11 ms·

Come on. The ultra-rich don’t pay their fair share. You know this and everyone knows this. Wealth inequality is obscene. Full stop.

Trias11 5y ago
Could you define "fair share" please in a way that everyone is agree with?
- airstrike 5y ago
  I'll throw a range out there for the sake of argument, and I'm really low-balling it: 25-30%
  - kwere 5y ago
    and its still a lot
  - Trias11 5y ago
    So what would be a single reason for person with $100MM of wealth to give $25MM away to wasteful, corruptive government? What kind of benefits the person is gaining by buying $25MM worth of taxes? I thought so too. Give that person a chance to reinvest these money into local economy, growing productive businesses instead of slapping the "filthy rich" label and suddenly there is a lots of capital are used for everyone's benefits instead of escaping.
    - rsgrn 5y ago
      To add $25MM to anti-corruption budgets? Sure, governments are to varying degrees, quite corrupt, but isn't that in part due to the people with leverage and power (aka money)? Example: Rich people > Shit newspapers > Misinformed populace > Shit political choices > Shit government > Corruption > Rich people now have more money.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > What kind of benefits the person is gaining by buying $25MM worth of taxes? Avoiding guillotines?
      - Trias11 5y ago
        I mean carrots, not sticks. People would be happy to pay 100% in tax to avoid guillotine but how much of a prosperous and productive society can be built with this approach?
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        To-may-to, to-mah-to. The carrot is "you get to live in a prosperous, stable society made possible in part by your contributions via taxes". The stick is what happens when you don't.
        Trias11 5y ago
        >> The carrot is "you get to live in a prosperous, stable society made possible in part by your contributions via taxes". The reality is that wealthy person can choose both (live where he wants and keep money safe from tax robbery) and poor can neither. Inequality is brought by high taxation and not by filthy rich who refuses to obey government stupid policies.
      - insert_coin 5y ago
        There is that of course. That is also the reason why they leave and take their money with them.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        If you fully want to renounce US citizenship, sure. You'll pay a hefty exit tax in doing so. You can already do this, though. Monaco exists. That folks like Bezos, Musk, and Gates stick around in the US indicates some intangible benefits here that justify paying some tax.
    - lttlrck 5y ago
      They are contributing to the long term stability and prosperity of the society that provided the very environment that enabled them establish their wealth in the first place. Pay it forward as it were. Unfortunately many people don't appear to think like that. Or are willfully blind/ ignorant. Take your pick.
      - Trias11 5y ago
        These all are good words but you cannot sweet talk millionaires and billionaires into investing and keeping money in the country. A bit of simple math is needed to supplement decisions in terms of return on investment. Overbloated government spending and useless wars are not a good arguments either. If government cannot manage their budgets well, why would people who can manage their budgets better should listen?
    - modo_mario 5y ago
      >What kind of benefits the person is gaining by buying $25MM worth of taxes? Hmm there's so many hypotheticals there. Perhaps they may fund the roads this persons company uses. Or the foodstamps this persons underpayed workers rely on. Perhaps they sustain the people that pay into his rentseeking scheme. Perhaps that's not the question you should be asking because not a whole lot of people give a damn about this persons 25 million staying in his pocket. (This person him/herself being part of this 'not a whole lot of people') and a whole lot of people on the other hand would rather this person be incentivized to avoid these taxes by investing in R&D and/or increasing the wages of the people he depends on so as to benefit society and to stimulate the economy.
    - wishinghand 5y ago
      If they're reinvesting money, that money is not getting taxed. If they still have obscene amounts afterward, c'est la vie.
    - throwaway_kufu 5y ago
      The $100MM is the benefit. So they are giving back some of the benefit they already received. Yeah they call it waste when they have to give back but the true waste is the policies that allowed the $100MM in light of the overall inequality. People who make $100MM are no smarter than those that don’t, I mean Einstein didn’t make that type of money right? It’s not merit either, it’s simply money...under our system money makes money, concentration of capital doesn’t benefit everyone it benefits the person with the capital. Consider wealth management itself, you want to diversify your investments, you would never put 90% of your wealth into .1% of the assets you own. The rich know and live by this rule, well that same rule applies to society, you don’t want .1% controlling 90% of the wealth so investment is determined by .1% of the population. You want the wealth diversified and in the hands of many so no single person controls investment.
  - jonas21 5y ago
    So a little bit less than they pay right now in the US? The latest CBO data has the average Federal tax rate at around 31% for both the top 1% and top 0.01% cohorts [1]. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Income.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Inc...
    - airstrike 5y ago
      Only if you assume "income" correctly captures the money made by the richest.
  - djbebs 5y ago
    So significantly less than what they currently pay? Sure, I'm all for it!
- ficklepickle 5y ago
  Everyone is unlikely to agree, but I'm pretty sure we could find a range that the majority of people agree with.
  - Trias11 5y ago
    When majority is agrees on something it doesn't make this automatically the right thing. Especially if this is a majority of non-productive, lazy individuals unwilling to get educated, work and prefer to live by selling their votes for printed money of government grants.
    - galangalalgol 5y ago
      It's not the productive people who annoy me, its the people who live off investments they dont even have the skills to make themselves. They hire money managers and sip on trust funds while trying to combat the resultant boredom with drugged up sex parties. Their money is productive, not them.
    - frenchman99 5y ago
