4 ms·

> and we should probably just tax net worth over a billion at 100% The reason people put these high limits is they think it will never concern them. But the re

by bambax 4y ago

> and we should probably just tax net worth over a billion at 100% The reason people put these high limits is they think it will never concern them. But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100%; or maybe forbid wealth altogether. Or at least we should discuss that, instead of billion limits that may only affect a few people -- people who will never be part of the discussion in the first place.

endymi0n 4y ago
„If being rich is outlawed, only outlaws will be rich.“ – roughly after Phil Zimmerman Thanks, I don‘t like that future. Don‘t get me wrong, I‘m all for progressive and _way_ higher taxes, but this extreme would do the opposite of what you want.
- bambax 4y ago
  Maybe. But my point is that it's that we should discuss this, and not super high limits of over 1 billion that 1/ only affects very few people, 2/ none of which are likely to be part of the conversation and 3/ would still leave them extremely rich by any reasonable standard.
  - sgc 4y ago
    I don't even understand your point. 1. A billion is 1000x more than a million. It is many times higher wealth and far beyond what could be considered required for a family to survive on for generations. 2. A million is not even enough to come close to retirement, it is way too low of a number, so it is not even enough for one person in one lifetime in the US (which we are presumably discussing since the billionaire in question is taxed here). 3. The affect on publicly available funds from taxing the 1% of the 1% would be equal to or more than taxing the 99% of the 1%. So regardless of what you consider the right answer to the question (it's pretty tough to support without major caveats in my opinion), they are not at all the same and it actually comes across as an subtle attempt to reduce any potential support by muddying the waters, regardless of what you were actually trying to do.
- igorkraw 4y ago
  How exactly? You can still be rich - but there will be a cap on power. That's like saying "if amazing dictatorial power is made illegal, only outlaws will amass dictatorial power". No, in fact, sometimes systems do what they are supposed to achieve, especially when it comes to things like power where we can have a conversation that the ultra-rich are usually already engaged in morally and legally questionable behaviour (Bill Gates anti-trust skirting and various anti-competetive antics, facebooks whole business mode centered around tracking users against their will,so much of Elon Musks skirting and flat out ignoring of labour and safety regulations and other recent antics...). I'm not saying a hard cap on wealth is the best way to achieve this or that achieving any form of control of private power that doesn't turn authoritarian is possible, but in general, I'm against using these types of "you can't make the thing we do regulated, because then only criminals will do it" argument. Beer, recreational weed and medical services tightly regulated and we don't see massive crime rings build on top of them. If we regulate wealth to such a degree that most people feel like it's fair, it'll be difficult to establish proper crime syndicates around it - the question of how to keep a state that can do this effectively from being authoritarian is a much better question to raise
- mola 4y ago
  Well, now they pay 0% so I don't think you need to worry about the other extreme yet....
hotpotamus 4y ago
Do you think if Elon Musk was able to own as much wealth as he wants (which I assume is all the wealth of the world), he would use it to increase the freedom of the average person, or do you think he would use it to work his will on them?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Is that even a question? He's on the record as wanting to run a whole planet. Sorry guys, we have to make this work somehow, oxygen is now $8 Elon Dollars / month...
elsjaako 4y ago
How would that work? It's not like most millionaires have $1e6 sitting on a bank account. For example, many (most? all?) farms are worth more than a million, who should own these? If one wants to start a new venture that requires more than $1e6 to start (say a new factory), how would funding work?
- b112 4y ago
  How would that work? It's not like most millionaires have Don't expect a cogent, sensible answer to that question.
  - techdragon 4y ago
    Just like any other tax enforcement works. It’s leg work, forensic accountants and laws that demand accountability. If the government thinks your cheating your taxes people are tasked to investigate… if the government suspects your cheating the 100% billionaire tax they would assign people to the task and investigate. I don’t know why people pretend this has to be special… like billionaires are supervillains with unbelievable power to conceal their globe spanning networks and operations.
    - elsjaako 4y ago
