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[flagged]

monero-xmr 1y ago
That’s fine if you accept that you can’t force the rich at gunpoint to stay, or seize their wealth upon exit. But if they do choose to leave, or at least stop expanding their businesses, you can’t deny the rational self interest
- Psillisp 1y ago
  The bayonets of the capitalists. Better lie down and take it.
- analog31 1y ago
  I heard New Zealand is nice.
  - tw04 1y ago
    It is, probably because it has a 39% tax rate on income over $180k, and no capital gains (stock sales are considered income and taxed at income tax rates).
- NietzscheanNull 1y ago
  If a nation's fortune hinges on permitting a handful of extremely rich individuals to extract wealth with impunity, wield their immense hoard to buy up major media organizations and communication platforms, use those assets to continually suppress labor and consumer protections, and fix political elections by way of SuperPACs and other dark-money slush funds... well, that isn't my idea of a robust society or economy. We've done fine without them in the past, and we'd be better off without them now. At the end of the day, labor and its fruits are the primary origin of value in an economy, not the handful of individuals that have had the immense luck and/or dubious ethics required to capture that value for their personal gain.
- bobsomers 1y ago
  > But if they do choose to leave, or at least stop expanding their businesses, you can’t deny the rational self interest "If you tax the rich, they will leave" is a myth created by the rich so that you won't tax them. In the middle of the 1900s, the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 91%. Nobody is going to leave over Mamdani's extremely modest proposal.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - burnerthrow008 1y ago
    > In the middle of the 1900s, the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 91% You forgot to mention that only half of capital gains were subject to tax. So the highest marginal rate was 45.5%.
    - jibal 1y ago
      The maximum effective rate on long-term capital gains was 45.5% but the top marginal rate on ordinary income was 91%. In any case, this is all a major deflection resulting from the lie that the low job creation rate is due to "the threat" of a possible future mayor rather than tariffs.
  - mxkopy 1y ago
    This statement is also supported by the fact that despite the relatively high taxes in NYC billionaires will jump through all loops necessary to effectively still live there just not on paper
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- anecdatas 1y ago
  This is making a lot of assumptions -- 1) That we're at the threshold for taxes that the wealthy will accept. I would bet many wealthy folks feel attached to their homes as their identity, and it would take some amount to price them out. Like, clearly a billionaire would leave if the cost to stay was a 100% of their wealth, but would probably stay if it was $10 more in taxes. So there's a very nebulous line somewhere in between. I suspect we are not close to that line. 2) That wealthy people living in an area are storing their wealth or declaring that area as their home. Plenty of ways to shield wealth from local taxes, and plenty of ways to claim a place as your home without being taxed by it. 3) That having wealthy people in your community is a net positive for the community. Wealthy people tend to use a lot more resources and distort local politics for their personal gain rather than the gain of the community. Maybe we'd be better off if they weren't around, and several families moved in to take their place. Wealthy people don't ride public transit, normal folks do. Wealthy people can push city council positions to reduce transit, normal folks don't have that influence. Maybe we need more normal folks around. 4) That businesses owned by the wealthy are a net positive compared to, e.g., workers co-ops. Maybe we could be a bit more collective in our approaches and a bit less lionizing towards the wealthy person who got lucky. Maybe we need more community oriented businesses run by members of the community they live in and fewer wealthy business owners racing to the bottom.
- AngryData 1y ago
  If they want to sell off all their assets and leave, then lets see them do it. If they don't want to sell their assets, I don't see why it can't be seized if they leave.
- jibal 1y ago
  > That’s fine Oh good. Then we can ignore your baseless assertions / talking points / propaganda and outright [non-truths].
dismalaf 1y ago
The system that allows very wealthy to exist is also the reason the US has the highest class mobility among western nations. Also, on a purely pragmatic note, capital is mobile. If you penalize the rich, they just move, and then the new system will stop class mobility.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  The globe can collaborate to make sure capital has nowhere to fly to. Form the USSA and get china onboard and let the USSR come back (they’re still the loyal opposition in today’s Russia) and capital will just fucking take it like they deserve to. What, you gonna go to the moon now?
  - decimalenough 1y ago
    > The globe can collaborate to make sure capital has nowhere to fly to <meme>hahahaha no</meme> There are countless places that are more than happy to accept capital with few questions asked. Including, funnily enough, the US itself. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-becoming-largest-tax-haven-under-trump-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2025-04 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-becomin...
  - nemo44x 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - Der_Einzige 1y ago
      You think I’d be caught dead using a standing desk? That’s the real insult.
      - nemo44x 1y ago
        Ok that’s fair.
- jkestner 1y ago
  the US has the highest class mobility among western nations Source? The rankings I see have the US behind most of Europe.
ambicapter 1y ago
"very wealthy" is heavily understating just how ludicrously wealthy some of these people are compared to the vast majority, and it's reflected in historical numbers.
- ehnto 1y ago
