4 ms·

I continue to be super concerned about this. I do not understand how the U.S. government does not view these billionaires as serious ideological threats to demo

by bmitc 4y ago

I continue to be super concerned about this. I do not understand how the U.S. government does not view these billionaires as serious ideological threats to democracy, the court system, national security, etc. Makes one realize just how bought out Congress is. Once a person has wealth over, say, $500 million, then there should be a 100% tax.

nightski 4y ago
Meh the government doesn't need more money to conduct frivolous and corrupt spending with. However it might be interesting to explore an option that required people who own a stake in a company that has grown beyond a certain size to be required to siphon off some of those shares to employees over time in a way where it was not conducted on the open market and would not affect share price. I also question whether corporate entities should be allowed to own shares and what the benefits are of that. Should private investment firms be allowed to accumulate massive stakes in public companies?
- xpe 4y ago
  Even staunch libertarians agree that there are agreeable ways for a government to spend money. With that said, the parent commenter subscribes to what political philsophies and/or ethics? ...
- bmitc 4y ago
  I don't think we should avoid something just because there are more problems. We should fix those other problems as well. The primary issue is that there is a single extremist party, not unlike those found in the Middle East, that is hell bent on undermining America for want of power. By systematically undermining education, public health and services, infrastructure, treating government projects as jobs programs, etc., they are creating a worse America and a sort of political Stockholm syndrome among their constituents. But there is indeed corruption across the board in America. Local governments are starved for money, and almost all of their funding comes from local property taxes, that is, normal people. So, these mega-rich are allowed to get unboundedly wealthy, while normal people have to pay to keep society running as a minimal level. The mega-rich's money, as well as corporations', needs to flow back through the system. It does no good to let it concentrate so heavily and ultimately do nothing while it sits there.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    IMO, neither party excels on educational topics and both 100% treat government projects as jobs programs.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nightski 4y ago
    Is it ironic I don't even know which party you are referring to because it accurately describes both in my opinion? But I disagree in that I think we absolutely should avoid it because a larger federal government has been heavily correlated with less local funding (so much so that the SALT deduction was once a thing). It's given rise to globalization and large multi-national conglomerates. It creates a situation where power & money is too concentrated.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      I'm not sure it's ironic as much as it is either not paying attention or not being honest with the situation. One party being extreme does not make the other party the good party. It just means that one party is extreme, which is a fact. The Democrats are not a paragon of a political party. They are as inefficient, middle of the road moderate, corrupt, etc. as any political party. But the Republicans, or at least a powerful subset of them, have become an extremist group. And they are well-funded by conservative and libertarian ideologues who care about nothing other than power and money and can use their wealth to avoid any downsides in their quest. Once you start looking into the ideologies of people like the Koch brothers, Robert Mercer and his family, Peter Thiel, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Sheldon Adelson, Ronald Cameron, Steve Wynn, and others, you start seeing very weird and strange beliefs that are incompatible with a functional society. The primary thread is that these people do not care about others. Just look at the Koch brothers' political donations and the businesses they run. Is it then any surprise why the Republicans might not care so much about climate change and policies to mitigate it? We have one extremist political party, and then the other, somewhat incompetent, party spends all their energy fighting back against the extremism of the other.
