4 ms·

Whey they claimed their "benevolence" as a justification for paying less tax than a cashier is when people pointed out the overwhelming hypocrisy. I'm with you

by harry8 5y ago

Whey they claimed their "benevolence" as a justification for paying less tax than a cashier is when people pointed out the overwhelming hypocrisy. I'm with you. We ditch their political influence entirely and tax them proportionately the same as everyone is supposed to be. Maybe ratchet up the rate some once you're beyond money that you can ever spend because you'll do something grossly moronic, rubbing everyone's faces in it like taking joy flights to space. Billionaires are a large-ish part of problems here on earth. Change my mind.

simonh 5y ago
A majority of billionairs globally are self made, having grown their wealth themselves. This mainly means building and growing companies that provide valuable goods and services, and employ lots of people doing productive work. Their wealth isn't in piles of cash, it's in their ownership and control of the enterprises they built. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-people-are-self-made-says-new-report.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche... I'll ask you a question. Who else do you think should own and control those enterprises, and how should the control and ownership be taken away from the current owners? Is doing so really in the public interest? The exceptions I think we can agree are parasitic behaviours. Inherited wealth, rent seeking, corruption, however these are a minority of billionaires, and looking at the developed world a small minority.
- Talanes 5y ago
  >having grown their wealth themselves. >and employ lots of people doing productive work. I think we may have different definitions of "themselves."
  - simonh 5y ago
    Sure, I just meant to distinguish them from those with inherited wealth.
- ohgodplsno 5y ago
  > Who else do you think should own and control those enterprises The employees of said companies, who have done the hard, sometimes back-breaking work to bring said company to such a valuation. Of course, current CEOs deserve a share of it too, proportional to the work they have put in. Just not simply because they had capital from mom and pop lending them a cool 500k like Bezos did. > how should the control and ownership be taken away from the current owners Force. > Is doing so really in the public interest? Redistribution of wealth is _always_ in the public's interest. There are no good billionaires. Every billionaire has become so upon the back of stealing wages, time and money from their employees. Every billionaire has death, sorrow and blood on their hands, as a result of their actions to greedily scrunge up money for their personal gain. Not even in a "well you could stop world hunger" way. No, in a "the work conditions you imposed led the people working 16 hours a day for you into deep mental issues, or the slave labour you knowingly used has caused people to die as a result of your actions." way.
  - simonh 5y ago
    >Redistribution of wealth is _always_ in the public's interest. My wife is Chinese, and her parents grew up under Mao. Because her father's family owned some land which they rented out to other farmers in their village, in Hebei, they were categorised as capitalist class enemies and persecuted. He was not allowed to go to school, was refused work and he grew up destitute. He still tears up when talking about that time. But hey, apparently it was in the public interest. Capitalism is based on three things. Freedom to own property and capital, freedom to buy the labour of others or sell your own labour, and freedom of association to form partnerships and companies. The reason Marxism always fails is because it is based on the elimination of those freedoms, putting power over these activities in the hands of functionaries. It takes away personal property; it coercively mandates and directs labour; it prohibits freedoms of association, organisation and communication. If you want to found an employee owned partnership there is nothing to stop you doing so. The freedoms granted under capitalism are entirely compatible with this. There are plenty of socialists in the world with large amounts of personal capital to seed such projects. Plenty of businesses are founded using loans. There's no law that says startups have to have individual founders, they could be formed as partnerships between the employees. In fact some such partnerships do exist, which shows that the reasons they are not more common are nothing to do with the regulatory environment. However such partnerships are extremely uncommon, why is this? The fact is most people choose not to take on the risks that owning and running a business entail. They don't want the responsibility in case it fails as most new businesses do, they prefer the owners and investors to take that risk and earn a regular pay packet instead. That's their choice. It's also the choice I have made throughout my career, but at least I'm prepared to take responsibility for it.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  "Self-made"? What a joke! No human can make a billion dollars by themselves. That is simply not possible. The one single and only way you can make a billion dollar is by exploiting the labour of others. There is nothing "self-made" about billionaires.
