3 ms·

I wonder what the numbers look like without stocks. On that front, the cognitive dissonance is kind of interesting. On one hand, people say that Elon Musk has 7

by rayiner 10mo ago

I wonder what the numbers look like without stocks. On that front, the cognitive dissonance is kind of interesting. On one hand, people say that Elon Musk has 700 billion dollars and we should tax it to pay for free healthcare. On the other hand, people say that Tesla isn’t worth that much, and Elon didn’t create much value. Like, both of those things can’t be true. If it’s fake money, why do we care that some people have a ton of it? If Tesla is only worth as much as GM, Musk’s share of it is only worth $11 billion, not $200 billion+. Even if you confiscate that it’ll run the federal government for less than a day.

a_ba 10mo ago
One reason you may want to care about this "fake money" is the buy, borrow, die tax avoidance scheme you can run if you're asset rich [1] [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26rsf/buy_borrow_die_explained/ https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
- rayiner 10mo ago
  In that case, isn't the correct analysis how much money is borrowed? If Musk is borrowing $500 million, that won't fund the government very long.
  - atmavatar 10mo ago
    What should probably happen is the gains on any stock used for collateral in a loan are automatically realized for tax purposes.
    - rayiner 10mo ago
      That would make sense.
- xyzzyz 10mo ago
  "Buy, borrow, die" is simply not a thing. It's a half-baked idea invented by academics, who don't realize that it's just not viable in practice. Billionaires do not actually utilize it[1]. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272725002178 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...