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Adding this to my reading list. I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Because that's the point

Adding this to my reading list. I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Because that's the point at which you have enough wealth to live a comfortably middle class lifestyle for the rest of your life, still pass down a substantial chunk to your children, and never have to earn another cent. I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved. But either of these changes on their own would do _substantial_ good. Going to make a note to read this book!

keeganpoppen 3y ago
yeah, $15.1 million is just obviously, blatantly too much
lostlogin 3y ago
> Adding this to my reading list. I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Wouldn’t a tax system that steeply ramps up, includes property and tends to it’s loopholes (family trusts, property etc) achieve most of this?
- yellowapple 3y ago
  A land value tax alone would address the vast majority of this, considering that virtually all wealth derives from land access/ownership.
  - AgentOrange1234 3y ago
    Is that still true? I’m probably in a software bubble, but like: none of FAANG have any real land holdings, for instance?
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      Their servers exist somewhere, and while it's called The Cloud™, that ain't literal ;) Datacenters, offices, warehouses, factories... these all sit on top of land. Even a fully-remote company running off Raspberry Pis in someone's closet still requires some quantity of land on which the employees' homes and that closet full of Raspberry Pis sit. Even if the companies themselves don't own that land directly, somebody does.
    - CrazyStat 3y ago
      I think it’s not a coincidence that land value tax is popular on Hacker News. Replacing all the taxes that tech companies currently pay with a land value tax that hardly affects them would be an incredible boon.
      - yellowapple 3y ago
        It's an incredible boon to the vast majority of society. The only ones who suffer under LVT are land speculators and landlords.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    Almost anyone that's making substantial money off of land is already paying property tax on it, as well as any income tax that applies. Now, the income and the property taxes they're paying are in many cases woefully inadequate, but I'm pretty sure the solution to that is to improve the tax system and patch the loopholes, not to add a separate additional tax for everyone to keep track of.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      This wouldn't be a separate additional tax; the vast majority of LVT proponents (myself included) propose it to replace property/sales/income taxes (all of which are just economically-inefficient taxes on land anyway: http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html). As for loopholes, LVT is the most effective way to patch them; you can't exactly move land to offshore bank accounts, after all.
- poncho_romero 3y ago
  Yes I think so. I’m not the original commenter, but I’ve also landed on the idea of limiting wealth to the ballpark of $10-15 million, primarily using progressive taxation. The point is to prevent any one person or small group of people from accruing too much power within our democratic society or reaching levels where they stop using their wealth to contribute to the economy (by e.g. offshoring money).
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > primarily using progressive taxation It's all well and good to take away from the rich, but where does that tax money, once taken away, end up? You're saying it should be redistributed to those making less money, but what's stopping politicians from enriching themselves with that money? > reaching levels where they stop using their wealth to contribute to the economy (by e.g. offshoring money) Money in Cayman Islands numbered accounts generally only happens with illegally gained money (maybe by the likes of politicians I've described above), or by people in jurisdictions with harsh capital controls (like the sort you're describing). People like Bezos or Gates aren't stashing their money away like that. Most of the ultra-rich of America derive their net worth figures from ownership of publicly-traded companies.
ch4s3 3y ago
So what is your proposal if you own a company, or if some minerals are discovered on your heretofore low value land? It's not really all that uncommon for a company with a sole owner or a partnership to be worth in excess of $15 Million.
- thunfischbrot 3y ago
  Pay your employees more, or be taxed near 100% on the excess gains?
  - poncho_romero 3y ago
    Exactly. Tax the profits, thereby encouraging the company to invest internally in higher salaries, R&D, new equipment, etc.
    - ch4s3 3y ago
      How does that encourage more R&D and higher salaries? Or rather can you show an example of a country with high corporate taxes and higher relative wages and R&D spending? I’m not aware of one.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    But why? If someone is creating millions of dollars worth of goods or services what moral justification is there for it to be confiscated, particularly at your arbitrary level?
    - naasking 3y ago
      > If someone is creating millions of dollars worth of goods or services what moral justification is there for it to be confiscated, particularly at your arbitrary level? I think there are good "system stability" arguments to set limits. Roughly, states are dynamic multivariate systems whose objective function should ideally track citizen well being and state security, and taxes are one of the feedback loops that prevent individual actors from dominating or otherwise destabilizing the system. The mistake is thinking that the fictions we created to establish this system are fundamental moral imperatives in and of themselves.
glitchc 3y ago
Any solutions that are in conflict with human nature will never be successful. Ambition and envy are basic human traits. At a deeper level, we are beings that measure everything (including light, sound, smell, touch and taste) by way of comparison. Communism fails because no one has anything left to aspire to and everyone is therefore equally miserable.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- medo-bear 3y ago
