7 ms·

This question is always strikes me as a false dichotomy, i.e. "we have to tax them, or else they leave". The issue is in my view is that constructing a system w

by koe123 9mo ago

This question is always strikes me as a false dichotomy, i.e. "we have to tax them, or else they leave". The issue is in my view is that constructing a system where the existence of such a rich class has become necessary to raise enough tax revenue. Organizing your country with more sustainable growth where income disparities aren't so high means you don't have this problem to this extent.

chipgap98 9mo ago
Who said "we have to tax them, or else they leave"? That doesn't seem to be what anyone is saying. The issue is that this group is threatening to leave if they are taxed. I agree you should want to avoid having an income disparity like this, but we are where we are. The goal of this tax is to help correct that disparity.
- oklahomasports 9mo ago
  Not a legitimate goal. But yeah if the government needs revenue they should raise it.
drorco 9mo ago
Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.
- mcntsh 9mo ago
  > Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? It's simply because money is compoundable. The more money you have the more you can make, and the more you make means less other people have.
  - Lionga 9mo ago
    money (or more exact wealth) is not a null sum game.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  - drorco 9mo ago
    OK that's one thing, but still there are many new billionaires that didn't exist a few decades ago, let alone a few years ago. Why did they become billionaires and the wealth didn't distribute over a much larger group?
    - hrimfaxi 9mo ago
      Is the rate of billionaire generation increasing? Maybe that is the distribution in practice.
      - drorco 9mo ago
        Maybe, I think it definitely happened with millionaires, there are probably many more millionaires these days compared to a few decades ago. Inflation helped too for sure. But I think still a lot of people would argue the distribution is too unequal.
    - mcntsh 9mo ago
      Wealth doesn't go straight up, it bubbles up. And thinking about bubbles, imagine what happens when the GenAI one pops. The wealth some new billionaires had will go up in smoke, their assets will go on sale, and they'll be gobbled up by the old billionaires.
  - kjshsh123 9mo ago
    There's a finite amount of money. There's not a finite amount of wealth. Having lots of wealth does not mean other people have less. If that were the case, there'd be as much wealth today as there was 1000 years ago. Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.
- mcny 9mo ago
  Not to be too glib but my mom would ask counter questions like this: Why is it that we have to trim out nails when they grow? Why not leave it natural? Why do we remove the weed in between the pavers in our backyard? Why not let it be natural? The fact is the world around us needs constant work. Our capitalism is no different. It needs constant pruning or it becomes gluttonous. There was a book I think which said most people involved in illegal drug trafficking are barely getting by, most of the income is soaked up at the top. I don't remember the point the bio was trying to make but it feels like that way for any enterprise these days. The richest people in the US have reportedly increased their net worth by over 1.5T over the course of the last year or so. How is this sustainable?
  - drorco 9mo ago
    Isn't this basically Entropy? Why do stars fuse and spread out their energy? Can't they just keep it all in? They are going to blow up/die out eventually, how is this sustainable? The notion I'm getting is that these forces that drive change are bigger than all of us, and they are inherently unsustainable in the larger scale of things, pretty similar to how solar systems are not really sustainable in a scale much larger than us, but not that is still pretty small in a universal scale. So for your perspective it might be unsustainable, but for the bigger system what you describe is smaller than a grain of sand.
    - mcny 9mo ago
      The point is everything needs work. We can't just say oh capitalism produces billionaires so billionaires must be good.
      - drorco 9mo ago
        Or in the absence of other competing systems which can be shown to be more efficient, we could say OK seems like billionaires are part of this ecosystem. If you'd like, similar to how we don't like mosquitos but they are nevertheless an important part of the current ecosystem, whether we like it or not. Though if we ever find a better alternative, they'd definitely be in a hard spot.
- vladvasiliu 9mo ago
  I think there's clearly a question of envy which doesn't seem addressed. I'm not particularly in favour of high taxation, but I think that the argument is a bit more subtle than that. The general point is that "the ultra rich" are able to benefit from a whole host of loopholes which allow them to pay proportionally less than the plebs. Now, this specific point seems somewhat debatable, judging by the fact that people don't seem to agree; I personally have not looked into the matter to form an opinion. Maybe our tax code hasn't kept up with the financialization of the economy. In any case, this whole tax increase thing, at least as I see it in France, since to spill over to "regular rich people", as in engineers or similar who "just" have a relatively high salary. Another issue, which I think is different but is rolled into complaints about rising tax rates is what the state actually does with the money. As in "I'm ok with paying tax, but not to fund this or that thing". In France, specifically, many "public service" offices have closed, having people either travel great distances or fight half-assed computer systems, while, at the same time, the number of public servants (so, cost) has increased.
- palmotea 9mo ago
  > One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Luck always plays the biggest role. Maybe the billionaires would have always been successful in some way, but not be a billionaire or even a millionaire. Also, your argument sounds like a just-so story designed to support the status quo. > the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Is is really a good idea to be ruled by the people with the greatest "wealth attraction?" > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. Yes, because regardless of anything else, the wealth imbalance has been politically destabilizing. Your comment strikes me as out-of-touch quantitative thinking: making certain easily-measured numbers going up the highest goal, while ignoring other things that are harder to quantify. That's a blind spot shared by a lot of people, especially tech people.
  - drorco 9mo ago
    I'm mostly trying to make sense of the world and so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. We can try and moderate it as a system (e.g some forms of democracy, socialism, etc.) to maybe lower the amplitudes, but it would be ignorant to deny that this might be a core part of current human nature. Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. Now imagine, there'd be some alien government, who'd be like "whoa humans are making way too disproportionate progress compared to the other species, let's tax/prune them so they don't get too much power".
