5 ms·

It's directionally correct though, no? What's the case to be made that Germany is ascending? The fact that most German billionaires inherited their wealth is pr

by tvon_g 3y ago

It's directionally correct though, no? What's the case to be made that Germany is ascending? The fact that most German billionaires inherited their wealth is pretty telling I think.

Archelaos 3y ago
It shows that inheritance tax in Germany is too low and that unfortunately there is no longer a wealth tax.
- wernercd 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - badpun 3y ago
    The childred didn't earn it either.
    - wernercd 3y ago
      But the parents did and, as such, get to decide where to put that money. Again: Always time to take money you didn't earn. Greed is an ugly emotion and socialism/marxism/theft is a fail no matter how you try to dress it up.
      - brazzy 3y ago
        Seriously? It's not billionaires who "earn" money by doing nothing who are greedy, but those who think such greed should not be allowed to perpetuate across generations? That is the position you're trying to defend?
        wernercd 3y ago
        [flagged]
        MyAccountYo 3y ago
        Super weird take. Most money is in capital. So most money needs to be spent/taxed in capital. Rich get richer and poor get poorer. That can't work. It's not sustainable. If wages would rise at the same rate as capital we might not need to have this conversation."successful" is also a pretty dim interpretation. Are people who care for elderly or teach kids not worth anything just because they are not CEOs? They should be seen as "successful" but instead we respect the people who exploit the most and are the most ruthless and psychopathic. It's really sad to see that money is the only metric for "success" some people employ.
        brazzy 3y ago
        Your position is simply wrong, and absurdly intellectually dishonest. It starts with "greed is wanting that which you didn't earn". No, that is not what greed is by any stretch of imagination. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/greed https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/greed "a very strong wish to continuously get more of something, especially food or money" It is, by definition, the rich who are greedy. Those who want to limit generational wealth are fighting greed
        wernercd 3y ago
        [flagged]
        jdasdf 3y ago
        [flagged]
        brazzy 3y ago
        It's funny how all of that can be applied without any changes at all to attack libertarianism (or anything, really). It is infact you, the person you are agreeing with, and Paul Birch who have spent their whole lives supporting theft, grift and coercion.
      - 9dev 3y ago
        I always found this way of thinking too shortsighted. No matter the millions on your bank account, being rich isn’t fun if the rest of the populace is poor, uneducated and bland, the economy void of investment opportunities, and the environment decaying. All of those are problems related to lacking education, which is related to poor living conditions in the lower social classes. By distributing wealth more equally, you improve the world your children are going to live in, and by extension their own lives.
    - lumost 3y ago
      It's surprising to me that Europeans aren't more opposed to generational wealth. Didn't many countries fight multiple wars and revolutions to overthrow/re-instate the entrenched agrarian aristocracy? why would Europeans be comfortable allowing the Entrenchment of a modern aristocracy a hundred years later?
      - rogerthis 3y ago
        It's always one aristocracy fighting another. It will always be. Some are better, some are worse for those below.
        Glawen 3y ago
        Well, that's a long time now that there was no fight between these aristocracies. We are maybe in the longest period without war.
    - jterrys 3y ago
      Imagine working hard to guarantee a good future for your children and having the state step in and taking it away.
      - brazzy 3y ago
        Imagine working harder that you can possibly imagine to guarantee a good future for your children, and yet not being able to because the deck is stacked against you, or you're just unlucky - and having the state step in to at least give them a fair chance. Then imagine someone saying that's bad because it's important for other people's kids to be able to live in luxury without ever having to work a day in their lives.
        wernercd 3y ago
        Imagine saying that you working hard, providing for your kids and doing good in life is less because someone else has it better/easier/"doesn't deserve it". Imagine saying that the only way things can be fair is if you steal from others you think have too much to make things 'equal'.
