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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#951

Post by vekker »

MikeUt wrote: post #853
SamBam wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the more you save, the bigger your tax gets And the more you save, the more the returns on your money are. Wealth grows much faster than the tax. If you have over $50 million (which is the target of this tax), or even if you have $5 million, you're not putting this in a savings account. Even just sticking it in an index fund and forgetting about it generates 8%, and has done so for decades.

But as I pointed out in my other comment, those returns are already taxed . If you think those returns are excessive, the solution is to raise the tax on them, not introduce an entirely different type of tax, with plenty of collateral damage.

Exactly, that's also what I try to point out to people: there are already tax mechanisms in place. Just raise tax rates if that's the goal.

It seems to me with a wealth tax they just want to force everyone to work & spend forever, except for the ultra rich who can afford it and who have the means to hide most of their capital offshore. It would be a devastating blow to the FIRE movement, where normal people have the goal the accumulate enough resources & invest them wisely so they and their family can "retire" early.

Re: Just Be Rich

#952

Post by esyir »

llamataboot wrote: post #875
esyir wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, crab in pot. Fuck having overall better conditions, I'm screwing myself over if it means I can be king of the dirt mound.

No, not at all. Read The Spirit Level and also a bunch of happiness psychology. Relative equality and perception of fairness matter quite a lot to humans.

I'm fully aware of that. I also think it's something unfortunate that we have to figure out a way to route around.

We should choose a system that gives one guy a billion dollars and everyone else a million, if the alternative is one that gives everyone 100k.

This is an analogy for lifestyle, the actual implications of supply demand are being ignored here.

Re: Just Be Rich

#953

Post by ivanche »

neonological wrote: post #858
ivanche wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't contradict that wealth inequality exists, or even that it increases. But if middle class relies only on income from salaries and spend it like there's no tomorrow (because catching up with the Joneses, or simply they don't know better) instead of staying out of debt + saving + investing it, the gap will only increase.

Investments do not compound fast enough for middle class people for it to really matter. Most people must work for an economy to function. If everyone can stop working and rely on income from investment growth then there would be no more human capital to grow those investments because everyone is waiting for investments to grow rather then producing work and labor which is the true driver of growth. Therefore, Anyone…

It seems to me you're painting everything black or everything white, no shades in between.

I never said anyone must rely only on investment income. I also never said that everybody should stop working and live off of investments (of course it's unsustainable). But outright refusing to combine salary and investment income just because investments "don't compound fast enough" is like saying you don't want to ride a bicycle because BMW 750i is faster than bicycle, so you'd rather walk.

Look long term. I'm fairly and squarely in middle class. Yet, my family net worth went from -$11,000 to +$50,000 in less than 4 years. Was it luck? Inheritance? Heck no! We changed our habits, cut spending, got rid of debt, worked hard to increase income and then invested everything we could afford. I'm aware that my wife and me would still probably never be millionaires. But my kid? No doubt! If he ends with less than $5,000,000 net worth I would be disappointed.

Re: Just Be Rich

#954

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

ozim wrote: post #860
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a good life? I know what I want from life, and what it costs, and I don't want extravagance. I don't have the capital to spend the 4-12 years training to increase my earning potential. My lack of capital is no fault of my own, I lost the womb lottery, why must I be relegated to live a meager life toiling for decades and have nothing to show for it while these billionaires you mentioned steal more money in a mo…

Why do you focus on these billionaires? There are literally scum people who sell drugs, are working on human trafficking and chop people heads off to be billionaires, maybe you want to focus your anger more on people like Pablo Escobar than Bill Gates?

Every billionaire is a failure of government, culture, and society. Pablo Escobar is dead, why should I waste my breath on a corpse? Bill Gates behaves like a king, moving his pawns around the world, controlling people and resources in a way that Hitler could not even imagine. Zuckerberg benefits from, enables, and has helped fascists take power, commit genocides, and mislead hundreds of millions-billions of people while having a direct hand on scales of public discourse the world over. Musk is an imperialist technofacist. So, I guess a better question, is why do you revere these sociopaths and not the more overt ones too? What's the difference between idolizing a child pump, drug dealer, hit man, or racketeer and a person that treats their staff as slaves, or one who funds experimentation on humans in the third world, or who leverages their capital to coup a democratic government for natural resources? They're all the same scum to me. No amount of money spent on PR will erase the harm they caused to get their plunder.

>No amount of charity and spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them. -Teddy Roosevelt

General background reading/listening

https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-45-the-not-so-ben...

Re: Just Be Rich

#955

Post by Mauricebranagh »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #685
Mauricebranagh wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cough Grenfell Tower fire. Lots of tiny Jerry built flats in tower blocks are not the answer - even more so when the rise of WFH is taken into account.

