealth of individuals, just like capitalism does. The difference is that different flavours of socialism want to increase it across the board, where capitalism wants an individuals wealth to be very well protected, especially when the numbers get high, so that wealth may accumulate in few. I find it fascinating that the original Monopoly game was desgined to teach us the difference and how…

Lol, the Soviet Kid’s encyclopedia definition of capitalism and socialism. You Americans are so deliciously naive.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#86

Post by jusssi »

killtimeatwork wrote: post #76
jusssi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many places in the world you pay a tax for inheritance. For 100% (or otherwise significant) inheritance tax, the issue is how to implement it. If you know it's happening, you'll just gift what you own to the preferred recipients before you die. If gifts are also 100% taxed, you sell your property to them (and then spring up a company and hire them to do "work", so they get the money back). If sale of property and wor…

> If you know it's happening, you'll just gift what you own to the preferred recipients before you die. You can treat all gifts a year or less before the date of death as inheritance. Many wealthy parents will be hesitant to give large amounts of money to children while in good health, as they're scared children won't care about them any more once they get their money.

So as a parent, you gift the money to your children on the condition that they lend it all back to you until your death. If the children don't behave up to your expectations, you'll just spend it all on booze and hookers^w^w^w really expensive elder care and be insolvent by the time you die.

The bottom line is, if someone wants to leave a significant inheritance to their (grand)children, there's little that can be done about it with tax policies only. By the time you have plugged all the holes to prevent inheritance, you've also prevented most of the things we consider necessary for the function of a capitalist free economy.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#87

Post by imtringued »

midasuni wrote: post #49
anonporridge wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith also wanted inheritance mostly abolished except for the small amount necessary to continue supporting a man's wife and young children.

Yes Smith was great. Why is inheritance moral? One person gets something for free, the other works and has to pay tax?

>Why is inheritance moral?

Because we do not want to isolate children from their parents. A 100% inheritance tax is impossible from a practical standpoint.

>One person gets something for free,

Do you abandon your child as soon as it is born? Do you think your newborn should work and pay the bills? No, you support it for 18 years and let it grow as much as possible instead of considering your child something to be exploited for money.

> the other works and has to pay tax?

If you inherit something from someone, that person had to work and pay tax.

I can come up with good reasons for wealth taxes, I can come up with good reasons for abolishment of land ownership (replaced by a permanent lease model) or heavy taxation of land but I honestly cannot come up with any reason for inheritance taxes beyond jealousy, jealousy that other people had more fortunate parents than you and your selfish desire to drag them down. If everyone started off on an empty earth it would be fair, but it also would be equally bad for everyone, instead of bad for an unlucky minority. Being poor in the US is a blessing, being poor in India is not.

Especially when there is a fair solution to the wealth inequality problem. Simply split the wealth instead of giving it all to the first born son. If people are obscenely wealthy, let them have many children and let each of those children be less wealthy than their parents. If you must implement this with a tax, then set a maximum amount that a single person can receive through inheritance in a lifetime, say $1 billion and tax anything after that. Yes, that means Jeff Bezos will have to find 200 heirs or lose the money to the state. It would be in his best interest to reduce wealth inequality at the end of his life.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#88

Post by midasuni »

pydry wrote: post #61
hkt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK pro-inheritance folks like to call it a "death tax" and argue it'll rob people of the ability to pass things along to their children. The debate is caustic and unpleasant to say the least.

They castigated land value tax as "the garden tax" too.

Rich people don’t like paying for society that keeps them rich. News at 11

Re: The Landlord's Game

#89

Post by baq »

cies wrote: post #75
gmueckl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a good understanding, but is it actually socialist when it is about increasing personal wealth at the core? It does rather sound like a constrained version of capitalism to me.

Socialism tries in increase wealth of individuals, just like capitalism does. The difference is that different flavours of socialism want to increase it across the board, where capitalism wants an individuals wealth to be very well protected, especially when the numbers get high, so that wealth may accumulate in few. I find it fascinating that the original Monopoly game was desgined to teach us the difference and how…

maybe start from the names: socialism tries to put society first, capitalism tries to put capital first. western europe democracies try to be 'social capitalism', with mixed results, but maybe not as disastrous and scary as some folks here would like them to be.

Re: The Landlord's Game

#90

Post by imtringued »

croon wrote: post #71
OscarCunningham wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone's working in both cases. In the case of inheritance it's the person who gave the money in their will. That person also already paid tax when they earned the money in the first place. If anything I think we should encourage rich people to give their money away (even if only to their children) since wealth consumed by a broader number of people leads to more happiness than if it's all consumed by one person. It…

> If anything I think we should encourage rich people to give their money away (even if only to their children) since wealth consumed by a broader number of people leads to more happiness than if it's all consumed by one person. It's better for a $10 million fortune to be spent by 10 consecutive generations than for it to all be spent by the original owner. I don't understand how you reach this conclusion. If the ori…

Assuming those savings are invested, it wouldn't change anything. Right now there is an excess of uninvested savings in corporations that is not being invested and sure, distributing that money would help with the economy but betting on inheritance taxes to do the job is weird. It's too unreliable.
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