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And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on the ultra wealthy. Before the six-seven digit

by mptest 3y ago

And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on the ultra wealthy. Before the six-seven digit earning engineers here lambast me, I'm talking billionaires. No one intelligent can/has yet looked me in the eye and told me earnestly: anyone with a billion + $ would have a single degree lower quality of life if their wealth was capped at 999 million If you want empirics google "highest marginal tax rate 1950- present" and "infrastructure spending 1950- present".

southernplaces7 3y ago
>And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on the ultra wealthy. Here you're just shoehorning in a specifically ideological posture in the context of a complex situation that's completely irrelevant to your fixation. Government spending today is enormous in the developed countries and among intergovernmental organizations. In the context of existing health research spending there's vastly more than enough money at least available inside government budgets even as they are for increasing that health spending. Just by reducing several gargantuan military budgets, many governments could easily increase health spending without some arbitrary new punitively huge tax on billionaires. The two things are literally unrelated in cause. In any case, the revenue you'd generate from this billionaire tax you propose would be much less stable or bountiful than you think or is possible through much less antagonistic alternative means, and this revenue tax from basically forbidding billionaires would probably decrease too, because after all, billionaires, generally being protective of their assets in very sophisticated ways, would find ways to circumvent it. Thus just from a practical standpoint, stable funds for medical research would be much better obtained from reasoned, non-punitive incentives and tax schemes complemented by certain budget cuts for absurd outlays that governments often spend ridiculously wasteful amounts on as is. >No one intelligent can/has yet looked me in the eye and told me earnestly: anyone with a billion + $ would have a single degree lower quality of life if their wealth was capped at 999 million No, your hypothetical billioniare wouldn't live any less materially good a life by having just under a full billion dollars, but certain incentives that do also contribute to good things in the economic and developmental world could be destroyed by this prohibition. Also, simply, you might with this tax also badly and pointlessly disincentivize pharmaceutical companies when you could have just tolerated high profits and encouraged them to help with medical generosity in other ways. Remember after all that within health spending, a vast and very useful part of its percentage is sustained by a properly incentivized private sector that it would be stupid to burn just for the sake of cheap anti-capitalist ideological notions. >If you want empirics google "highest marginal tax rate 1950- present" and "infrastructure spending 1950- present". Seriously? you're comparing the speed of progress in medical infrastructure and related spending during the 50's with today? You do realize that part of a reduction in gains could simply be because, oh I don't know, the easier problems and projects having been already handled with older, simpler methods and now the harder problems steadily dominating, requiring much more complex solutions with slower progress and higher cost...
weaksauce 3y ago
billionaires existing is an indictment on our greed and failures of our systems. nobody needs 1000+ million dollars.
- gwd 3y ago
  You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization. Money is power; not to force someone to do what they don't want to do, but to pay them to do what they're willing to do. When capitalism works well, it's because people who made "good" choices with their money-power were rewarded with more, and people who made "bad" choices were rewarded with less. Warren Buffet doesn't have an extravagant lifestyle. He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Obviously it doesn't always happen this way; but the accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad. It's bad when it can be accumulated by ways which destroy value for society rather than creating it; and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing.
  - mptest 3y ago
    >You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization I don't know if they're as different as you portray in practice. I agree with the notion in theory, which is why I distinctly used "wealth" in my original comment and not "income". >He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Sure, no one is saying don't aspire to a meritocracy when considering control of the state's purse strings. The key to your example and your "accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad" notion is the reason I didn't say "no organization" should have more than 999m. I was strictly referring to excess personal accumulation of capital. Which harms us all. Like I said, no one's quality of life is going to get worse if personal wealth were capped at 999m, but I can think of infinite ways to make a lot of people's quality of life better with the money we'd have in such an organization of the economy. >and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing I don't even know if I agree with this. A state fund that earns interest and spends that interest makes sense. I think the key is the first case you note where it's bad.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rpmisms 3y ago
So, the state should control any large enough corporation? Or there should be a ban on over $999m in cash? Or should the government just not waste the absurd amounts of money we already give them?
- mptest 3y ago
  >state should control any large enough corporation Not necessarily, company could be broken down in to smaller, become employee owned in some part, could have some amount of stock become owned by an infrastructure fund or something. There's many ways to skin a cat
  - wingworks 3y ago
    I'd love for this to work, but in practise I feel the owner on the 999m will more likely stop investing in sed company when it reaches 999m and spin up a new company or some other loophole to get around it. (or if it's individual wealth, then they'll use trusts or some of the many other options available to them.) If there are no options, you better believe they'll create them soon enough.
    - mptest 3y ago
      >or some other loophole to get around it. (or if it's individual wealth, then they'll use trusts or some of the many other options available to them Completely agree, it will always be a cat and mouse game. But it's a worthy aspiration, and I'd argue the reason the wealthy have been the cat more than the mouse in the relationship with the state is due only to the budget disparity between them. Start to shrink the disparity between the enforcement budget (think IRS special forces for the ultra wealthy) and the "avoid taxes" budget and the aspiration looks a lot more doable. >owner of the 999m will stop investing Maybe. Or maybe they'll get better and spending rather than hoarding and continuously need to replenish that stock. Even if these "winners" of a more 'social capitalism' stopped gracing us with their genius, the surplus of wealth in endeavors like free stem schooling for everyone (that wants it) would surely make up for that loss??
  - 3y ago
PoignardAzur 3y ago
> And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on the ultra wealthy. Pretty bold to claim that government intervention post-taxes would work better than philanthropic fundations.
- mptest 3y ago
