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> Most billionaires are billionaires are on paper, by owning capital. By owning stock. I'm not sure that "on paper" is a particularly interesting qualifier. I

by lapcat 10mo ago

> Most billionaires are billionaires are on paper, by owning capital. By owning stock. I'm not sure that "on paper" is a particularly interesting qualifier. I'm not a billionaire, but most of my wealth, such as it is, is "on paper". I have some cash on hand to pay expenses (technically, a checking account, and less than $50 in physical bills and coins), but you're probably losing money if you're keeping most of it in cash and not investing it on something with returns. > Capital used to produce things. The reality is much more complicated than this simple statement. An IPO is a one-time cash infusion for the company; subsequent sales of the shares on the stock market may bring additional cash to the shareholders, but not to the company. A company may issue additional shares, but this requires approval of the current shareholders, who probably won't look kindly on dilution. I think the main use of this is not to raise additional capital from the public but rather to compensate employees. (Sometimes companies do the opposite: stock buybacks, where the company gives cash to stockholders rather than vice versa.) One primary purpose of an IPO is not to raise new capital but rather to compensate the company founders/executives and initial private investors. So you could say that stock indirectly produces things by enticing investment. But a lucrative IPO requires that the company already produce something of value before the IPO. A successful publicly owned corporation does not require further capital infusion from investors, because sales of the corporation's products to customers are more than sufficient to fund continued operation. > you simply end up driving much of those capital investments elsewhere It's questionable how much these investments actually benefit the community. For example, if labor is brought primarily from outside the community, then existing residents do not necessarily benefit from the spending, and they may find themselves priced out of their own community by the incoming labor force. > If they are simply taxing whatever loose cash and personal (mostly luxury) assets people have No, that does not appear to be the design or intention of the proposed wealth tax.

