6 ms·

This is a totally legitimate, efficient, and reasonable method of taxation. The persons involved are basically lottery winners, due to random and unjustified gy

This is a totally legitimate, efficient, and reasonable method of taxation. The persons involved are basically lottery winners, due to random and unjustified gyrations in the stock market, and will remain extremely wealthy after the tax is levied, barely even noticing the effect of this tax. The real question is whether or not the government will use the money for something productive, like infrastructure, or unproductive, like pointless wars.

neilwilson 6y ago
It isn't. Taxation is there for essentially one purpose - to free up physical resources to create public goods with. Billionaires don't have the physical resources required. Which means you either get to tax somebody else as well, or you get inflation. A nation with its own currency has no need of the money of billionaires. In fact it makes them out to be more important than they are to suggest you do. Beardsley Ruml explained this decades ago - Taxes for Revenue is an obsolete concept: http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html Look after the unemployment and the numbers will look after themselves.
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  This actually pretty good concept I never thought it like this.
- cosmiccatnap 6y ago
  What if I told you that the fact that billionaires have no liquid assets is the problem to begin with. I would love to put every penny I made into the s&p but I have to pay about half of it in taxes, what makes them any different? They are playing a system and they pay people well who know how to play it for them but that doesn't fix the root problem that equity is tied up in the ultra rich and no amount of printing money or begging for trickle down will fix that. If you take care of the unemployment things DONT just take care of themselves. The fact that unemployment skyrocketed so easily during covid is a testament to how poor the quality of jobs were and how little companies and CEOs had prepared for a scenario like this because they simply rolled their money into investments and r&d which seems logical but the problem is that at some point you have to look at the middle class and inflation and ask what happened and the answer is clear as day, equity was to hedge funds. So now instead of someone being able to pay for a house and a car and secure a safe loan at a reasonable price they must pay and institution more money than they could possibly make to even have a chance of paying for a house but of course they won't be able to because they are also paying for the student loan and God help them if they have a medical condition on top of this. ...the rest will handle itself is exactly the kind of thing you say when you are looking down on the rest of the populous like ants instead of human beings that deserve a chance because crunching the numbers you will find every single time that the heart of keeping an economy strong and stable is to have a good middle class and lower the vast majority of the population out of poverty and even lower income so that they can be consumers to the market. Printing money and giving two shits about what assets billionaires have as liquid is not our damn problem, we do it every year and we can't beg the feds to bail us out when it's our mortgage on the line. Think how messed up that is that my mortgage company can ask for free money that delutes the value of the USD but we can't even ask for a months forgiveness over a worldwide pandemic from the same company that needed bailed out. I'm sure right about now tlyou are calling me nieve in your head for comparing people to companies but I think it quite nieve as a person to give them the benefit of the doubt they so desperately need you to buy into to keep this round about enslavement going. You are just an economist I think is the problem, but you don't understand that this is a problem that has been going on for a long long time, it's a power dynamic where the most powerful members of a society need to take as much value for themselves as possible and traditionally we dealt with it by burning down a palice and presenting a head to the people. I think this is quite a reasonable alternative to that considering the former isn't off the table.
postingawayonhn 6y ago
> This is a totally legitimate, efficient, and reasonable method of taxation. No it's not. It's a totally arbitrary proposal aimed at a small portion of the population. Why does it target billionaires? Why not all shareholders? Why does having the foresight to invest in quality businesses mean you should be taxed so highly when it pays off? Are they going to pay back 60% of losses to those billionaires who were holding shares that have gone down? > will remain extremely wealthy after the tax is levied But may loose substantial control of the businesses they're invested in. Musk would need to liquidate over half his Tesla shares.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  Exactly. This law could wipe out the company Tesla. With all jobs attached.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    I am following the financials of Tesla closely, and while I am a huge supporter of Tesla, I know how much the company keeps a delicate balance with financials. Yes, currently the stock price of Tesla is overvalued, but right now, they have the opportunity of raising a lot more cash, when the stocks enter the S&P 500, by issuing more stocks. However, with a stock that volatile, this needs to be done with care. Forcing Musk to sell off a substantial part of his stock could disrupt the stock value significantly and of course means, that Musk influence in the company would be significantly decreased. The control could end up with "investors" and financing organisations, which have ruined more than one company already.
- cryptica 6y ago
  >> But may loose substantial control of the businesses they're invested in. Musk would need to liquidate over half his Tesla shares. How is that a bad thing? That would decentralize control of these companies. That alone would be a good thing.
  - babesh 6y ago
    No it wouldn’t. Why would I prefer you controlling that company versus someone who grew it to its present size?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
_ph_ 6y ago
No, they are not "lottery winners". First of all, they didn't "win" anything. Yes, the Tesla stocks that Musk owns are suddenly valued more on the stock market. This isn't money that Musk has at his free disposal, as he cannot just sell large parts of his Tesla stock (both because the question of company control and also because it would greatly harm the company) And also, it isn't a "lottery". This isn't money invested into random stocks for gains, this is the share of the company owned by the founders which still run the respective companies. This is wealth built by creating those companies not wealth that can be spent.

neilwilson 6y ago

It isn't. Taxation is there for essentially one purpose - to free up physical resources to create public goods with. Billionaires don't have the physical resources required. Which means you either get to tax somebody else as well, or you get inflation. A nation with its own currency has no need of the money of billionaires. In fact it makes them out to be more important than they are to suggest you do. Beardsley Ruml explained this decades ago - Taxes for Revenue is an obsolete concept: http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html Look after the unemployment and the numbers will look after themselves.