  Wealth caps of 15M is certainly not communism > Ambition and envy are basic human traits No they are not
  - MightyBuzzard 3y ago
    Yes, they are. If they weren't you wouldn't care if someone made more than $15M.
    - medo-bear 3y ago
      If someone makes the grand claim that something is a basic (fundamental) human trait, the burden of proof is on them.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      Is watching those around you starve/freeze to death due to having $0 (or less!) not a reason to care about whether some people make more than $15M? How many people could that hoarded wealth have housed and clothed and fed?
      - germandiago 3y ago
        I think that is a wrong perspective. Of course many people care about that. The problem is that by looting rich people you will not end up with the problem. In fact, you can make the problem much bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty... Cuba or Venezuela were richer than Spain in the 50s just to give you a couple of examples. And Venezuela has natural resources. What happened? Well, yes, this kind of: let's take everything from the others and give to the poor.
sackfield 3y ago
Whenever people talk about how much wealth is comfortable (or ethical) to have, its usually just a notch above their own (well within their social class status). To be fair I don't know your wealth at all but its just an observation I've had from talking with others about this. The end result of this would be to make these people some of the wealthiest in the country by dragging the wealth curve to just above their level. It sounds like a moral hazard to me.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  These arguments nearly always come back to the fundamental desire (greed) for "Giev moniez pl0x.", as you say the limit is above their own wealth as to not be an inconvenience to themselves while siphoning monies from those around (and presumably above) them. It would make for better discussion if these social justice warriors were at least honest about what they actually want.
  - jdiff 3y ago
    Most people in this thread aren't making 6-7 figures. The boogeyman you're railing against isn't here.
    - FredPret 3y ago
      Are you kidding? This HN.
    - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
      Very few people on HN are making less than 6 figures.
      - imetatroll 3y ago
        I make less. It sucks.
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      How many people here aren't making 6 figures? I'd wager a slim minority. And I'll bet that some who show up here are making 7 figures. Did you think you were replying on reddit or twitter or something?
hackererror404 3y ago
Some things cost way more than 10 or 15 million in terms of investment. Why shouldn't a billionaire be capable of starting a genetics lab to fund cancer research and pay for it in cash, if they are so inclined? Also almost all of super wealthy people's "wealth" is tied up in assets that are funding entire economies. This money is creating jobs, allowing for affordable loans, the money is working for many other people... It's not as if the money wealthy people have is just in physical gold coins in their swimming pools.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > Why shouldn't a billionaire be capable of starting a genetics lab to fund cancer research and pay for it in cash, if they are so inclined? The answer might be "they should be able to" But are you open to the possibility of the answer being "Despite the apparent potential benefits, it isn't beneficial overall to society or humanity to have extremely rich individuals starting research projects, and perhaps not beneficial overall to even have extremely rich individuals at all" ?
  - rockemsockem 3y ago
    Why would it be better to have fewer entities allocating large chunks of capital?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      Who said anything about fewer?
      - rockemsockem 3y ago
        I was taking this last comment > perhaps not beneficial overall to even have extremely rich individuals at all To mean there would be fewer. I suppose it depends on where the "extremely rich" line is drawn, but I feel like you must be extremely rich to start a project that normally only a government could start.
bluescrn 3y ago
It's just not practical to enforce a cap though. Even with a very authoritarian world government to stop people moving assets elsewhere, there'll be too many ways around it. So you can only have $15mil of assets? But your partner can have $15mil too, as can your kids, and parents. And if that's not enough, you can still try to hoard extra wealth in easier-to-hide forms - whether it's physical gold, bitcoin, art, fine wines, etc. Or worse still, the super-rich will realise that they can spend many times the wealth cap per year consumable/disposable items (so long as they stay under the cap, or get back there by year-end), and become more wasteful. "Might as well spend a few million on a private jet, if I don't, I'll hit the wealth cap!".
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  Its not that its not practical as much as it is actively counterproductive to progress since the minimum effective size in many sectors is larger than that so you would end up force liquidating founders out of companies they start, which is a bad thing in for progress in mlst cases. You want quality founders to ma*ntain control and grow a business up to the point it starts abusing market power rather than innovating and that is often far beyond 15 mm valuation. Tje real problem is the market power and that is when heavy regulation and breakup should set in, not at some arbitrarily low asset limit.
- jszymborski 3y ago
  But even in your family hypothetical, the overall inequality is still much less than between billionaires and the middle-class (nothing said of the truly destitute). > Or worse still, the super-rich will realise that they can spend many times the wealth cap per year consumable/disposable items (so long as they stay under the cap, or get back there by year-end), and become more wasteful. "Might as well spend a few million on a private jet, if I don't, I'll hit the wealth cap!". This is a very interesting point! I'd worry less about rich folks spending to be below the cap (that money re-enters the economy), but rather evasion by sending money back and forth between a small set. Clearly evasion would need to be monitored.