mothballed 10mo ago
>By owning stock. Yes often stock, although this can be confusing for ownership portions in private equity because the incorporation often does use stock as a form of ownership but not the publicly traded kind as one often thinks of (this why I prefer a more generic 'capital'). The key here is ownership of things that facilitate the production of goods and services. These usually represent by far the largest portion of wealth billionaires have, its almost never mostly horded as mostly unused or non-productive wealth but rather representative of ownership of productive assets that bring goods and services to fruition. >I'm not sure that "on paper" is a particularly interesting qualifier. I'm not a billionaire, but most of my wealth, such as it is, is "on paper". I have some cash on hand to pay expenses (technically, a checking account, and less than $50 in physical bills and coins), but you're probably losing money if you're keeping most of it in cash and not investing it on something with returns. A large portion of people have their assets mostly in real estate, vehicles, demand accounts, personal tangible assets. The median household stock ownership is $~50k of $~200k in median household net worth. Having most wealth "on paper" is very much a situation of note from the viewpoint of the common person, and your position puts you closer to the billionaires in this regard. >IPOs Stock ownership is literally the ownership of the company and thereby the productive capital. Wealth tax on stock is a punishment for owning productive assets, and also a punishment for creating productive assets. You are trying to sidestep this by arguing whether the purchase of the stock itself adds investment while ignoring the stock itself is a fractional title of the productive assets. >It's questionable how much these investments actually benefit the community. For example, if labor is brought primarily from outside the community, then existing residents do not necessarily benefit from the spending, and they may find themselves priced out of their own community by the incoming labor force. This is a fully informed acknowledgement you simply don't seem to care if the investments leave the community. Your attitude seems to be something akin to, well, if the biggest productive capital holders want to leave then it probably doesn't matter for the community anyway. I can respect that. You know what you want and you're willing to work to get it. I wish you the most sincerest of luck. Although I'm not in favor of these kind of zero sum games, I will definitely welcome the movement of investment out of California and into my state where it definitely will not benefit my community.
- lapcat 10mo ago
  > The key here is ownership of things that facilitate the production of goods and services. I think this is so vague as to be useless. Does ownership of cash not facilitate the production of goods and services? The cash certainly gets spent on goods and services. Does home ownership not facilitate the production of goods and services, namely, homes, as well as the goods and services that maintain homes? Your distinction between productive and non-productive seems like BS to me and just a way of making rich people appear superior. My point was that when you spell out exactly what "facilitate" means, sitting on a bunch of stock waiting for it to appreciate in value isn't particularly "productive". Bill Gates is richer now after he stopped working than when he was CEO of Microsoft, despite the fact that he claims to want to give away most of his money. It seems that he can't give it away faster than he passively makes more. > Having most wealth "on paper" is very much a situation of note from the viewpoint of the common person, and your position puts you closer to the billionaires in this regard. Well, I rent rather than own my home, so I have no real estate assets. Does that fact alone make me more "productive"? > Wealth tax on stock is a punishment No. Fines are a punishment. Prison is a punishment. Probation is a punishment. Tax is not a punishment. Taxes are how the government funds public services, and everyone pays taxes in one way or another. The point here is to tax based on ability to pay, and billionaires have more ability to pay than anyone else. As everyone admits, billionaires are free to leave and avoid paying the tax. This is not true for fines, prison, and other punishments. If Peter Thiel leaves, no arrest warrant will be issued. > This is a fully informed acknowledgement you simply don't seem to care if the investments leave the community. According to the submitted article, Khanna himself said much the same about the prospect of Larry Page and Peter Thiel leaving.
  - mothballed 10mo ago
    It's wild seeing you alternate between having no idea what productive capital is and singling out what you find to be the single weakest isolated sentence and then going completely off of that and then pretending not to understand. You believe you know exactly what it is, based on your confidence with which you assert your position on 'taxing' these assets. I am not going to entertain this feigned ignorance further by entertaining the false equivalence between a pile of cash or a gold watch sitting somewhere and something like a computer actively crunching the most efficient shipping routes. If you own stocks instead of a personal residence because of its superior productive capability that return you a profit, you already understand this intuitively, in fact I think you understand it more or less completely. I am also free to leave Iran to not be executed for being an apostate, that doesn't mean it's not a punishment, it just means if you never do the thing under the conditions of punishment you won't get punished for it. Many here explicitly acknowledge this tax is punitive -- they argue the price of living and rent/homes is too high in CA and it'd be better off if many of those who 'gentrify' go elsewhere so the prices will come down. I believe your position is an informed one. You are pretending like mine is not. Indeed, I think we both have informed opinions, yours is one intended to drive out productive assets from your state and mine is one intended to bring productive assets to my state. I believe with fewer productive assets our labor becomes less and less competitive; there's no shortage of places on earth with lots of (relatively destitute) smart educated people who can work efficiently -- a golden thing about California is they also have the tools and assets to produce even larger returns on that labor. In the end the billionaires won't notice the missing 5% in terms of feeling a change in their quality of life, I would agree with you there. But the poor and middle class likely will notice themselves getting poorer after taxing the productive capital of billionaires, and watching some of the life blood from which they make their living float away.

by lapcat 10mo ago

mothballed 10mo ago

>By owning stock. Yes often stock, although this can be confusing for ownership portions in private equity because the incorporation often does use stock as a form of ownership but not the publicly traded kind as one often thinks of (this why I prefer a more generic 'capital'). The key here is ownership of things that facilitate the production of goods and services. These usually represent by far the largest portion of wealth billionaires have, its almost never mostly horded as mostly unused or non-productive wealth but rather representative of ownership of productive assets that bring goods and services to fruition. >I'm not sure that "on paper" is a particularly interesting qualifier. I'm not a billionaire, but most of my wealth, such as it is, is "on paper". I have some cash on hand to pay expenses (technically, a checking account, and less than $50 in physical bills and coins), but you're probably losing money if you're keeping most of it in cash and not investing it on something with returns. A large portion of people have their assets mostly in real estate, vehicles, demand accounts, personal tangible assets. The median household stock ownership is $~50k of $~200k in median household net worth. Having most wealth "on paper" is very much a situation of note from the viewpoint of the common person, and your position puts you closer to the billionaires in this regard. >IPOs Stock ownership is literally the ownership of the company and thereby the productive capital. Wealth tax on stock is a punishment for owning productive assets, and also a punishment for creating productive assets. You are trying to sidestep this by arguing whether the purchase of the stock itself adds investment while ignoring the stock itself is a fractional title of the productive assets. >It's questionable how much these investments actually benefit the community. For example, if labor is brought primarily from outside the community, then existing residents do not necessarily benefit from the spending, and they may find themselves priced out of their own community by the incoming labor force. This is a fully informed acknowledgement you simply don't seem to care if the investments leave the community. Your attitude seems to be something akin to, well, if the biggest productive capital holders want to leave then it probably doesn't matter for the community anyway. I can respect that. You know what you want and you're willing to work to get it. I wish you the most sincerest of luck. Although I'm not in favor of these kind of zero sum games, I will definitely welcome the movement of investment out of California and into my state where it definitely will not benefit my community.