  I am wondering why "very wealthy" would be so stressed by increased taxes. Don't they have ludicrous wealth, shouldn't it have almost no material impact for them? Are there money games I am unaware of that means they are running brittle houses of cards and marginal percentage increases in taxes would topple their empires? I just don't understand the fear or concern, but I am not ludicrously wealthy so I suppose I wouldn't. If someone is truly strong then they have strength to spare for others. I guess I assume the same would be true of wealth, but perhaps you don't get ludicrously wealthy by being proportionally generous.
  - ambicapter 1y ago
    They are so ludicrously wealthy that even a very small increase in percentage points of tax ends up being a very large number, and no one likes to see a very large number of their “hard-earned” dollars get “taken away”. The marginal value of each dollar to them I don’t think is a calculation that is very accessible to our emotional human minds.
mancerayder 1y ago
Fantastic. And tax levy for the city goes down, and cuts are made while middle class people pick up the rest of the burden. Notice your statement is a broad morale, and I'm presenting a consequence out here in the real world. The math of booting wealthy people from the city doesn't play out well for the city.
- jibal 1y ago
  > I'm presenting a consequence out here in the real world. No, you're making baseless assertions / talking points / propaganda.
- lasc4r 1y ago
  [flagged]
- LeafItAlone 1y ago
  This argument has been made time and time again. It seems reasonable at first glance, but I’ve seen no proof of it. California, usually mentioned as having high taxes, still has a large percentage of the ultra-wealthy in the USA. Same with NYC. Sure some notable persons have changed their addresses, but overall, they are they hurting? Is there any documented case of a rich-popular municipality increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy and seeing the tax levy go down?
  - roenxi 1y ago
    That is one of those questions where if you're asking it, I do question how serous you are in seeking out answers. It is mathematically guaranteed that an optimal rate exists, the topic has been an ongoing research question for several centuries and it is hard to avoid if you spend time arguing economics. Wikipedia points out [0] that scholars dating back to Ibn Khaldun have been working on the topic of pinpointing an optimal tax rate for maximising income. So while I admit to not providing you with a study in this comment [1], it is pretty obvious they have been done and I don't see what there is to challenge on the topic. Obviously there is an optimal tax rate for maximising revenue, this is an area where there has been a huge amount of research done and if a municipality pushes their rates beyond that point (which will happen with some regularity) it'll see its tax take go down. There isn't much to document, anywhere with taxing authority would be feeling out limits experimentally all the time. > Sure some notable persons have changed their addresses, but overall, they are they hurting? They moved states for tax reasons, so yes. Otherwise they wouldn't have moved. If notable people are starting to move then the system sounds like it is very close to the critical point. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve (not that it'd be total tax burden that needs is the limit, not just the slice imposed by one area). [1] Wikipedia has a lot of sources though if you actually want to look it up.
anecdatas 1y ago
As a wealthier person (income of ~1m/year, give or take), I could not more strongly support Mamdani (no 'h' in Zohran's last name afaik). I want a candidate like him in my city to vote for.
- speakfreely 1y ago
  If you're still measuring wealth by income, you're probably not in the bracket that is being discussed here. $1 million per year is an extremely comfortable income, but it would take 30 years of saving that, post tax, before you hit $30 million in net worth, which is the entry point for UHNW status.
  - ehnto 1y ago
    I do see your point, but it's highly unlikely that they are putting their wealth into a HISA for 30 years. There is likely 0 people who got to UHNW through saving money.
    - speakfreely 1y ago
      Completely agree with you. Which it why I mentioned measuring wealth by income shows a disconnect from what real wealth is.
  - wrs 1y ago
    This is assuming they have to work for the $1M income. The point of having $30M is to make $1M income without doing anything.
  - anecdatas 1y ago
    Totally. I'm someone who could choose to enter the capital class via purchasing rental properties or investing heavily in stocks, but I deliberately do not. Capital class wildly different than wealthier working class. But in all honesty, bring the taxes all the way down to me at least. Anyone making a million a year could be taxed a lot more and still live comfortably. The capital class above me could afford a LOT more taxation and still live lives of unbridled luxury.
simonh 1y ago
The fundamental question is who gets to start, control, own and grow businesses. Who makes those decisions? If it’s not private citizens, it is government functionaries. The latter has been tried many times. It can just about work, but only barely, and it has all the same problems of patronage, cronyism, monopolisation and labour abuse as capitalism but x10.
- speakfreely 1y ago
  Capitalism is a morally reprehensible way to distribute resources in a society, but still better than any of the alternatives.
  - kruffalon 1y ago
    > but still better than any of the alternatives. Is it though? For many of our current societies I would say that we have failed to distribute the available resources. And even more so if we look at how we have failed distributing resources between societies and countries. > Capitalism is a morally reprehensible way to distribute resources Agreed!
- Eisenstein 1y ago
  We also tried the 'let the market do whatever it wants' method and it ended up with babies being fed milk with formaldehyde in it, pharmaceuticals that were mostly opiates or ethanol, and entire industries owned by single families.
tomhow 1y ago
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45079542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45079542 and marked it off topic.