  - FredPret 3y ago
medo-bear 3y ago
I agree with this except just to point out > Because that's the point at which you have enough wealth to live a comfortably middle class lifestyle for the rest of your life 15M is far from middle class by any measure. 15M affords you a big city place, a place for winter holidays, and a place for summer holidays. With still left to have spoiled little kids (and possibly spoiled grand children). Also, 15M is not static money. If you have that much money you will certainly gain an income from just having that much money.
- vacuity 3y ago
  Yeah, my family lives very comfortably in the US, all things considered ("upper middle class"??), but still far from having $15 million in total wealth.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
I don't have a problem with someone being a billionaire per se. Assuming, of course, the wealth was earned without worker exploitation. However, I do take strong offense to politico-economic systems where the billionaire has more political power than a poor person. In the current system in almost every country, both individual super rich people and collectively the top 1-5% have enormously more political power than the remaining people. The system much be changed.
- mynjin 3y ago
  It seems likely that the only way to become a billionaire is through worker exploitation, collusion, cheating the system through tax evation and asset laundering, etc. I think politico-economic interference is the crux of the problem. For example, someone with $10 million are trying to maintain their lifestyle, they want to know what stocks, bonds, and certificates, and real estate to invest in. Someone with $100 million are trying to leverage through venture capital, joining corporate boards, owning platforms, etc. Someone with $1+ billion will find that the most cost effective way to keep and gain wealth is buying lobbyists, campaign donations, starting and controlling some non-profits that have tax and spending incentives, getting favors by giving politician's kids high profile jobs, and any other innumberable political grift that maintain their wealth status and that only really work at that scale. I wouldn't care if billionaires were just hoarding some money. But they are not, and all this while they pay bad wages and have even shoved off the cost of training for their jobs onto society and the labor force who have to speculate and pay for their own training.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > It seems likely that the only way to become a billionaire is through worker exploitation, collusion, cheating the system through tax evation and asset laundering, etc. What workers did J.K. Rowling exploit to become a billionaire? Did Stephen King only cheat half as much to arrive at his half-billion net worth? They produced something that people wanted to buy that previously did not exist, and everyone in the chain got paid what they were willing to work for. In what world does it "seem likely" that you can only become a billionaire through illicit means?
303uru 3y ago
I agree wholeheartedly with this concept. I wonder if the most realistic way to do it is to hardcap inheritance. As much as I'm uncomfortable with the power hoarding with the Bezo, Gates, Musks of the worlds, I'm much more uncomfortable with their hundred great grandchildren still being the most powerful group on the planet. An honest meritocracy type should even be able to get behind that. Bezos built something, his kids were just born into it. Cap their total inheritance at $15M and call it a day.
golemiprague 3y ago
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jimbokun 3y ago
> I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Where's the empirical evidence that such a cutoff benefits society as a whole? > I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved. I like the German system of giving labor a board seat. We should try that first before burning our entire economic model to the ground and starting over, based on a gut feeling with no hard evidence to support it.
- yulker 3y ago
  Not to be snarky, but how could there be empirical evidence for anything that hasn't been done before?
  - educaysean 3y ago
    That's true. Although when embarking on a brand new frontier without any empirical evidence available, one would assume there's ample theoretical evidence to make up for it. In this case both appear to be lacking.
    - vonjuice 3y ago
      In an abstract context that all seems dandy. However when the power is held by people who would potentially face significant financial loss from either theoretical or empirical evidence, it shouldn't be a surprise that such evidence is lacking, no?
      - latency-guy2 3y ago
        > it shouldn't be a surprise that such evidence is lacking, no? So there's no way for you to be wrong? But there is indeed all the ways for everyone else to be wrong?
        vonjuice 3y ago
naasking 3y ago
> I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy While I'm sympathetic to this ideal, I don't think it works. All you'd do is add all the inefficiencies of politics into business-level decision making. Democratic processes should be reserved for governing shared resources, like water and air, where independent decision making has pathologies, and independent hierarchical systems are good for optimizing efficiency and value for all other goods and services. We just have to ensure there's competition and fairness for good outcomes.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  You're aware that all publicly traded companies are run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders? The only change here is who limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders The more shares you hold, the greater your voice, when it comes to corporate governance. It's not at all the same as the typical idea of democracy as "one person, one vote". Would you rather corporate governance be more like a political democracy, where no matter if someone has 30% of the shares or 0.0001%, they get the same vote? Or, perhaps the other way around, you'd like to change a political democracy to: > limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved where suffrage is limited to people who work and contribute to society?
