17 ms·

French economist scours spreadsheets to find secret offshore accounts

179 points by hokkos 7y ago

cascom 7y ago
The money is only "hidden" in that people's bank accounts investments are not public record. Really this title should read "Guy estimates wealth of super rich based on their income tax return" but that is not as sexy...
kevas 7y ago
Maybe i should start calling myself that. Kevas, Wealth Detective. There's a person that has a Huntington Beach address that's owed over one million by California. There's hundreds of thousands of dollars waiting for Google and its subsidies to claim. This is the same for all major corporations... In Los Angeles County, a certain Agency has overcharged nearly all of their commercial customers hundreds of millions (possibly billion(s)) of dollars over the last few decade. Wealth Detective has a nice ring to it.
arcbyte 7y ago
It started out pretty reasonable, but quickly lost me at the wealth tax and how "the other 15 countries that tried it didn't do it right". Suuuurrrrree.
- undersuit 7y ago
  And right after your paraphrased quote, after describing one of the reasons those wealth taxes failed one: “Too many people just start from the assumption that it’s impossible,” May I inquire, are you starting from this position as well?
  - arcanus 7y ago
    That is an unscientific statement. If 15 countries have tried and failed, the burden of proof is on providing evidence that another attempt would not similarly fail. Empirically speaking, the evidence speaks against the efficacy of wealth taxes.
    - mgolawala 7y ago
      There are plenty of things in existence that took more than 15 tries to get right. It is silly to dismiss something because it has failed the last 15 times. If wealth taxes are beneficial and a good goal to work towards for a society, then it might be worth it to try for a 16th or even a 17th time until someone figures it out. Human flight took plenty of tries too, but it was something we deemed beneficial, so we figured it out.. eventually. Anyway, Property taxes are a kind of wealth tax, as are capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes. All three of those are wide spread and well established.
      - aetherson 7y ago
        Capital gains taxes are income taxes, not wealth taxes.
      - toasterlovin 7y ago
        The person you’re responding to isn’t saying we should dismiss wealth taxes out of hand. They are saying that 100% of the evidence so far is that they do not work. So the burden of proof is on the person in favor of them.
        jacobr1 7y ago
        Right, the proposal for try 16 needs to say: we are we succeed this time because tries 1-15 had flaw X and we have remedy Y that overcomes it.
        timoth 7y ago
        15 countries failing doesn't actually seem to be 100% of the evidence so far. What about Argentina, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Italy (and BC in Canada) listed here as currently having wealth taxes?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples
        toasterlovin 7y ago
        Yeah, my comment was about the argument, not about the actual facts. I don't actually know anything about the facts.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    "wealth tax" is already a biased framing of specific design.
  - petrocrat 7y ago
    Article 1, Section 9 prohibits direct taxes (which a wealth tax would definitely be) unless apportioned by state population. So it is unconstitutional unless every state agrees on an apportionment arrangement, which is nigh impossible as low population states will not receive much of the benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional...
- hokkos 7y ago
  It failed because those countries didn't had Citizenship-based taxation, and guess what USA has it.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    Perhaps I’m not following you, but all income produced in the US is subject to federal taxes, regardless of the citizenship of the parties involved.
    - basementcat 7y ago
      All income earned by USA citizens is subject to taxation by USA authorities even if the money was earned while resident in another country. Most other countries do not tax their citizens for income earned abroad. *There may be tax treaties that may reduce total tax liability.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        It reduces your tax liability to the greater of the two. The only other countries that practices citizenship based taxation are Eritrea, Hungary and Myanmar. Even Hungary doesn't tax dual-nationals. Of them only the US is in a position to really collect.
    - 6502nerdface 7y ago