      > When majority is agrees on something it doesn't make this automatically the right thing. In a democracy, yes it does.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        Prior to the 1860s, the majority agreed to some things that we find abhorrent today.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  Tax avoidance should be punished, that's all. Oh, and in my country, it is punished, it's just that the team which must find about the culprit are totally under staffed, what-a-surprise.
  - Trias11 5y ago
    You're mistaking tax avoidance with tax evasion.
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    > Tax avoidance should be punished, that's all. Tax avoidance and tax evasion are distinct things. Tax avoidance is (deliberately) legal. Why do you think it should be punished?
    - wiz21c 5y ago
      OK I conflated the two. But law and justice are not the same thing.
- throwaway_kufu 5y ago
  The top .1% own as much wealth as the bottom 90%. For better or worse the only way that type of inequality happens is as a direct result of the policies of the country they live in, thus they should be grateful and thankful for living in a country that not only allows but promotes that type of concentration of wealth. In exchange for the benefit of living in such a country that promotes such wealth inequality, they should pay a 90% tax rate to reflect the wealth inequality itself. They will bitch and moan of course, but they will still be far richer and better off than everyone else, and everyone else will be better off not living in a country with such high inequality and a country with tremendous national resources, as opposed to a country that is $28T in debt further decreasing the quality of life of those without the personal wealth to not need public services.
- DSingularity 5y ago
  IMO a percentage which ensures that they don’t monopolize wealth. Their levels of money and resources are so large that it is game changing. Take startups, who do you think funds them? Is it a pension for teachers that’s goes out and gets those precious preferred shares in 5 startups per year or is it the venture arm of gates/below/zuckerberg/dell/..? The wealthy have monopolized wealth. That’s why we end up where one man owns most the farm land in the US.
haolez 5y ago
Why do you want access to other people's riches?
- celticninja 5y ago
  Why does one person need $1bn? If we can ensure that no single individual has to live below the poverty line then I'm less worried about individuals who attain huge stores of wealth.
  - gogopuppygogo 5y ago
    Who needs a TV? Who needs more than one pair of shoes? Who determines what other people need? Maybe we should forget we are adults and have a governing body tell us why we need so we don’t have to think about it?
  - Trias11 5y ago
    Instead of chasing the person with $1Bn, wouldn't it be more productive to learn from that person and educate others how to earn good money and live a good, productive lifestyle? Otherwise many are under the impression that looting and robbing is a way to go.
    - okasaki 5y ago
      Educate them on what? How to be on top of a pyramid scheme?
      - Trias11 5y ago
        >> Educate them on what? "...educate others how to earn good money and live a good, productive lifestyle". You may add to that many other educational resources and lots of them are free. People who are willing to learn will learn. People who are unwilling to learn and prefer to rob and loot - will continue doing so.
    - turbinerneiter 5y ago
      Because poor people don't have time to learn, they have to struggle staying alive. And very often the billionaires business's model is based on poor people making bad financial decisions, like pay day loans or buying products they don't need but are told that they do by the billionaires ad agency. Also, if the billionaires give a tiny amount of their money to fund schools, people will get educated, earn more money and be able to spend more.
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
> You know this and everyone knows this. False consensus fallacy
- Supermancho 5y ago
  >> The sky is blue. >> You know this and everyone knows this. > False consensus fallacy Absurd comment. The wealth inequality and regressive taxation has been inherent to capitalism since at least roman times - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/social_structure_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/social_structure... https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/14/wealth-tax-zakat-islamic-ancient-greece-inequality/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/14/wealth-tax-zakat-islami... Once your wealth is international, you don't have to pay on what you don't declare across tax regions. These havens arent really havens, as much as optimizations on where you declare assets based on asset class. etc
fighterpilot 5y ago
The top 1% pay 6x more tax than the bottom 50%! It's obscene how much they pay and how a small group of individuals is forced to carry the entire country. Much, much more should be expected from the bottom 50%.
- modo_mario 5y ago
  >The top 1% pay 6x more tax than the bottom 50%! And yet their share of wealth keeps on growing and growing for decades. Curious.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    Primarily because their unique value add to society has been growing (due to technology), and the unique value add of the bottom 50 percent has been decreasing (due to technology and globalization). Take JK Rowling as an example. Her work added significant value to the lives of hundreds of millions, and she got a slice of all that value creation (say, 30 percent of it). Nobody is worse off. Everyone is better off. Her value proposition was magnified by the scale afforded to her by modern day distribution and movie deals, which is why she got so fabulously wealthy compared to what an author could've achieved (relative to their surrounding population) 100 years ago. The poorest people inside developed countries on the other hand have had a decreasing value add to society. This is partly because of automation and partly because of globalization and the fact they now have to compete with 1 billion Chinese who work harder than them and for less.
    - coldcode 5y ago
      Why not just kill all the poor people then, or let them starve to death. Leave the land for Gates and Bezos and Musk, clearly they are worth more than me because they have more money. The value of a human is not measured by how much money they "earned" or how cheaply they can be "worked". You could bring back slavery so that poor people work for free and the rich get more rich and thus more valuable.
      - 5y ago
missedthecue 5y ago
In America, the top 1% has 20% of the income, but pays almost 40% of the taxes. What is their 'fair share'? What is your fair share of someone else's income? Countries like Norway or Sweden, which have more billionaires per capita than the USA have much less progressive tax codes.
- mupuff1234 5y ago
  I think the key word there is "income" - At some point income barely plays a role.

