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Wealthy people have taken disproportionately from society, so their taxes should reflect that by being disproportionately higher. I'm glad to see additional evi

Wealthy people have taken disproportionately from society, so their taxes should reflect that by being disproportionately higher. I'm glad to see additional evidence, like this study, showing that there is no reason to give tax breaks to the wealthy.

14 5y ago
I am amazed that we actually need a study to determine this. The whole trickle down economy felt like a farce from the get go. “If we let the rich have just a little more money surely they will give it back to us!”. Well I wonder what the breaking point is. Inequality can only last for so long before people have nothing else to lose.
- skapadia 5y ago
  The breaking point will likely happen in the next decade.
- l33t2328 5y ago
  *if we let the rich keep a little more of their own money, instead of making them give it to the government, maybe they will invest it For the record, we’re no where near a breaking point in America. For as much complaining you see on HN and reddit and twitter, people in real life are happy.
l33t2328 5y ago
I would say wealthy people have added disproportionately to society. Amazon, Walmart, and Microsoft have added tremendous value to the world.
- kazen44 5y ago
  did they? does jeff bezos spend his wealth efficiently by launching himself into space for a billionare popularity contest? all that money could have been invested into people who actually spend it in the economy, instead of hoarding all that excess wealth.
  - rscoots 5y ago
    Lol where do you think the vast majority of the money went to? American aerospace engineers' paychecks. Although I think they should probably be taxed more, those hyper billionaires tend to give huge amounts to charity too. And it's not always for shamefully self-serving/partisan purposes such as Bezos propping up the Washington Post.
  - l33t2328 5y ago
    I’m not sure why you believe the money needs to be spent “efficiently” By creating Amazon, Bezos added tremendous value to our world, and he deserves his profits from it.
- chasebro 5y ago
  Bezos is no more “Amazon” than the president is “the United States”. We’d still have all those companies if their executives had to pay more in taxes.
  - adolph 5y ago
    The parent comment didn't mention Bezos. Since the majority of individual wealth created by Amazon is reflected in the price of Amazon stock, then taxing executive salary would have the likely effect of shifting more compensation to stock grants, etc.
pengwing 5y ago
I think you misspelled "contributed".
- minikites 5y ago
  They don't contribute to society because their wealth is formed by taking from society (the cumulative surplus value of the thousands of workers below them). That is why I believe their taxes should be significantly higher. Billionaires owe society, not the other way around.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    This sounds like the labor theory of value.
  - closeparen 5y ago
    Income taxes are about workers. "The rich" in income tax terms are senior and specialist workers.
adolph 5y ago
> Wealthy people have taken disproportionately from society This seems like an uncharitable statement. In many cases (although maybe not the majority), the wealth generated is additive to society and and not "taken" because it might never have existed otherwise. Consider PayPal. Did the development of PayPal take or give to society? It seems to me that it increased the wealth of everyone both in a direct sense and also indirectly through the enablement of large scale secondary and long-tail economies in Ebay. This statement isn't to suggest a reason for "tax breaks to the wealthy," only to offer an alternative theory to "taken disproportionately."
nemo44x 5y ago
That's not really true in most cases. Most people gain wealth from their innovations and their innovations generally create considerably more wealth for society than it does for themselves. They appear to have gained everything but you need to account for the extra wealth they created for the many millions of people. Amazon for example - how much wealth has Amazon created for everyone else? A lot and many, many factors more than Bezos' net worth. Granted not every wealthy person creates wealth this way - some influence politics to get unethical things done that put them there. But we shouldn't clobber the idea of wealthy people because some people cheat.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  The fact that many people may agree that Amazon has in some way made their lives better does not inherently mean that Bezos should now get to decide on the disposition of all the revenue that flows towards the company. The point of taxation is to keep pulling some chunk of the overall money flow back into the pool where we have some collective, political control over its disposition. How big that chunk should be, and what the process(es) should be used to decide on its disposition are open for debate, certainly. But the idea that because $X flowed towards Amazon, and everyone did that voluntarily and feels good about it, now Bezos gets to decide how the accumulated sum should be spent - I don't consider that a sensible view in any way.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    I was mainly replying to this part of the comment (and I should have referenced it): > Wealthy people have taken disproportionately from society And I just don't think that's true at all. Yeah, we can figure out how to better tax extreme wealth, but this wave of sentiment I see more and more of that wealthy people are evil, or parasitic, is just wrong in my opinion.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Depends on how you see proportionality. Let's say I do a really hard physical labor job, and I work at it 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year. As a result, I make $45k (or $60k, or $80k or $100k - at this scale, the numbers don't really matter) Is there any possible rationale for how any amount of succesful "business-ing" could ever justify why a person doing that for a year should end up with an income in the tens or hundreds of millions? We could concede that perhaps the business-ing has results that affect far more people in a positive way than the manual labor ever will. But the notion of people "taking disproportionately from society" could really be stated as "I don't care what you did last year, there's no possible activity you could have carried out that justifies you earning US$200M". That's a position that could continue to be held even if every cent of that US$200M arose from conscious, voluntarily, beneficial transactions. You don't have to agree, but there are people (I suspect I am one of them) who just don't believe there can ever be a justification for incomes at this level.