  Is it bold? What percentage of all of our modern infrastructure is from the benevolence of philanthropists?? I am sure it's not zero, but I can't imagine it being a majority... But please enlighten me. For "billionaires know best what to do with all that wealth, they'll take care of us" sounds an awful lot like what sbf was preaching.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    This reasoning doesn't seem very sound. Infrastructure is far too broad, to the point of irrelevance. "Sounds like SBF" is also not reasonable. How about this: the state is bad because it declares war and sends people to their deaths. Its projects often go astonishingly over budget, corruption is high in many countries, and its funding is unreliable, as it's prone to not keeping the promises of the people previously in charge. That accurately describes almost every state that ever existed. If you have a similar list for all philanthropic institutions, that would be a good start in justifying your claim that philanthropy doesn't work, so we have to take the money and let the bureaucrats handle it.
    - mptest 3y ago
      >the state is bad because it declares war and sends people to their deaths Wouldn't it make more sense to conclude war is bad, rather than states themselves? >Its projects often go astonishingly over budget, corruption is high in many countries, and its funding is unreliable, as it's prone to not keeping the promises of the people previously in charge All of this I agree with. But the solution isn't "less states" it's... Better states, surely? What am I missing here? My point with the question about where a majority of our infrastructure comes from, (roads, schools, hospitals, water, electricity and sewage systems to specify as a start) the state or the benevolence of philanthropists was to demonstrate that there is quite a bit of evidence as to what structure is the better steward of societies, a bunch of rich guys, or a state with some mandate to do right by its constituents.
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
Ive heard tax evasion rates were much higher historically, and that though tax rates were considersbly higher and taxes more complicated, many people simply did not pay. The simplification of taxes and reduction may have resulted in a larger amount of collected taxes. Do you suspect if taxes were set to 99% that people would honestly pay them? To me it seems like a solution to two equations intersecting. Find the number that maximizes willing participation (a decreasing function of rates) and maximizes tax revenue (an increasing function of rates).
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  With appropriate funds to the revenue services it's easier to flag and investigate likely tax evasion these days than in days of yore.
- scotty79 3y ago
  > Do you suspect if taxes were set to 99% that people would honestly pay them? Truly rich have most of their money in assets like real estate and companies. And goverment through laws is in control of what it even means to own those things. Government could make a law that when any company goes public 20% of shares are a tax.
GuB-42 3y ago
Since we are talking about health, the ultra wealthy are still human beings, they get sick and die like the rest of us. And they want to stay healthy and live long, also like the rest of us. It means it is in their own selfish interest to invest loads of money into health, because that is what will help them achieve that goal. But again, their body is much like our bodies, so every advance in medicine that can help them live longer will ultimately help us live longer. Maybe at first, only the wealthy will be able to get these state of the art treatment, but processes will improve, patents will expire, and sooner or later, they will be available to all of us. This is one instance where there is no real need to "tax the rich", research is good for all of mankind, the rich are not taking away knowledge from the poor. This is in contrast to natural resources, like land. If the rich want to build their manor on some good spot, the poor that live there will have to leave. But if a cancer treatment is found for the rich, it will not take away a cancer treatment for the poor, in fact, that's the opposite, as it is likely that a few years after, the poor will also get the rich treatment.
- mptest 3y ago
  This notion that medical inventions are the benevolent gift of billionaires' ability to accumulate wealth is just wrong. What medical advances were made by the process you imagine in this comment? Maybe if brian johnson's blood magic from his son works I'll cede a single point here. Science is a communal, collective effort, more evidently than anything else I can think of. To need to say that here of all places is really unfortunate To try and act like taxing the rich is incompatible with medical advancement is just wrong. In the 50's and 60's we still made advancements and google the top marginal tax rate then. Do you think research would even slow down if rich people were capped at 999m? Seriously?
  - boxed 3y ago
    > This notion that medical inventions are the benevolent gift of billionaires' ability to accumulate wealth is just wrong. No one said that. We are saying that billionaires do NOT do that, and because they don't, they are flaming idiots. Literally killing their own children, and often hastening their own personal deaths.
HALtheWise 3y ago
> And since philanthropic approaches to such actions demonstrably do not work... It baffles me that you chose to share this comment on, of all things, a post about the eradication of Polio, which was primarily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a _clear_ example of a "philanthropic approach" working quite well. If I had to identify one organization that has contributed the _most_ to positive changes in public health infrastructure in the last decade it would be them, above any governments, churches, or other non-billionare organizations. Reaching back further, many/most top universities have billionaires to thank for their existence (Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, etc.), the widespread existence of public libraries is mostly due to Andrew Carnegie, and a lot of tech/science innovation comes from for-profit companies primarily controlled by or funded by billionaires. I won't deny that billionaire philanthropy _sometimes_ doesn't work, but that's true for any system of building infrastructure that I can imagine, and is a far cry from your claim that philanthropy is demonstrably an ineffective way to solve public infrastructure problems. I'm curious if there are other processes you see as being historically more effective, either overall or per-dollar, at producing effective public health outcomes than philanthropic organizations? If so, I'd definitely like to find ways to give them more resources.
- mptest 3y ago
  Ok, so first off happy thanksgiving. I'm drunk at this point so forgive my probable incoherence. while there's some validity in the notion that philanthropists do good occasionally, a better question is would their good more effective than a state solution? I don't have a ton of evidence on hand right now, but highways, the whole new deal america stuff pretty clearly did more for infrastructure than any philanthropist. In the terms of stuff like the gates foundation, at the end of the day I'm a utilitarian. They do good I'm happy. All I'm sayin is a more egalitarian state might have achieved the goal quicker had they any rich guys' will to solve it. At the end of the day I don't have the evidence off hand but everything I've read points to the state as the source of modern amenities but admittedly I'm biased towards tech and leftism and I'm no expert. I haven't exactly read ayn rand. I've read stuff like pikkety and sunkara. In the cases where billionaires do good I ask, Couldn't a state with that same will do more?
- tga_d 3y ago

