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I agree. The super wealthy prefer seclusion but it is hard to hide a 10 bedroom mansion and a superyacht. It is better to provide a strong "foxnews education" s

I agree. The super wealthy prefer seclusion but it is hard to hide a 10 bedroom mansion and a superyacht. It is better to provide a strong "foxnews education" so there is no need to hide. Honestly, I wonder if a symbolic model would work better for our society. Ask the rich to set aside 20% of their wealth to provide low interest rate (~1% to 2%) loans to the poor to be used specifically on self-improvement (housing, infrastructure, education, policing, healthcare, childcare, etc). The loans start small and increase with good payment history.

prolikewh0a 8y ago
>Ask the rich to set aside 20% of their wealth to provide low interest rate (~1% to 2%) loans to the poor to be used specifically on self-improvement (housing, infrastructure, education, policing, healthcare, childcare, etc). The loans start small and increase with good payment history. What you're suggesting would create more wealth for the elite. It's a loan, so they retain the same amount of money (since it's a loan, the assumption is that it's paid back), while gaining more money in interest. I am lower end of the spectrum when it comes to my wealth, and I probably can't even claim any sort of middle class "label" in the USA. I avoid debt (because I can't afford to pay it back) and wouldn't even consider something like this.
- hakfoo 8y ago
  If the interest rate in the loan was pegged to track inflation, it should be roughly zero-practical-gain. But it's still clunky. There's no reason we can't say "people earning more than a few million dollars a year can afford to pay a 97% tax rate." We just need to have it wired together into a comprehensive plan. Hold passports if you have outstanding tax debt. Orchestrate "regime change" in Carribean tax shelters and Luxembourg instead of the Middle East for a change.
  - RhysU 8y ago
    > There's no reason we can't say "people earning more than a few million dollars a year can afford to pay a 97% tax rate." Sure there is. They won't bother creating any value if their marginal take is effectively zero. How hard would you work if someone said you couldn't take home more than $10K?
    - prolikewh0a 8y ago
      Ideally there would be tax brackets so people making $150,000/year aren't taking home poverty wages, but people making $1,000,000,000/year are taking home maybe a couple tens of millions, which is still perfectly comfortable to live on for an entire lifetime.
      - darawk 8y ago
        I think you're missing his point. Say your hypothetical person is making $10,000,000/year already. He has the opportunity to work 40% harder to 10x his income up to $100M/year. However, at this point, his marginal tax rate under your scheme is already 97%, which means that on that extra $90M in theoretical income, he will only take home an extra $2.7M. Now, it's not worth it for him to make that extra effort, to only increase his realized income by 27%. The next question is: Why should you, someone presumably not making $10m/year, care? We care because when someone increases their earnings from $10M to $100M, in theory, they are doing so by creating value for society. In fact the people at the highest ends of the income distribution should be the ones creating the most value. So we really do want them to be incentivized to earn more. To ensure that they are, we need a top marginal rate that strikes a balance between unnecessary super wealth, and incentivizing the value creation that drives the tremendous prosperity of the modern economy. This is a delicate balancing act, to be sure. But it is extremely important to understand that it is a balancing act.
        foxhop 8y ago
        You don't 10x by working harder. You do other things but likely not work.
        darawk 8y ago
        That's pretty empirically false.
        nostrademons 8y ago
        Empirical with what data? The rich people I know get there not through working harder, but through making better decisions than ordinary people, in particular in figuring out what to work on. You certainly can't just work 10x harder to go from making $1M - $10M - you have to do qualitatively different stuff. Similarly in going from $10M - $100M.
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    >There's no reason we can't say "people earning more than a few million dollars a year can afford to pay a 97% tax rate." We have people "fox news" deluded into thinking the elite deserve all of it -- hundreds of lifetimes worth of money -- because all of their hard work went into making it (their workers made it), while their own wealth and security declines at the same time. In 1944 we had a tax rate of 94% on people earning over what in today's money would be $2.8 million [1], and it was the beginning of some of the lowest income inequality in USA's history [2]. Jeff Bezos would still be left with $9,000,000,000 on a 94% tax rate (I realize most of his net worth is stock, I have a hard time finding what it is without his stock, this is just an example). I would love to see it too, but people continuously vote against their own interests. [1] https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1944 https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1944 [2] https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequality-rises/ https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequalit... (unions + income tax)
  - foobarian 8y ago
    I suspect it wouldn't be as simple as that. The elites have many ways to make their earnings appear as zero on paper, or in fact don't have any earnings.
- tbihl 8y ago
  It would not. That interest rate doesn't even cover inflation, let alone the significant occurrence of default that you would see when using 'low income', with its high correlation to 'credit risk', as your criteria for lending.
xg15 8y ago
> Ask the rich to set aside 20% of their wealth to provide low interest rate (~1% to 2%) loans... Instead of or in addition to taxes?

