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It is really frustrating when a man makes that much and does so little. Like, I don't think/know if it should be law. I'm not talking about being Robinhood wit

It is really frustrating when a man makes that much and does so little. Like, I don't think/know if it should be law. I'm not talking about being Robinhood with our taxes or whatever. I don't know any of that. All I know is it's frustrating. Look at all the good Gates is working towards. There's just so much room for people with that much wealth to strive for. Honestly.. I think what's most frustrating is I can't even imagine what you even do with that much money, aside from watch it get bigger, if not helping people. These people have so much money that they can't even spend it. Short of trying to personally buy a company or a country, there's just nothing you could spend it on.. it grows too fast. So it's frustrating that the human condition so easily falls towards hoarding. And yes, I'm largely ignoring the idea of liquidity, but for this discussion I think we can.

zouhair 8y ago
That's the charity of Kings. The French king gave a lot to charity with one hand and created a lot more misery with the other. This is just the return of the times of charity.
- GW150914 8y ago
  That's the charity of Kings. The French king gave a lot to charity with one hand and created a lot more misery with the other. This is just the return of the times of charity. You’d think people would remember how that worked out for the French royalty, but I guess it’s always “going to be different this time.”
  - zouhair 8y ago
    It's a matter of perspective. You can see a thing from afar and know what it is, but when you are in it, it is extremely hard to give it a name.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      Surely a few people in the French aristocracy knew they were sitting on a time bomb. But nobody had the will, the skill, and the charisma to defuse the damned thing.
      - zouhair 8y ago
        After centuries of a system people integrate their role in it. After a while you really feel that you are the superior or the inferior. It's really hard to get out of it.
      - kazen44 8y ago
        Mind you that the french aristocracy was dealing with a revolution which upheaveled the entire meaning of being a royal/noble, it's principles and the "entity" that they derived their "rights" from. Prior to the french revolution, many royalty's (including the french) got their righteousness to rule from 'god'. The french revolution was the first which actually abolished this ancient idea and tried to hold the nobles accountable to the state. (early revolutionaries even wanted to keep the bourbonnes, until the jacobins and Robespierre came around and ended that rather... certainly).
        village-idiot 8y ago
        To be fair, there were liberal nobles who wanted to ditch their titles and make the system more meritocratic (with the subtle acknowledgement that nobles could afford education). America’s favorite Frenchman, the marquis de Lafayette, was one of them. They just weren’t very effective at defusing the time bomb.
  - komali2 8y ago
    The Kings have learned - between unrestricted surveillance and a far better armed military, any hope of sending to the aristocracy to the guillotine probably ended sometime in the 40s. Not to mention it's been learned to label those sorts of revolutionaries as "terrorists," among a lot of other social engineering tricks. I should note - I'm not for lopping off anybody's heads. I'm just saying the shortlist of solutions for a trapped peasantry class has grown quite slim.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  I’ve maintained again and again, the current trajectory of American business and finance looks a lot less like capitalism and a lot more like feudalism.
Domenic_S 8y ago
Frustrating? I can understand why you would feel like it's a shame, or feel disappointed, or even ashamed of tech/bezos/humanity, but why frustrated? Is it that you're upset that you can't change the way someone else spends their own personal fortune?
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  > Is it that you're upset that you can't change the way someone else spends their own personal fortune? I haven't thought too much about it honestly, but it seems so, yes. I'm frustrated by a lot of things. It doesn't mean I think I should be trying to change Bezos' mind, but I think being frustrated in this scenario just means you feel a level of personal responsibility for the world around you. Even if you're not immediately responsible for it. I'm frustrated by a ton of things I'm not personally able to change. Yet it doesn't change by desire for it to be different, my desire to find a way to improve the situation, and ultimately my tiny but meaningful feeling of personal responsibility. Anyway, take all this with a grain of salt. I chose a word (frustrated) to express my emotion towards the situation I described earlier. I don't think it's wrong, but emotions are hardly a science.
  - Domenic_S 8y ago
    > I'm frustrated by a ton of things I'm not personally able to change. It's a matter of perspective, which is why I asked the question in the first place. Can you personally change how Bezos spends his money? No. Can you personally help the homeless and disadvantaged? YES!
fixermark 8y ago