[flagged]

That’s fine if you accept that you can’t force the rich at gunpoint to stay, or seize their wealth upon exit. But if they do choose to leave, or at least stop expanding their businesses, you can’t deny the rational self interest

Psillisp 1y ago
The bayonets of the capitalists. Better lie down and take it.
analog31 1y ago
I heard New Zealand is nice.
- tw04 1y ago
  It is, probably because it has a 39% tax rate on income over $180k, and no capital gains (stock sales are considered income and taxed at income tax rates).
NietzscheanNull 1y ago
If a nation's fortune hinges on permitting a handful of extremely rich individuals to extract wealth with impunity, wield their immense hoard to buy up major media organizations and communication platforms, use those assets to continually suppress labor and consumer protections, and fix political elections by way of SuperPACs and other dark-money slush funds... well, that isn't my idea of a robust society or economy. We've done fine without them in the past, and we'd be better off without them now. At the end of the day, labor and its fruits are the primary origin of value in an economy, not the handful of individuals that have had the immense luck and/or dubious ethics required to capture that value for their personal gain.
bobsomers 1y ago
> But if they do choose to leave, or at least stop expanding their businesses, you can’t deny the rational self interest "If you tax the rich, they will leave" is a myth created by the rich so that you won't tax them. In the middle of the 1900s, the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 91%. Nobody is going to leave over Mamdani's extremely modest proposal.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- burnerthrow008 1y ago
  > In the middle of the 1900s, the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 91% You forgot to mention that only half of capital gains were subject to tax. So the highest marginal rate was 45.5%.
  - jibal 1y ago
    The maximum effective rate on long-term capital gains was 45.5% but the top marginal rate on ordinary income was 91%. In any case, this is all a major deflection resulting from the lie that the low job creation rate is due to "the threat" of a possible future mayor rather than tariffs.
- mxkopy 1y ago
  This statement is also supported by the fact that despite the relatively high taxes in NYC billionaires will jump through all loops necessary to effectively still live there just not on paper
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
anecdatas 1y ago
This is making a lot of assumptions -- 1) That we're at the threshold for taxes that the wealthy will accept. I would bet many wealthy folks feel attached to their homes as their identity, and it would take some amount to price them out. Like, clearly a billionaire would leave if the cost to stay was a 100% of their wealth, but would probably stay if it was $10 more in taxes. So there's a very nebulous line somewhere in between. I suspect we are not close to that line. 2) That wealthy people living in an area are storing their wealth or declaring that area as their home. Plenty of ways to shield wealth from local taxes, and plenty of ways to claim a place as your home without being taxed by it. 3) That having wealthy people in your community is a net positive for the community. Wealthy people tend to use a lot more resources and distort local politics for their personal gain rather than the gain of the community. Maybe we'd be better off if they weren't around, and several families moved in to take their place. Wealthy people don't ride public transit, normal folks do. Wealthy people can push city council positions to reduce transit, normal folks don't have that influence. Maybe we need more normal folks around. 4) That businesses owned by the wealthy are a net positive compared to, e.g., workers co-ops. Maybe we could be a bit more collective in our approaches and a bit less lionizing towards the wealthy person who got lucky. Maybe we need more community oriented businesses run by members of the community they live in and fewer wealthy business owners racing to the bottom.
AngryData 1y ago
If they want to sell off all their assets and leave, then lets see them do it. If they don't want to sell their assets, I don't see why it can't be seized if they leave.
jibal 1y ago
> That’s fine Oh good. Then we can ignore your baseless assertions / talking points / propaganda and outright [non-truths].

