4 ms·

Maybe we should ask everyone claiming about the rigged system what they really want: income evenly distributed to all workers ? More taxation for those who earn

by AKifer 10y ago

Maybe we should ask everyone claiming about the rigged system what they really want: income evenly distributed to all workers ? More taxation for those who earn more than the average ? Central economic planning so everyone get's the same information regarding where the profits are ? Frankly, sometimes some people need to take a refreshing trip into North Korea instead of perpetually complaining about the downsides of capitalism.

Taek 10y ago
Elimination of rent-seeking and all sibling offenses. Someone can buy a property in a growing region and then sit on it and do nothing while it gains value. The fact that it is doing nothing may even drive the price up more, because it reduces supply in that region by not making itself available. The owner is allowed to refuse to sell at any price, which again means they can make money just by sitting on their scarce asset. Same for corporate stock really. And for things like gold and bitcoin. A better system imo would require active bidding on scarce resources. If you are not generating wealth with your resource, someone can take it from you by outbidding the amount of taxes you are paying for it. This forces people to apply their capital and makes it harder to just sit on scarce resources and accumulate wealth.
- Mattasher 10y ago
  If you are operating in a market that hasn't been too distorted by taxes and regulations, there are strong economic incentives to use all resources. Vacant properties are a straight liability, better to rent them out. If the owner is sitting on an unused property waiting for appreciation, they are taking on risk. If everyone already magically knew the future price would be much higher, then current prices would already converge to that amount (discounted to NPV) and the owner could sell now or later.
  - Taek 10y ago
    What if that resource is your home? You get rich for essentially just living. Of course there are ethical questions in play now.
- RestlessMind 10y ago
  > A better system imo would require active bidding on scarce resources. If you are not generating wealth with your resource, someone can take it from you by outbidding the amount of taxes you are paying for it. But its easy to game this system by generating token wealth. For example, if you make it mandatory to keep your houses non-empty, then all you need to do is register a token business and rent your house to that business for a token amount. All you stand to lose is a few hundred dollars of registration fees etc. In some cases, its hard to even know how to generate wealth from the assets (gold, rare paintings...). How will you force people to ensure that they generate wealth from gold, so that its price won't skyrocket during inflationary times? Finally, wealth generation is relative. How can you measure wealth generated in non-monetary terms? Sure, you can "develop" your one acre plot by building more apartments there, but what about the wealth lost by losing a great scenic view of the bay? Why should everything be measured in terms of money?
  - notahacker 10y ago
    I think you're completely missing the OP's point, which is a hypothetical scenario in which all scarce resources like land are effectively leased from the government to the highest bidder, in which case you can keep your houses as empty or full as you like (or bay views as pretty as you like), but if someone is willing to pay the government higher annual fees for the use of the land (or oil, or spectrum) then they get the use of it instead of you. This system comes with its own problems (no incentive to invest in developing a resource if someone can slightly outbid you for its use after you've invested all that cash in improving its potential yields in the long term) but ease of evasion though fake companies and difficulty of establishing how much a resource should yield aren't amongst them.
    - Taek 10y ago
      Yes exactly. I'd rather the entity doing the leading not be the government, but I do not know what other entity could. For purely digital resources you could use a blockchain. But digital resources tend not to be scarce.
prostoalex 10y ago
Since you asked, 1) Re-defining the original meaning of the share of stock. Current paper that is stripped of voting rights, various classes and super-classes of stock based on who happens to be the shareholder just seem keenly intent on making the corporate governance process more opaque. If you want the exec to have 100x votes over anyone else, print 100x as many shares. 2) Double taxation of dividends. Distributions by REIT, MLP or a pass-through LLC/LLP don't get taxed at a corporate level. Convert that entity to a corporation and keep the same process, and what you used to call "distributions" is now called "dividends" and gets taxed twice. 3) Slow dilution of existing stock pool via new options and companies printing new shares of stock. If they want to award some shares to their execs, they should go out and buy them in the open market. If they want to raise cash for acquisitions, the debt markets are eager to accommodate. Dilution is the ultimate "trickle up" benefitting current management at the expense of the small shareholders.
- tomp 10y ago
  Double taxation is a fair payment for a service offered by the government: the limitation of liability.
  - prostoalex 10y ago
    Is it a radically better limitation than the one offered to LLPs or LLCs?
nisa 10y ago
> income evenly distributed to all workers? Tobin tax > More taxation for those who earn more than the average ? Progressive taxation is a good thing. > Central economic planning so everyone get's the same information regarding where the profits are? no. but tax subsidized effective public services where a natural monopoly is exploited by the market for private profit gains. public infrastructure. free good education. universal health care with access to mental health and addiction help, no private prisons. This is beeing paid for with higher taxes on higher incomes or small taxes on market transfers. In the long run this pay for itself due less crime, lower health costs and more productive workers. > Frankly, sometimes some people need to take a refreshing trip into North Korea instead of perpetually complaining about the downsides of capitalism. There a lot of countries that look, not without some substance at the USA and think of a third world country in how it treats ports of their citizens. They could be turned into productive elements of society instead of beeing permanently marginalized. Looks like short term profit won over longterm planning. Maybe the competition avoids these mistakes.
closeparen 10y ago
1) Minimize the startup costs of a decent life: education and housing. Bring college costs back in line with what students can realistically earn. Establish and promote affordable vocational training for people who don't genuinely want the intellectual part. Build abundant housing in cities with economic opportunity. Protect owner property value less, and renter budgets and financial security more. End this insane system where if you're young enough to have "missed the boat" on education and housing being affordable, you're starting out life with enormous debt, enormous rents, or just no realistic access to the modern economy (intellectual work in major cities). 2) Shift the relationship between wages and expenses such that more people can have a decent standard of living and security and retirement at the same time. Probably via productivity growth. (Yes, there is an argument that some people will always raise their expenses to the level of their income and beyond. We can still do better. And blaming people's spending a few hundred extra dollars a year for the fact that their incomes are a few tens of thousands too low is not that helpful). 3) Dampen the effect of your parents' station in life on your own, especially with respect to K12, college, and getting your first professional job. (Probably by having the state expand some of the boosts that upper-middle-class parents give their own children, such as high-quality K12 and affordable college, to kids at all income levels).

