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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#801

Post by cbslinger »

nindalf wrote: post #482
kgantchev wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the existing investors are the ones whose wealth is being taken and being put up on the market. :) So who is going to buy the existing investor's wealth? Are they just going to buy each other's wealth?

Most stock is held by people worth less than $50m. All of those large pension funds and institutional investors invest on behalf of the "little guy" who are worth $10k-10m. That's a massive amount of wealth. If the super rich have to sell shares to afford their taxes, then these investors will buy. For example, no single individual holds more than 0.1% of Apple stock, while 15% is held by Vanguard and Blackrock alone…

Thank you - Jesus Christ I don't know if people around here are being deliberately obtuse or if they just have no imagination whatsoever. I think they don't understand that wealth redistribution is in fact the entire fucking point.

Re: Just Be Rich

#802

Post by ameister14 »

nindalf wrote: post #773
ameister14 wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of your article is a bit confusing to me - when you say this: "Strange. No one is proposing a tax that would apply to all your assets." Are you saying that the wealth tax proposed does not apply to assets and only applies to actual liquid cash holdings?

That wouldn’t apply to all your assets, meaning the tax would be assessed only on wealth above the threshold. PG “simplifies” this in his example by asking you to consider a tax that would have a threshold of 0.

Got it, that makes sense.

Re: Just Be Rich

#803

Post by ameister14 »

Spivak wrote: post #723
adriancr wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Entrenched money stabilizes the world. It stabilizes the world into a corrupt distopia where those people rule only to entrench themselves and their friends (incompetent and malign as they are) What you are describing is the old feudalism approach where aristocracy controlled everything. How well did that turn out for the serfs?, then how did it work out historically for everyone?, how many are still around?

But entrenching themselves is a benign end. I don’t really care that very very wealthy people exist and seek to carve out exceptions for themselves to maintain that wealth. The harm that’s done is vague and more the realm of economics. But very very wealthy people who want to “change the world” are individuals with the monetary weight of tens of thousands of people and can do things that for others would require and…

When has concentrated and entrenched wealth ever been a benign end?

Re: Just Be Rich

#804

Post by McScroogy »

kmeisthax wrote: post #798
McScroogy wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your description, it seems to me that renting is cheaper than buying. So it seems renters get the better deal. It's a pity if a flat is empty for a year, but that in itself also does not cause a shortage. After all, it was rented out after a year. The market is supposed to deliver the flat to the person who needs it most. In that case, apparently it was you. Without the speculator, somebody would have rented it…

Debtors have to make even on their mortgage, at least, so an increase in prices also drags rental rates up - either because the landlord bought later and has higher costs; or because the increase in prices drives up property tax and thus increases costs on existing properties. If the market worked, you'd see people building multi-family units everywhere until supply caught up with demand, and then you'd see a huge cr…

A market working does not imply the creation of unlimited supply. Governments that restrict building are an external factor. Markets can only operate within those bounds. Since land for building is scarce, prices rise.

There are other factors, of course. Just speculation does not really seem to be a major one.

Re: Just Be Rich

#805

Post by MikeUt »

pjc50 wrote: post #646
MikeUt wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's buying a new house every 50 years. That's re-building all of the wealth your family spent generations accumulating, every 50 years. That's a direct disincentive to saving money and frugality - the more you save, the bigger your tax gets, while your income stays the same .

> re-building all of the wealth your family spent generations accumulating, every 50 years. Correct, that's the point. > the more you save, the bigger your tax gets, while your income stays the same. Only if you're a completely useless investor. Most people's income increases as their wealth increases. That's part of the problem. Especially the "r > g" question: are you growing the pie or simply sitting on a larger s…

> Most people's income increases as their wealth increases. That's part of the problem.

But that's already solved by taxing income.

Re: Just Be Rich

#806

Post by pjc50 »

literallycancer wrote: post #739
pjc50 wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> re-building all of the wealth your family spent generations accumulating, every 50 years. Correct, that's the point. > the more you save, the bigger your tax gets, while your income stays the same. Only if you're a completely useless investor. Most people's income increases as their wealth increases. That's part of the problem. Especially the "r > g" question: are you growing the pie or simply sitting on a larger s…

Have you actually checked what's available in places like LA for $1m?