  - simonh 5y ago
    That's true, fair comment. All those workers could have gathered together independently and founded a company together. They could have pooled their savings, taken business loans as many business owners do and established a co-operative ownership structure. What is it that prevented them from doing so? Are there laws against it? The fact is they chose not to accept the risks of doing that, after all most new businesses fail. Instead they opted for a regular pay packet from an owner and investors who accepted all of that risk.
    - pbak 5y ago
      Well, you were more than halfway to a Yugoslav-style worker-managed company in your first paragraph. They were all destroyed either because of the 90's wars, or by post-war liberal governments who forced dissolution. There aren't laws against it, but the trouble with such structures is they need stability, so they tend to grow way slower, with new members who go in and stay (50-70 years for the examples below). That's not conducive to a space "race" indeed. Alternatively they need some state protection until they are big and stable enough - and then you're living in full Marxist-cum-Bolchevik or Maoist territory. There still exit various such cooperatives in Spain and northern Italy with from 12 to 30'000 members (also including industry). A lot of large Chinese firms also have that form.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      What you are talking about is what millionaires do. Billionaires are a completely different type of thing. You do not become a billionaire by employing some people and taking on a bit of risk.
    - smolder 5y ago
      They accepted that regular pay from an owner and investors who are risking money which is... mostly the fruit of earlier workers' labor, rather than a direct result of their own. There's always a degree of exploitation behind profit, and while profitability is improved through more synergistic organizations, it can also be improved by stifling competition, buying favorable policy from corrupt officials, etc. Our economic environment rewards malicious economic conquest just as much or more than the pursuit of efficient value creation. That it's so easy for concentrated capital to squeeze more capital from the masses is the key to crazy wealth inequality, not anyone's lack of industry or entrepreneurship.
- France_is_bacon 5y ago
  in the 1930s through the early 1980s, the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was 70-85%. In the late 1980s it went down to 28% and is now at 37%. Historical tax rates on the highest marginal rates: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highes... In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan lowered the tax rate by so much, and that's when the country started going to the dogs. What you say about the wealth not being in piles of cash is completely incorrect. The stock has value, and the super wealthy can use their stock ownership as collateral and get as much cash as they wish. Cash is not an issue for the super wealthy. Additionally, while the owners take a salary of $1, let's say for kicks, in addition to getting unlimited cash, they also get other perks as well - like company jets, and limos with drivers, etc. I don't know if Bezos does, but many business owners do. I think that Bezos should control the company, but there could be a 90% tax on wealth (not income) at the highest marginal rate and that would be fine with me. It's been there before in the USA's best years, where there was money to build roads and bridges, and pay for student's educations at public universities. It's not like Jeff Bezos and those people like him are going to quit if we limit their wealth to $1 billion or $5 billion. But the rich are a bunch of c-nts. San Francisco said that they would raise taxes for the richest by 1%...1 f-ing percent, in order to help the homeless, which is a big problem there, and the wealthy started making noises about leaving San Francisco because of that. What utter c-nts the wealthy are. Here is how wealthy Jeff Bezos is, and how wealthy the .0001% of our population is - that are as rich as the bottom 60% of the USA. Below is a graphic that shows actual wealth of Bezos accurately, which we never see, ever. Can you get to the end? I never have been able to yet. Just use your right arrow key to start scrolling. Here it is: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
mekal 5y ago
What do you mean they claim benevolence? As in give to charities? If so that's a pretty good claim since its the law right? If you donate to charity, you don't have to pay taxes on that money. Are you saying that particular law needs to change?