        brazzy 3y ago
        I am not saying at all that it is "less" (in what way do you even imagine that?), I am saying that in cases where it has nothing to do with working harder and everything with profiting off the work of others, which is invariably the case with multimillionaires, there must be a limit If you're gonna play games with framing things as "stealing", the everyone whose income is from investment is stealing from the people who work to produce these returns.
        wernercd 3y ago
        "the everyone whose income is from investment is stealing" So if millionaires are bad for investing and doing good... does that mean "poor" are bad for not investing? Does that mean that the poor people should suffer when investments go bad? And what about stuff that requires billions - IE: Star Link, Tesla, Spaceships, etc? You think a company shouldn't reward people who risked millions? Your problem is you don't accept that most people won't take the risks - either because they can't or because they won't. Those that do are what have created the world of miracles we live in. From computer to phones to the site we are talking across right now. Saying that investers are stealing is a bold faced lie because without those investors there wouldn't be anything to "steal". And if employees had to work at a company that wasn't profitable for decades - IE: Tesla wasn't profitable for 17 years - then a majority of companies wouldn't exist. outlandish inheritance tax punishes those who work hard and take risks - risks that should be rewarded and not punished by greedy people unwilling or unable to take those risks. "the rich" already pay more than their share and it's simple greed to want more More MORE MOAR! of other peoples money simply because they have the balls to take risks.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    It's pretty wild how capital has pushed all of the taxes off of their own transactions and onto the transactions involving labor. Yes indeed, it always seems to be time to take money from others that you did not earn!
  - completegap 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      Rich people get paid for being rich. Poor people get paid for working. These things are not the same. "But rich people don't get paid for being rich, they get paid to take risks! To invest!" There are two definitions of investment running around. One definition has a moral component: you sacrifice consumption today in order to build factories or take risks, thereby enabling greater consumption tomorrow, improving the world and taking a cut of the improvement. That's fine. Great, even! There's a second definition that is amoral, though: anything that you put capital into that provides a return is an investment. This second definition is just fine with "create a problem, sell the cure" and indeed encourages a lot of it. If you look at economic sectors, the ones that are doing really well (health care, housing, education) seem to have this as a high level strategy. Underproduce doctors, price goes up. Fuck up the zoning, price goes up. Pump more debt, price goes up. Merge up the competitors, price goes up. This is deeply unfortunate. Capitalism gets most of its legitimacy from the idea of competition as a check on power, but it seems that most of the money is made by figuring out how not to compete. They teach the Prisoner's Dilemma on the very first day of business school with this very lesson in mind. Don't play the game, play the meta-game! Don't build a product, build a moat! This is highly problematic. When the economy expands by multiples but most people see their pie slice not only failing to keep pace in relative turns but failing to grow in absolute terms, that's a problem, a failed promise. What's the answer? The right will hop up and down shrieking "Stalin!" "Mao!" any time you talk about taxing assets, but no, 100 million people will not starve to death if capital gains income gets taxed as regular income, or if we meet in the middle with work hours so that people are allowed to raise their own kids again, or any of a dozen other progressive policies. They tried to coup the last Roosevelt and they'll try to coup the next one, but the prospertiy gospel's own failed promises will be its undoing. We've fixed this before and we'll fix it again.
  - 7952 3y ago
    Less so than other taxes. The person inheriting didn't earn it.
- completegap 3y ago
  [flagged]
- pseudo0 3y ago
  Or just hike the capital gains tax. Those billions of dollars have to be put somewhere, and the ultra-rich aren't going to hide it under the mattress. Inheritance tax is fairly easy to avoid with sophisticated tax planning.