Trias11 5y ago

Could you define "fair share" please in a way that everyone is agree with?

airstrike 5y ago
I'll throw a range out there for the sake of argument, and I'm really low-balling it: 25-30%
- kwere 5y ago
  and its still a lot
- Trias11 5y ago
  So what would be a single reason for person with $100MM of wealth to give $25MM away to wasteful, corruptive government? What kind of benefits the person is gaining by buying $25MM worth of taxes? I thought so too. Give that person a chance to reinvest these money into local economy, growing productive businesses instead of slapping the "filthy rich" label and suddenly there is a lots of capital are used for everyone's benefits instead of escaping.
  - rsgrn 5y ago
    To add $25MM to anti-corruption budgets? Sure, governments are to varying degrees, quite corrupt, but isn't that in part due to the people with leverage and power (aka money)? Example: Rich people > Shit newspapers > Misinformed populace > Shit political choices > Shit government > Corruption > Rich people now have more money.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > What kind of benefits the person is gaining by buying $25MM worth of taxes? Avoiding guillotines?
    - Trias11 5y ago
      I mean carrots, not sticks. People would be happy to pay 100% in tax to avoid guillotine but how much of a prosperous and productive society can be built with this approach?
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        To-may-to, to-mah-to. The carrot is "you get to live in a prosperous, stable society made possible in part by your contributions via taxes". The stick is what happens when you don't.
        Trias11 5y ago
        >> The carrot is "you get to live in a prosperous, stable society made possible in part by your contributions via taxes". The reality is that wealthy person can choose both (live where he wants and keep money safe from tax robbery) and poor can neither. Inequality is brought by high taxation and not by filthy rich who refuses to obey government stupid policies.
    - insert_coin 5y ago
      There is that of course. That is also the reason why they leave and take their money with them.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        If you fully want to renounce US citizenship, sure. You'll pay a hefty exit tax in doing so. You can already do this, though. Monaco exists. That folks like Bezos, Musk, and Gates stick around in the US indicates some intangible benefits here that justify paying some tax.
  - lttlrck 5y ago
    They are contributing to the long term stability and prosperity of the society that provided the very environment that enabled them establish their wealth in the first place. Pay it forward as it were. Unfortunately many people don't appear to think like that. Or are willfully blind/ ignorant. Take your pick.
    - Trias11 5y ago
      These all are good words but you cannot sweet talk millionaires and billionaires into investing and keeping money in the country. A bit of simple math is needed to supplement decisions in terms of return on investment. Overbloated government spending and useless wars are not a good arguments either. If government cannot manage their budgets well, why would people who can manage their budgets better should listen?
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    >What kind of benefits the person is gaining by buying $25MM worth of taxes? Hmm there's so many hypotheticals there. Perhaps they may fund the roads this persons company uses. Or the foodstamps this persons underpayed workers rely on. Perhaps they sustain the people that pay into his rentseeking scheme. Perhaps that's not the question you should be asking because not a whole lot of people give a damn about this persons 25 million staying in his pocket. (This person him/herself being part of this 'not a whole lot of people') and a whole lot of people on the other hand would rather this person be incentivized to avoid these taxes by investing in R&D and/or increasing the wages of the people he depends on so as to benefit society and to stimulate the economy.
  - wishinghand 5y ago
    If they're reinvesting money, that money is not getting taxed. If they still have obscene amounts afterward, c'est la vie.
  - throwaway_kufu 5y ago