- rlt 4y ago
  > Meh the government doesn't need more money to conduct frivolous and corrupt spending with. I agree with that, but they could just, you know, lower taxes on the lower and middle class to balance it out.
  - dopidopHN 4y ago
    Or do something useful and somewhat efficient with the money. Eg: good, reliable public school, roads, network infrastructures, renewable energy sources. I’m a US tax payer since less than a decade. My experience is that I pay a significant portion of my incomes to taxes that only marginally benefit me or folks around me. Recent uptick of direct distribution is nice. But a leadership in the stewarding of the land would be tasteful and send the right message IMO. It’s fascinating to see the Western European countries I’m familiar with being blinded by the economic might of the US but not realizing how little the average citizen benefit from it.
QuarterReptile 4y ago
>Once a person has wealth over, say, $500 million, then there should be a 100% tax. Your inability to conceive of a useful purpose for such a quantity of money does not justify prohibiting its existence. >I do not understand how the U.S. government does not view these billionaires as serious ideological threats to democracy, the court system, national security, etc Cooperation. A government that can't handle the idea of powerful citizens has all the tools it needs to make almost all those people (hard to banish all the Christian missionaries, and martyring them is the surest way to grow more) leave or fall in line, but I don't think many people look at Venezuela or North Korea as ideal places to govern in terms of democracy, the court system, national security, etc.
- bmitc 4y ago
  > Your inability to conceive of a useful purpose for such a quantity of money does not justify prohibiting its existence. What inability and where was it demonstrated? Are you referring to a useful purpose if it was taxed or a useful purpose for individuals to have such wealth? If the latter, then I propose that an individual containing such wealth is less useful than it being returned. Those things and countries you mentioned have nothing to do with this discussion.
  - towaway15463 4y ago
    It’s rather ironic that a discussion of Elon Musk prompted you to make that assertion.
    - QuarterReptile 4y ago
      It's so many layers of delightfully nested irony. Give more money to the federal government so they give more big tax credits for Tesla purchases, but Tesla can't exist any more in this fantasy world where nothing outside of the federal government can grow beyond $500 million in scope.
      - bmitc 4y ago
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
According to the Laffer curve it should probably be 70% or so to maximize government income, but yes. If you tax them 100% they'll just stop working or bail to another country, and then you collect zero tax revenue from them. At 70% most of them will just suck it up and pay. (I realize France is a counterpoint here, but I'd argue it was a half-assed attempt, and they have neighboring French-speaking tax havens that have no real U.S. equivalent.)
- bmitc 4y ago
  Thank you for the reference to the Laffer curve.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  The Laffer curve is a fact-free zone except for at it's two end points. The reality is that nobody knows for sure what the curve of revenue vs. tax rate looks like other than at those two end points, which makes the entire concept completely useless.
  - double_nan 4y ago
    It’s fascinating. Not only that is fact free, but it’s based on an assumption that the purpose of the government is to collect maximum tax value from the citizens. Is it thought?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      It's not based on this assumption at all. In fact, the Laffer curve is named after an economist who did his best to provide "intellectual heft" to politicians who wanted to reduce taxation as far as possible (and maybe a little further than that), later summarized by one of them as "shrink[ing] the government to the point where we can drown it in the bathtub".
  - scarmig 4y ago
    The most amusing thing about the Laffer curve folk is they mention it, and a breath later will talk about cutting taxes so they can drag the government to a tub and drown it in the bathwater: they don't even pretend to believe that we're at the point on the curve where cutting taxes will increase revenue.