by mptest 3y ago

southernplaces7 3y ago

>And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on the ultra wealthy. Here you're just shoehorning in a specifically ideological posture in the context of a complex situation that's completely irrelevant to your fixation. Government spending today is enormous in the developed countries and among intergovernmental organizations. In the context of existing health research spending there's vastly more than enough money at least available inside government budgets even as they are for increasing that health spending. Just by reducing several gargantuan military budgets, many governments could easily increase health spending without some arbitrary new punitively huge tax on billionaires. The two things are literally unrelated in cause. In any case, the revenue you'd generate from this billionaire tax you propose would be much less stable or bountiful than you think or is possible through much less antagonistic alternative means, and this revenue tax from basically forbidding billionaires would probably decrease too, because after all, billionaires, generally being protective of their assets in very sophisticated ways, would find ways to circumvent it. Thus just from a practical standpoint, stable funds for medical research would be much better obtained from reasoned, non-punitive incentives and tax schemes complemented by certain budget cuts for absurd outlays that governments often spend ridiculously wasteful amounts on as is. >No one intelligent can/has yet looked me in the eye and told me earnestly: anyone with a billion + $ would have a single degree lower quality of life if their wealth was capped at 999 million No, your hypothetical billioniare wouldn't live any less materially good a life by having just under a full billion dollars, but certain incentives that do also contribute to good things in the economic and developmental world could be destroyed by this prohibition. Also, simply, you might with this tax also badly and pointlessly disincentivize pharmaceutical companies when you could have just tolerated high profits and encouraged them to help with medical generosity in other ways. Remember after all that within health spending, a vast and very useful part of its percentage is sustained by a properly incentivized private sector that it would be stupid to burn just for the sake of cheap anti-capitalist ideological notions. >If you want empirics google "highest marginal tax rate 1950- present" and "infrastructure spending 1950- present". Seriously? you're comparing the speed of progress in medical infrastructure and related spending during the 50's with today? You do realize that part of a reduction in gains could simply be because, oh I don't know, the easier problems and projects having been already handled with older, simpler methods and now the harder problems steadily dominating, requiring much more complex solutions with slower progress and higher cost...

