4 ms·

> you could ever possibly have earned fairly. I'm just wondering, but what is the max amount you can earn "fairly"?

by itake 6y ago

pydry 6y ago
I don't think it makes sense to try and put a number on it. It makes more sense to look at narrow sources of income and ask "was this wealth earned or extracted?" In many cases (e.g. rental income from property passed from one generation to another that is managed by an agency) it is extremely obvious. In other cases (e.g. dividend income from a company you founded) it is less so, and there is probably a split. With outrageous sums of wealth (e.g. Bezos) you can bet that it's probably almost all extracted. I doubt we'd be losing much productive labor (if any) by taxing all people with assets over a billion $.
- andrepd 6y ago
  Very well put.
oblio 6y ago
It's hard to say, but except for some outliers, on average, won't it be something like: 40 years x the salary of the best paid profession x the compounded interest rate over those 40 years x heck, I'll be nice and add a 2-5-10x multiplier to account for various other factors More than that, aren't we talking about sheer, dumb, luck? Plus, anything over that, it doesn't really matter anymore, you're living like a king compared to the average person. If you're a religious person, it kind of feels like greed :-)
- bluecalm 6y ago
  It's not about living like a king, it's about changing the world. If it was just about consumption I would never work another day in my life even though I probably have at least 25 productive ones left. I haven't exploited anyone either, I created software with my own hands and sold it to people without employing anyone (I have a partner and we sometimes had short term contractors but not employees). We are not a monopoly and we have very smart competitors. The reason I will not stop working? With enough money I can change the world around me: open a racket sports club/gym, maybe my gf opens a kindergarten for autistic kids (she currently works at one), maybe I can influence local politics so we finally get rid of the biggest polluters from my town. If it wasn't possible to do those things with money it wouldn't be the game worth playing and that would be a loss for everyone involved: me, my customers and the government taxing me. I can only change the world at a very small local scale. Jeff Bezos can send rockets to another planet. Elon Musk can among other things build infrastructure to give everyone around the world internet access. Please let them, the governments have enough money already and they don't have a monopoly for good ideas how to spend it to put it mildly.
  - oblio 6y ago
    That's not how this game is played. For every billionaire trying to make the world a better place, 10+ billionaires are just treating this whole thing as a game and abusing us, peons. And even for the folks working on those rockets, it's not so clear cut. Reading how their workers are treated, the whole thing is quite gray and murky.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    The problem is other people are also trying to change the world: lobbying for more military spending, killing environmental legislation and Green New Deals, building media empires to undermine democracies, etc. The answer is more democracy and less rich people calling all the shots.
  - pydry 6y ago
    >Jeff Bezos can send rockets to another planet. Elon Musk can among other things build infrastructure to give everyone around the world internet access. When taxes were ~90%NASA used to do the research and spend the money to send rockets into space. Several tax cuts later and we had to be reliant upon one billionaire out of 650 picking up the rocket research where they left off (literally). >Please let them, the governments have enough Not enough to build rockets these days. That's why it's outsourced. NASA's budget got converted into tax cuts. Also Bezos fucked up his program through his own hubris. >they don't have a monopoly for good ideas It wasn't Elons ideas that got SpaceX rockets worrking. It was NASA ideas + Elon cash.
    - bluecalm 6y ago
      NASA being underfunded has nothing to do with lack of money. The governments spend way more than ever. They just spend it in a questionable way. Back then they thought competing with Soviet Union for space supremacy was important so NASA was funded. It has absolutely nothing to do with tax rates.
nicoburns 6y ago
Say it was 1000x what the poorest member of society has. That would seem to align incentives nicely. There is no limit on how much you can earn, but in order to earn it you have improve society in a way that actually impacts those who need it the most.

> you could ever possibly have earned fairly. I'm just wondering, but what is the max amount you can earn "fairly"?

by itake 6y ago

> you could ever possibly have earned fairly. I'm just wondering, but what is the max amount you can earn "fairly"?

I don't think it makes sense to try and put a number on it. It makes more sense to look at narrow sources of income and ask "was this wealth earned or extracted?" In many cases (e.g. rental income from property passed from one generation to another that is managed by an agency) it is extremely obvious. In other cases (e.g. dividend income from a company you founded) it is less so, and there is probably a split. With outrageous sums of wealth (e.g. Bezos) you can bet that it's probably almost all extracted. I doubt we'd be losing much productive labor (if any) by taxing all people with assets over a billion $.

andrepd 6y ago
Very well put.

oblio 6y ago

It's hard to say, but except for some outliers, on average, won't it be something like: 40 years x the salary of the best paid profession x the compounded interest rate over those 40 years x heck, I'll be nice and add a 2-5-10x multiplier to account for various other factors More than that, aren't we talking about sheer, dumb, luck? Plus, anything over that, it doesn't really matter anymore, you're living like a king compared to the average person. If you're a religious person, it kind of feels like greed :-)

bluecalm 6y ago
It's not about living like a king, it's about changing the world. If it was just about consumption I would never work another day in my life even though I probably have at least 25 productive ones left. I haven't exploited anyone either, I created software with my own hands and sold it to people without employing anyone (I have a partner and we sometimes had short term contractors but not employees). We are not a monopoly and we have very smart competitors. The reason I will not stop working? With enough money I can change the world around me: open a racket sports club/gym, maybe my gf opens a kindergarten for autistic kids (she currently works at one), maybe I can influence local politics so we finally get rid of the biggest polluters from my town. If it wasn't possible to do those things with money it wouldn't be the game worth playing and that would be a loss for everyone involved: me, my customers and the government taxing me. I can only change the world at a very small local scale. Jeff Bezos can send rockets to another planet. Elon Musk can among other things build infrastructure to give everyone around the world internet access. Please let them, the governments have enough money already and they don't have a monopoly for good ideas how to spend it to put it mildly.
- oblio 6y ago
  That's not how this game is played. For every billionaire trying to make the world a better place, 10+ billionaires are just treating this whole thing as a game and abusing us, peons. And even for the folks working on those rockets, it's not so clear cut. Reading how their workers are treated, the whole thing is quite gray and murky.
- andrepd 6y ago
  The problem is other people are also trying to change the world: lobbying for more military spending, killing environmental legislation and Green New Deals, building media empires to undermine democracies, etc. The answer is more democracy and less rich people calling all the shots.
- pydry 6y ago
  >Jeff Bezos can send rockets to another planet. Elon Musk can among other things build infrastructure to give everyone around the world internet access. When taxes were ~90%NASA used to do the research and spend the money to send rockets into space. Several tax cuts later and we had to be reliant upon one billionaire out of 650 picking up the rocket research where they left off (literally). >Please let them, the governments have enough Not enough to build rockets these days. That's why it's outsourced. NASA's budget got converted into tax cuts. Also Bezos fucked up his program through his own hubris. >they don't have a monopoly for good ideas It wasn't Elons ideas that got SpaceX rockets worrking. It was NASA ideas + Elon cash.
  - bluecalm 6y ago
    NASA being underfunded has nothing to do with lack of money. The governments spend way more than ever. They just spend it in a questionable way. Back then they thought competing with Soviet Union for space supremacy was important so NASA was funded. It has absolutely nothing to do with tax rates.

nicoburns 6y ago

Say it was 1000x what the poorest member of society has. That would seem to align incentives nicely. There is no limit on how much you can earn, but in order to earn it you have improve society in a way that actually impacts those who need it the most.