      And all income earned by a US citizen is subject to federal taxes, regardless of where in the world the income is earned. Hence there would be precedent for a US wealth tax to apply to a citizen’s “global wealth,” which, unlike in the case of those other countries, means people couldn’t dodge the tax just by changing the physical/notional location of their wealth.
      - toasterlovin 7y ago
        Ah, that makes sense. I did know about the U.S. taxing foreign income (less whatever taxes were already paid to foreign governments). I see the connection to a wealth tax now.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  I really don't see the point of wealth taxes; modest inflation combined with actually taxing investment income seem to accomplish the same goal with easier enforcement.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Inflation doesn't actually tax 'wealth' per se, it taxes cash on hand. The actual value of investments denominated in a given currency is inherent to the investment vehicle and not to what it is denominated in. For instance, if gold retains 100% of its value over time but there's 10% inflation per annum, $100 of gold today is still worth exactly the same as $110 of gold next year. Inflation taxes 'idle' wealth only.
    - CryptoPunk 7y ago
      Inflation incurs an additional capital gains tax on any asset that sees its value remain constant or grow. The asset doesn't have to be idle for this effect to manifest.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        True. Although, that does only apply on disposition and you can plan accordingly, borrow against the assets and pay off your debt through dividends.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    You can't have an allowance with inflation.
  - zeveb 7y ago
    > I really don't see the point of wealth taxes I think the article actually mentioned that when it wrote of 'soaking the rich.' That's the real point I think: envy. I'm very open to the idea of some form of asset tax; I think that they can make a lot of sense. But the reason shouldn't be to drag a few lucky folks down: it should be to try to make a better economy and world for everyone.
yeahitslikethat 7y ago
"They found that something cataclysmic happened around 1980. As Ronald Reagan was winning the White House, the top 0.1% controlled 7% of the nation’s wealth. By 2014, after a few decades of booming markets and stagnant wages, the top 0.1% had tripled its share, to 22%, a bit more wealth than the bottom 85% of the country controlled." Then later. .. "When Reagan cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% across eight years, and later, when Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush slashed tax rates for investors, they were doing so on the advice of economists. The prevailing belief, backed by theoretical models, was that lower taxes on the wealthy would stimulate more investment and thus more economic growth. The real world hasn’t been kind to those theories."
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  > would stimulate more investment and thus more economic growth. The real world hasn’t been kind to those theories Economists need to stop optimizing for growth and start optimizing for fixed size. Once we run out of third-world countries to pump investments into and get cheap gadgets, there will be no more economic frontiers (or they would have been found already). Not to mention, our obsession with growth is destroying the planet we depend on. I heard an interesting idea the other day: give all males a vasectomy (or some form of long-term birth control) at the age of 14. The purpose is to make having children a conscious decision instead of a "whoops!" and put downward pressure on the overall population.
  - natrik 7y ago
    Many "first world/developed" countries are already starting to rely on immigration to have a ~2.1 birth rate (necessary for non declining population levels). I doubt vasectomies would fly in other countries. Not to mention the idea of vasectomies for every teen is unfeasible and dumb.
  - newsoul2019 7y ago
    Why don't you just release some kind of virus. It would be random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike.
  - deleted 7y ago
tathougies 7y ago
> Remember, he points out, that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the income tax unconstitutional in 1895; it took a constitutional amendment to legalize it in 1913. “There’s a lot of policy innovation ahead of us,” he says. Why not just get rid of the entire Constitution then? The idea of changing our constitution from that of a liberal republic to that of an authoritarian state should be universally met with disdain. This is not a matter of liking the rich. I disagree wholeheartedly with the politics and spirituality of Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos. However, the idea that the government has any right to tax private property at whatever valuation they see fit is a quick step towards a totalitarian nightmare.
