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I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need the

I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need the resources to tackle problems and we can't if people hoard them. I know that it sounds simple, and lots of people on this site will disagree, but I'm having trouble justifying this kind of extreme wealth to myself anymore. There are so many people in poverty and ignorance. What's it for any way if people are starving and illiterate? I'm really not looking forward to some of the responses to this comment, but I find myself thinking more and more about the morality of letting people accumulate massive sums when the resources that wealth could muster go unused by the people that need them most. I don't know. I'm genuinely interested in hearing what other people here have to say if you can keep from being condescending or mean. Please be nice.

seattle_spring 10y ago
> I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100% Not that I'm anywhere close to this problem, but I would simply stop working after hitting that mark. Why would I work for free?
- youdontknowtho 10y ago
  That's a valid question, but I think that people would do the things that interest them. After earning 1.5 million in a year, what would be wrong with not working?
jcsnv 10y ago
>I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100% Remember, Elon funded SpaceX and Tesla with the wealth he generated from the sale of Paypal. Where would the funding have come from for those entities if he was taxed at 100% after 1.5mm?
- youdontknowtho 10y ago
  To be fair, he has raised money from investors to start those companies. I'm not advocating for the end of banking, so people would still be able to borrow money and invest. I'm also not talking about taxing wealth, but income. SpaceX is interesting because we could be doing that stuff at NASA if it were funded well. I get what you are saying though, it would have an effect on investment and speculation. Maybe we don't need as much of those things. I'm also not saying that this is particularly well thought out.
soneil 10y ago
I'm not convinced it'd work. Not to be mean at all, just realistic. The huge bulk of this tax bill was from exercising stock options. According to another commenter here, 44% on $1.34B earnings from these options. So given a $1.5M cap, these options simply wouldn't have been exercised. You'd use your options up to the $1.5m earnings ceiling, and then stop. So the tax 'purse' would receive the pre-ceiling rate on $1.5M instead of 44% of $1.34B. A 100% ceiling sounds very straightforward, but the end result would have been that Musk would have paid over $592M less in taxes over the same period - and I'm pretty sure that wasn't your intent. (sidenote: With regards to the morality - under your proposal, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wouldn't exist. I think I'd rather any proposal allowed for such altruism.)
methodover 10y ago
Genuine response here: From a strictly utilitarian/consequentialist perspective, capitalist systems has proven to be pretty good at improving the quality of life for everyone. You're suggesting essentially eliminating medium-to-large prizes for succeeding in that system. Destroying those incentives strikes me as being fairly risky. You could end up causing more harm than good. An interesting thought experiment to go through might be to compare two worlds: One in which we do as you suggest, and another where we continue on with the current system. In your world, we might use the extra taxes to fund a medicare-for-all style healthcare system, free college tuition for everyone, and perhaps some large infrastructure program. More people have better health care coverage, would go to school for free, and be able to subsist on government-funded jobs. However, innovators, investors and entrepreneurs would be curbed back -- we get less technological innovation, fewer improvements in communication, education, medicine, technology, food production, travel, etc. It's difficult to predict what kinds of technologies we would miss out on, but it could be massive. Would we miss out on an important cancer drug? Or perhaps the solution to climate change? Or maybe we would miss the boat on AI-driven cars? As a heuristic, it seems to me that the biggest improvements in the quality of life of humanity so far have come not from socially engineered programs, but have rather come from entrepreneurs and inventors. It seems unwise to take our foot of the gas in that regards.
youdontknowtho 10y ago
Wow. Lots of down votes...I'm shocked. Assholes.

seattle_spring 10y ago

> I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100% Not that I'm anywhere close to this problem, but I would simply stop working after hitting that mark. Why would I work for free?

youdontknowtho 10y ago
That's a valid question, but I think that people would do the things that interest them. After earning 1.5 million in a year, what would be wrong with not working?

jcsnv 10y ago

>I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100% Remember, Elon funded SpaceX and Tesla with the wealth he generated from the sale of Paypal. Where would the funding have come from for those entities if he was taxed at 100% after 1.5mm?

youdontknowtho 10y ago
To be fair, he has raised money from investors to start those companies. I'm not advocating for the end of banking, so people would still be able to borrow money and invest. I'm also not talking about taxing wealth, but income. SpaceX is interesting because we could be doing that stuff at NASA if it were funded well. I get what you are saying though, it would have an effect on investment and speculation. Maybe we don't need as much of those things. I'm also not saying that this is particularly well thought out.

soneil 10y ago

I'm not convinced it'd work. Not to be mean at all, just realistic. The huge bulk of this tax bill was from exercising stock options. According to another commenter here, 44% on $1.34B earnings from these options. So given a $1.5M cap, these options simply wouldn't have been exercised. You'd use your options up to the $1.5m earnings ceiling, and then stop. So the tax 'purse' would receive the pre-ceiling rate on $1.5M instead of 44% of $1.34B. A 100% ceiling sounds very straightforward, but the end result would have been that Musk would have paid over $592M less in taxes over the same period - and I'm pretty sure that wasn't your intent. (sidenote: With regards to the morality - under your proposal, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wouldn't exist. I think I'd rather any proposal allowed for such altruism.)

methodover 10y ago

Genuine response here: From a strictly utilitarian/consequentialist perspective, capitalist systems has proven to be pretty good at improving the quality of life for everyone. You're suggesting essentially eliminating medium-to-large prizes for succeeding in that system. Destroying those incentives strikes me as being fairly risky. You could end up causing more harm than good. An interesting thought experiment to go through might be to compare two worlds: One in which we do as you suggest, and another where we continue on with the current system. In your world, we might use the extra taxes to fund a medicare-for-all style healthcare system, free college tuition for everyone, and perhaps some large infrastructure program. More people have better health care coverage, would go to school for free, and be able to subsist on government-funded jobs. However, innovators, investors and entrepreneurs would be curbed back -- we get less technological innovation, fewer improvements in communication, education, medicine, technology, food production, travel, etc. It's difficult to predict what kinds of technologies we would miss out on, but it could be massive. Would we miss out on an important cancer drug? Or perhaps the solution to climate change? Or maybe we would miss the boat on AI-driven cars? As a heuristic, it seems to me that the biggest improvements in the quality of life of humanity so far have come not from socially engineered programs, but have rather come from entrepreneurs and inventors. It seems unwise to take our foot of the gas in that regards.

youdontknowtho 10y ago

Wow. Lots of down votes...I'm shocked. Assholes.