4 ms·

>How do you determine the threshold I think most people will agree the threshold to be in the few millions. Some will argue for 5 and few for 50, but nobody ca

by mateo1 3y ago

>How do you determine the threshold I think most people will agree the threshold to be in the few millions. Some will argue for 5 and few for 50, but nobody can produce $1B of value. Take control of it, sure, but produce, no.

6510 3y ago
Apparently they can by giving it to the right entity at the right time. What we could do (besides taxing it away) is configure a limit to what they are allowed to do with it. I also see room for special titles with cosmetic privileges if someone accomplishes to pay the enormous tax. It will be hard to find the right privileges. Something like a medal or an outfit is obviously doable. An annual fancy dinner for the group doesn't seem over the top. A daily 30 min slot on the TV for them to bid on exclusively, or each their own slot annually. Can grant 3 lectures in any university. It gets slightly dubious if we add special construction permits for locations no one else may build in. The funniest I could think of, at 10 bl+ we seize all of your money and assets, you are forbidden to participate in the financial system. You get a robe and a cloak and a card with which you can eat any place, stay at any hotel, buy cloths, do shopping, take a taxi and take any flight with a maximum of 3 guests + partner and kids.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  This reminds me of ancient Athens. The rich would all compete to pay taxes, because your social status was based on your taxes, and you had special perks if you paid enough. It became a bragging opportunity to showcase your wealthy. If you funded something with your taxes, you could hire the artist that made the sculptures. Say you build a new civic center with a theater. You have an incentive to hire a good artist to make the place in your preference, with your image, which means the city has more art. If it was an ugly building, it’d be an ugly building with your name on it. The rich during times of war would be separated into those that could fund a whole battleship and those that didn’t. If you shirked your responsibilities during war, you were viewed as a traitor who was so greedy they’d let the city fall. Maybe we need to stop chastising the rich for building things in their names, but instead give them more opportunities to do so. Additionally maybe we should make all tax payments public, so you can see if your friends and family avoid taxes. Maybe people would become embarrassed to pay less taxes than their employees if everyone could look it up.
  - rblatz 3y ago
    ”... he didn't pay any federal income tax.” “That makes me smart.” - Donald Trump
- madsbuch 3y ago
  > Apparently they can by giving it to the right entity at the right time. I want to understand this. If I buy a Novo Nordisk share on the market I never gave novo nordisk a single krone. My counter part is the seller (who rarely would be the company itself). Generally I would say that investors provide liquidity to the market. Ie. the action of buying and selling are the ones that provide the value. Not holding. You can conclude that a person holding onto a share for 30 years did not provide any value. That person was merely a rent seeker based on other people providing value by doing the asset allocation – In Denmark these people would be punished by the progressive capital gains tax, while the people trading ones in a while would benefit from a lower tax bill. Or am I wrong?
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    If I give Novo directly $125 for a share of their stock, sell it 30 seconds later to you, who gives me $125.01, and you hold those shares for 30 years, which one of us really invested in Novo? Does your opinion change if we've agreed the night before that you'll buy the share from me? I believe the long-term holders of equity investment are the true investors, regardless of whether they bought the shares in an initial offering or a secondary offering. The initial offering market doesn't exist without the secondary market.
    - madsbuch 3y ago
