6 ms·

Without questioning if seizing the property of Russian billionaires is justified or not, if you believe in equity, the property of American billionaires should

by hbbio 5y ago

Without questioning if seizing the property of Russian billionaires is justified or not, if you believe in equity, the property of American billionaires should also be seized by the other countries for the nearly 200 000 civilian deaths in Iraq (which is much worse, but the US-led war lasted longer). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Iraqi_civilian_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ira...

stuaxo 5y ago
What a fantastic idea, billionaires are a symptom of our unequal society. We could have a ceiling of say 50 million quid and you get to say you won capitalism, and everyone throws you a bug party.
- obilgic 5y ago
  so we force productive people to retire early? How do you expect to have Google, Microsoft, Apple Tesla, SpaceX? if their founders were to retire once they have 50m
  - newsclues 5y ago
    People can continue to be productive without meaninglessly adding more digits to their network. Or maybe others would be highly productive if the current people retire.
    - esyir 5y ago
      Hey, why don't you work for me, you won't get money, but you'll get visibility.
  - this_was_posted 5y ago
    No one is forcing them to retire, I for one would be interested to see what these productive people would come up with when they shift their goal from making a great profit to making a great social impact.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      Then just look at Elon Musk's and Bill Gates' projects. One is weaning us off hydrocarbons, the other is curing disease.
      - mandmandam 5y ago
        nradov 5y ago
        If you're referring to the Starlink satellite constellation, Kessler syndrome isn't a real concern. Those satellites are in low orbits.
        mandmandam 5y ago
        NASA and MIT beg to differ. And the light pollution on its own is a concern - why the everloving fuck should Musk of all people get to block humanity's starlight for his own private profit.
        bennyelv 5y ago
        > Gates is buying up all the arable farmland, and taking advantage of poor African countries. Can you expand on that? I'm sure there are easier ways for him to make money if that's what the purpose is.
        mandmandam 5y ago
        https://www.vox.com/recode/22528659/bill-gates-largest-farmland-owner-cascade-investments https://www.vox.com/recode/22528659/bill-gates-largest-farml... (to be fair, 'all of the farmland' is not really appropriate: 300,000 acres out of 900 million. He's still the biggest single owner though). And, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817537 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817537, for one perspective on his Africa ventures.
    - obilgic 5y ago
  - refurb 5y ago
    Exactly. We tell Elon Musk "hey buddy, you did amazing with Paypal, but that's enough, we're forcing you to retire."
  - gxt 5y ago
    Put the cap on assets. They should be able to make all the money in the world as long as they spend it too.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    I think this assumes that only Certain Blessed Special People could create Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, and so on. I think there are a lot of people out there who could start and/or run one of these. The population of entrepreneurs is limited by the number of potential commercializable ideas, not by the number of people who can do it. If people just stopped at $50M, it would open things up for even more entrepreneurs to make shots like those companies. Currently, a small number of already-rich people are using up all the economic oxygen in the room trying to get richer.
- buro9 5y ago