- chadash 7y ago
  > Why not just get rid of the entire Constitution then? The idea of changing our constitution from that of a liberal republic to that of an authoritarian state should be universally met with disdain. But it's wasn't universally met with disdain, it was broadly agreed upon. The amendment procedure requires 3/4 of the states to ratify it. The 16th amendment got 42 out of the 48 states at the time (87%). Aside from this, federal income taxes were just a shift away from the previous way that the federal government raised money before the 16th amendment, which was primarily through tariffs. From a libertarian perspective, is there really much of a difference? Tariffs are regressive and come with all sorts of political issues that income taxes don't have.
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  > However, the idea that the government has any right to tax private property at whatever valuation they see fit is a quick step towards a totalitarian nightmare. Not really? Only in the case where the government is no longer beholden to the people (or the rich). Right now, the federal government in general is more or less a captured agency of Wall St and the tax policy follows as such. Either way, no matter who controls the government, there's a vested interest in setting tax policy that above all else, optimizes for stability. I mean, you're a voluntary exchange type, right? Is it in the government's rational self interest to set a tax policy that causes revolt? Also, who protects that private property you love so much? There's a cost associated with that. This whole "taxes are theft!" nonsense is becoming tiresome. You're part of a society. Pay your membership fees and stop whining.
darawk 7y ago
> One proposal, posted on Twitter by Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford, was for a 100% tax on wealth beyond $500 million. He based it on what he called “Beyoncé’s rule,” which he explains as, “Think of the most talented and hardest-working person you know, and think about how much money they have and how much money they deserve.” Queen Bey, he tweeted, has an estimated net worth in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. “Let’s have Howard Schultz explain to us why he should be worth more than Beyoncé.” I don't think a statement has ever made me more furious than this.
- intopieces 7y ago
  I can’t think of a statement - beyond, perhaps, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights - that I have agreed with more. There is simply no use for one individual to have that much wealth. Tax it, and individuals will find creative ways to put it to use instead of hoarding it.
  - mrfredward 7y ago
    He's more or less saying "no one should ever be richer than my favorite singer." I can't possibly think of a shallower way to talk about wealth inequality.
    - e40 7y ago
      Seriously, stop thinking about the singer and think about the number. $500,000,000. That's a lot of money. The world is a crazy place right now, and part of it has to do with so few people amassing so much wealth.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      The argument was that nobody should be richer than what they can earn through work, or "exploitation" of themselves as a capital asset. Ronaldo would also work as a yardstick. Earning purely through property or being a boss wouldn't. It's an interesting one to explore, as there are all sorts of annoying corner cases possible.
vkou 7y ago
This is a dangerous business to be in, with questionable upside. Daphne Caruana Galizia, one of the journalists involved in exposing the Panama Papers was recently murdered by a car bomb in Europe. [1] Meanwhile, how many of the crooks she exposed went to jail? Not a one. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/630866527/mastermind-behind-malta-journalist-killing-remains-a-mystery https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/630866527/mastermind-behind-m...
cosmodisk 7y ago
Again,people often make this sound simpler than it actually is. I don't like paying taxes,nobody does. I'm also not stupid enough to deny that even though my income is higher than national average,I'm most likely getting more in return than I contribute. I'm also strongly against any tiered tax model,where you pay more if you earn more.There are some freeriders out there but the majority did put extreme amounts of energy to get to the point where they can make lots of money and that can't be said about everyone. If extra money to be raised from additional taxes,it shouldn't go towards F-35s, carrier ships or some other shit but rather towards education, some element of risk acceptance towards encouraging people to start business,create and etc. However, until we continue having people who vote based on show values rather than merit and not ensuring the elected once doing what promises, there's no chances of changing any of this.