prolikewh0a 8y ago

>Ask the rich to set aside 20% of their wealth to provide low interest rate (~1% to 2%) loans to the poor to be used specifically on self-improvement (housing, infrastructure, education, policing, healthcare, childcare, etc). The loans start small and increase with good payment history. What you're suggesting would create more wealth for the elite. It's a loan, so they retain the same amount of money (since it's a loan, the assumption is that it's paid back), while gaining more money in interest. I am lower end of the spectrum when it comes to my wealth, and I probably can't even claim any sort of middle class "label" in the USA. I avoid debt (because I can't afford to pay it back) and wouldn't even consider something like this.

hakfoo 8y ago
If the interest rate in the loan was pegged to track inflation, it should be roughly zero-practical-gain. But it's still clunky. There's no reason we can't say "people earning more than a few million dollars a year can afford to pay a 97% tax rate." We just need to have it wired together into a comprehensive plan. Hold passports if you have outstanding tax debt. Orchestrate "regime change" in Carribean tax shelters and Luxembourg instead of the Middle East for a change.
- RhysU 8y ago
  > There's no reason we can't say "people earning more than a few million dollars a year can afford to pay a 97% tax rate." Sure there is. They won't bother creating any value if their marginal take is effectively zero. How hard would you work if someone said you couldn't take home more than $10K?
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    Ideally there would be tax brackets so people making $150,000/year aren't taking home poverty wages, but people making $1,000,000,000/year are taking home maybe a couple tens of millions, which is still perfectly comfortable to live on for an entire lifetime.
    - darawk 8y ago
      I think you're missing his point. Say your hypothetical person is making $10,000,000/year already. He has the opportunity to work 40% harder to 10x his income up to $100M/year. However, at this point, his marginal tax rate under your scheme is already 97%, which means that on that extra $90M in theoretical income, he will only take home an extra $2.7M. Now, it's not worth it for him to make that extra effort, to only increase his realized income by 27%. The next question is: Why should you, someone presumably not making $10m/year, care? We care because when someone increases their earnings from $10M to $100M, in theory, they are doing so by creating value for society. In fact the people at the highest ends of the income distribution should be the ones creating the most value. So we really do want them to be incentivized to earn more. To ensure that they are, we need a top marginal rate that strikes a balance between unnecessary super wealth, and incentivizing the value creation that drives the tremendous prosperity of the modern economy. This is a delicate balancing act, to be sure. But it is extremely important to understand that it is a balancing act.
      - foxhop 8y ago
        You don't 10x by working harder. You do other things but likely not work.
        darawk 8y ago
        That's pretty empirically false.
        nostrademons 8y ago
        Empirical with what data? The rich people I know get there not through working harder, but through making better decisions than ordinary people, in particular in figuring out what to work on. You certainly can't just work 10x harder to go from making $1M - $10M - you have to do qualitatively different stuff. Similarly in going from $10M - $100M.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  >There's no reason we can't say "people earning more than a few million dollars a year can afford to pay a 97% tax rate." We have people "fox news" deluded into thinking the elite deserve all of it -- hundreds of lifetimes worth of money -- because all of their hard work went into making it (their workers made it), while their own wealth and security declines at the same time. In 1944 we had a tax rate of 94% on people earning over what in today's money would be $2.8 million [1], and it was the beginning of some of the lowest income inequality in USA's history [2]. Jeff Bezos would still be left with $9,000,000,000 on a 94% tax rate (I realize most of his net worth is stock, I have a hard time finding what it is without his stock, this is just an example). I would love to see it too, but people continuously vote against their own interests. [1] https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1944 https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1944 [2] https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequality-rises/ https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequalit... (unions + income tax)
- foobarian 8y ago
  I suspect it wouldn't be as simple as that. The elites have many ways to make their earnings appear as zero on paper, or in fact don't have any earnings.
tbihl 8y ago
It would not. That interest rate doesn't even cover inflation, let alone the significant occurrence of default that you would see when using 'low income', with its high correlation to 'credit risk', as your criteria for lending.

xg15 8y ago

> Ask the rich to set aside 20% of their wealth to provide low interest rate (~1% to 2%) loans... Instead of or in addition to taxes?