I hadn't, because the precise value doesn't matter, but from here it looks like that's above the median: https://www.zillow.com/los-angeles-ca/home-values/

(I was also assuming it would operate like income tax allowances, where you deduct the $1m first and then apply the percentage to the remainder; and we should also consider families, so you could co-own a $2m home without hitting that limit)

The question of which inflation measure the number should keep pace with might be more important in the long term...

Re: Just Be Rich

#807

Post by dougmwne »

baron816 wrote: post #58

Inequality by itself is not a bad thing. Let's start from there. If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic. Inequality is only bad if you're in a zero-sum game. The rich do have the power to extract rents and "rig the system" to ceme…

> If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic.

I strongly disagree with this and I think it runs counter to human nature. You're looking at quality of life as if there were some kind of absolute measure of it, but it really doesn't work like that. Quality of life is always measured relative to the people around us or to whom we are exposed in media or social media.

If you look at modern Americans they have fabulously lavish quality of life in comparison to 19th century factory workers or 11th century peasants. Even people in the poorest quintile have access to safety, food, housing and entertainment that would have made people from centuries past gasp in awe. Antibiotics! Virtual reality! Same day shipping!

But what really counts is how we perceive we are doing versus people we can compare ourselves to. That's where the suffering comes from. You have running hot water but your neighbor has a spa tub. You have the iPhone 6 but a friend just got the 12. You have a safe job that pays your bills but a classmate vacations in Portugal. I've been in other countries where the average quality of life was much lower than the US, and no one knew the difference or had any shame or sadness in their smaller cars, smaller bathrooms or lower square footage.

If there were trillionaires but they all lived on Mars or some faraway continent and we knew nothing about them then they wouldn't cause us social suffering.

Re: Just Be Rich

#808

Post by btilly »

Vinnl wrote: post #433
baron816 wrote: post #58

Inequality by itself is not a bad thing. Let's start from there. If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic. Inequality is only bad if you're in a zero-sum game. The rich do have the power to extract rents and "rig the system" to ceme…

> And global poverty has collapsed since 1980. IIRC it's only extreme poverty (i.e. living off $1.90 a day) that has collapsed; other poverty has seen more modest reductions.

Yes..and no.

The absolute rate of other kinds of poverty have not collapsed. But that statistic hides the fact that the population who are that poor has changed. People who were there moved up and out, while people who were poorer have moved up to that bracket.

It is only after people stop moving out of extreme poverty to the tune of a quarter million per day that we can expect to see reductions in less severe poverty brackets.

Re: Just Be Rich

#809

Post by bigbillheck »

laurent92 wrote: post #605
adriancr wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The aristocrats and oligarchs of the olden days might have been corrupt, debauched and half-useless, but at least they knew it. Corruption is an incredible poverty multiplier, combined with debauched and half-useless is just insane. Living in a society led by such people isn't fair by any means. Arrogant new wealth is 100x better then old corrupt wealth that only seeks to entrench itself and friends. New wealth in…

Entrenched money stabilizes the world. Imagine putting 10% of the billionaires of the world on a boat, those who pull the strings of their empires to keep their nations into status-quo, and imagine the boat sinks. A year later, all those entrenched interests dematerialize, fewer powers hold people together, diplomacy isn’t as balanced as it has been when billionaires weighed in, and war starts. That’s the story of th…

> Imagine putting 10% of the billionaires of the world on a boat, those who pull the strings of their empires to keep their nations into status-quo, and imagine the boat sinks.

How do we make this happen?

Re: Just Be Rich

#810

Post by going_ham »

janeroe wrote: post #438
nullptr_deref wrote: post #78

This is pretty accurate. When I went through that essay (by PG), I got the similar idea. The essay read to me like, "Oh, you are white guy, your parents are well off, you must have been studying in some tier 1 school, why not risk 1/2 yrs of your life to start a company, while you are in college. Chances are you may get some money from us too! You should try a lot. Infact the more you try, the better we earn." edit:…

>> There is a very small chance that people in US would trust a revolutionary product built outside. Maybe it's not that revolutionary after all?

"Revolutionary" is a extreme word. I wanted to convey, "any better/slightly better product either in cost or performance."
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