7 ms·
Why would anyone need more than 400k a year for himself in the first place though ?
by tnzn 9y ago
Why would anyone need more than 400k a year for himself in the first place though ?
- layble 9y ago$400k adjusted for 1954 dollars would be $3.6M.
- sw00pur 9y agoThat's like if you had two cars and the government took one of them. "What do you need two cars for?"
- foepys 9y agoNo, it would be like I had three big houses, two boats, and 10 cars. What do I need half of this for?
- jfnixon 9y agoBernie Sanders has the 3 houses part of it. Dunno about the boats or cars, but he has the houses. Why don't we ask him why he needs 3 houses?
- JSONwebtoken 9y agoBernie Sanders has three big houses, a boat, several cars, and multi-million dollar book deals. What does he need half that stuff for?
- ams6110 9y agoThe people who build houses, boats, and cars might be pretty happy about it.
- adwhit 9y agoMore like if you had 40 cars and the government said they were going to charge you 90% tax for your 41st. In other words, nothing like that.
- mnx 9y ago400k is not quite 40 cars level of income though. 4 million might be more in that range.
- chrisco255 9y agoNo, more like we are going to tax you 90% on everything from that point on. 90% is insane, folks. We don't have the same economy or tax laws today that they had in the 50s. You can't ignore what's changed.
- cakedoggie 9y ago> 90% is insane, folks. Why? Why is that the magic number that is insane??
- hacking_again 9y agoeven clinically, sane vs. insane is a judgment call
- legendiriz68 9y agoTo buy(/invest in) stuff? Not your or mine business anyway.
- aswanson 9y agoTo invest in 2 hippies starting a personal computer company in 1976. To invest in 2 guys in starting a search engine in 1996. To invest in a kid in Harvard making a social network in 2004....
- acidburnNSA 9y agoTrue, but also for multiple homes, fancy cars, world travel, etc. When I worked at a hardware store we had a brochure we could order in a gold-plated Ducane grill for $4 million. That recent graph showing the top 1% having a 6% wealth growth rate is wholly unsustainable for any society. So there's something to be said for trying to level it off.
- aswanson 9y agoWhat makes you think the government would be better at job creation through confiscating more capital than individuals who created the wealth redistributing it through investments and purchases? Every summer home or car bought puts people to work as well, its not like the money disappears.
- acidburnNSA 9y agoI'm not sure that tasking the government with job creation is a good solution. There are many kinds of wealth redistribution that people are talking about these days and I'm only pointing out that it may be necessary. What fraction of wealth are the richest among us spending and investing rather than saving? Yes Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are saving millions of lives, and yes we have Facebook now. But what should we tell Marta Ramos? Enjoy the $0.50 raise after all that hard work! If the wealth continues the trend to concentrate at the top then there will be an increasingly large and unhappy group of people who will elect increasingly non-mainstream politicians who promise to help them, eventually leading to who knows what kind of unpleasantries for all.
- WalterBright 9y ago> What fraction of wealth are the richest among us spending and investing rather than saving? 100%. Nobody has a Scrooge McDuck cash vault. Bank deposits are also spent, in the form of depositor's money being loaned out by the bank.
- chrisco255 9y agoSo you can sell PayPal one day for $200 million and have the capital to build a space ship company and the first viable fully electric car manufacturer.
- lancewiggs 9y agoSadly Musk is an outlier. Very few entrepreneurs have had his impact on the world.
- banned1 9y agoWhat impact?
- ams6110 9y agoAnyone with his wealth is by definition an outlier.
- chrisco255 9y agoI don't think so. I think most successful entrepreneurs continue to reinvest their profits. They may not do so at the scale of Musk individually, but collectively, the activity of millions of business owners across the U.S., reinvesting their profits and continuing to risk it, has a huge net effect on the economy.
- mamon 9y agoThat's for them to decide. Stay away from other people's money and focus on earning your own.
- stale2002 9y ago"need" is besides the point. The point is incentives. People doing work and providing value is a good thing that we don't want to discourage. There is zero point in doing extra work if it will be taxed at 90%. People would just work for half a year, then take the rest off.
- thescribe 9y agoJust like income tax, inflation will eventually push this down to everyone.