weaksauce 3y ago

billionaires existing is an indictment on our greed and failures of our systems. nobody needs 1000+ million dollars.

gwd 3y ago
You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization. Money is power; not to force someone to do what they don't want to do, but to pay them to do what they're willing to do. When capitalism works well, it's because people who made "good" choices with their money-power were rewarded with more, and people who made "bad" choices were rewarded with less. Warren Buffet doesn't have an extravagant lifestyle. He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Obviously it doesn't always happen this way; but the accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad. It's bad when it can be accumulated by ways which destroy value for society rather than creating it; and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing.
- mptest 3y ago
  >You're confusing resources they have control over with resources for their own personal utilization I don't know if they're as different as you portray in practice. I agree with the notion in theory, which is why I distinctly used "wealth" in my original comment and not "income". >He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our economy's resources in part because he's made good decisions in the past. Sure, no one is saying don't aspire to a meritocracy when considering control of the state's purse strings. The key to your example and your "accumulation of wealth by itself isn't necessarily bad" notion is the reason I didn't say "no organization" should have more than 999m. I was strictly referring to excess personal accumulation of capital. Which harms us all. Like I said, no one's quality of life is going to get worse if personal wealth were capped at 999m, but I can think of infinite ways to make a lot of people's quality of life better with the money we'd have in such an organization of the economy. >and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing nothing I don't even know if I agree with this. A state fund that earns interest and spends that interest makes sense. I think the key is the first case you note where it's bad.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rpmisms 3y ago

So, the state should control any large enough corporation? Or there should be a ban on over $999m in cash? Or should the government just not waste the absurd amounts of money we already give them?

mptest 3y ago
>state should control any large enough corporation Not necessarily, company could be broken down in to smaller, become employee owned in some part, could have some amount of stock become owned by an infrastructure fund or something. There's many ways to skin a cat
- wingworks 3y ago
  I'd love for this to work, but in practise I feel the owner on the 999m will more likely stop investing in sed company when it reaches 999m and spin up a new company or some other loophole to get around it. (or if it's individual wealth, then they'll use trusts or some of the many other options available to them.) If there are no options, you better believe they'll create them soon enough.
  - mptest 3y ago
    >or some other loophole to get around it. (or if it's individual wealth, then they'll use trusts or some of the many other options available to them Completely agree, it will always be a cat and mouse game. But it's a worthy aspiration, and I'd argue the reason the wealthy have been the cat more than the mouse in the relationship with the state is due only to the budget disparity between them. Start to shrink the disparity between the enforcement budget (think IRS special forces for the ultra wealthy) and the "avoid taxes" budget and the aspiration looks a lot more doable. >owner of the 999m will stop investing Maybe. Or maybe they'll get better and spending rather than hoarding and continuously need to replenish that stock. Even if these "winners" of a more 'social capitalism' stopped gracing us with their genius, the surplus of wealth in endeavors like free stem schooling for everyone (that wants it) would surely make up for that loss??
- 3y ago

PoignardAzur 3y ago

> And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on the ultra wealthy. Pretty bold to claim that government intervention post-taxes would work better than philanthropic fundations.

mptest 3y ago
Is it bold? What percentage of all of our modern infrastructure is from the benevolence of philanthropists?? I am sure it's not zero, but I can't imagine it being a majority... But please enlighten me. For "billionaires know best what to do with all that wealth, they'll take care of us" sounds an awful lot like what sbf was preaching.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  This reasoning doesn't seem very sound. Infrastructure is far too broad, to the point of irrelevance. "Sounds like SBF" is also not reasonable. How about this: the state is bad because it declares war and sends people to their deaths. Its projects often go astonishingly over budget, corruption is high in many countries, and its funding is unreliable, as it's prone to not keeping the promises of the people previously in charge. That accurately describes almost every state that ever existed. If you have a similar list for all philanthropic institutions, that would be a good start in justifying your claim that philanthropy doesn't work, so we have to take the money and let the bureaucrats handle it.
  - mptest 3y ago
    >the state is bad because it declares war and sends people to their deaths Wouldn't it make more sense to conclude war is bad, rather than states themselves? >Its projects often go astonishingly over budget, corruption is high in many countries, and its funding is unreliable, as it's prone to not keeping the promises of the people previously in charge All of this I agree with. But the solution isn't "less states" it's... Better states, surely? What am I missing here? My point with the question about where a majority of our infrastructure comes from, (roads, schools, hospitals, water, electricity and sewage systems to specify as a start) the state or the benevolence of philanthropists was to demonstrate that there is quite a bit of evidence as to what structure is the better steward of societies, a bunch of rich guys, or a state with some mandate to do right by its constituents.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

Ive heard tax evasion rates were much higher historically, and that though tax rates were considersbly higher and taxes more complicated, many people simply did not pay. The simplification of taxes and reduction may have resulted in a larger amount of collected taxes. Do you suspect if taxes were set to 99% that people would honestly pay them? To me it seems like a solution to two equations intersecting. Find the number that maximizes willing participation (a decreasing function of rates) and maximizes tax revenue (an increasing function of rates).