14 5y ago

I am amazed that we actually need a study to determine this. The whole trickle down economy felt like a farce from the get go. “If we let the rich have just a little more money surely they will give it back to us!”. Well I wonder what the breaking point is. Inequality can only last for so long before people have nothing else to lose.

skapadia 5y ago
The breaking point will likely happen in the next decade.
l33t2328 5y ago
*if we let the rich keep a little more of their own money, instead of making them give it to the government, maybe they will invest it For the record, we’re no where near a breaking point in America. For as much complaining you see on HN and reddit and twitter, people in real life are happy.

l33t2328 5y ago

I would say wealthy people have added disproportionately to society. Amazon, Walmart, and Microsoft have added tremendous value to the world.

kazen44 5y ago
did they? does jeff bezos spend his wealth efficiently by launching himself into space for a billionare popularity contest? all that money could have been invested into people who actually spend it in the economy, instead of hoarding all that excess wealth.
- rscoots 5y ago
  Lol where do you think the vast majority of the money went to? American aerospace engineers' paychecks. Although I think they should probably be taxed more, those hyper billionaires tend to give huge amounts to charity too. And it's not always for shamefully self-serving/partisan purposes such as Bezos propping up the Washington Post.
- l33t2328 5y ago
  I’m not sure why you believe the money needs to be spent “efficiently” By creating Amazon, Bezos added tremendous value to our world, and he deserves his profits from it.
chasebro 5y ago
Bezos is no more “Amazon” than the president is “the United States”. We’d still have all those companies if their executives had to pay more in taxes.
- adolph 5y ago
  The parent comment didn't mention Bezos. Since the majority of individual wealth created by Amazon is reflected in the price of Amazon stock, then taxing executive salary would have the likely effect of shifting more compensation to stock grants, etc.

pengwing 5y ago

I think you misspelled "contributed".

minikites 5y ago
They don't contribute to society because their wealth is formed by taking from society (the cumulative surplus value of the thousands of workers below them). That is why I believe their taxes should be significantly higher. Billionaires owe society, not the other way around.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  This sounds like the labor theory of value.
- closeparen 5y ago
  Income taxes are about workers. "The rich" in income tax terms are senior and specialist workers.

adolph 5y ago

> Wealthy people have taken disproportionately from society This seems like an uncharitable statement. In many cases (although maybe not the majority), the wealth generated is additive to society and and not "taken" because it might never have existed otherwise. Consider PayPal. Did the development of PayPal take or give to society? It seems to me that it increased the wealth of everyone both in a direct sense and also indirectly through the enablement of large scale secondary and long-tail economies in Ebay. This statement isn't to suggest a reason for "tax breaks to the wealthy," only to offer an alternative theory to "taken disproportionately."

nemo44x 5y ago

That's not really true in most cases. Most people gain wealth from their innovations and their innovations generally create considerably more wealth for society than it does for themselves. They appear to have gained everything but you need to account for the extra wealth they created for the many millions of people. Amazon for example - how much wealth has Amazon created for everyone else? A lot and many, many factors more than Bezos' net worth. Granted not every wealthy person creates wealth this way - some influence politics to get unethical things done that put them there. But we shouldn't clobber the idea of wealthy people because some people cheat.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
The fact that many people may agree that Amazon has in some way made their lives better does not inherently mean that Bezos should now get to decide on the disposition of all the revenue that flows towards the company. The point of taxation is to keep pulling some chunk of the overall money flow back into the pool where we have some collective, political control over its disposition. How big that chunk should be, and what the process(es) should be used to decide on its disposition are open for debate, certainly. But the idea that because $X flowed towards Amazon, and everyone did that voluntarily and feels good about it, now Bezos gets to decide how the accumulated sum should be spent - I don't consider that a sensible view in any way.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  I was mainly replying to this part of the comment (and I should have referenced it): > Wealthy people have taken disproportionately from society And I just don't think that's true at all. Yeah, we can figure out how to better tax extreme wealth, but this wave of sentiment I see more and more of that wealthy people are evil, or parasitic, is just wrong in my opinion.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Depends on how you see proportionality. Let's say I do a really hard physical labor job, and I work at it 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year. As a result, I make $45k (or $60k, or $80k or $100k - at this scale, the numbers don't really matter) Is there any possible rationale for how any amount of succesful "business-ing" could ever justify why a person doing that for a year should end up with an income in the tens or hundreds of millions? We could concede that perhaps the business-ing has results that affect far more people in a positive way than the manual labor ever will. But the notion of people "taking disproportionately from society" could really be stated as "I don't care what you did last year, there's no possible activity you could have carried out that justifies you earning US$200M". That's a position that could continue to be held even if every cent of that US$200M arose from conscious, voluntarily, beneficial transactions. You don't have to agree, but there are people (I suspect I am one of them) who just don't believe there can ever be a justification for incomes at this level.