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      > The more shares you hold, the greater your voice, when it comes to corporate governance. It's not at all the same as the typical idea of democracy as "one person, one vote". "One person, one vote" is not how the presidency works in the USA. Beyond that, you seem to trying setup some strawman positions rather than engaging in a discussion about anything anyone actually said.
- ksplicer 3y ago
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million Do you think your standard of living under such a system would be lower, the same, or higher than it is now? I think it would be much lower. I think most people will stop working when they stop getting paid. Some I guess would spend money as fast as they make it on experiences and services and other things that don't increase wealth. But I think many people who would in the current system have gone on to create billions in wealth would stop at $10 million and say, "OK I hit the number, moving on to the next challenge".
- vacuity 3y ago
  Even if that's true, I think a lot of people have a long way to go before reaching $10 million in wealth, and there always would be, so it's not like there are just a few "chosen ones" who could do so much more if they were motivated to earn $1 billion, and society will suffer otherwise.
- vonjuice 3y ago
  > Do you think your standard of living under such a system would be lower, the same, or higher than it is now? that would probably depend on whether you're being exploited by the current system Imagine looking at a group of slave owners and slaves and asking a similar question with regards to ending slavery, and being all like "well let's hear both sides".
  - gottorf 3y ago
    I fail to see the relation between people participating in an economy based on a voluntary exchange of goods and services and slavery.
    - vonjuice 3y ago
      There's people participating in that economy benefiting from people in other countries being exploited in order for those participants to get cheap products.
ydlr 3y ago
Let folks keep their wine and art collections. Limits need to be placed on ownership of productive assets. Employee, consumer, or even municipal ownership of firms would be a natural consequence of such a limit. No other way to offload assets fast enough, especially since the usual sources of capital would be under the same limits.
spacecadet 3y ago
I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved. 100%
nox101 3y ago
The problem is some places are more desirable than others. Penthouses, even if they're not big, they are, for most people, more desirable than the bottom floor. They have a view. They're away from noise. They're often away from rats, roaches, ants which start at the bottom. Similarly any place on the side of a hill, a cliff, a beach, ... You're unlikely to ban such places (all buildings 1 story?) Even if you managed that they're the house on the quiet street and the loud house next to the highway/trainline/airport You could try to make such places merit based but that only turns into a different kind of bribe and cronyism. Money is at least, somewhat obtainable by anyone. Plenty of people were not rich and became rich, maybe by luck, but at least it's a higher rate of churn than central authority has ever been.
dmn322 3y ago
> a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved A few notes... another way to make the economy more worker owned is to have a a portion of the shares of companies held by public entities, which then use dividends for a basic income. Public investment in companies like this could also be a way of incubating industries. Another note: the biggest problem with businesses being democratic institutions is the pace at which decisions can be collectively made. This is an information systems problem that can be solved by software. Instead of voting for representatives who make decisions, we need an institutional programming language, and people can vote directly on implementations of modifications to this institutional code that defines every institution. Votes are essentially approvals to a PR. No need for intermediaries to misinterpret voters' intentions.
blatzguzzler 3y ago
I have to laugh when $15M is considered enough wealth to "live a middle class lifestyle." I live in flyover country in a city of two million where the average household income is $60K. A 4% investment return on $15M would keep ten ordinary middle-class households afloat in my neighborhood forever without anyone ever having to work again (and without ever having to touch the investment principal). It's easy to lose track of what an immense amount of money $15M is.
throwawaymaths 3y ago
That's terrible. Suppose you want to go some amount of social good that will cost you $15M. Let's say. Develop a new drug. Maybe you want to do something crazy, like don't patent it. It's clearly great for society. But nobody will give you money to do that. Your only recourse to do it is to amass wealth yourself and fund it personally. Now you have a created a society where that sort of social entrepreneurism is impossible.
- bagful 3y ago
  If this good were “clearly” great for society, they wouldn’t have trouble forming a conglomerate towards achieving it. We can use the wealth that isn’t sponged up and locked away at the bottom of the sea for such initiatives. Society has had enough of ostensibly singular “great persons” inflicting their idea of the greater good on the rest of us in exchange for love, respect, and money. The rest of us have to earn those three.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    > they wouldn’t have trouble forming a conglomerate towards achieving it. That's underpants-gnomes level bullshit and you know it. Especially since I've given a concrete example that doesn't exist and would be AWESOME for society