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
With appropriate funds to the revenue services it's easier to flag and investigate likely tax evasion these days than in days of yore.
scotty79 3y ago
> Do you suspect if taxes were set to 99% that people would honestly pay them? Truly rich have most of their money in assets like real estate and companies. And goverment through laws is in control of what it even means to own those things. Government could make a law that when any company goes public 20% of shares are a tax.

GuB-42 3y ago

Since we are talking about health, the ultra wealthy are still human beings, they get sick and die like the rest of us. And they want to stay healthy and live long, also like the rest of us. It means it is in their own selfish interest to invest loads of money into health, because that is what will help them achieve that goal. But again, their body is much like our bodies, so every advance in medicine that can help them live longer will ultimately help us live longer. Maybe at first, only the wealthy will be able to get these state of the art treatment, but processes will improve, patents will expire, and sooner or later, they will be available to all of us. This is one instance where there is no real need to "tax the rich", research is good for all of mankind, the rich are not taking away knowledge from the poor. This is in contrast to natural resources, like land. If the rich want to build their manor on some good spot, the poor that live there will have to leave. But if a cancer treatment is found for the rich, it will not take away a cancer treatment for the poor, in fact, that's the opposite, as it is likely that a few years after, the poor will also get the rich treatment.

mptest 3y ago
This notion that medical inventions are the benevolent gift of billionaires' ability to accumulate wealth is just wrong. What medical advances were made by the process you imagine in this comment? Maybe if brian johnson's blood magic from his son works I'll cede a single point here. Science is a communal, collective effort, more evidently than anything else I can think of. To need to say that here of all places is really unfortunate To try and act like taxing the rich is incompatible with medical advancement is just wrong. In the 50's and 60's we still made advancements and google the top marginal tax rate then. Do you think research would even slow down if rich people were capped at 999m? Seriously?
- boxed 3y ago
  > This notion that medical inventions are the benevolent gift of billionaires' ability to accumulate wealth is just wrong. No one said that. We are saying that billionaires do NOT do that, and because they don't, they are flaming idiots. Literally killing their own children, and often hastening their own personal deaths.

HALtheWise 3y ago

> And since philanthropic approaches to such actions demonstrably do not work... It baffles me that you chose to share this comment on, of all things, a post about the eradication of Polio, which was primarily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a _clear_ example of a "philanthropic approach" working quite well. If I had to identify one organization that has contributed the _most_ to positive changes in public health infrastructure in the last decade it would be them, above any governments, churches, or other non-billionare organizations. Reaching back further, many/most top universities have billionaires to thank for their existence (Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, etc.), the widespread existence of public libraries is mostly due to Andrew Carnegie, and a lot of tech/science innovation comes from for-profit companies primarily controlled by or funded by billionaires. I won't deny that billionaire philanthropy _sometimes_ doesn't work, but that's true for any system of building infrastructure that I can imagine, and is a far cry from your claim that philanthropy is demonstrably an ineffective way to solve public infrastructure problems. I'm curious if there are other processes you see as being historically more effective, either overall or per-dollar, at producing effective public health outcomes than philanthropic organizations? If so, I'd definitely like to find ways to give them more resources.

mptest 3y ago
Ok, so first off happy thanksgiving. I'm drunk at this point so forgive my probable incoherence. while there's some validity in the notion that philanthropists do good occasionally, a better question is would their good more effective than a state solution? I don't have a ton of evidence on hand right now, but highways, the whole new deal america stuff pretty clearly did more for infrastructure than any philanthropist. In the terms of stuff like the gates foundation, at the end of the day I'm a utilitarian. They do good I'm happy. All I'm sayin is a more egalitarian state might have achieved the goal quicker had they any rich guys' will to solve it. At the end of the day I don't have the evidence off hand but everything I've read points to the state as the source of modern amenities but admittedly I'm biased towards tech and leftism and I'm no expert. I haven't exactly read ayn rand. I've read stuff like pikkety and sunkara. In the cases where billionaires do good I ask, Couldn't a state with that same will do more?
tga_d 3y ago