- bigred100 7y ago
  Don’t really buy this in the middle argument. “It’s the budget committee’s fault that I dodge taxes.” The way you change the way the national budget is allocated is changing your voting habits and organizing with people who feel similarly, not gaming the tax system until you feel that it’s suitable
  - nikanj 7y ago
    Regardless of the industry, the anti-subsidy side has a bunch of stressed-out volunteers. The pro-subsidy side has a sizable budget, and a large team of paid professionals doing lobbying.
- chongli 7y ago
  There are some freeriders out there but the majority did put extreme amounts of energy to get to the point where they can make lots of money and that can't be said about everyone. Did Jeff Bezos put in a million times as much effort as a typical minimum wage worker? The reason why it's fair to make Jeff pay way more taxes than the average person is because he benefits way more from public services than the average person. Where would Amazon be without public roads, electricity, or water services? You can perform this exercise with any big company. The idea that an entrepreneur builds a billion dollar business entirely on their own and so they deserve all of the wealth produced is the most pernicious idea in our societies today. Unfortunately, as the Monopoly study showed [1], this idea may be universal to humans who obtain an advantage. [1] https://tedsummaries.com/2014/09/05/paul-piff-does-money-make-you-mean/ https://tedsummaries.com/2014/09/05/paul-piff-does-money-mak...
jgalt212 7y ago
> when New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed on 60 Minutes to hike the top marginal tax rate to as much as 70% on income above $10 million, Zucman and Saez were fast out with a New York Times op-ed in support. Isn't he smart enough to know that such a tax would only serve to permanently entrench the super wealthy? That's why I think Warren's wealth tax is much smarter and would effective.
- perfmode 7y ago
  > Isn't he smart enough to know that such a tax would only serve to permanently entrench the super wealthy? How?
  - jgalt212 7y ago
    because no-one will ever be able to make enough money to challenge the position of the super wealthy. The super wealthy, barring extreme inflation and unavoidable estate taxes, would become the permanently super wealthy.
    - perfmode 7y ago
      is there evidence that there presently exist people who challenge the super wealthy who would be immediately and obviously affected by the tax? Even a single example would be helpful
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      You should be able to avoid this via properly designed and implemented marginal tax brackets.
  - nosuchthing 7y ago
    I'm guessing because actual wealth accumulates though capital gains and income sources that are not classified or taxed as "income"
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
hgibbs 7y ago
Without reading the article at all, this kind of thing sounds like an interesting mathematical problem. You have some time series above various nodes on a graph (each node is an account), and you cannot observe the time series directly, only some functions of the total state space, such as yearly income statements, ( i.e. some information is hidden or obfuscated). The question is how much of the underlying graph and time series you can reconstruct from your observations. I know some people have methods for reconstructing time dependent dynamical systems from observations using E.g. manifold learning, but I'm not sure if this problem exactly fits the bill.
- johntiger1 7y ago
  sounds like a continuous hmm problem to me :)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
_bxg1 7y ago
I wonder if a neural net could be trained on this problem, to "scour" en masse
n-exploit 7y ago
I found the last sentence here most astonishing. Zucman and Saez’s latest estimates show that the top 0.1% of taxpayers—about 170,000 families in a country of 330 million people—control 20% of American wealth, the highest share since 1929. The top 1% control 39% of U.S. wealth, and the bottom 90% have only 26%. The bottom half of Americans combined have a negative net worth.
CryptoPunk 7y ago
The more governments try to control the economy and the flow of capital, the more inefficiencies and unintended consequences will be created. The entire offshore investment market only exists as a result of high tax burdens. Economic resources that go to sustaining that industry would be better spent expanding production of goods and services that enhance people's lives. The tax rates of major economies are far too high and beyond what is optimal..