keeganpoppen 3y ago

yeah, $15.1 million is just obviously, blatantly too much

lostlogin 3y ago

> Adding this to my reading list. I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Wouldn’t a tax system that steeply ramps up, includes property and tends to it’s loopholes (family trusts, property etc) achieve most of this?

yellowapple 3y ago
A land value tax alone would address the vast majority of this, considering that virtually all wealth derives from land access/ownership.
- AgentOrange1234 3y ago
  Is that still true? I’m probably in a software bubble, but like: none of FAANG have any real land holdings, for instance?
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    Their servers exist somewhere, and while it's called The Cloud™, that ain't literal ;) Datacenters, offices, warehouses, factories... these all sit on top of land. Even a fully-remote company running off Raspberry Pis in someone's closet still requires some quantity of land on which the employees' homes and that closet full of Raspberry Pis sit. Even if the companies themselves don't own that land directly, somebody does.
  - CrazyStat 3y ago
    I think it’s not a coincidence that land value tax is popular on Hacker News. Replacing all the taxes that tech companies currently pay with a land value tax that hardly affects them would be an incredible boon.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      It's an incredible boon to the vast majority of society. The only ones who suffer under LVT are land speculators and landlords.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  Almost anyone that's making substantial money off of land is already paying property tax on it, as well as any income tax that applies. Now, the income and the property taxes they're paying are in many cases woefully inadequate, but I'm pretty sure the solution to that is to improve the tax system and patch the loopholes, not to add a separate additional tax for everyone to keep track of.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    This wouldn't be a separate additional tax; the vast majority of LVT proponents (myself included) propose it to replace property/sales/income taxes (all of which are just economically-inefficient taxes on land anyway: http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html). As for loopholes, LVT is the most effective way to patch them; you can't exactly move land to offshore bank accounts, after all.
poncho_romero 3y ago
Yes I think so. I’m not the original commenter, but I’ve also landed on the idea of limiting wealth to the ballpark of $10-15 million, primarily using progressive taxation. The point is to prevent any one person or small group of people from accruing too much power within our democratic society or reaching levels where they stop using their wealth to contribute to the economy (by e.g. offshoring money).
- gottorf 3y ago
  > primarily using progressive taxation It's all well and good to take away from the rich, but where does that tax money, once taken away, end up? You're saying it should be redistributed to those making less money, but what's stopping politicians from enriching themselves with that money? > reaching levels where they stop using their wealth to contribute to the economy (by e.g. offshoring money) Money in Cayman Islands numbered accounts generally only happens with illegally gained money (maybe by the likes of politicians I've described above), or by people in jurisdictions with harsh capital controls (like the sort you're describing). People like Bezos or Gates aren't stashing their money away like that. Most of the ultra-rich of America derive their net worth figures from ownership of publicly-traded companies.

ch4s3 3y ago

So what is your proposal if you own a company, or if some minerals are discovered on your heretofore low value land? It's not really all that uncommon for a company with a sole owner or a partnership to be worth in excess of $15 Million.

thunfischbrot 3y ago
Pay your employees more, or be taxed near 100% on the excess gains?
- poncho_romero 3y ago
  Exactly. Tax the profits, thereby encouraging the company to invest internally in higher salaries, R&D, new equipment, etc.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    How does that encourage more R&D and higher salaries? Or rather can you show an example of a country with high corporate taxes and higher relative wages and R&D spending? I’m not aware of one.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  But why? If someone is creating millions of dollars worth of goods or services what moral justification is there for it to be confiscated, particularly at your arbitrary level?
  - naasking 3y ago
    > If someone is creating millions of dollars worth of goods or services what moral justification is there for it to be confiscated, particularly at your arbitrary level? I think there are good "system stability" arguments to set limits. Roughly, states are dynamic multivariate systems whose objective function should ideally track citizen well being and state security, and taxes are one of the feedback loops that prevent individual actors from dominating or otherwise destabilizing the system. The mistake is thinking that the fictions we created to establish this system are fundamental moral imperatives in and of themselves.