      I am talking about the value you provide as an investor - regardless of where you got the share. I agree that it is indifferent whether you buy it from the company (in an IPO or in later emissions) or on the secondary market. My point is that the value provide is liquidity. Ie. the property that owners of a stock con transfer that stock into money to use on other ventures. People that merely hold a stock does not provide liquidity. You need to have an open order on your stock to do that. Now, please oppose me! My question is: What value to does term holder provide in virtue of them being long term holders?
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        They have (transitively) provided the company the original $125 to use in their operations. In that example, you provided the money; I was just a middle-man. Except as it pertains to employee/executive comp and future fund-raising, the company doesn't care about the secondary market liquidity. They care about the money they used over that 30 years to grow.
edanm 3y ago
> I think most people will agree the threshold to be in the few millions. Some will argue for 5 and few for 50, but nobody can produce $1B of value. Take control of it, sure, but produce, no. That is just, on the face of it, false. Did Stephen King not produce millions and almost a billion in value? Despite writing books that have been read by millions of people, have turned into super successful movies, including some movies considered some of our best art?
- fennecbutt 3y ago
  If I charge $1000 with a 90% profit and sell 10m units, can I claim all of that as having "produced value"? If my movie budget is 300m but 200m of that went to high priced actors (think JD, RDJ getting paid 50m~) did that movie produce that amount of value? Corporations have perfected consumer value extraction, allowing them to pay themselves more and bid higher against the competition, further increasing prices to consumers in an endless loop. It produces nothing of value for us, but we're too dumb to boycott this behaviour.
  - edanm 3y ago
    > Corporations have perfected consumer value extraction, allowing them to pay themselves more and bid higher against the competition, further increasing prices to consumers in an endless loop. This flies in the face of most economic theory, and also flies in the face of reality. How many corporations are out there with 90% profit margins? Very few, if any. > If my movie budget is 300m but 200m of that went to high priced actors (think JD, RDJ getting paid 50m~) did that movie produce that amount of value? I'm not sure what the high-priced actors have to do with it, but the amount of value produced has nothing to do with the budget - it has to do with the tickets you sell. If your $300m movie tanks and no one ever goes to see it, you've in some sense created 0 value. If everyone in the world goes to see it and you make billions of dollars, you've created billions in value, as decided by actual people choosing to vote with their wallets to giving you money for your art. The budget only figures into it in the sense that you need to subtract it from the revenue to decide on the actual profit.
- lobocinza 3y ago
RestlessMind 3y ago
JK Rowling surely produced $1B of value. Much more in fact.
- madsbuch 3y ago
  I would love to see the itemisation and deduction for this. In particular, how did you decide how much value was due to the publisher, movie studios, etc. vs. her? We can safely assume that she would have produced absolutely no value, had there been no publisher. Maybe the publisher produced $1B of value and JK Rowling produced none? They did after all select her over other authors.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    > Maybe the publisher produced $1B of value and JK Rowling produced none? You are actually right that publisher produced most of the value... though only in the beginning when she was a nobody. I am sure publishing industry knows that too and read somewhere that their deals with new authors reflect that reality. After the first 3 books when the series started gaining traction and people talked about lining up for the 4th one? It was absolutely the author who was producing the value. Publishing house couldn't have conjured up the remaining 4 books at the same quality - they are good at publishing, not good at creating. (Just ask HBO / Game of Thrones showrunners how it went after GRRM didn't write the last 2 books).
    - chuckinthegump 3y ago
      Nah. You were right the first time. Own it.