  Taxes should be doing this. Progressive taxation should be uncapped, when you pass some threshold of "this is more than you need in the lifetimes of you, your partner, your next-of-kin to all live a life of unparalleled luxury" then it should escalate up to 99%, and if you pass some really obscene threshold equivalent to a small country's GDP then let it go to 100%. Wealth taxation should be effective. No individual needs to own land area equivalent to a city, or housing and art assets of a disproportionate nature. And on the flipside... income taxation can be lowered if we're more effectively taxing wealth and the obscene earnings. Instead we could encourage far more social mobility and the growing of a far larger middle-class. Tax low earners and those without wealth nothing at all, and tax the middle-class only a little. This opinion won't resonate on HN, but modern society has become so effective at extracting money from people and enriching a few, and rent-seeking as a business model so prevalent that it does feel we're at risk of putting future generations in a serfdom role that had taken hundreds of years to get out of. This is all distinct from what's happening in Ukraine and with sanctions, this is just an opinion about what's happening in the World at large.
  - nradov 5y ago
    In the US, low earners already pay no income tax. In 2020, 61% of Americans paid no federal income tax. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/18/61percent-of-americans-paid-no-federal-income-taxes-in-2020-tax-policy-center-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/18/61percent-of-americans-paid-...
  - ilammy 5y ago
    > when you pass some threshold [...] then it should escalate up to 99% Why stop at 100%? Assuming it is okay to put a cap on how much wealth and income a person can have, it should be sensible to have marginal tax rate higher than 100% of the taxable income. You earn more than 100M in a year? Please pay 200M until your wealth is back to sensible levels. Alternatively, you can reduce your taxable income by making charitable donations willingly – same thing as far as balance is concerned, but you might feel differently about it.
- sunshinerag 5y ago
  Why 50 million? Why millions? Think comrade
- usrusr 5y ago
  If leaving the country wouldn't be an issue, a formally established rite of "financial lynching" could be an interesting tweak to society: have a regularly occurring vote about who is the least popular rich/powerful person and the "winner" gets a very generous stipend but is stripped of all assets and contracts, like starting with new name (and data, to curb stockpiling of blackmail material for the reboot). Much safer for everyone involved than allowing imbalance to grow until it's eventually cleared out in a revolution.
twoodfin 5y ago
Putting aside the confiscation question, it’s morally obtuse to liken Iraqi civilian deaths, the top cause of which per that link was execution after capture by insurgent & other non-US-aligned forces, with Ukrainian deaths from indiscriminate Russian shelling of civilian neighborhoods.
- zakki 5y ago
  - nojito 5y ago
    No it most definitely doesn’t make them combatants.
    - zakki 5y ago
- _3u10 5y ago
  - midasz 5y ago
    More precise targeting??? With cluster bombs???
    - _3u10 5y ago
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    that's some serious level of victim blaming.
    - _3u10 5y ago
jstanley 5y ago
That doesn't follow. It's perfectly consistent to believe in equity and believe that neither the Russian nor the American billionaires' assets should be seized. You can't just handwave away one side and say "regardless of whether you believe it's justified for group A, you have to believe it's justified for group B".
z3c0 5y ago
This would be a tu quoque fallacy, and when speaking of "Russia vs America", you can also call it whataboutism[1]. America's invasion of Iraq was bad, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine is bad, but only one is happening right now. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