The answer is to update codes to require new buildings have sprinkler systems, and not to put extremely flammable cladding on the side of a damned building. We absolutely need to be able to build more medium density housing more easily.

You are aware of all the problems of quickly built high rise tower blocks both technical and social.

Re: Just Be Rich

#956

Post by Z0rr0 »

dougmwne wrote: post #840
bko wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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're looking for validation and happiness based on what you see in social media, quality of…

If human nature wasn't greedy, vain and materialistic, the modern economy would not exist.

Are you arguing that if we take away the bad parts of human nature, the economy would collapse? What useful function does greed, vanity, and materialism serve in the modern economy?

Re: Just Be Rich

#957

Post by [deleted] »

southerntofu wrote: post #454
throwaways885 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a viable alternative that doesn't descend into fascism. Capitalism is called the 'least worst' system for a reason, and some countries have an excellent QoL under it.

> Capitalism is called the 'least worst' system Capitalism is only called "least worst" by capitalists themselves. Much of humanity considers capitalism "the worst". > Give a viable alternative that doesn't descend into fascism So, to give some historic perspective, capitalism is precisely the root cause of fascism. All totalitarian systems are capitalist by essence, and historic fascism in France, Germany, Italy, Gr…

[deleted]

Re: Just Be Rich

#958

Post by throwaways885 »

southerntofu wrote: post #454
throwaways885 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a viable alternative that doesn't descend into fascism. Capitalism is called the 'least worst' system for a reason, and some countries have an excellent QoL under it.

> Capitalism is called the 'least worst' system Capitalism is only called "least worst" by capitalists themselves. Much of humanity considers capitalism "the worst". > Give a viable alternative that doesn't descend into fascism So, to give some historic perspective, capitalism is precisely the root cause of fascism. All totalitarian systems are capitalist by essence, and historic fascism in France, Germany, Italy, Gr…

State capitalism is the only viable implementation of communism. Humans will not share unless co-opted, so the use of violence is required for the proletariat to seize resources.

> What about a society in which nobody has to worry for a place to sleep and food to feed their children?

We have this society, today. There are a few outliers, and yes, life is tough for many (most?), but we are way way better off as compared to any other time in history.

> In which nobody has to work side gigs to pay for education or health bills?

This is an issue with America, not capitalism. Fight for single payer and to cap student loans to ~$10,000/year like most other countries did.

> Communism is when power and resources are shared, which is what the Soviet (workers councils) revolution was about before the Bolsheviks (Lenin's sect)

This is an issue in itself though. If state violence is required to force people to share, then anyone who co-opts control of the state is suddenly in the position of a dictator, with effectively unlimited power over all resources. Capitalist parliaments are a magnet for psychopaths, true, and it's worse in a communist system because the only way you can survive is by making sure the ones in charge like you.

> Capitalism is just as rude as Mao's rule, you just can't see it if you're part of the tiny privileged elite (as most of us on HN are)

Excuse me, but I make ~O(£20k) per year. I am not rich, nor am I poor, but you can fuck right off calling me part of "the tiny privileged elite".

To be honest, after that statement, I cannot any further path for good faith debate here, so I will leave it at that.

Re: Just Be Rich

#959

Post by throwaways885 »

goodpoint wrote: post #475
allendoerfer wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social market economy. Socializing some things does not mean you have to put up red flags everywhere, hold big party meetings and kill all the intellectuals. You can still keep markets where they make sense and outcompete others in a global capitalist system. Extremists are always wrong.

> Socializing some things ... kill all the intellectuals This is a false dichotomy and huge oversimplification. > Extremists are always wrong. Another one. Who defines what's moderate and what's extreme? Completely rejecting slavering was called extreme, as universal suffrage was. The current economical system is destroying the planet and hence completely unsustainable. We need radical changes to survive.

Go read a history book. Rejecting slavery wasn't extreme, in fact, America fought a civil war in no small part due to it. Something with half the support of a country is not extreme.

Re: Just Be Rich

#960

Post by anthony_barker »

soheyl wrote: post #894
dougmwne wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wor…

But is it really "human nature"? Go back a few centuries, and everything belonged to a monarchy, and by everything, I mean even your life and your family. Were people unhappy "because of it"? For the vast majority of humans, I doubt it. They had just learned not to compare themselves with the king. For something to be human nature, I think it needs more time. And if peasants knew that comparing themselves to the king…

And go back to most of human existence as hunter gatherers humans were very equal. 10,000 years ago the new technology called Agriculture changed this.

Technology has generally always created inequality.

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