179 points by hokkos 7y ago

The money is only "hidden" in that people's bank accounts investments are not public record. Really this title should read "Guy estimates wealth of super rich based on their income tax return" but that is not as sexy...

kevas 7y ago

Maybe i should start calling myself that. Kevas, Wealth Detective. There's a person that has a Huntington Beach address that's owed over one million by California. There's hundreds of thousands of dollars waiting for Google and its subsidies to claim. This is the same for all major corporations... In Los Angeles County, a certain Agency has overcharged nearly all of their commercial customers hundreds of millions (possibly billion(s)) of dollars over the last few decade. Wealth Detective has a nice ring to it.

arcbyte 7y ago

It started out pretty reasonable, but quickly lost me at the wealth tax and how "the other 15 countries that tried it didn't do it right". Suuuurrrrree.

undersuit 7y ago
And right after your paraphrased quote, after describing one of the reasons those wealth taxes failed one: “Too many people just start from the assumption that it’s impossible,” May I inquire, are you starting from this position as well?
- arcanus 7y ago
  That is an unscientific statement. If 15 countries have tried and failed, the burden of proof is on providing evidence that another attempt would not similarly fail. Empirically speaking, the evidence speaks against the efficacy of wealth taxes.
  - mgolawala 7y ago
    There are plenty of things in existence that took more than 15 tries to get right. It is silly to dismiss something because it has failed the last 15 times. If wealth taxes are beneficial and a good goal to work towards for a society, then it might be worth it to try for a 16th or even a 17th time until someone figures it out. Human flight took plenty of tries too, but it was something we deemed beneficial, so we figured it out.. eventually. Anyway, Property taxes are a kind of wealth tax, as are capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes. All three of those are wide spread and well established.
    - aetherson 7y ago
      Capital gains taxes are income taxes, not wealth taxes.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      The person you’re responding to isn’t saying we should dismiss wealth taxes out of hand. They are saying that 100% of the evidence so far is that they do not work. So the burden of proof is on the person in favor of them.
      - jacobr1 7y ago
        Right, the proposal for try 16 needs to say: we are we succeed this time because tries 1-15 had flaw X and we have remedy Y that overcomes it.
      - timoth 7y ago
        15 countries failing doesn't actually seem to be 100% of the evidence so far. What about Argentina, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Italy (and BC in Canada) listed here as currently having wealth taxes?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples
        toasterlovin 7y ago
        Yeah, my comment was about the argument, not about the actual facts. I don't actually know anything about the facts.
- rhizome 7y ago
  "wealth tax" is already a biased framing of specific design.
- petrocrat 7y ago
  Article 1, Section 9 prohibits direct taxes (which a wealth tax would definitely be) unless apportioned by state population. So it is unconstitutional unless every state agrees on an apportionment arrangement, which is nigh impossible as low population states will not receive much of the benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional...
hokkos 7y ago
It failed because those countries didn't had Citizenship-based taxation, and guess what USA has it.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Perhaps I’m not following you, but all income produced in the US is subject to federal taxes, regardless of the citizenship of the parties involved.
  - basementcat 7y ago
    All income earned by USA citizens is subject to taxation by USA authorities even if the money was earned while resident in another country. Most other countries do not tax their citizens for income earned abroad. *There may be tax treaties that may reduce total tax liability.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      It reduces your tax liability to the greater of the two. The only other countries that practices citizenship based taxation are Eritrea, Hungary and Myanmar. Even Hungary doesn't tax dual-nationals. Of them only the US is in a position to really collect.
  - 6502nerdface 7y ago
    And all income earned by a US citizen is subject to federal taxes, regardless of where in the world the income is earned. Hence there would be precedent for a US wealth tax to apply to a citizen’s “global wealth,” which, unlike in the case of those other countries, means people couldn’t dodge the tax just by changing the physical/notional location of their wealth.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      Ah, that makes sense. I did know about the U.S. taxing foreign income (less whatever taxes were already paid to foreign governments). I see the connection to a wealth tax now.
aidenn0 7y ago
I really don't see the point of wealth taxes; modest inflation combined with actually taxing investment income seem to accomplish the same goal with easier enforcement.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Inflation doesn't actually tax 'wealth' per se, it taxes cash on hand. The actual value of investments denominated in a given currency is inherent to the investment vehicle and not to what it is denominated in. For instance, if gold retains 100% of its value over time but there's 10% inflation per annum, $100 of gold today is still worth exactly the same as $110 of gold next year. Inflation taxes 'idle' wealth only.
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    Inflation incurs an additional capital gains tax on any asset that sees its value remain constant or grow. The asset doesn't have to be idle for this effect to manifest.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      True. Although, that does only apply on disposition and you can plan accordingly, borrow against the assets and pay off your debt through dividends.
- anoncake 7y ago
  You can't have an allowance with inflation.
- zeveb 7y ago
  > I really don't see the point of wealth taxes I think the article actually mentioned that when it wrote of 'soaking the rich.' That's the real point I think: envy. I'm very open to the idea of some form of asset tax; I think that they can make a lot of sense. But the reason shouldn't be to drag a few lucky folks down: it should be to try to make a better economy and world for everyone.

yeahitslikethat 7y ago

"They found that something cataclysmic happened around 1980. As Ronald Reagan was winning the White House, the top 0.1% controlled 7% of the nation’s wealth. By 2014, after a few decades of booming markets and stagnant wages, the top 0.1% had tripled its share, to 22%, a bit more wealth than the bottom 85% of the country controlled." Then later. .. "When Reagan cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% across eight years, and later, when Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush slashed tax rates for investors, they were doing so on the advice of economists. The prevailing belief, backed by theoretical models, was that lower taxes on the wealthy would stimulate more investment and thus more economic growth. The real world hasn’t been kind to those theories."