by hbbio 5y ago

stuaxo 5y ago

What a fantastic idea, billionaires are a symptom of our unequal society. We could have a ceiling of say 50 million quid and you get to say you won capitalism, and everyone throws you a bug party.

obilgic 5y ago
so we force productive people to retire early? How do you expect to have Google, Microsoft, Apple Tesla, SpaceX? if their founders were to retire once they have 50m
- newsclues 5y ago
  People can continue to be productive without meaninglessly adding more digits to their network. Or maybe others would be highly productive if the current people retire.
  - esyir 5y ago
    Hey, why don't you work for me, you won't get money, but you'll get visibility.
- this_was_posted 5y ago
  No one is forcing them to retire, I for one would be interested to see what these productive people would come up with when they shift their goal from making a great profit to making a great social impact.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    Then just look at Elon Musk's and Bill Gates' projects. One is weaning us off hydrocarbons, the other is curing disease.
    - mandmandam 5y ago
      - nradov 5y ago
        If you're referring to the Starlink satellite constellation, Kessler syndrome isn't a real concern. Those satellites are in low orbits.
        mandmandam 5y ago
        NASA and MIT beg to differ. And the light pollution on its own is a concern - why the everloving fuck should Musk of all people get to block humanity's starlight for his own private profit.
      - bennyelv 5y ago
        > Gates is buying up all the arable farmland, and taking advantage of poor African countries. Can you expand on that? I'm sure there are easier ways for him to make money if that's what the purpose is.
        mandmandam 5y ago
        https://www.vox.com/recode/22528659/bill-gates-largest-farmland-owner-cascade-investments https://www.vox.com/recode/22528659/bill-gates-largest-farml... (to be fair, 'all of the farmland' is not really appropriate: 300,000 acres out of 900 million. He's still the biggest single owner though). And, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817537 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817537, for one perspective on his Africa ventures.
  - obilgic 5y ago
- refurb 5y ago
  Exactly. We tell Elon Musk "hey buddy, you did amazing with Paypal, but that's enough, we're forcing you to retire."
- gxt 5y ago
  Put the cap on assets. They should be able to make all the money in the world as long as they spend it too.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  I think this assumes that only Certain Blessed Special People could create Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, and so on. I think there are a lot of people out there who could start and/or run one of these. The population of entrepreneurs is limited by the number of potential commercializable ideas, not by the number of people who can do it. If people just stopped at $50M, it would open things up for even more entrepreneurs to make shots like those companies. Currently, a small number of already-rich people are using up all the economic oxygen in the room trying to get richer.
buro9 5y ago
Taxes should be doing this. Progressive taxation should be uncapped, when you pass some threshold of "this is more than you need in the lifetimes of you, your partner, your next-of-kin to all live a life of unparalleled luxury" then it should escalate up to 99%, and if you pass some really obscene threshold equivalent to a small country's GDP then let it go to 100%. Wealth taxation should be effective. No individual needs to own land area equivalent to a city, or housing and art assets of a disproportionate nature. And on the flipside... income taxation can be lowered if we're more effectively taxing wealth and the obscene earnings. Instead we could encourage far more social mobility and the growing of a far larger middle-class. Tax low earners and those without wealth nothing at all, and tax the middle-class only a little. This opinion won't resonate on HN, but modern society has become so effective at extracting money from people and enriching a few, and rent-seeking as a business model so prevalent that it does feel we're at risk of putting future generations in a serfdom role that had taken hundreds of years to get out of. This is all distinct from what's happening in Ukraine and with sanctions, this is just an opinion about what's happening in the World at large.
- nradov 5y ago
  In the US, low earners already pay no income tax. In 2020, 61% of Americans paid no federal income tax. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/18/61percent-of-americans-paid-no-federal-income-taxes-in-2020-tax-policy-center-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/18/61percent-of-americans-paid-...
- ilammy 5y ago
  > when you pass some threshold [...] then it should escalate up to 99% Why stop at 100%? Assuming it is okay to put a cap on how much wealth and income a person can have, it should be sensible to have marginal tax rate higher than 100% of the taxable income. You earn more than 100M in a year? Please pay 200M until your wealth is back to sensible levels. Alternatively, you can reduce your taxable income by making charitable donations willingly – same thing as far as balance is concerned, but you might feel differently about it.
sunshinerag 5y ago
Why 50 million? Why millions? Think comrade
usrusr 5y ago
If leaving the country wouldn't be an issue, a formally established rite of "financial lynching" could be an interesting tweak to society: have a regularly occurring vote about who is the least popular rich/powerful person and the "winner" gets a very generous stipend but is stripped of all assets and contracts, like starting with new name (and data, to curb stockpiling of blackmail material for the reboot). Much safer for everyone involved than allowing imbalance to grow until it's eventually cleared out in a revolution.

twoodfin 5y ago

Putting aside the confiscation question, it’s morally obtuse to liken Iraqi civilian deaths, the top cause of which per that link was execution after capture by insurgent & other non-US-aligned forces, with Ukrainian deaths from indiscriminate Russian shelling of civilian neighborhoods.

zakki 5y ago
- nojito 5y ago
  No it most definitely doesn’t make them combatants.
  - zakki 5y ago
_3u10 5y ago
- midasz 5y ago
  More precise targeting??? With cluster bombs???
  - _3u10 5y ago
- ithkuil 5y ago
  that's some serious level of victim blaming.
  - _3u10 5y ago

jstanley 5y ago

That doesn't follow. It's perfectly consistent to believe in equity and believe that neither the Russian nor the American billionaires' assets should be seized. You can't just handwave away one side and say "regardless of whether you believe it's justified for group A, you have to believe it's justified for group B".

z3c0 5y ago

This would be a tu quoque fallacy, and when speaking of "Russia vs America", you can also call it whataboutism[1]. America's invasion of Iraq was bad, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine is bad, but only one is happening right now. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism