3 ms·

A billionaire is usually just someone who's done something like me but 1000x better. Where is your line? What's ok? 100m? 432m? Above that people are "too rich"

A billionaire is usually just someone who's done something like me but 1000x better. Where is your line? What's ok? 100m? 432m? Above that people are "too rich"? What if there's 10% inflation? Do you add that on? Also - yes, there are rent seeking evil billionaires. The 2008 banking crises showed that. There are also rent seeking evil slum lords who own $50k worth of real estate. The problem isn't wealth. It's rent seeking with no value add, with government lobbying sprinkled in.

spyckie2 4y ago
> Where is your line? What's ok? 100m? 432m? Above that people are "too rich"? What if there's 10% inflation? Do you add that on? Surprisingly, this is an answerable question. It's not that we directly take away money from current existing billionaires — rather, we create policies that make SMB owners and working class the beneficiaries of the policies we implement. For example: 1) Be more labor favored rather than rent favored in terms of tax policy. Like you rightly said, rent seeking is currently too strong compared to wages, tax policy should penalize rent seeking. This is only contentious because rent seekers are already too large of a population and would not support this. 2) Business environments that favor small business over large business. Large business is a choice, not an inevitability. I would much prefer a dynamic city with many small businesses (maybe higher prices overall) than the current cookie cutter walmart landscape. This is doable by policy, specifically creating policy that subsidizes small businesses and make them easier to start and run and penalizing large corporations. 3) Labor protection instead of risk and asset protection. For example, the wallstreet bailout is a policy environment that favors risk and asset protection over labor protection. It's not that I'm pro-labor - trust me, when labor laws become too strong to the point that business suffer, I'm pro-business. But right now the working class is powerless to the point of suffering, while large businesses are at a historic level of return, even through multiple recessions. Speaking of large businesses vs small businesses, I want to state again that there's a huge difference between billionaires and millionaires. Repeating again - large businesses are a byproduct of economic policy and not an inevitability. Economic policy is not about optimizing for GDP or growth, it's about the preference of how you want your economy to run. Do you want cities where walmarts eat all the local businesses? That's a economic policy choice. Do you want billionaires? That's also an economic policy choice. And the policy decisions are not "oh, you have a billion dollars, now we tax you." It's instead "oh, you have 6 buildings? maybe your 7th building will impose additional taxes." Oh, you are a giant multi-national shopping chain? Maybe we'll force minimum wage and benefits on your workers so that you can't expand everywhere recklessly. Oh, that rises the price of bread by .50$? Sure, we can live with that tradeoff. This is what is meant by billionaires are a policy issue. It's not limiting your ability to be an entrepreneur - actually, a environment that is good for large businesses is usually bad for small businesses and entrepreneurship (because it favors the incumbents).
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  I’m actually in agreement with you up to a point, but these policies won’t stop Elon or bezos becoming billionaires. They’ve built businesses that actually put a lot of value into society. They own shares in those businesses, that’s why they’re wealthy. Unless you tax their capital gains, yearly, you can’t stop them. And that opens a massive can of worms. How does a paper billionaire pay taxes on paper wealth? Do you force them to take out loans? What if there’s a stock market crash. And they lose net worth? Do you refund their taxes? It’s a really bad policy.

spyckie2 4y ago

> Where is your line? What's ok? 100m? 432m? Above that people are "too rich"? What if there's 10% inflation? Do you add that on? Surprisingly, this is an answerable question. It's not that we directly take away money from current existing billionaires — rather, we create policies that make SMB owners and working class the beneficiaries of the policies we implement. For example: 1) Be more labor favored rather than rent favored in terms of tax policy. Like you rightly said, rent seeking is currently too strong compared to wages, tax policy should penalize rent seeking. This is only contentious because rent seekers are already too large of a population and would not support this. 2) Business environments that favor small business over large business. Large business is a choice, not an inevitability. I would much prefer a dynamic city with many small businesses (maybe higher prices overall) than the current cookie cutter walmart landscape. This is doable by policy, specifically creating policy that subsidizes small businesses and make them easier to start and run and penalizing large corporations. 3) Labor protection instead of risk and asset protection. For example, the wallstreet bailout is a policy environment that favors risk and asset protection over labor protection. It's not that I'm pro-labor - trust me, when labor laws become too strong to the point that business suffer, I'm pro-business. But right now the working class is powerless to the point of suffering, while large businesses are at a historic level of return, even through multiple recessions. Speaking of large businesses vs small businesses, I want to state again that there's a huge difference between billionaires and millionaires. Repeating again - large businesses are a byproduct of economic policy and not an inevitability. Economic policy is not about optimizing for GDP or growth, it's about the preference of how you want your economy to run. Do you want cities where walmarts eat all the local businesses? That's a economic policy choice. Do you want billionaires? That's also an economic policy choice. And the policy decisions are not "oh, you have a billion dollars, now we tax you." It's instead "oh, you have 6 buildings? maybe your 7th building will impose additional taxes." Oh, you are a giant multi-national shopping chain? Maybe we'll force minimum wage and benefits on your workers so that you can't expand everywhere recklessly. Oh, that rises the price of bread by .50$? Sure, we can live with that tradeoff. This is what is meant by billionaires are a policy issue. It's not limiting your ability to be an entrepreneur - actually, a environment that is good for large businesses is usually bad for small businesses and entrepreneurship (because it favors the incumbents).

cloutchaser 4y ago
I’m actually in agreement with you up to a point, but these policies won’t stop Elon or bezos becoming billionaires. They’ve built businesses that actually put a lot of value into society. They own shares in those businesses, that’s why they’re wealthy. Unless you tax their capital gains, yearly, you can’t stop them. And that opens a massive can of worms. How does a paper billionaire pay taxes on paper wealth? Do you force them to take out loans? What if there’s a stock market crash. And they lose net worth? Do you refund their taxes? It’s a really bad policy.