    The $100MM is the benefit. So they are giving back some of the benefit they already received. Yeah they call it waste when they have to give back but the true waste is the policies that allowed the $100MM in light of the overall inequality. People who make $100MM are no smarter than those that don’t, I mean Einstein didn’t make that type of money right? It’s not merit either, it’s simply money...under our system money makes money, concentration of capital doesn’t benefit everyone it benefits the person with the capital. Consider wealth management itself, you want to diversify your investments, you would never put 90% of your wealth into .1% of the assets you own. The rich know and live by this rule, well that same rule applies to society, you don’t want .1% controlling 90% of the wealth so investment is determined by .1% of the population. You want the wealth diversified and in the hands of many so no single person controls investment.
- jonas21 5y ago
  So a little bit less than they pay right now in the US? The latest CBO data has the average Federal tax rate at around 31% for both the top 1% and top 0.01% cohorts [1]. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Income.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-10/56575-Household-Inc...
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Only if you assume "income" correctly captures the money made by the richest.
- djbebs 5y ago
  So significantly less than what they currently pay? Sure, I'm all for it!
ficklepickle 5y ago
Everyone is unlikely to agree, but I'm pretty sure we could find a range that the majority of people agree with.
- Trias11 5y ago
  When majority is agrees on something it doesn't make this automatically the right thing. Especially if this is a majority of non-productive, lazy individuals unwilling to get educated, work and prefer to live by selling their votes for printed money of government grants.
  - galangalalgol 5y ago
    It's not the productive people who annoy me, its the people who live off investments they dont even have the skills to make themselves. They hire money managers and sip on trust funds while trying to combat the resultant boredom with drugged up sex parties. Their money is productive, not them.
  - frenchman99 5y ago
    > When majority is agrees on something it doesn't make this automatically the right thing. In a democracy, yes it does.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Prior to the 1860s, the majority agreed to some things that we find abhorrent today.
wiz21c 5y ago
Tax avoidance should be punished, that's all. Oh, and in my country, it is punished, it's just that the team which must find about the culprit are totally under staffed, what-a-surprise.
- Trias11 5y ago
  You're mistaking tax avoidance with tax evasion.
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  > Tax avoidance should be punished, that's all. Tax avoidance and tax evasion are distinct things. Tax avoidance is (deliberately) legal. Why do you think it should be punished?
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    OK I conflated the two. But law and justice are not the same thing.
throwaway_kufu 5y ago
The top .1% own as much wealth as the bottom 90%. For better or worse the only way that type of inequality happens is as a direct result of the policies of the country they live in, thus they should be grateful and thankful for living in a country that not only allows but promotes that type of concentration of wealth. In exchange for the benefit of living in such a country that promotes such wealth inequality, they should pay a 90% tax rate to reflect the wealth inequality itself. They will bitch and moan of course, but they will still be far richer and better off than everyone else, and everyone else will be better off not living in a country with such high inequality and a country with tremendous national resources, as opposed to a country that is $28T in debt further decreasing the quality of life of those without the personal wealth to not need public services.
DSingularity 5y ago
IMO a percentage which ensures that they don’t monopolize wealth. Their levels of money and resources are so large that it is game changing. Take startups, who do you think funds them? Is it a pension for teachers that’s goes out and gets those precious preferred shares in 5 startups per year or is it the venture arm of gates/below/zuckerberg/dell/..? The wealthy have monopolized wealth. That’s why we end up where one man owns most the farm land in the US.

