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How much revenue do you expect from such a tax bracket? You should do some napkin math to see if it’ll actually make a difference. I suspect very few people re
by rank0 3y ago
How much revenue do you expect from such a tax bracket? You should do some napkin math to see if it’ll actually make a difference.
I suspect very few people report income in excess of $100M and an 80% bracket would do very little for society other than a vindictive gesture to placate the masses.
Not saying we should or shouldn’t…but it’s not gonna fix all our problems like people think.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago> You should do some napkin math to see if it’ll actually make a difference. The napkin math says: 3900 employees. 400M is 2435x median income in the company, so that's $164k. So if we gave the CEO the same income as the median, and split the 400M across everybody else, they'd all have received a $102k bonus, a 62%-of-median-income bonus. You tell me if a 62% bonus for the year would make any difference in your life or not.
- rank0 3y agoVery convenient of you to entirely sidestep discussion of the original point: “80% income tax bracket at >$100M” It’s ridiculous that so many users of this startup accelerator forum want to ban private ownership. I guess I’ll bite… Why would anyone start/own a company if the government is just gonna liquidate your legal ownership? It would be more lucrative to find the easiest job and do the bare minimum than be CEO under your half baked authoritarian system. But why is this even a response in the first place to OP? Stick to the topic or else you come off like a religious zealot.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago> Why would anyone start/own a company if the government is just gonna liquidate your legal ownership? I don't know. Ask the people who started companies when the top marginal rate was approx 90%. Seemed to work out ok for them. I have not proposed banning private ownership. The issue is how much of the revenue from a corporation can end up as private income. You may see those as connected, or even the same issue. This is a problem, in and of itself.
- rank0 3y agoDid you even read TFA? The 400M came from planned stock sales. How are you gonna distribute that money if not by taking his ownership? And your suggestion that anything remotely similar happened to the Reagan era corporations is plainly false.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoStock compensation is compensation. It can be distributed the same way as any other compensation: either handed out differently to other employees or taxed. At 90%. > And your suggestion that anything remotely similar happened to the Reagan era corporations is plainly false. This is getting tiresome. Highest marginal tax rate in the pre-reagan era was around 90%. People started companies. People got rich. Not Elon rich, or Bezos rich, but rich. The 90% tax rate didn't prevent them from being rich, it limited how rich they became relative to their income/compensation.
- rank0 3y agoHe already paid taxes on the compensation! He sold stock that had previously vested and taxes are calculated at the time of vestment. What's so special about the Moderna employees? They already make much more than the median American income. You're redistributing wealth from the ultra rich to the rich. Even if the USGOV took 100% of that $400M, that'd be a whopping dollar per American. History is littered with failed "utopian" communist/socialist states. The ultra rich will always be able to avoid taxes legally or illegally. They're not gonna report income that gets taxed at 90%. The math doesn't work out. If we magically take 400M additional taxes from 1000 individuals annually that wouldn't even cover our federal debt obligations. EDIT: It's telling that you need to resort to quips about goal posts. I suggest you take a moment to read about history and macroeconomics...your brain must be tired from all these mental gymnastics.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoI recommend a good physical therapist. With all that dragging the goal posts around, your shoulders will probably need some work.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago> Very convenient of you to entirely sidestep discussion of the original point I didn't sidestep it at all. If the top marginal rate is 80%, a company might think differently about how to distribute its revenue, and one option would be a more egalitarian distribution. But even if the company doesn't, the tax rate itself creates redistribution options to the entire public. So the same sort of scenario applies, except that the beneficiaries might just be 2000 people in some sort of particularly acute situation, unrelated to moderna. You tell me if you think that would make a difference. Also, tone policing is generally discouraged on HN.
- Nullabillity 3y agoIgnoring all of your other garbage… starting a company is not an inherent good, and filtering out sociopathic career climbers would absolutely be an improvement.
- rank0 3y agoStarting a company is not inherent good, but rather a prerequisite for a prosperous economy. Who do you think maintains supply chains? Who is gonna sell food, energy, and build infrastructure? Entrepreneurship and capitalism for all its ugly tendencies has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. Where does this ideology come from that says people will produce goods/services for free? Nobody is going to build homes or drill for oil without a financial inventive.
- Nullabillity 3y agoHow many buildings has Brendan Bechtel built? How many apples has Doug McMillon sold, let alone harvested? How many packages has Bezos delivered? How many rockets or cars has Elon built?
- rank0 3y agoYou’re missing the point. No corporations means no goods/services. Share with me your fairytale about how we’ll all have apples/cars/whatever without free enterprise. People like you would rather see the world burn than see the presence of the elite, who will always exist.
- twoodfin 3y agoPretty sure the median Moderna employee who’s been around as long as the CEO has seen some very nice pop to their stock comp as well.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoProbably not $400M, though.