Billionaires Build

This does not follow. You could just as easily argue that this means you are bad at predicting billionaires. YC is 8 for 1000 in the billionaire prediction game. Maybe that is good enough to claim expertise, but I think you have to actually make that argument and not assume it.

If the key to becoming a billionaire — the defining feature of billionaires — was to exploit people, then I, as a professional billionaire scout, would surely realize this.

This does not follow. First, "if this was true, I would know" is not an argument. Second, if exploitation is necessary, but not sufficient, it might be essentially useless as a predictor while still being universal among billionaires.

Totally and this is the danger of state-controlled markets. Capitalists have a point here. I tend to argue that at least in democratic societies people have some control over it, whereas in a free labor market they don't. But in practice, like so many things democracy is supposed to fix, people largely aren't concerned with it.

> Of course it is. Teaching an employee on your systems/way of working costs money and is an element in the decision of whether or not to hire an employee. This decision affects demand and therefore price/wages.

Definitely, stickiness works both ways. We've all probably encountered situations where someone's made themselves virtually unfireable because no one can do the things they can. I think generally people characterize that as some kind of selfishness or at least a labor antipattern, but I tend to view it as a rational response to a lack of financial stability: if your employer can completely destabilize you financially, it's pretty rational to take drastic steps to guard against that.

Suffice to say it's complicated; far more complicated than the supply/demand curves charts you get in econ 101.

---

I'll add that my prescription generally is:

- Enshrine the right to organize

- Require equal profit sharing across all employees

- Require significant worker representation on corporate boards

- Heavily tax relatively high salaries, e.g. if everyone makes $1m then 0 tax. If one person makes $100k and 99 others make $1, insane super tax them down to $100 (include tricky stuff like bonuses or whatever)

- Heavily tax nationally high salaries with a progressive income tax

- Heavily punish tax dodging

- Set the minimum wage to a living wage and pin it to the CPI

- Abolish "right to work"

I don't really need concise data, just some rough numbers. How much did they project the revenue act would raise, how much did it actually raise. How much did it impact investments, spending, choices etc.

Without so much as numbers its really hard to argue its impact. You could say going off the gold standard was much more impactful.

>Regardless of whether FTT would work or not, it's a single tactic (small picture), when we already successfully tax wealth in various ways (estate, property taxes).

Man... it isn't regardless. If an FTT doesn't work we're taking one step forward and several steps back.

>The big picture is breaking the power of concentrated financial power, and taxation is an obvious method.

Yea... and sometimes obvious things are not the best things.

>Nit picking specific policies seems to be a favorite bad-faith tactic to avoid acknowledging that the issue is an issue, which would then require the nitpickers to suggest ideas themselves, instead of just criticizing.

Then why would you bring up the Revenue Act? That is literally a "specific policy". Do you want me to show dozens of examples of FTTs failing? Do you simply need more?

I'm "nit picking" this because 1) I have knowledge on it as I've researched it. 2) It would personally impact me. 3) It is a ridiculous policy because it has been tried so many times and never in its history has it raised as much money as it has projected to raise. They are constantly repealed shortly after they are enacted because people realized they messed up.

Its hardly nit picking when its pretty much one of the major policies of politicians wanting to "redistribute wealth" or "fix inequality" - Bernie Sanders has talked about it at great length. Andrew Yang proposed it as one of his policies. There's nothing to nit pick. Every single time it has been tried it has been repealed after terrible results.

I'm saying I see a very high chance of the wealth tax doing the same exact thing.

What if they are skimming money precisely because they made it difficult to offer the same services cheaper?