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100% agree with everything you wrote. Paul's modeling of the wealth tax is incredibly naive and simplistic... to the point of either being extraordinarily dumb

100% agree with everything you wrote. Paul's modeling of the wealth tax is incredibly naive and simplistic... to the point of either being extraordinarily dumb or intentional misleading. Given how intelligent Paul Graham is, I'm gonna say the later. I don't even gross 200k USD per year and I could afford a 1-2% wealth tax, no sweat.. wouldn't even miss it. In fact my savings would continue to grow almost unabated. The wealthy want us to believe that their money is the true wealth of America... that the {insert country} would fall apart if the wealthy left. In reality, our wealth is in our natural resources (food, energy generation, fresh water) and industrious, hardworking people of this country. I say this clearly... Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates (etc.) are not responsible for wealth creation in this country. There have been 10's of thousands of people who brought the technology of those respective companies to fruition, and an entire society that made it possible. The idea of the "self made millionaire/billionaire" is ridiculous in its essence. That we DO NOT have a wealth tax, and high taxes on earning above a wealth threshold, is ridiculous and (dare I say) unethical/immoral. We need to entirely re-frame the argument surrounding taxes on corporations, wealth and sky-high incomes. ... my 0.02.

kamaal 6y ago
His modeling could be naive and simplistic. But emotionally losing 2% on 200K and 200 billion have very different effects on human brain. It's one thing to pay 2K totally different thing to pay 4 billion. You could make an argument that for some one with 200 billion, paying 4 billion isn't that much. But they are likely thinking on the lines of some great grandchild inheriting that money.
kajecounterhack 6y ago
>I don't even gross 200k USD per year and I could afford a 1-2% wealth tax, no sweat.. wouldn't even miss it. In fact my savings would continue to grow almost unabated. THIS! Most Americans just don't have many sitting assets, so even if you made the wealth tax apply equally to everyone, and we all had to pay an additional 1% on our net worth each year, for most of us that's either 1% of our house value or 1% of a small amount sitting in a bank account. For a billionaire that's $10M, which is about my city's whole budget. So another framing could be: "billionaires should annually pay for a small city's municipal expenses" -- it seems more than fair. Even in the case of not-yet-wealthy-startup-folks, assuming shoddy implementation -- "my money isn't liquid -- paying 1% tax on $1M of monopoly money from a startup is going to be hard" it's actually just $10k. And marginal rates and floors can easily make it all work. I'm a spoiled tech employee, I'd pay 1% of my salary a year for the purpose of helping mitigate income and quality-of-life inequality.

kamaal 6y ago

His modeling could be naive and simplistic. But emotionally losing 2% on 200K and 200 billion have very different effects on human brain. It's one thing to pay 2K totally different thing to pay 4 billion. You could make an argument that for some one with 200 billion, paying 4 billion isn't that much. But they are likely thinking on the lines of some great grandchild inheriting that money.

kajecounterhack 6y ago

>I don't even gross 200k USD per year and I could afford a 1-2% wealth tax, no sweat.. wouldn't even miss it. In fact my savings would continue to grow almost unabated. THIS! Most Americans just don't have many sitting assets, so even if you made the wealth tax apply equally to everyone, and we all had to pay an additional 1% on our net worth each year, for most of us that's either 1% of our house value or 1% of a small amount sitting in a bank account. For a billionaire that's $10M, which is about my city's whole budget. So another framing could be: "billionaires should annually pay for a small city's municipal expenses" -- it seems more than fair. Even in the case of not-yet-wealthy-startup-folks, assuming shoddy implementation -- "my money isn't liquid -- paying 1% tax on $1M of monopoly money from a startup is going to be hard" it's actually just $10k. And marginal rates and floors can easily make it all work. I'm a spoiled tech employee, I'd pay 1% of my salary a year for the purpose of helping mitigate income and quality-of-life inequality.