      I didn't mean how would the tax work. I meant how would ownership of companies work? If a company is worth 100 billion ($1e11), does that mean you need 100 000 people who together own that company (and nothing else)? If it has a good month and becomes worth more, you need to find more people? Capping wealth at a billion has a couple of icky practicalities, but I can definitely understand why you would want to do this. There are less than a thousand billionaires in the USA right now, if we can radically improve wealth equality by affecting that many people it seems like a good trade, and those people are still filthy rich at the end of the process. But if you cap it at a million, I start to see things that require millionaires. Starting large companies and family owned farms are two of them. I'm genuinely curious what alternatives to millionaires we have there. Are you (or bambax) arguing for straight up communism, where everything is owned "communally" or by the state?
jacquesm 4y ago
> But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100% I suspect that the answer does not lie in an absolute number but more in a 99th or even 95th percentile sort of way.
techdragon 4y ago
It’s about a high enough number to get agreement. Day to day citizens won’t care and would probably get behind it because its easy to point at bad billionaires who only did bad stuff because they had billions to do those things with. And tax revenue would help their lives so great … tax the rich … easy sell. The millionaires are basically just upper middle class these days, they might think differently but it’s not hard to construct arguments based on their real life and use things they care about to get them to agree. The multimillionaires are the toughest sell, but i think it’s probably doable. They aren’t yet detached from reality, they have causes they care about they can’t single handily bankroll. they haven’t gotten rich enough the tenth generation of their families may never need to work, they can be reasoned with. The hundred million plus will probably on average hate the idea as they are probably in general looking at the continuation of their net worth growth and considering themselves as likely be eventually billionaires themselves… on average. Some will be on board, maybe even a significant percentage but I think the majority wont. The thing is about critical mass. With even a modest percentage of these people and all the rest… With that aggregate group you can use democracy to make things happen even with the billionaires trying to buy the system. There are rich people on board to pay for counter media propaganda and the voting class do matter to their elected representatives as those people worry about getting votes next time. A wealth tax at say a hundred million is so much harder to sell than at a billion. And that’s all before you’d get into how it was structured. It would be almost impossible for the world to stop billionaires hoarding wealth in some foxhole full of gold and diamonds and valuable art and so on… but even just capping personal wealth at a billion and forcing the rest of their wealth into trusts and companies would likely be a net good as the army of money managers and businessmen would spread that money further around the economy than a single billionaire ever could.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Day to day citizens won’t care and would probably get behind it In coastal cities, sure. Beyond that, most people understand the cost of a Prohibition-style war on private wealth.
  - igorkraw 4y ago
spiffytech 4y ago
> But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100% As a reference point, a retirement account funded with $1,000,000, designed to support a $50,000 annual spend (inflation-adjusted), only has a 75% chance of lasting 30 years before the money runs out. (per default parameters on https://cfiresim.com https://cfiresim.com)
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  The original commenter spoke of "over a billion". A million is a modest middle-class retirement account. A billlion is a thousand of those.
- hnbad 4y ago
  That's a strawman because it assumes a 100% wealth tax could exist in a vaccum and would have no effect on the economic system whatsoever. A more realistic concern would be that if you set a 100% wealth tax for all wealth exceeding a million dollars, rich people would just structure their wealth so they don't exceed that cap. In most cases that wealth is primarily in companies (i.e. profiting off other people's labor). So if want to place a ceiling cap on "how much money you can have" (figuratively, let's not pretend this is ever about cash on hand) we'd also need better transparency for corporate ownership. Personally I think a 100% wealth tax as a "maximum amount of money an individual can have" is a red herring and while wealth taxes are certainly a way to skim some of that surplus value siphoned off by people who own companies (speaking as a company owner myself to be clear), it's just a band aid for the underlying problem. In my opinion the only logical solution is to abolish individual ownership of companies, effectively requiring all corporations to operate as cooperatives. This isn't an "easy answer" as there are clearly a lot of nuances to what the laws would need to specify in order to make this happen, and it's clearly in stark opposition to how company ownership works in most places today, but it's the only way to fix the problem of excessive wealth accumulation, if we view it as a real problem.