by mateo1 3y ago

6510 3y ago

Apparently they can by giving it to the right entity at the right time. What we could do (besides taxing it away) is configure a limit to what they are allowed to do with it. I also see room for special titles with cosmetic privileges if someone accomplishes to pay the enormous tax. It will be hard to find the right privileges. Something like a medal or an outfit is obviously doable. An annual fancy dinner for the group doesn't seem over the top. A daily 30 min slot on the TV for them to bid on exclusively, or each their own slot annually. Can grant 3 lectures in any university. It gets slightly dubious if we add special construction permits for locations no one else may build in. The funniest I could think of, at 10 bl+ we seize all of your money and assets, you are forbidden to participate in the financial system. You get a robe and a cloak and a card with which you can eat any place, stay at any hotel, buy cloths, do shopping, take a taxi and take any flight with a maximum of 3 guests + partner and kids.

vineyardmike 3y ago
This reminds me of ancient Athens. The rich would all compete to pay taxes, because your social status was based on your taxes, and you had special perks if you paid enough. It became a bragging opportunity to showcase your wealthy. If you funded something with your taxes, you could hire the artist that made the sculptures. Say you build a new civic center with a theater. You have an incentive to hire a good artist to make the place in your preference, with your image, which means the city has more art. If it was an ugly building, it’d be an ugly building with your name on it. The rich during times of war would be separated into those that could fund a whole battleship and those that didn’t. If you shirked your responsibilities during war, you were viewed as a traitor who was so greedy they’d let the city fall. Maybe we need to stop chastising the rich for building things in their names, but instead give them more opportunities to do so. Additionally maybe we should make all tax payments public, so you can see if your friends and family avoid taxes. Maybe people would become embarrassed to pay less taxes than their employees if everyone could look it up.
- rblatz 3y ago
  ”... he didn't pay any federal income tax.” “That makes me smart.” - Donald Trump
madsbuch 3y ago
> Apparently they can by giving it to the right entity at the right time. I want to understand this. If I buy a Novo Nordisk share on the market I never gave novo nordisk a single krone. My counter part is the seller (who rarely would be the company itself). Generally I would say that investors provide liquidity to the market. Ie. the action of buying and selling are the ones that provide the value. Not holding. You can conclude that a person holding onto a share for 30 years did not provide any value. That person was merely a rent seeker based on other people providing value by doing the asset allocation – In Denmark these people would be punished by the progressive capital gains tax, while the people trading ones in a while would benefit from a lower tax bill. Or am I wrong?
- sokoloff 3y ago
  If I give Novo directly $125 for a share of their stock, sell it 30 seconds later to you, who gives me $125.01, and you hold those shares for 30 years, which one of us really invested in Novo? Does your opinion change if we've agreed the night before that you'll buy the share from me? I believe the long-term holders of equity investment are the true investors, regardless of whether they bought the shares in an initial offering or a secondary offering. The initial offering market doesn't exist without the secondary market.
  - madsbuch 3y ago
    I am talking about the value you provide as an investor - regardless of where you got the share. I agree that it is indifferent whether you buy it from the company (in an IPO or in later emissions) or on the secondary market. My point is that the value provide is liquidity. Ie. the property that owners of a stock con transfer that stock into money to use on other ventures. People that merely hold a stock does not provide liquidity. You need to have an open order on your stock to do that. Now, please oppose me! My question is: What value to does term holder provide in virtue of them being long term holders?
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      They have (transitively) provided the company the original $125 to use in their operations. In that example, you provided the money; I was just a middle-man. Except as it pertains to employee/executive comp and future fund-raising, the company doesn't care about the secondary market liquidity. They care about the money they used over that 30 years to grow.

edanm 3y ago

> I think most people will agree the threshold to be in the few millions. Some will argue for 5 and few for 50, but nobody can produce $1B of value. Take control of it, sure, but produce, no. That is just, on the face of it, false. Did Stephen King not produce millions and almost a billion in value? Despite writing books that have been read by millions of people, have turned into super successful movies, including some movies considered some of our best art?

fennecbutt 3y ago
If I charge $1000 with a 90% profit and sell 10m units, can I claim all of that as having "produced value"? If my movie budget is 300m but 200m of that went to high priced actors (think JD, RDJ getting paid 50m~) did that movie produce that amount of value? Corporations have perfected consumer value extraction, allowing them to pay themselves more and bid higher against the competition, further increasing prices to consumers in an endless loop. It produces nothing of value for us, but we're too dumb to boycott this behaviour.
- edanm 3y ago
  > Corporations have perfected consumer value extraction, allowing them to pay themselves more and bid higher against the competition, further increasing prices to consumers in an endless loop. This flies in the face of most economic theory, and also flies in the face of reality. How many corporations are out there with 90% profit margins? Very few, if any. > If my movie budget is 300m but 200m of that went to high priced actors (think JD, RDJ getting paid 50m~) did that movie produce that amount of value? I'm not sure what the high-priced actors have to do with it, but the amount of value produced has nothing to do with the budget - it has to do with the tickets you sell. If your $300m movie tanks and no one ever goes to see it, you've in some sense created 0 value. If everyone in the world goes to see it and you make billions of dollars, you've created billions in value, as decided by actual people choosing to vote with their wallets to giving you money for your art. The budget only figures into it in the sense that you need to subtract it from the revenue to decide on the actual profit.
lobocinza 3y ago

RestlessMind 3y ago

JK Rowling surely produced $1B of value. Much more in fact.

madsbuch 3y ago
I would love to see the itemisation and deduction for this. In particular, how did you decide how much value was due to the publisher, movie studios, etc. vs. her? We can safely assume that she would have produced absolutely no value, had there been no publisher. Maybe the publisher produced $1B of value and JK Rowling produced none? They did after all select her over other authors.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > Maybe the publisher produced $1B of value and JK Rowling produced none? You are actually right that publisher produced most of the value... though only in the beginning when she was a nobody. I am sure publishing industry knows that too and read somewhere that their deals with new authors reflect that reality. After the first 3 books when the series started gaining traction and people talked about lining up for the 4th one? It was absolutely the author who was producing the value. Publishing house couldn't have conjured up the remaining 4 books at the same quality - they are good at publishing, not good at creating. (Just ask HBO / Game of Thrones showrunners how it went after GRRM didn't write the last 2 books).
  - chuckinthegump 3y ago
    Nah. You were right the first time. Own it.