by tvon_g 3y ago

It's directionally correct though, no? What's the case to be made that Germany is ascending? The fact that most German billionaires inherited their wealth is pretty telling I think.

Archelaos 3y ago

It shows that inheritance tax in Germany is too low and that unfortunately there is no longer a wealth tax.

wernercd 3y ago
[flagged]
- badpun 3y ago
  The childred didn't earn it either.
  - wernercd 3y ago
    But the parents did and, as such, get to decide where to put that money. Again: Always time to take money you didn't earn. Greed is an ugly emotion and socialism/marxism/theft is a fail no matter how you try to dress it up.
    - brazzy 3y ago
      Seriously? It's not billionaires who "earn" money by doing nothing who are greedy, but those who think such greed should not be allowed to perpetuate across generations? That is the position you're trying to defend?
      - wernercd 3y ago
        [flagged]
        MyAccountYo 3y ago
        Super weird take. Most money is in capital. So most money needs to be spent/taxed in capital. Rich get richer and poor get poorer. That can't work. It's not sustainable. If wages would rise at the same rate as capital we might not need to have this conversation."successful" is also a pretty dim interpretation. Are people who care for elderly or teach kids not worth anything just because they are not CEOs? They should be seen as "successful" but instead we respect the people who exploit the most and are the most ruthless and psychopathic. It's really sad to see that money is the only metric for "success" some people employ.
        brazzy 3y ago
        Your position is simply wrong, and absurdly intellectually dishonest. It starts with "greed is wanting that which you didn't earn". No, that is not what greed is by any stretch of imagination. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/greed https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/greed "a very strong wish to continuously get more of something, especially food or money" It is, by definition, the rich who are greedy. Those who want to limit generational wealth are fighting greed
        wernercd 3y ago
        [flagged]
        jdasdf 3y ago
        [flagged]
        brazzy 3y ago
        It's funny how all of that can be applied without any changes at all to attack libertarianism (or anything, really). It is infact you, the person you are agreeing with, and Paul Birch who have spent their whole lives supporting theft, grift and coercion.
    - 9dev 3y ago
      I always found this way of thinking too shortsighted. No matter the millions on your bank account, being rich isn’t fun if the rest of the populace is poor, uneducated and bland, the economy void of investment opportunities, and the environment decaying. All of those are problems related to lacking education, which is related to poor living conditions in the lower social classes. By distributing wealth more equally, you improve the world your children are going to live in, and by extension their own lives.
  - lumost 3y ago
    It's surprising to me that Europeans aren't more opposed to generational wealth. Didn't many countries fight multiple wars and revolutions to overthrow/re-instate the entrenched agrarian aristocracy? why would Europeans be comfortable allowing the Entrenchment of a modern aristocracy a hundred years later?
    - rogerthis 3y ago
      It's always one aristocracy fighting another. It will always be. Some are better, some are worse for those below.
      - Glawen 3y ago
        Well, that's a long time now that there was no fight between these aristocracies. We are maybe in the longest period without war.
  - jterrys 3y ago
    Imagine working hard to guarantee a good future for your children and having the state step in and taking it away.
    - brazzy 3y ago
      Imagine working harder that you can possibly imagine to guarantee a good future for your children, and yet not being able to because the deck is stacked against you, or you're just unlucky - and having the state step in to at least give them a fair chance. Then imagine someone saying that's bad because it's important for other people's kids to be able to live in luxury without ever having to work a day in their lives.
      - wernercd 3y ago
        Imagine saying that you working hard, providing for your kids and doing good in life is less because someone else has it better/easier/"doesn't deserve it". Imagine saying that the only way things can be fair is if you steal from others you think have too much to make things 'equal'.
        brazzy 3y ago
        I am not saying at all that it is "less" (in what way do you even imagine that?), I am saying that in cases where it has nothing to do with working harder and everything with profiting off the work of others, which is invariably the case with multimillionaires, there must be a limit If you're gonna play games with framing things as "stealing", the everyone whose income is from investment is stealing from the people who work to produce these returns.
        wernercd 3y ago
        "the everyone whose income is from investment is stealing" So if millionaires are bad for investing and doing good... does that mean "poor" are bad for not investing? Does that mean that the poor people should suffer when investments go bad? And what about stuff that requires billions - IE: Star Link, Tesla, Spaceships, etc? You think a company shouldn't reward people who risked millions? Your problem is you don't accept that most people won't take the risks - either because they can't or because they won't. Those that do are what have created the world of miracles we live in. From computer to phones to the site we are talking across right now. Saying that investers are stealing is a bold faced lie because without those investors there wouldn't be anything to "steal". And if employees had to work at a company that wasn't profitable for decades - IE: Tesla wasn't profitable for 17 years - then a majority of companies wouldn't exist. outlandish inheritance tax punishes those who work hard and take risks - risks that should be rewarded and not punished by greedy people unwilling or unable to take those risks. "the rich" already pay more than their share and it's simple greed to want more More MORE MOAR! of other peoples money simply because they have the balls to take risks.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  It's pretty wild how capital has pushed all of the taxes off of their own transactions and onto the transactions involving labor. Yes indeed, it always seems to be time to take money from others that you did not earn!
- completegap 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Rich people get paid for being rich. Poor people get paid for working. These things are not the same. "But rich people don't get paid for being rich, they get paid to take risks! To invest!" There are two definitions of investment running around. One definition has a moral component: you sacrifice consumption today in order to build factories or take risks, thereby enabling greater consumption tomorrow, improving the world and taking a cut of the improvement. That's fine. Great, even! There's a second definition that is amoral, though: anything that you put capital into that provides a return is an investment. This second definition is just fine with "create a problem, sell the cure" and indeed encourages a lot of it. If you look at economic sectors, the ones that are doing really well (health care, housing, education) seem to have this as a high level strategy. Underproduce doctors, price goes up. Fuck up the zoning, price goes up. Pump more debt, price goes up. Merge up the competitors, price goes up. This is deeply unfortunate. Capitalism gets most of its legitimacy from the idea of competition as a check on power, but it seems that most of the money is made by figuring out how not to compete. They teach the Prisoner's Dilemma on the very first day of business school with this very lesson in mind. Don't play the game, play the meta-game! Don't build a product, build a moat! This is highly problematic. When the economy expands by multiples but most people see their pie slice not only failing to keep pace in relative turns but failing to grow in absolute terms, that's a problem, a failed promise. What's the answer? The right will hop up and down shrieking "Stalin!" "Mao!" any time you talk about taxing assets, but no, 100 million people will not starve to death if capital gains income gets taxed as regular income, or if we meet in the middle with work hours so that people are allowed to raise their own kids again, or any of a dozen other progressive policies. They tried to coup the last Roosevelt and they'll try to coup the next one, but the prospertiy gospel's own failed promises will be its undoing. We've fixed this before and we'll fix it again.
- 7952 3y ago
  Less so than other taxes. The person inheriting didn't earn it.
completegap 3y ago
[flagged]
pseudo0 3y ago
Or just hike the capital gains tax. Those billions of dollars have to be put somewhere, and the ultra-rich aren't going to hide it under the mattress. Inheritance tax is fairly easy to avoid with sophisticated tax planning.