by bmitc 4y ago

nightski 4y ago

Meh the government doesn't need more money to conduct frivolous and corrupt spending with. However it might be interesting to explore an option that required people who own a stake in a company that has grown beyond a certain size to be required to siphon off some of those shares to employees over time in a way where it was not conducted on the open market and would not affect share price. I also question whether corporate entities should be allowed to own shares and what the benefits are of that. Should private investment firms be allowed to accumulate massive stakes in public companies?

xpe 4y ago
Even staunch libertarians agree that there are agreeable ways for a government to spend money. With that said, the parent commenter subscribes to what political philsophies and/or ethics? ...
bmitc 4y ago
I don't think we should avoid something just because there are more problems. We should fix those other problems as well. The primary issue is that there is a single extremist party, not unlike those found in the Middle East, that is hell bent on undermining America for want of power. By systematically undermining education, public health and services, infrastructure, treating government projects as jobs programs, etc., they are creating a worse America and a sort of political Stockholm syndrome among their constituents. But there is indeed corruption across the board in America. Local governments are starved for money, and almost all of their funding comes from local property taxes, that is, normal people. So, these mega-rich are allowed to get unboundedly wealthy, while normal people have to pay to keep society running as a minimal level. The mega-rich's money, as well as corporations', needs to flow back through the system. It does no good to let it concentrate so heavily and ultimately do nothing while it sits there.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  IMO, neither party excels on educational topics and both 100% treat government projects as jobs programs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nightski 4y ago
  Is it ironic I don't even know which party you are referring to because it accurately describes both in my opinion? But I disagree in that I think we absolutely should avoid it because a larger federal government has been heavily correlated with less local funding (so much so that the SALT deduction was once a thing). It's given rise to globalization and large multi-national conglomerates. It creates a situation where power & money is too concentrated.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    I'm not sure it's ironic as much as it is either not paying attention or not being honest with the situation. One party being extreme does not make the other party the good party. It just means that one party is extreme, which is a fact. The Democrats are not a paragon of a political party. They are as inefficient, middle of the road moderate, corrupt, etc. as any political party. But the Republicans, or at least a powerful subset of them, have become an extremist group. And they are well-funded by conservative and libertarian ideologues who care about nothing other than power and money and can use their wealth to avoid any downsides in their quest. Once you start looking into the ideologies of people like the Koch brothers, Robert Mercer and his family, Peter Thiel, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Sheldon Adelson, Ronald Cameron, Steve Wynn, and others, you start seeing very weird and strange beliefs that are incompatible with a functional society. The primary thread is that these people do not care about others. Just look at the Koch brothers' political donations and the businesses they run. Is it then any surprise why the Republicans might not care so much about climate change and policies to mitigate it? We have one extremist political party, and then the other, somewhat incompetent, party spends all their energy fighting back against the extremism of the other.
rlt 4y ago
> Meh the government doesn't need more money to conduct frivolous and corrupt spending with. I agree with that, but they could just, you know, lower taxes on the lower and middle class to balance it out.
- dopidopHN 4y ago
  Or do something useful and somewhat efficient with the money. Eg: good, reliable public school, roads, network infrastructures, renewable energy sources. I’m a US tax payer since less than a decade. My experience is that I pay a significant portion of my incomes to taxes that only marginally benefit me or folks around me. Recent uptick of direct distribution is nice. But a leadership in the stewarding of the land would be tasteful and send the right message IMO. It’s fascinating to see the Western European countries I’m familiar with being blinded by the economic might of the US but not realizing how little the average citizen benefit from it.

QuarterReptile 4y ago

>Once a person has wealth over, say, $500 million, then there should be a 100% tax. Your inability to conceive of a useful purpose for such a quantity of money does not justify prohibiting its existence. >I do not understand how the U.S. government does not view these billionaires as serious ideological threats to democracy, the court system, national security, etc Cooperation. A government that can't handle the idea of powerful citizens has all the tools it needs to make almost all those people (hard to banish all the Christian missionaries, and martyring them is the surest way to grow more) leave or fall in line, but I don't think many people look at Venezuela or North Korea as ideal places to govern in terms of democracy, the court system, national security, etc.

bmitc 4y ago
> Your inability to conceive of a useful purpose for such a quantity of money does not justify prohibiting its existence. What inability and where was it demonstrated? Are you referring to a useful purpose if it was taxed or a useful purpose for individuals to have such wealth? If the latter, then I propose that an individual containing such wealth is less useful than it being returned. Those things and countries you mentioned have nothing to do with this discussion.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  It’s rather ironic that a discussion of Elon Musk prompted you to make that assertion.
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    It's so many layers of delightfully nested irony. Give more money to the federal government so they give more big tax credits for Tesla purchases, but Tesla can't exist any more in this fantasy world where nothing outside of the federal government can grow beyond $500 million in scope.
    - bmitc 4y ago

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago

According to the Laffer curve it should probably be 70% or so to maximize government income, but yes. If you tax them 100% they'll just stop working or bail to another country, and then you collect zero tax revenue from them. At 70% most of them will just suck it up and pay. (I realize France is a counterpoint here, but I'd argue it was a half-assed attempt, and they have neighboring French-speaking tax havens that have no real U.S. equivalent.)

bmitc 4y ago
Thank you for the reference to the Laffer curve.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
The Laffer curve is a fact-free zone except for at it's two end points. The reality is that nobody knows for sure what the curve of revenue vs. tax rate looks like other than at those two end points, which makes the entire concept completely useless.
- double_nan 4y ago
  It’s fascinating. Not only that is fact free, but it’s based on an assumption that the purpose of the government is to collect maximum tax value from the citizens. Is it thought?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    It's not based on this assumption at all. In fact, the Laffer curve is named after an economist who did his best to provide "intellectual heft" to politicians who wanted to reduce taxation as far as possible (and maybe a little further than that), later summarized by one of them as "shrink[ing] the government to the point where we can drown it in the bathtub".
- scarmig 4y ago
  The most amusing thing about the Laffer curve folk is they mention it, and a breath later will talk about cutting taxes so they can drag the government to a tub and drown it in the bathwater: they don't even pretend to believe that we're at the point on the curve where cutting taxes will increase revenue.