by bambax 4y ago

endymi0n 4y ago

„If being rich is outlawed, only outlaws will be rich.“ – roughly after Phil Zimmerman Thanks, I don‘t like that future. Don‘t get me wrong, I‘m all for progressive and _way_ higher taxes, but this extreme would do the opposite of what you want.

bambax 4y ago
Maybe. But my point is that it's that we should discuss this, and not super high limits of over 1 billion that 1/ only affects very few people, 2/ none of which are likely to be part of the conversation and 3/ would still leave them extremely rich by any reasonable standard.
- sgc 4y ago
  I don't even understand your point. 1. A billion is 1000x more than a million. It is many times higher wealth and far beyond what could be considered required for a family to survive on for generations. 2. A million is not even enough to come close to retirement, it is way too low of a number, so it is not even enough for one person in one lifetime in the US (which we are presumably discussing since the billionaire in question is taxed here). 3. The affect on publicly available funds from taxing the 1% of the 1% would be equal to or more than taxing the 99% of the 1%. So regardless of what you consider the right answer to the question (it's pretty tough to support without major caveats in my opinion), they are not at all the same and it actually comes across as an subtle attempt to reduce any potential support by muddying the waters, regardless of what you were actually trying to do.
igorkraw 4y ago
How exactly? You can still be rich - but there will be a cap on power. That's like saying "if amazing dictatorial power is made illegal, only outlaws will amass dictatorial power". No, in fact, sometimes systems do what they are supposed to achieve, especially when it comes to things like power where we can have a conversation that the ultra-rich are usually already engaged in morally and legally questionable behaviour (Bill Gates anti-trust skirting and various anti-competetive antics, facebooks whole business mode centered around tracking users against their will,so much of Elon Musks skirting and flat out ignoring of labour and safety regulations and other recent antics...). I'm not saying a hard cap on wealth is the best way to achieve this or that achieving any form of control of private power that doesn't turn authoritarian is possible, but in general, I'm against using these types of "you can't make the thing we do regulated, because then only criminals will do it" argument. Beer, recreational weed and medical services tightly regulated and we don't see massive crime rings build on top of them. If we regulate wealth to such a degree that most people feel like it's fair, it'll be difficult to establish proper crime syndicates around it - the question of how to keep a state that can do this effectively from being authoritarian is a much better question to raise
mola 4y ago
Well, now they pay 0% so I don't think you need to worry about the other extreme yet....

hotpotamus 4y ago

Do you think if Elon Musk was able to own as much wealth as he wants (which I assume is all the wealth of the world), he would use it to increase the freedom of the average person, or do you think he would use it to work his will on them?

jacquesm 4y ago
Is that even a question? He's on the record as wanting to run a whole planet. Sorry guys, we have to make this work somehow, oxygen is now $8 Elon Dollars / month...

elsjaako 4y ago

How would that work? It's not like most millionaires have $1e6 sitting on a bank account. For example, many (most? all?) farms are worth more than a million, who should own these? If one wants to start a new venture that requires more than $1e6 to start (say a new factory), how would funding work?

b112 4y ago
How would that work? It's not like most millionaires have Don't expect a cogent, sensible answer to that question.
- techdragon 4y ago
  Just like any other tax enforcement works. It’s leg work, forensic accountants and laws that demand accountability. If the government thinks your cheating your taxes people are tasked to investigate… if the government suspects your cheating the 100% billionaire tax they would assign people to the task and investigate. I don’t know why people pretend this has to be special… like billionaires are supervillains with unbelievable power to conceal their globe spanning networks and operations.
  - elsjaako 4y ago
    I didn't mean how would the tax work. I meant how would ownership of companies work? If a company is worth 100 billion ($1e11), does that mean you need 100 000 people who together own that company (and nothing else)? If it has a good month and becomes worth more, you need to find more people? Capping wealth at a billion has a couple of icky practicalities, but I can definitely understand why you would want to do this. There are less than a thousand billionaires in the USA right now, if we can radically improve wealth equality by affecting that many people it seems like a good trade, and those people are still filthy rich at the end of the process. But if you cap it at a million, I start to see things that require millionaires. Starting large companies and family owned farms are two of them. I'm genuinely curious what alternatives to millionaires we have there. Are you (or bambax) arguing for straight up communism, where everything is owned "communally" or by the state?