by harry8 5y ago

simonh 5y ago

A majority of billionairs globally are self made, having grown their wealth themselves. This mainly means building and growing companies that provide valuable goods and services, and employ lots of people doing productive work. Their wealth isn't in piles of cash, it's in their ownership and control of the enterprises they built. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-people-are-self-made-says-new-report.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche... I'll ask you a question. Who else do you think should own and control those enterprises, and how should the control and ownership be taken away from the current owners? Is doing so really in the public interest? The exceptions I think we can agree are parasitic behaviours. Inherited wealth, rent seeking, corruption, however these are a minority of billionaires, and looking at the developed world a small minority.

Talanes 5y ago
>having grown their wealth themselves. >and employ lots of people doing productive work. I think we may have different definitions of "themselves."
- simonh 5y ago
  Sure, I just meant to distinguish them from those with inherited wealth.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
> Who else do you think should own and control those enterprises The employees of said companies, who have done the hard, sometimes back-breaking work to bring said company to such a valuation. Of course, current CEOs deserve a share of it too, proportional to the work they have put in. Just not simply because they had capital from mom and pop lending them a cool 500k like Bezos did. > how should the control and ownership be taken away from the current owners Force. > Is doing so really in the public interest? Redistribution of wealth is _always_ in the public's interest. There are no good billionaires. Every billionaire has become so upon the back of stealing wages, time and money from their employees. Every billionaire has death, sorrow and blood on their hands, as a result of their actions to greedily scrunge up money for their personal gain. Not even in a "well you could stop world hunger" way. No, in a "the work conditions you imposed led the people working 16 hours a day for you into deep mental issues, or the slave labour you knowingly used has caused people to die as a result of your actions." way.
- simonh 5y ago
  >Redistribution of wealth is _always_ in the public's interest. My wife is Chinese, and her parents grew up under Mao. Because her father's family owned some land which they rented out to other farmers in their village, in Hebei, they were categorised as capitalist class enemies and persecuted. He was not allowed to go to school, was refused work and he grew up destitute. He still tears up when talking about that time. But hey, apparently it was in the public interest. Capitalism is based on three things. Freedom to own property and capital, freedom to buy the labour of others or sell your own labour, and freedom of association to form partnerships and companies. The reason Marxism always fails is because it is based on the elimination of those freedoms, putting power over these activities in the hands of functionaries. It takes away personal property; it coercively mandates and directs labour; it prohibits freedoms of association, organisation and communication. If you want to found an employee owned partnership there is nothing to stop you doing so. The freedoms granted under capitalism are entirely compatible with this. There are plenty of socialists in the world with large amounts of personal capital to seed such projects. Plenty of businesses are founded using loans. There's no law that says startups have to have individual founders, they could be formed as partnerships between the employees. In fact some such partnerships do exist, which shows that the reasons they are not more common are nothing to do with the regulatory environment. However such partnerships are extremely uncommon, why is this? The fact is most people choose not to take on the risks that owning and running a business entail. They don't want the responsibility in case it fails as most new businesses do, they prefer the owners and investors to take that risk and earn a regular pay packet instead. That's their choice. It's also the choice I have made throughout my career, but at least I'm prepared to take responsibility for it.
user-the-name 5y ago
"Self-made"? What a joke! No human can make a billion dollars by themselves. That is simply not possible. The one single and only way you can make a billion dollar is by exploiting the labour of others. There is nothing "self-made" about billionaires.
- simonh 5y ago
  That's true, fair comment. All those workers could have gathered together independently and founded a company together. They could have pooled their savings, taken business loans as many business owners do and established a co-operative ownership structure. What is it that prevented them from doing so? Are there laws against it? The fact is they chose not to accept the risks of doing that, after all most new businesses fail. Instead they opted for a regular pay packet from an owner and investors who accepted all of that risk.
  - pbak 5y ago
    Well, you were more than halfway to a Yugoslav-style worker-managed company in your first paragraph. They were all destroyed either because of the 90's wars, or by post-war liberal governments who forced dissolution. There aren't laws against it, but the trouble with such structures is they need stability, so they tend to grow way slower, with new members who go in and stay (50-70 years for the examples below). That's not conducive to a space "race" indeed. Alternatively they need some state protection until they are big and stable enough - and then you're living in full Marxist-cum-Bolchevik or Maoist territory. There still exit various such cooperatives in Spain and northern Italy with from 12 to 30'000 members (also including industry). A lot of large Chinese firms also have that form.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    What you are talking about is what millionaires do. Billionaires are a completely different type of thing. You do not become a billionaire by employing some people and taking on a bit of risk.
  - smolder 5y ago
    They accepted that regular pay from an owner and investors who are risking money which is... mostly the fruit of earlier workers' labor, rather than a direct result of their own. There's always a degree of exploitation behind profit, and while profitability is improved through more synergistic organizations, it can also be improved by stifling competition, buying favorable policy from corrupt officials, etc. Our economic environment rewards malicious economic conquest just as much or more than the pursuit of efficient value creation. That it's so easy for concentrated capital to squeeze more capital from the masses is the key to crazy wealth inequality, not anyone's lack of industry or entrepreneurship.
France_is_bacon 5y ago
in the 1930s through the early 1980s, the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was 70-85%. In the late 1980s it went down to 28% and is now at 37%. Historical tax rates on the highest marginal rates: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highes... In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan lowered the tax rate by so much, and that's when the country started going to the dogs. What you say about the wealth not being in piles of cash is completely incorrect. The stock has value, and the super wealthy can use their stock ownership as collateral and get as much cash as they wish. Cash is not an issue for the super wealthy. Additionally, while the owners take a salary of $1, let's say for kicks, in addition to getting unlimited cash, they also get other perks as well - like company jets, and limos with drivers, etc. I don't know if Bezos does, but many business owners do. I think that Bezos should control the company, but there could be a 90% tax on wealth (not income) at the highest marginal rate and that would be fine with me. It's been there before in the USA's best years, where there was money to build roads and bridges, and pay for student's educations at public universities. It's not like Jeff Bezos and those people like him are going to quit if we limit their wealth to $1 billion or $5 billion. But the rich are a bunch of c-nts. San Francisco said that they would raise taxes for the richest by 1%...1 f-ing percent, in order to help the homeless, which is a big problem there, and the wealthy started making noises about leaving San Francisco because of that. What utter c-nts the wealthy are. Here is how wealthy Jeff Bezos is, and how wealthy the .0001% of our population is - that are as rich as the bottom 60% of the USA. Below is a graphic that shows actual wealth of Bezos accurately, which we never see, ever. Can you get to the end? I never have been able to yet. Just use your right arrow key to start scrolling. Here it is: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

mekal 5y ago

What do you mean they claim benevolence? As in give to charities? If so that's a pretty good claim since its the law right? If you donate to charity, you don't have to pay taxes on that money. Are you saying that particular law needs to change?