by AKifer 10y ago

Taek 10y ago

Elimination of rent-seeking and all sibling offenses. Someone can buy a property in a growing region and then sit on it and do nothing while it gains value. The fact that it is doing nothing may even drive the price up more, because it reduces supply in that region by not making itself available. The owner is allowed to refuse to sell at any price, which again means they can make money just by sitting on their scarce asset. Same for corporate stock really. And for things like gold and bitcoin. A better system imo would require active bidding on scarce resources. If you are not generating wealth with your resource, someone can take it from you by outbidding the amount of taxes you are paying for it. This forces people to apply their capital and makes it harder to just sit on scarce resources and accumulate wealth.

Mattasher 10y ago
If you are operating in a market that hasn't been too distorted by taxes and regulations, there are strong economic incentives to use all resources. Vacant properties are a straight liability, better to rent them out. If the owner is sitting on an unused property waiting for appreciation, they are taking on risk. If everyone already magically knew the future price would be much higher, then current prices would already converge to that amount (discounted to NPV) and the owner could sell now or later.
- Taek 10y ago
  What if that resource is your home? You get rich for essentially just living. Of course there are ethical questions in play now.
RestlessMind 10y ago
> A better system imo would require active bidding on scarce resources. If you are not generating wealth with your resource, someone can take it from you by outbidding the amount of taxes you are paying for it. But its easy to game this system by generating token wealth. For example, if you make it mandatory to keep your houses non-empty, then all you need to do is register a token business and rent your house to that business for a token amount. All you stand to lose is a few hundred dollars of registration fees etc. In some cases, its hard to even know how to generate wealth from the assets (gold, rare paintings...). How will you force people to ensure that they generate wealth from gold, so that its price won't skyrocket during inflationary times? Finally, wealth generation is relative. How can you measure wealth generated in non-monetary terms? Sure, you can "develop" your one acre plot by building more apartments there, but what about the wealth lost by losing a great scenic view of the bay? Why should everything be measured in terms of money?
- notahacker 10y ago
  I think you're completely missing the OP's point, which is a hypothetical scenario in which all scarce resources like land are effectively leased from the government to the highest bidder, in which case you can keep your houses as empty or full as you like (or bay views as pretty as you like), but if someone is willing to pay the government higher annual fees for the use of the land (or oil, or spectrum) then they get the use of it instead of you. This system comes with its own problems (no incentive to invest in developing a resource if someone can slightly outbid you for its use after you've invested all that cash in improving its potential yields in the long term) but ease of evasion though fake companies and difficulty of establishing how much a resource should yield aren't amongst them.
  - Taek 10y ago
    Yes exactly. I'd rather the entity doing the leading not be the government, but I do not know what other entity could. For purely digital resources you could use a blockchain. But digital resources tend not to be scarce.