jacquesm 4y ago

> But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100% I suspect that the answer does not lie in an absolute number but more in a 99th or even 95th percentile sort of way.

techdragon 4y ago

It’s about a high enough number to get agreement. Day to day citizens won’t care and would probably get behind it because its easy to point at bad billionaires who only did bad stuff because they had billions to do those things with. And tax revenue would help their lives so great … tax the rich … easy sell. The millionaires are basically just upper middle class these days, they might think differently but it’s not hard to construct arguments based on their real life and use things they care about to get them to agree. The multimillionaires are the toughest sell, but i think it’s probably doable. They aren’t yet detached from reality, they have causes they care about they can’t single handily bankroll. they haven’t gotten rich enough the tenth generation of their families may never need to work, they can be reasoned with. The hundred million plus will probably on average hate the idea as they are probably in general looking at the continuation of their net worth growth and considering themselves as likely be eventually billionaires themselves… on average. Some will be on board, maybe even a significant percentage but I think the majority wont. The thing is about critical mass. With even a modest percentage of these people and all the rest… With that aggregate group you can use democracy to make things happen even with the billionaires trying to buy the system. There are rich people on board to pay for counter media propaganda and the voting class do matter to their elected representatives as those people worry about getting votes next time. A wealth tax at say a hundred million is so much harder to sell than at a billion. And that’s all before you’d get into how it was structured. It would be almost impossible for the world to stop billionaires hoarding wealth in some foxhole full of gold and diamonds and valuable art and so on… but even just capping personal wealth at a billion and forcing the rest of their wealth into trusts and companies would likely be a net good as the army of money managers and businessmen would spread that money further around the economy than a single billionaire ever could.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Day to day citizens won’t care and would probably get behind it In coastal cities, sure. Beyond that, most people understand the cost of a Prohibition-style war on private wealth.
- igorkraw 4y ago

spiffytech 4y ago

> But the reality is we should just tax net worth over a million at 100% As a reference point, a retirement account funded with $1,000,000, designed to support a $50,000 annual spend (inflation-adjusted), only has a 75% chance of lasting 30 years before the money runs out. (per default parameters on https://cfiresim.com https://cfiresim.com)

denton-scratch 4y ago
The original commenter spoke of "over a billion". A million is a modest middle-class retirement account. A billlion is a thousand of those.
hnbad 4y ago
That's a strawman because it assumes a 100% wealth tax could exist in a vaccum and would have no effect on the economic system whatsoever. A more realistic concern would be that if you set a 100% wealth tax for all wealth exceeding a million dollars, rich people would just structure their wealth so they don't exceed that cap. In most cases that wealth is primarily in companies (i.e. profiting off other people's labor). So if want to place a ceiling cap on "how much money you can have" (figuratively, let's not pretend this is ever about cash on hand) we'd also need better transparency for corporate ownership. Personally I think a 100% wealth tax as a "maximum amount of money an individual can have" is a red herring and while wealth taxes are certainly a way to skim some of that surplus value siphoned off by people who own companies (speaking as a company owner myself to be clear), it's just a band aid for the underlying problem. In my opinion the only logical solution is to abolish individual ownership of companies, effectively requiring all corporations to operate as cooperatives. This isn't an "easy answer" as there are clearly a lot of nuances to what the laws would need to specify in order to make this happen, and it's clearly in stark opposition to how company ownership works in most places today, but it's the only way to fix the problem of excessive wealth accumulation, if we view it as a real problem.