glitchc 3y ago

Any solutions that are in conflict with human nature will never be successful. Ambition and envy are basic human traits. At a deeper level, we are beings that measure everything (including light, sound, smell, touch and taste) by way of comparison. Communism fails because no one has anything left to aspire to and everyone is therefore equally miserable.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
medo-bear 3y ago
Wealth caps of 15M is certainly not communism > Ambition and envy are basic human traits No they are not
- MightyBuzzard 3y ago
  Yes, they are. If they weren't you wouldn't care if someone made more than $15M.
  - medo-bear 3y ago
    If someone makes the grand claim that something is a basic (fundamental) human trait, the burden of proof is on them.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    Is watching those around you starve/freeze to death due to having $0 (or less!) not a reason to care about whether some people make more than $15M? How many people could that hoarded wealth have housed and clothed and fed?
    - germandiago 3y ago
      I think that is a wrong perspective. Of course many people care about that. The problem is that by looting rich people you will not end up with the problem. In fact, you can make the problem much bigger mid-term by killing incentives and making people into poverty... Cuba or Venezuela were richer than Spain in the 50s just to give you a couple of examples. And Venezuela has natural resources. What happened? Well, yes, this kind of: let's take everything from the others and give to the poor.

sackfield 3y ago

Whenever people talk about how much wealth is comfortable (or ethical) to have, its usually just a notch above their own (well within their social class status). To be fair I don't know your wealth at all but its just an observation I've had from talking with others about this. The end result of this would be to make these people some of the wealthiest in the country by dragging the wealth curve to just above their level. It sounds like a moral hazard to me.

Dalewyn 3y ago
These arguments nearly always come back to the fundamental desire (greed) for "Giev moniez pl0x.", as you say the limit is above their own wealth as to not be an inconvenience to themselves while siphoning monies from those around (and presumably above) them. It would make for better discussion if these social justice warriors were at least honest about what they actually want.
- jdiff 3y ago
  Most people in this thread aren't making 6-7 figures. The boogeyman you're railing against isn't here.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    Are you kidding? This HN.
  - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
    Very few people on HN are making less than 6 figures.
    - imetatroll 3y ago
      I make less. It sucks.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    How many people here aren't making 6 figures? I'd wager a slim minority. And I'll bet that some who show up here are making 7 figures. Did you think you were replying on reddit or twitter or something?

hackererror404 3y ago

Some things cost way more than 10 or 15 million in terms of investment. Why shouldn't a billionaire be capable of starting a genetics lab to fund cancer research and pay for it in cash, if they are so inclined? Also almost all of super wealthy people's "wealth" is tied up in assets that are funding entire economies. This money is creating jobs, allowing for affordable loans, the money is working for many other people... It's not as if the money wealthy people have is just in physical gold coins in their swimming pools.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> Why shouldn't a billionaire be capable of starting a genetics lab to fund cancer research and pay for it in cash, if they are so inclined? The answer might be "they should be able to" But are you open to the possibility of the answer being "Despite the apparent potential benefits, it isn't beneficial overall to society or humanity to have extremely rich individuals starting research projects, and perhaps not beneficial overall to even have extremely rich individuals at all" ?
- rockemsockem 3y ago
  Why would it be better to have fewer entities allocating large chunks of capital?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Who said anything about fewer?
    - rockemsockem 3y ago
      I was taking this last comment > perhaps not beneficial overall to even have extremely rich individuals at all To mean there would be fewer. I suppose it depends on where the "extremely rich" line is drawn, but I feel like you must be extremely rich to start a project that normally only a government could start.

bluescrn 3y ago

It's just not practical to enforce a cap though. Even with a very authoritarian world government to stop people moving assets elsewhere, there'll be too many ways around it. So you can only have $15mil of assets? But your partner can have $15mil too, as can your kids, and parents. And if that's not enough, you can still try to hoard extra wealth in easier-to-hide forms - whether it's physical gold, bitcoin, art, fine wines, etc. Or worse still, the super-rich will realise that they can spend many times the wealth cap per year consumable/disposable items (so long as they stay under the cap, or get back there by year-end), and become more wasteful. "Might as well spend a few million on a private jet, if I don't, I'll hit the wealth cap!".

snapplebobapple 3y ago
Its not that its not practical as much as it is actively counterproductive to progress since the minimum effective size in many sectors is larger than that so you would end up force liquidating founders out of companies they start, which is a bad thing in for progress in mlst cases. You want quality founders to ma*ntain control and grow a business up to the point it starts abusing market power rather than innovating and that is often far beyond 15 mm valuation. Tje real problem is the market power and that is when heavy regulation and breakup should set in, not at some arbitrarily low asset limit.
jszymborski 3y ago
But even in your family hypothetical, the overall inequality is still much less than between billionaires and the middle-class (nothing said of the truly destitute). > Or worse still, the super-rich will realise that they can spend many times the wealth cap per year consumable/disposable items (so long as they stay under the cap, or get back there by year-end), and become more wasteful. "Might as well spend a few million on a private jet, if I don't, I'll hit the wealth cap!". This is a very interesting point! I'd worry less about rich folks spending to be below the cap (that money re-enters the economy), but rather evasion by sending money back and forth between a small set. Clearly evasion would need to be monitored.
- FredPret 3y ago

medo-bear 3y ago

I agree with this except just to point out > Because that's the point at which you have enough wealth to live a comfortably middle class lifestyle for the rest of your life 15M is far from middle class by any measure. 15M affords you a big city place, a place for winter holidays, and a place for summer holidays. With still left to have spoiled little kids (and possibly spoiled grand children). Also, 15M is not static money. If you have that much money you will certainly gain an income from just having that much money.