haolez 5y ago

Why do you want access to other people's riches?

celticninja 5y ago
Why does one person need $1bn? If we can ensure that no single individual has to live below the poverty line then I'm less worried about individuals who attain huge stores of wealth.
- gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  Who needs a TV? Who needs more than one pair of shoes? Who determines what other people need? Maybe we should forget we are adults and have a governing body tell us why we need so we don’t have to think about it?
- Trias11 5y ago
  Instead of chasing the person with $1Bn, wouldn't it be more productive to learn from that person and educate others how to earn good money and live a good, productive lifestyle? Otherwise many are under the impression that looting and robbing is a way to go.
  - okasaki 5y ago
    Educate them on what? How to be on top of a pyramid scheme?
    - Trias11 5y ago
      >> Educate them on what? "...educate others how to earn good money and live a good, productive lifestyle". You may add to that many other educational resources and lots of them are free. People who are willing to learn will learn. People who are unwilling to learn and prefer to rob and loot - will continue doing so.
  - turbinerneiter 5y ago
    Because poor people don't have time to learn, they have to struggle staying alive. And very often the billionaires business's model is based on poor people making bad financial decisions, like pay day loans or buying products they don't need but are told that they do by the billionaires ad agency. Also, if the billionaires give a tiny amount of their money to fund schools, people will get educated, earn more money and be able to spend more.

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

> You know this and everyone knows this. False consensus fallacy

Supermancho 5y ago
>> The sky is blue. >> You know this and everyone knows this. > False consensus fallacy Absurd comment. The wealth inequality and regressive taxation has been inherent to capitalism since at least roman times - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/social_structure_01.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/social_structure... https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/14/wealth-tax-zakat-islamic-ancient-greece-inequality/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/14/wealth-tax-zakat-islami... Once your wealth is international, you don't have to pay on what you don't declare across tax regions. These havens arent really havens, as much as optimizations on where you declare assets based on asset class. etc

fighterpilot 5y ago

The top 1% pay 6x more tax than the bottom 50%! It's obscene how much they pay and how a small group of individuals is forced to carry the entire country. Much, much more should be expected from the bottom 50%.

modo_mario 5y ago
>The top 1% pay 6x more tax than the bottom 50%! And yet their share of wealth keeps on growing and growing for decades. Curious.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  Primarily because their unique value add to society has been growing (due to technology), and the unique value add of the bottom 50 percent has been decreasing (due to technology and globalization). Take JK Rowling as an example. Her work added significant value to the lives of hundreds of millions, and she got a slice of all that value creation (say, 30 percent of it). Nobody is worse off. Everyone is better off. Her value proposition was magnified by the scale afforded to her by modern day distribution and movie deals, which is why she got so fabulously wealthy compared to what an author could've achieved (relative to their surrounding population) 100 years ago. The poorest people inside developed countries on the other hand have had a decreasing value add to society. This is partly because of automation and partly because of globalization and the fact they now have to compete with 1 billion Chinese who work harder than them and for less.
  - coldcode 5y ago
    Why not just kill all the poor people then, or let them starve to death. Leave the land for Gates and Bezos and Musk, clearly they are worth more than me because they have more money. The value of a human is not measured by how much money they "earned" or how cheaply they can be "worked". You could bring back slavery so that poor people work for free and the rich get more rich and thus more valuable.
    - 5y ago

missedthecue 5y ago

In America, the top 1% has 20% of the income, but pays almost 40% of the taxes. What is their 'fair share'? What is your fair share of someone else's income? Countries like Norway or Sweden, which have more billionaires per capita than the USA have much less progressive tax codes.

mupuff1234 5y ago
I think the key word there is "income" - At some point income barely plays a role.