lapcat 10mo ago
> The key here is ownership of things that facilitate the production of goods and services. I think this is so vague as to be useless. Does ownership of cash not facilitate the production of goods and services? The cash certainly gets spent on goods and services. Does home ownership not facilitate the production of goods and services, namely, homes, as well as the goods and services that maintain homes? Your distinction between productive and non-productive seems like BS to me and just a way of making rich people appear superior. My point was that when you spell out exactly what "facilitate" means, sitting on a bunch of stock waiting for it to appreciate in value isn't particularly "productive". Bill Gates is richer now after he stopped working than when he was CEO of Microsoft, despite the fact that he claims to want to give away most of his money. It seems that he can't give it away faster than he passively makes more. > Having most wealth "on paper" is very much a situation of note from the viewpoint of the common person, and your position puts you closer to the billionaires in this regard. Well, I rent rather than own my home, so I have no real estate assets. Does that fact alone make me more "productive"? > Wealth tax on stock is a punishment No. Fines are a punishment. Prison is a punishment. Probation is a punishment. Tax is not a punishment. Taxes are how the government funds public services, and everyone pays taxes in one way or another. The point here is to tax based on ability to pay, and billionaires have more ability to pay than anyone else. As everyone admits, billionaires are free to leave and avoid paying the tax. This is not true for fines, prison, and other punishments. If Peter Thiel leaves, no arrest warrant will be issued. > This is a fully informed acknowledgement you simply don't seem to care if the investments leave the community. According to the submitted article, Khanna himself said much the same about the prospect of Larry Page and Peter Thiel leaving.
- mothballed 10mo ago
  It's wild seeing you alternate between having no idea what productive capital is and singling out what you find to be the single weakest isolated sentence and then going completely off of that and then pretending not to understand. You believe you know exactly what it is, based on your confidence with which you assert your position on 'taxing' these assets. I am not going to entertain this feigned ignorance further by entertaining the false equivalence between a pile of cash or a gold watch sitting somewhere and something like a computer actively crunching the most efficient shipping routes. If you own stocks instead of a personal residence because of its superior productive capability that return you a profit, you already understand this intuitively, in fact I think you understand it more or less completely. I am also free to leave Iran to not be executed for being an apostate, that doesn't mean it's not a punishment, it just means if you never do the thing under the conditions of punishment you won't get punished for it. Many here explicitly acknowledge this tax is punitive -- they argue the price of living and rent/homes is too high in CA and it'd be better off if many of those who 'gentrify' go elsewhere so the prices will come down. I believe your position is an informed one. You are pretending like mine is not. Indeed, I think we both have informed opinions, yours is one intended to drive out productive assets from your state and mine is one intended to bring productive assets to my state. I believe with fewer productive assets our labor becomes less and less competitive; there's no shortage of places on earth with lots of (relatively destitute) smart educated people who can work efficiently -- a golden thing about California is they also have the tools and assets to produce even larger returns on that labor. In the end the billionaires won't notice the missing 5% in terms of feeling a change in their quality of life, I would agree with you there. But the poor and middle class likely will notice themselves getting poorer after taxing the productive capital of billionaires, and watching some of the life blood from which they make their living float away.