DeonPenny 6y ago
This actually pretty good concept I never thought it like this.
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
What if I told you that the fact that billionaires have no liquid assets is the problem to begin with. I would love to put every penny I made into the s&p but I have to pay about half of it in taxes, what makes them any different? They are playing a system and they pay people well who know how to play it for them but that doesn't fix the root problem that equity is tied up in the ultra rich and no amount of printing money or begging for trickle down will fix that. If you take care of the unemployment things DONT just take care of themselves. The fact that unemployment skyrocketed so easily during covid is a testament to how poor the quality of jobs were and how little companies and CEOs had prepared for a scenario like this because they simply rolled their money into investments and r&d which seems logical but the problem is that at some point you have to look at the middle class and inflation and ask what happened and the answer is clear as day, equity was to hedge funds. So now instead of someone being able to pay for a house and a car and secure a safe loan at a reasonable price they must pay and institution more money than they could possibly make to even have a chance of paying for a house but of course they won't be able to because they are also paying for the student loan and God help them if they have a medical condition on top of this. ...the rest will handle itself is exactly the kind of thing you say when you are looking down on the rest of the populous like ants instead of human beings that deserve a chance because crunching the numbers you will find every single time that the heart of keeping an economy strong and stable is to have a good middle class and lower the vast majority of the population out of poverty and even lower income so that they can be consumers to the market. Printing money and giving two shits about what assets billionaires have as liquid is not our damn problem, we do it every year and we can't beg the feds to bail us out when it's our mortgage on the line. Think how messed up that is that my mortgage company can ask for free money that delutes the value of the USD but we can't even ask for a months forgiveness over a worldwide pandemic from the same company that needed bailed out. I'm sure right about now tlyou are calling me nieve in your head for comparing people to companies but I think it quite nieve as a person to give them the benefit of the doubt they so desperately need you to buy into to keep this round about enslavement going. You are just an economist I think is the problem, but you don't understand that this is a problem that has been going on for a long long time, it's a power dynamic where the most powerful members of a society need to take as much value for themselves as possible and traditionally we dealt with it by burning down a palice and presenting a head to the people. I think this is quite a reasonable alternative to that considering the former isn't off the table.

postingawayonhn 6y ago

> This is a totally legitimate, efficient, and reasonable method of taxation. No it's not. It's a totally arbitrary proposal aimed at a small portion of the population. Why does it target billionaires? Why not all shareholders? Why does having the foresight to invest in quality businesses mean you should be taxed so highly when it pays off? Are they going to pay back 60% of losses to those billionaires who were holding shares that have gone down? > will remain extremely wealthy after the tax is levied But may loose substantial control of the businesses they're invested in. Musk would need to liquidate over half his Tesla shares.

_ph_ 6y ago
Exactly. This law could wipe out the company Tesla. With all jobs attached.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  I am following the financials of Tesla closely, and while I am a huge supporter of Tesla, I know how much the company keeps a delicate balance with financials. Yes, currently the stock price of Tesla is overvalued, but right now, they have the opportunity of raising a lot more cash, when the stocks enter the S&P 500, by issuing more stocks. However, with a stock that volatile, this needs to be done with care. Forcing Musk to sell off a substantial part of his stock could disrupt the stock value significantly and of course means, that Musk influence in the company would be significantly decreased. The control could end up with "investors" and financing organisations, which have ruined more than one company already.
cryptica 6y ago
>> But may loose substantial control of the businesses they're invested in. Musk would need to liquidate over half his Tesla shares. How is that a bad thing? That would decentralize control of these companies. That alone would be a good thing.
- babesh 6y ago
  No it wouldn’t. Why would I prefer you controlling that company versus someone who grew it to its present size?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

_ph_ 6y ago

No, they are not "lottery winners". First of all, they didn't "win" anything. Yes, the Tesla stocks that Musk owns are suddenly valued more on the stock market. This isn't money that Musk has at his free disposal, as he cannot just sell large parts of his Tesla stock (both because the question of company control and also because it would greatly harm the company) And also, it isn't a "lottery". This isn't money invested into random stocks for gains, this is the share of the company owned by the founders which still run the respective companies. This is wealth built by creating those companies not wealth that can be spent.