orthecreedence 7y ago
> would stimulate more investment and thus more economic growth. The real world hasn’t been kind to those theories Economists need to stop optimizing for growth and start optimizing for fixed size. Once we run out of third-world countries to pump investments into and get cheap gadgets, there will be no more economic frontiers (or they would have been found already). Not to mention, our obsession with growth is destroying the planet we depend on. I heard an interesting idea the other day: give all males a vasectomy (or some form of long-term birth control) at the age of 14. The purpose is to make having children a conscious decision instead of a "whoops!" and put downward pressure on the overall population.
- natrik 7y ago
  Many "first world/developed" countries are already starting to rely on immigration to have a ~2.1 birth rate (necessary for non declining population levels). I doubt vasectomies would fly in other countries. Not to mention the idea of vasectomies for every teen is unfeasible and dumb.
- newsoul2019 7y ago
  Why don't you just release some kind of virus. It would be random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike.
- deleted 7y ago

tathougies 7y ago

> Remember, he points out, that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the income tax unconstitutional in 1895; it took a constitutional amendment to legalize it in 1913. “There’s a lot of policy innovation ahead of us,” he says. Why not just get rid of the entire Constitution then? The idea of changing our constitution from that of a liberal republic to that of an authoritarian state should be universally met with disdain. This is not a matter of liking the rich. I disagree wholeheartedly with the politics and spirituality of Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos. However, the idea that the government has any right to tax private property at whatever valuation they see fit is a quick step towards a totalitarian nightmare.

chadash 7y ago
> Why not just get rid of the entire Constitution then? The idea of changing our constitution from that of a liberal republic to that of an authoritarian state should be universally met with disdain. But it's wasn't universally met with disdain, it was broadly agreed upon. The amendment procedure requires 3/4 of the states to ratify it. The 16th amendment got 42 out of the 48 states at the time (87%). Aside from this, federal income taxes were just a shift away from the previous way that the federal government raised money before the 16th amendment, which was primarily through tariffs. From a libertarian perspective, is there really much of a difference? Tariffs are regressive and come with all sorts of political issues that income taxes don't have.
orthecreedence 7y ago
> However, the idea that the government has any right to tax private property at whatever valuation they see fit is a quick step towards a totalitarian nightmare. Not really? Only in the case where the government is no longer beholden to the people (or the rich). Right now, the federal government in general is more or less a captured agency of Wall St and the tax policy follows as such. Either way, no matter who controls the government, there's a vested interest in setting tax policy that above all else, optimizes for stability. I mean, you're a voluntary exchange type, right? Is it in the government's rational self interest to set a tax policy that causes revolt? Also, who protects that private property you love so much? There's a cost associated with that. This whole "taxes are theft!" nonsense is becoming tiresome. You're part of a society. Pay your membership fees and stop whining.

darawk 7y ago

> One proposal, posted on Twitter by Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford, was for a 100% tax on wealth beyond $500 million. He based it on what he called “Beyoncé’s rule,” which he explains as, “Think of the most talented and hardest-working person you know, and think about how much money they have and how much money they deserve.” Queen Bey, he tweeted, has an estimated net worth in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. “Let’s have Howard Schultz explain to us why he should be worth more than Beyoncé.” I don't think a statement has ever made me more furious than this.

intopieces 7y ago
I can’t think of a statement - beyond, perhaps, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights - that I have agreed with more. There is simply no use for one individual to have that much wealth. Tax it, and individuals will find creative ways to put it to use instead of hoarding it.
- mrfredward 7y ago
  He's more or less saying "no one should ever be richer than my favorite singer." I can't possibly think of a shallower way to talk about wealth inequality.
  - e40 7y ago
    Seriously, stop thinking about the singer and think about the number. $500,000,000. That's a lot of money. The world is a crazy place right now, and part of it has to do with so few people amassing so much wealth.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    The argument was that nobody should be richer than what they can earn through work, or "exploitation" of themselves as a capital asset. Ronaldo would also work as a yardstick. Earning purely through property or being a boss wouldn't. It's an interesting one to explore, as there are all sorts of annoying corner cases possible.

vkou 7y ago

This is a dangerous business to be in, with questionable upside. Daphne Caruana Galizia, one of the journalists involved in exposing the Panama Papers was recently murdered by a car bomb in Europe. [1] Meanwhile, how many of the crooks she exposed went to jail? Not a one. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/630866527/mastermind-behind-malta-journalist-killing-remains-a-mystery https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/630866527/mastermind-behind-m...