prostoalex 10y ago

Since you asked, 1) Re-defining the original meaning of the share of stock. Current paper that is stripped of voting rights, various classes and super-classes of stock based on who happens to be the shareholder just seem keenly intent on making the corporate governance process more opaque. If you want the exec to have 100x votes over anyone else, print 100x as many shares. 2) Double taxation of dividends. Distributions by REIT, MLP or a pass-through LLC/LLP don't get taxed at a corporate level. Convert that entity to a corporation and keep the same process, and what you used to call "distributions" is now called "dividends" and gets taxed twice. 3) Slow dilution of existing stock pool via new options and companies printing new shares of stock. If they want to award some shares to their execs, they should go out and buy them in the open market. If they want to raise cash for acquisitions, the debt markets are eager to accommodate. Dilution is the ultimate "trickle up" benefitting current management at the expense of the small shareholders.

tomp 10y ago
Double taxation is a fair payment for a service offered by the government: the limitation of liability.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  Is it a radically better limitation than the one offered to LLPs or LLCs?

nisa 10y ago

> income evenly distributed to all workers? Tobin tax > More taxation for those who earn more than the average ? Progressive taxation is a good thing. > Central economic planning so everyone get's the same information regarding where the profits are? no. but tax subsidized effective public services where a natural monopoly is exploited by the market for private profit gains. public infrastructure. free good education. universal health care with access to mental health and addiction help, no private prisons. This is beeing paid for with higher taxes on higher incomes or small taxes on market transfers. In the long run this pay for itself due less crime, lower health costs and more productive workers. > Frankly, sometimes some people need to take a refreshing trip into North Korea instead of perpetually complaining about the downsides of capitalism. There a lot of countries that look, not without some substance at the USA and think of a third world country in how it treats ports of their citizens. They could be turned into productive elements of society instead of beeing permanently marginalized. Looks like short term profit won over longterm planning. Maybe the competition avoids these mistakes.

closeparen 10y ago

1) Minimize the startup costs of a decent life: education and housing. Bring college costs back in line with what students can realistically earn. Establish and promote affordable vocational training for people who don't genuinely want the intellectual part. Build abundant housing in cities with economic opportunity. Protect owner property value less, and renter budgets and financial security more. End this insane system where if you're young enough to have "missed the boat" on education and housing being affordable, you're starting out life with enormous debt, enormous rents, or just no realistic access to the modern economy (intellectual work in major cities). 2) Shift the relationship between wages and expenses such that more people can have a decent standard of living and security and retirement at the same time. Probably via productivity growth. (Yes, there is an argument that some people will always raise their expenses to the level of their income and beyond. We can still do better. And blaming people's spending a few hundred extra dollars a year for the fact that their incomes are a few tens of thousands too low is not that helpful). 3) Dampen the effect of your parents' station in life on your own, especially with respect to K12, college, and getting your first professional job. (Probably by having the state expand some of the boosts that upper-middle-class parents give their own children, such as high-quality K12 and affordable college, to kids at all income levels).