dismalaf 1y ago

The system that allows very wealthy to exist is also the reason the US has the highest class mobility among western nations. Also, on a purely pragmatic note, capital is mobile. If you penalize the rich, they just move, and then the new system will stop class mobility.

Der_Einzige 1y ago
The globe can collaborate to make sure capital has nowhere to fly to. Form the USSA and get china onboard and let the USSR come back (they’re still the loyal opposition in today’s Russia) and capital will just fucking take it like they deserve to. What, you gonna go to the moon now?
- decimalenough 1y ago
  > The globe can collaborate to make sure capital has nowhere to fly to <meme>hahahaha no</meme> There are countless places that are more than happy to accept capital with few questions asked. Including, funnily enough, the US itself. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-becoming-largest-tax-haven-under-trump-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2025-04 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-becomin...
- nemo44x 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    You think I’d be caught dead using a standing desk? That’s the real insult.
    - nemo44x 1y ago
      Ok that’s fair.
jkestner 1y ago
the US has the highest class mobility among western nations Source? The rankings I see have the US behind most of Europe.

ambicapter 1y ago

"very wealthy" is heavily understating just how ludicrously wealthy some of these people are compared to the vast majority, and it's reflected in historical numbers.

ehnto 1y ago
I am wondering why "very wealthy" would be so stressed by increased taxes. Don't they have ludicrous wealth, shouldn't it have almost no material impact for them? Are there money games I am unaware of that means they are running brittle houses of cards and marginal percentage increases in taxes would topple their empires? I just don't understand the fear or concern, but I am not ludicrously wealthy so I suppose I wouldn't. If someone is truly strong then they have strength to spare for others. I guess I assume the same would be true of wealth, but perhaps you don't get ludicrously wealthy by being proportionally generous.
- ambicapter 1y ago
  They are so ludicrously wealthy that even a very small increase in percentage points of tax ends up being a very large number, and no one likes to see a very large number of their “hard-earned” dollars get “taken away”. The marginal value of each dollar to them I don’t think is a calculation that is very accessible to our emotional human minds.

mancerayder 1y ago

Fantastic. And tax levy for the city goes down, and cuts are made while middle class people pick up the rest of the burden. Notice your statement is a broad morale, and I'm presenting a consequence out here in the real world. The math of booting wealthy people from the city doesn't play out well for the city.