vacuity 3y ago
Yeah, my family lives very comfortably in the US, all things considered ("upper middle class"??), but still far from having $15 million in total wealth.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

I don't have a problem with someone being a billionaire per se. Assuming, of course, the wealth was earned without worker exploitation. However, I do take strong offense to politico-economic systems where the billionaire has more political power than a poor person. In the current system in almost every country, both individual super rich people and collectively the top 1-5% have enormously more political power than the remaining people. The system much be changed.

mynjin 3y ago
It seems likely that the only way to become a billionaire is through worker exploitation, collusion, cheating the system through tax evation and asset laundering, etc. I think politico-economic interference is the crux of the problem. For example, someone with $10 million are trying to maintain their lifestyle, they want to know what stocks, bonds, and certificates, and real estate to invest in. Someone with $100 million are trying to leverage through venture capital, joining corporate boards, owning platforms, etc. Someone with $1+ billion will find that the most cost effective way to keep and gain wealth is buying lobbyists, campaign donations, starting and controlling some non-profits that have tax and spending incentives, getting favors by giving politician's kids high profile jobs, and any other innumberable political grift that maintain their wealth status and that only really work at that scale. I wouldn't care if billionaires were just hoarding some money. But they are not, and all this while they pay bad wages and have even shoved off the cost of training for their jobs onto society and the labor force who have to speculate and pay for their own training.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > It seems likely that the only way to become a billionaire is through worker exploitation, collusion, cheating the system through tax evation and asset laundering, etc. What workers did J.K. Rowling exploit to become a billionaire? Did Stephen King only cheat half as much to arrive at his half-billion net worth? They produced something that people wanted to buy that previously did not exist, and everyone in the chain got paid what they were willing to work for. In what world does it "seem likely" that you can only become a billionaire through illicit means?

303uru 3y ago

I agree wholeheartedly with this concept. I wonder if the most realistic way to do it is to hardcap inheritance. As much as I'm uncomfortable with the power hoarding with the Bezo, Gates, Musks of the worlds, I'm much more uncomfortable with their hundred great grandchildren still being the most powerful group on the planet. An honest meritocracy type should even be able to get behind that. Bezos built something, his kids were just born into it. Cap their total inheritance at $15M and call it a day.

golemiprague 3y ago

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jimbokun 3y ago

> I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million. Where's the empirical evidence that such a cutoff benefits society as a whole? > I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved. I like the German system of giving labor a board seat. We should try that first before burning our entire economic model to the ground and starting over, based on a gut feeling with no hard evidence to support it.

yulker 3y ago
Not to be snarky, but how could there be empirical evidence for anything that hasn't been done before?
- educaysean 3y ago
  That's true. Although when embarking on a brand new frontier without any empirical evidence available, one would assume there's ample theoretical evidence to make up for it. In this case both appear to be lacking.
  - vonjuice 3y ago
    In an abstract context that all seems dandy. However when the power is held by people who would potentially face significant financial loss from either theoretical or empirical evidence, it shouldn't be a surprise that such evidence is lacking, no?
    - latency-guy2 3y ago
      > it shouldn't be a surprise that such evidence is lacking, no? So there's no way for you to be wrong? But there is indeed all the ways for everyone else to be wrong?
      - vonjuice 3y ago

naasking 3y ago

> I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy While I'm sympathetic to this ideal, I don't think it works. All you'd do is add all the inefficiencies of politics into business-level decision making. Democratic processes should be reserved for governing shared resources, like water and air, where independent decision making has pathologies, and independent hierarchical systems are good for optimizing efficiency and value for all other goods and services. We just have to ensure there's competition and fairness for good outcomes.