FWIW, it used to be law. Tax rate on the top-1% of earners in the US was much, much, MUCH higher until the recent four or so decades.
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  At this rate I'd be happy if they simply paid as much as everyone else (percentage wise). Rather, that they didn't find as many legal tax avoidance methods. I don't know if they should be taxed more than the 99%, I'll let someone who knows economics tell me what is best.
  - jtolmar 8y ago
    The richest people make their money primarily from capital investment, which has returns proportional to the capital invested, which in the long run is exponential. Laborers make their money primarily from effort over time, which is linear. So it makes sense for their taxes to be different. Additionally the amount of money someone needs to live comfortably is more or less constant (regional differences apply), so it's less harmful to tax someone with more than that than someone with less. An economist will tell you that a handful of taxes are inherently helpful and getting money is a nice bonus (externalities taxes, some amount of LVT). If you need more money than what you can get through those (and you do) then the least harmful tax is a wealth tax, but those are unpopular and difficult to administrate. Income-based taxes are less efficient but still okay. Sales taxes aren't very good at all.
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  It is a common misconception that high income tax rates would affect the ultra-wealthy to any significant degree. It would not, because their wealth almost never appears as ordinary income. High income tax rates (such as we indeed used to have in the United States) affect people like dentists and pediatricians, not people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Note that Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Mitt Romney, and Michael Bloomberg, among others, have all "taken a salary of $1/year" as a publicity stunt at various times, yet somehow managed to wind up billionaires in spite of that. Harry Reid never had a real job in his entire life, and never had any ordinary income outside his congressional salary, but wound up massively wealthy nonetheless. Try proposing a tax on net worth/assets and see how many of the Pelosis, Feinsteins, Heinz-Kerrys, Warrens, Obamas, or Kennedys sign off on that.
xamuel 8y ago
If I were Bezos, I'd do a lot more for charity. That said, you're making the fallacy of thinking like money is a natural resource we dig up from the ground or something, that Bezos is hoarding. No. Money is just an abstraction of barters and favors owed. Suppose Bezos pays a surgeon $100k to treat a patient. Well, the surgeon could have done it for free. So if Bezos didn't pay the surgeon, who is responsible for the lack of treatment? Bezos, or the surgeon? (An over-simplification, but the point doesn't change if you shift the money from one surgeon to a whole hospital etc.) My vote: allow Bezos and others to operate within the law. If they're exploiting a loophole (like tax-free Amazon competing with taxed local shops), fix the law.
- thekingofh 8y ago
  Gasp! You aren't suggesting we adhere to the rule of law and personal freedoms protected for us by the constitution?
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  That's an interesting viewpoint. Though, I view it more as; if you're starving and I have 10 apples, should I give you an apple? Why shouldn't someone else? Should the surgeon really do the work for free when 100k to him means a lot; but 100k to Bezos is meaningfully less? By the same token, if there's someone in front of me who needs help and I can help them with 5 cents? 5 cents is nothing to me, I'd do it in a heartbeat. $10,000 I could also afford, but it would be a considerable risk for my life and long term happiness. The point I'm getting at, is expectation of helping someone or doing something noble seems to be relative to how much excess you have. Though, another important angle is how likely it is to help someone. I don't give $25 to charitable TV advertisements because I don't trust them. Despite being able to afford $25 to help someone. So it's definitely complex, but correct me if I'm wrong, but your barter abstraction doesn't feel right to me.
  - xamuel 8y ago
    No-one eats money. Money is just how we notate that we owe each other stuff. The surgeon can operate on the patient but decides not to, because the patient is a stranger. Bezos says "Please help that patient". The surgeon says "I know you! You convinced a bunch of vendors to send physical products to me and my loved ones. Therefore, I'll help the patient if you insist." The above dialog is unfamiliar because it gets abstracted away by money, but if money works correctly, then that's what it really means for Bezos to pay the surgeon $100k to treat the patient. Imagine I know how to fish. I go and teach one million people how to fish. I charge them $1 each, which they gladly pay because they consider the skill worth more than $1. Now I have $1M. I hoard it. Am I greedy? By no means! It's a paradox: you think I'm greedy because I'm hoarding that $1M, but actually I have the $1M because I provided so much value!

zouhair 8y ago

That's the charity of Kings. The French king gave a lot to charity with one hand and created a lot more misery with the other. This is just the return of the times of charity.