jibal 1y ago
> I'm presenting a consequence out here in the real world. No, you're making baseless assertions / talking points / propaganda.
lasc4r 1y ago
[flagged]
LeafItAlone 1y ago
This argument has been made time and time again. It seems reasonable at first glance, but I’ve seen no proof of it. California, usually mentioned as having high taxes, still has a large percentage of the ultra-wealthy in the USA. Same with NYC. Sure some notable persons have changed their addresses, but overall, they are they hurting? Is there any documented case of a rich-popular municipality increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy and seeing the tax levy go down?
- roenxi 1y ago
  That is one of those questions where if you're asking it, I do question how serous you are in seeking out answers. It is mathematically guaranteed that an optimal rate exists, the topic has been an ongoing research question for several centuries and it is hard to avoid if you spend time arguing economics. Wikipedia points out [0] that scholars dating back to Ibn Khaldun have been working on the topic of pinpointing an optimal tax rate for maximising income. So while I admit to not providing you with a study in this comment [1], it is pretty obvious they have been done and I don't see what there is to challenge on the topic. Obviously there is an optimal tax rate for maximising revenue, this is an area where there has been a huge amount of research done and if a municipality pushes their rates beyond that point (which will happen with some regularity) it'll see its tax take go down. There isn't much to document, anywhere with taxing authority would be feeling out limits experimentally all the time. > Sure some notable persons have changed their addresses, but overall, they are they hurting? They moved states for tax reasons, so yes. Otherwise they wouldn't have moved. If notable people are starting to move then the system sounds like it is very close to the critical point. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve (not that it'd be total tax burden that needs is the limit, not just the slice imposed by one area). [1] Wikipedia has a lot of sources though if you actually want to look it up.

anecdatas 1y ago

As a wealthier person (income of ~1m/year, give or take), I could not more strongly support Mamdani (no 'h' in Zohran's last name afaik). I want a candidate like him in my city to vote for.

speakfreely 1y ago
If you're still measuring wealth by income, you're probably not in the bracket that is being discussed here. $1 million per year is an extremely comfortable income, but it would take 30 years of saving that, post tax, before you hit $30 million in net worth, which is the entry point for UHNW status.
- ehnto 1y ago
  I do see your point, but it's highly unlikely that they are putting their wealth into a HISA for 30 years. There is likely 0 people who got to UHNW through saving money.
  - speakfreely 1y ago
    Completely agree with you. Which it why I mentioned measuring wealth by income shows a disconnect from what real wealth is.
- wrs 1y ago
  This is assuming they have to work for the $1M income. The point of having $30M is to make $1M income without doing anything.
- anecdatas 1y ago
  Totally. I'm someone who could choose to enter the capital class via purchasing rental properties or investing heavily in stocks, but I deliberately do not. Capital class wildly different than wealthier working class. But in all honesty, bring the taxes all the way down to me at least. Anyone making a million a year could be taxed a lot more and still live comfortably. The capital class above me could afford a LOT more taxation and still live lives of unbridled luxury.

simonh 1y ago

The fundamental question is who gets to start, control, own and grow businesses. Who makes those decisions? If it’s not private citizens, it is government functionaries. The latter has been tried many times. It can just about work, but only barely, and it has all the same problems of patronage, cronyism, monopolisation and labour abuse as capitalism but x10.

speakfreely 1y ago
Capitalism is a morally reprehensible way to distribute resources in a society, but still better than any of the alternatives.
- kruffalon 1y ago
  > but still better than any of the alternatives. Is it though? For many of our current societies I would say that we have failed to distribute the available resources. And even more so if we look at how we have failed distributing resources between societies and countries. > Capitalism is a morally reprehensible way to distribute resources Agreed!
Eisenstein 1y ago
We also tried the 'let the market do whatever it wants' method and it ended up with babies being fed milk with formaldehyde in it, pharmaceuticals that were mostly opiates or ethanol, and entire industries owned by single families.

tomhow 1y ago

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45079542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45079542 and marked it off topic.