shkkmo 3y ago
You're aware that all publicly traded companies are run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders? The only change here is who limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders The more shares you hold, the greater your voice, when it comes to corporate governance. It's not at all the same as the typical idea of democracy as "one person, one vote". Would you rather corporate governance be more like a political democracy, where no matter if someone has 30% of the shares or 0.0001%, they get the same vote? Or, perhaps the other way around, you'd like to change a political democracy to: > limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved where suffrage is limited to people who work and contribute to society?
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    > The more shares you hold, the greater your voice, when it comes to corporate governance. It's not at all the same as the typical idea of democracy as "one person, one vote". "One person, one vote" is not how the presidency works in the USA. Beyond that, you seem to trying setup some strawman positions rather than engaging in a discussion about anything anyone actually said.
ksplicer 3y ago

rufus_foreman 3y ago

>> I've thought for years that we should place at hard cap on wealth somewhere around $10 or $15 million Do you think your standard of living under such a system would be lower, the same, or higher than it is now? I think it would be much lower. I think most people will stop working when they stop getting paid. Some I guess would spend money as fast as they make it on experiences and services and other things that don't increase wealth. But I think many people who would in the current system have gone on to create billions in wealth would stop at $10 million and say, "OK I hit the number, moving on to the next challenge".

vacuity 3y ago
Even if that's true, I think a lot of people have a long way to go before reaching $10 million in wealth, and there always would be, so it's not like there are just a few "chosen ones" who could do so much more if they were motivated to earn $1 billion, and society will suffer otherwise.
vonjuice 3y ago
> Do you think your standard of living under such a system would be lower, the same, or higher than it is now? that would probably depend on whether you're being exploited by the current system Imagine looking at a group of slave owners and slaves and asking a similar question with regards to ending slavery, and being all like "well let's hear both sides".
- gottorf 3y ago
  I fail to see the relation between people participating in an economy based on a voluntary exchange of goods and services and slavery.
  - vonjuice 3y ago
    There's people participating in that economy benefiting from people in other countries being exploited in order for those participants to get cheap products.

ydlr 3y ago

Let folks keep their wine and art collections. Limits need to be placed on ownership of productive assets. Employee, consumer, or even municipal ownership of firms would be a natural consequence of such a limit. No other way to offload assets fast enough, especially since the usual sources of capital would be under the same limits.

spacecadet 3y ago

I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved. 100%

nox101 3y ago

The problem is some places are more desirable than others. Penthouses, even if they're not big, they are, for most people, more desirable than the bottom floor. They have a view. They're away from noise. They're often away from rats, roaches, ants which start at the bottom. Similarly any place on the side of a hill, a cliff, a beach, ... You're unlikely to ban such places (all buildings 1 story?) Even if you managed that they're the house on the quiet street and the loud house next to the highway/trainline/airport You could try to make such places merit based but that only turns into a different kind of bribe and cronyism. Money is at least, somewhat obtainable by anyone. Plenty of people were not rich and became rich, maybe by luck, but at least it's a higher rate of churn than central authority has ever been.

dmn322 3y ago

> a worker owned economy - in which businesses are democratic institutions governed by the people who do the work involved A few notes... another way to make the economy more worker owned is to have a a portion of the shares of companies held by public entities, which then use dividends for a basic income. Public investment in companies like this could also be a way of incubating industries. Another note: the biggest problem with businesses being democratic institutions is the pace at which decisions can be collectively made. This is an information systems problem that can be solved by software. Instead of voting for representatives who make decisions, we need an institutional programming language, and people can vote directly on implementations of modifications to this institutional code that defines every institution. Votes are essentially approvals to a PR. No need for intermediaries to misinterpret voters' intentions.

blatzguzzler 3y ago

I have to laugh when $15M is considered enough wealth to "live a middle class lifestyle." I live in flyover country in a city of two million where the average household income is $60K. A 4% investment return on $15M would keep ten ordinary middle-class households afloat in my neighborhood forever without anyone ever having to work again (and without ever having to touch the investment principal). It's easy to lose track of what an immense amount of money $15M is.

throwawaymaths 3y ago

That's terrible. Suppose you want to go some amount of social good that will cost you $15M. Let's say. Develop a new drug. Maybe you want to do something crazy, like don't patent it. It's clearly great for society. But nobody will give you money to do that. Your only recourse to do it is to amass wealth yourself and fund it personally. Now you have a created a society where that sort of social entrepreneurism is impossible.

bagful 3y ago
If this good were “clearly” great for society, they wouldn’t have trouble forming a conglomerate towards achieving it. We can use the wealth that isn’t sponged up and locked away at the bottom of the sea for such initiatives. Society has had enough of ostensibly singular “great persons” inflicting their idea of the greater good on the rest of us in exchange for love, respect, and money. The rest of us have to earn those three.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  > they wouldn’t have trouble forming a conglomerate towards achieving it. That's underpants-gnomes level bullshit and you know it. Especially since I've given a concrete example that doesn't exist and would be AWESOME for society