cosmodisk 7y ago

Again,people often make this sound simpler than it actually is. I don't like paying taxes,nobody does. I'm also not stupid enough to deny that even though my income is higher than national average,I'm most likely getting more in return than I contribute. I'm also strongly against any tiered tax model,where you pay more if you earn more.There are some freeriders out there but the majority did put extreme amounts of energy to get to the point where they can make lots of money and that can't be said about everyone. If extra money to be raised from additional taxes,it shouldn't go towards F-35s, carrier ships or some other shit but rather towards education, some element of risk acceptance towards encouraging people to start business,create and etc. However, until we continue having people who vote based on show values rather than merit and not ensuring the elected once doing what promises, there's no chances of changing any of this.

bigred100 7y ago
Don’t really buy this in the middle argument. “It’s the budget committee’s fault that I dodge taxes.” The way you change the way the national budget is allocated is changing your voting habits and organizing with people who feel similarly, not gaming the tax system until you feel that it’s suitable
- nikanj 7y ago
  Regardless of the industry, the anti-subsidy side has a bunch of stressed-out volunteers. The pro-subsidy side has a sizable budget, and a large team of paid professionals doing lobbying.
chongli 7y ago
There are some freeriders out there but the majority did put extreme amounts of energy to get to the point where they can make lots of money and that can't be said about everyone. Did Jeff Bezos put in a million times as much effort as a typical minimum wage worker? The reason why it's fair to make Jeff pay way more taxes than the average person is because he benefits way more from public services than the average person. Where would Amazon be without public roads, electricity, or water services? You can perform this exercise with any big company. The idea that an entrepreneur builds a billion dollar business entirely on their own and so they deserve all of the wealth produced is the most pernicious idea in our societies today. Unfortunately, as the Monopoly study showed [1], this idea may be universal to humans who obtain an advantage. [1] https://tedsummaries.com/2014/09/05/paul-piff-does-money-make-you-mean/ https://tedsummaries.com/2014/09/05/paul-piff-does-money-mak...

jgalt212 7y ago

> when New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed on 60 Minutes to hike the top marginal tax rate to as much as 70% on income above $10 million, Zucman and Saez were fast out with a New York Times op-ed in support. Isn't he smart enough to know that such a tax would only serve to permanently entrench the super wealthy? That's why I think Warren's wealth tax is much smarter and would effective.

perfmode 7y ago
> Isn't he smart enough to know that such a tax would only serve to permanently entrench the super wealthy? How?
- jgalt212 7y ago
  because no-one will ever be able to make enough money to challenge the position of the super wealthy. The super wealthy, barring extreme inflation and unavoidable estate taxes, would become the permanently super wealthy.
  - perfmode 7y ago
    is there evidence that there presently exist people who challenge the super wealthy who would be immediately and obviously affected by the tax? Even a single example would be helpful
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    You should be able to avoid this via properly designed and implemented marginal tax brackets.
- nosuchthing 7y ago
  I'm guessing because actual wealth accumulates though capital gains and income sources that are not classified or taxed as "income"
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

hgibbs 7y ago

Without reading the article at all, this kind of thing sounds like an interesting mathematical problem. You have some time series above various nodes on a graph (each node is an account), and you cannot observe the time series directly, only some functions of the total state space, such as yearly income statements, ( i.e. some information is hidden or obfuscated). The question is how much of the underlying graph and time series you can reconstruct from your observations. I know some people have methods for reconstructing time dependent dynamical systems from observations using E.g. manifold learning, but I'm not sure if this problem exactly fits the bill.

johntiger1 7y ago
sounds like a continuous hmm problem to me :)
deleted 7y ago
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_bxg1 7y ago

I wonder if a neural net could be trained on this problem, to "scour" en masse

n-exploit 7y ago

I found the last sentence here most astonishing. Zucman and Saez’s latest estimates show that the top 0.1% of taxpayers—about 170,000 families in a country of 330 million people—control 20% of American wealth, the highest share since 1929. The top 1% control 39% of U.S. wealth, and the bottom 90% have only 26%. The bottom half of Americans combined have a negative net worth.

CryptoPunk 7y ago

The more governments try to control the economy and the flow of capital, the more inefficiencies and unintended consequences will be created. The entire offshore investment market only exists as a result of high tax burdens. Economic resources that go to sustaining that industry would be better spent expanding production of goods and services that enhance people's lives. The tax rates of major economies are far too high and beyond what is optimal..