GW150914 8y ago
That's the charity of Kings. The French king gave a lot to charity with one hand and created a lot more misery with the other. This is just the return of the times of charity. You’d think people would remember how that worked out for the French royalty, but I guess it’s always “going to be different this time.”
- zouhair 8y ago
  It's a matter of perspective. You can see a thing from afar and know what it is, but when you are in it, it is extremely hard to give it a name.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Surely a few people in the French aristocracy knew they were sitting on a time bomb. But nobody had the will, the skill, and the charisma to defuse the damned thing.
    - zouhair 8y ago
      After centuries of a system people integrate their role in it. After a while you really feel that you are the superior or the inferior. It's really hard to get out of it.
    - kazen44 8y ago
      Mind you that the french aristocracy was dealing with a revolution which upheaveled the entire meaning of being a royal/noble, it's principles and the "entity" that they derived their "rights" from. Prior to the french revolution, many royalty's (including the french) got their righteousness to rule from 'god'. The french revolution was the first which actually abolished this ancient idea and tried to hold the nobles accountable to the state. (early revolutionaries even wanted to keep the bourbonnes, until the jacobins and Robespierre came around and ended that rather... certainly).
      - village-idiot 8y ago
        To be fair, there were liberal nobles who wanted to ditch their titles and make the system more meritocratic (with the subtle acknowledgement that nobles could afford education). America’s favorite Frenchman, the marquis de Lafayette, was one of them. They just weren’t very effective at defusing the time bomb.
- komali2 8y ago
  The Kings have learned - between unrestricted surveillance and a far better armed military, any hope of sending to the aristocracy to the guillotine probably ended sometime in the 40s. Not to mention it's been learned to label those sorts of revolutionaries as "terrorists," among a lot of other social engineering tricks. I should note - I'm not for lopping off anybody's heads. I'm just saying the shortlist of solutions for a trapped peasantry class has grown quite slim.
village-idiot 8y ago
I’ve maintained again and again, the current trajectory of American business and finance looks a lot less like capitalism and a lot more like feudalism.

Domenic_S 8y ago

Frustrating? I can understand why you would feel like it's a shame, or feel disappointed, or even ashamed of tech/bezos/humanity, but why frustrated? Is it that you're upset that you can't change the way someone else spends their own personal fortune?

asdkhadsj 8y ago
> Is it that you're upset that you can't change the way someone else spends their own personal fortune? I haven't thought too much about it honestly, but it seems so, yes. I'm frustrated by a lot of things. It doesn't mean I think I should be trying to change Bezos' mind, but I think being frustrated in this scenario just means you feel a level of personal responsibility for the world around you. Even if you're not immediately responsible for it. I'm frustrated by a ton of things I'm not personally able to change. Yet it doesn't change by desire for it to be different, my desire to find a way to improve the situation, and ultimately my tiny but meaningful feeling of personal responsibility. Anyway, take all this with a grain of salt. I chose a word (frustrated) to express my emotion towards the situation I described earlier. I don't think it's wrong, but emotions are hardly a science.
- Domenic_S 8y ago
  > I'm frustrated by a ton of things I'm not personally able to change. It's a matter of perspective, which is why I asked the question in the first place. Can you personally change how Bezos spends his money? No. Can you personally help the homeless and disadvantaged? YES!

fixermark 8y ago

FWIW, it used to be law. Tax rate on the top-1% of earners in the US was much, much, MUCH higher until the recent four or so decades.

asdkhadsj 8y ago
At this rate I'd be happy if they simply paid as much as everyone else (percentage wise). Rather, that they didn't find as many legal tax avoidance methods. I don't know if they should be taxed more than the 99%, I'll let someone who knows economics tell me what is best.
- jtolmar 8y ago
  The richest people make their money primarily from capital investment, which has returns proportional to the capital invested, which in the long run is exponential. Laborers make their money primarily from effort over time, which is linear. So it makes sense for their taxes to be different. Additionally the amount of money someone needs to live comfortably is more or less constant (regional differences apply), so it's less harmful to tax someone with more than that than someone with less. An economist will tell you that a handful of taxes are inherently helpful and getting money is a nice bonus (externalities taxes, some amount of LVT). If you need more money than what you can get through those (and you do) then the least harmful tax is a wealth tax, but those are unpopular and difficult to administrate. Income-based taxes are less efficient but still okay. Sales taxes aren't very good at all.
Turing_Machine 8y ago
It is a common misconception that high income tax rates would affect the ultra-wealthy to any significant degree. It would not, because their wealth almost never appears as ordinary income. High income tax rates (such as we indeed used to have in the United States) affect people like dentists and pediatricians, not people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Note that Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Mitt Romney, and Michael Bloomberg, among others, have all "taken a salary of $1/year" as a publicity stunt at various times, yet somehow managed to wind up billionaires in spite of that. Harry Reid never had a real job in his entire life, and never had any ordinary income outside his congressional salary, but wound up massively wealthy nonetheless. Try proposing a tax on net worth/assets and see how many of the Pelosis, Feinsteins, Heinz-Kerrys, Warrens, Obamas, or Kennedys sign off on that.

xamuel 8y ago

If I were Bezos, I'd do a lot more for charity. That said, you're making the fallacy of thinking like money is a natural resource we dig up from the ground or something, that Bezos is hoarding. No. Money is just an abstraction of barters and favors owed. Suppose Bezos pays a surgeon $100k to treat a patient. Well, the surgeon could have done it for free. So if Bezos didn't pay the surgeon, who is responsible for the lack of treatment? Bezos, or the surgeon? (An over-simplification, but the point doesn't change if you shift the money from one surgeon to a whole hospital etc.) My vote: allow Bezos and others to operate within the law. If they're exploiting a loophole (like tax-free Amazon competing with taxed local shops), fix the law.

thekingofh 8y ago
Gasp! You aren't suggesting we adhere to the rule of law and personal freedoms protected for us by the constitution?
asdkhadsj 8y ago
That's an interesting viewpoint. Though, I view it more as; if you're starving and I have 10 apples, should I give you an apple? Why shouldn't someone else? Should the surgeon really do the work for free when 100k to him means a lot; but 100k to Bezos is meaningfully less? By the same token, if there's someone in front of me who needs help and I can help them with 5 cents? 5 cents is nothing to me, I'd do it in a heartbeat. $10,000 I could also afford, but it would be a considerable risk for my life and long term happiness. The point I'm getting at, is expectation of helping someone or doing something noble seems to be relative to how much excess you have. Though, another important angle is how likely it is to help someone. I don't give $25 to charitable TV advertisements because I don't trust them. Despite being able to afford $25 to help someone. So it's definitely complex, but correct me if I'm wrong, but your barter abstraction doesn't feel right to me.
- xamuel 8y ago
  No-one eats money. Money is just how we notate that we owe each other stuff. The surgeon can operate on the patient but decides not to, because the patient is a stranger. Bezos says "Please help that patient". The surgeon says "I know you! You convinced a bunch of vendors to send physical products to me and my loved ones. Therefore, I'll help the patient if you insist." The above dialog is unfamiliar because it gets abstracted away by money, but if money works correctly, then that's what it really means for Bezos to pay the surgeon $100k to treat the patient. Imagine I know how to fish. I go and teach one million people how to fish. I charge them $1 each, which they gladly pay because they consider the skill worth more than $1. Now I have $1M. I hoard it. Am I greedy? By no means! It's a paradox: you think I'm greedy because I'm hoarding that $1M, but actually I have the $1M because I provided so much value!