    - ahf8Aithaex7Nai 9mo ago
      > ... so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. What do you mean, you found that out? And what does that have to do with anything? > So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. To me, that doesn't sound like an observation, but rather an interpretation. We could apply various epistemological carpet beaters to see what remains. One would be the critique of ideology. A few others can be found in the philosophy of science. It also seems to contradict your reference to thermodynamics. Wouldn't that mean that personality traits don't play a role at all? We don't look at individual particles, and certainly not at their personality traits. > Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. I cannot understand this conclusion at all. Why should the structural relationship to other species be reflected within the species itself?
- RGamma 9mo ago
  There's many shades of grey between financial laissez faire and enforced equality. This entire "taxes are theft/unnecessary" (and frankly extremist in the neutral definition of the word) thinking is destroying the US politically and socially right now. Do you not see this? Probably because you don't feel it in your pocket (yet, let's see what happens when the USD crashes. I will feel it too, no doubt.) There's the belief that the economy can be a mighty tool to improve our lives, but isn't it going pretty much overboard since some time? Is this materialistic growth-at-all-costs ideology really making average US lives better these days? From the outside the US feels like a runner that is stretching its arm towards the finish line (total automation) while also falling on their ass.
- koe123 9mo ago
  > Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? Compound interest, and as (admittedly) an armchair economist I buy into the argument that goes along the lines of: "when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth". In my view, r has been greater than g for some time now. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. To me, it is clear that while Europe optimizes for quality of life to a large extent, Americans really drink the coo-laid and enthusiastically optimize for shareholder value. I highly encourage you to give life in Europe a go at some point. I hope you'll return (or stay) also having reached the same perspective.
  - kjshsh123 9mo ago
    This isn't a view thing though. We have the data. What you're saying is what Piketty said. Only issue is, when you account for depreciation, you find that r>g applied to housing (so boomer NIMBYs) not billionaires. This is not a Karl Marx thing, but a Henry George thing. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-rise-in-the-net-capital-share/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-...
  - drorco 9mo ago
    I'm not American. I did stay for months though in the US (SF, NY) and Europe (Italy, France, Greece, PT, DE, more) at times. I think for competitive and talented people, US in general offers much more lucrative opportunities as long as you're OK with the US specific drawbacks. For non-competitive people, living in Europe would probably be a more convenient. I think the problem though is in the future, both the US and Europe has grave societal and economic issues but from the different angles. Europe lacks economical drive and seems to discourage change on a cultural level. The US on the other hand seems to be an extreme catalyst. I'm not familiar enough with quantitative data to judge on the compound interest, nevertheless I think in the last few decades we have already been witness on the global level to major changes in wealth: empires like UK have shrank, giants like China have risen. This had been very different a few decades ago and is an anecdote at least that compound interest can only do so much for empires, in the face of major changes.
- dv_dt 9mo ago
  Look for the Sugarscape model research studies. With uniform equally distributed starting point, fairly unbiased rules, and a set of random early wins, large disparities tend to accumulate over time without active policy to counteract it.
  - jibal 9mo ago
    Which is why there should be active policy to counteract it.
- jibal 9mo ago
  > One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed That's not an argument, it's a completely counterfactual assertion ... or rather, the assertion that this is the cause of uneven distribution of wealth. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. But of course it's not true, it's just an attempt to justify a morally bankrupt sociopathic ideology.
- rawgabbit 9mo ago
  You could have asked the same question when slavery was legal. Why is slavery not evenly distributed. Social injustice has been the default since the beginning of known history. Social justice is something that has to be fought for.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- 1718627440 9mo ago
  Because a tree has better access times than a list, so some amount of hierarchy results in a better performance than unstructured set of individuals. As directing people means more available work force for ones goals, and money represents ability to do something and availability to resources, some people will have more money than others.
gruez 9mo ago
>Organizing your country with more sustainable growth where income disparities aren't so high means you don't have this problem to this extent. Sounds like US vs Europe. Having redistributive policies funded by taxes works well until your most productive people flee for a country that doesn't, and you steadily lose ground to competitors economically.
- ozlikethewizard 9mo ago
  Americans like to act like they've beaten European nations in some kind of battle, but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens? Not try to make the biggest corporations? In which case, even taking the whole of Europe as an average (which you shouldn't), by every metric beyond GDP its ahead.
  - gruez 9mo ago
    >but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens? It's going to be hard to provide all of that when you don't have the money for it (eg. fiscal crisis in France right now), or if you get invaded by your neighbor (or any other competitor) eclipses you economically and then uses that to subjugate you. The european model of reaping the peace dividend and using it to fund a more generous welfare state worked from 1990s to 2010s, but is breaking down with the rise of china and russia, and is further exacerbated by sluggish growth and the demographic/pension crisis.
    - disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
      > the demographic/pension crisis. This is the actual issue, which we often avoid talking about because it's grim. Like, health care is expensive, old people health care is really expensive, and the proportion of old people in many Western countries is increasing over time (because of a fall in birth rates). I believe the FT had a good article about this recently, where they showed that the vast majority of extra spending from government was on old people. Now, clearly, society doesn't want to just shoot old people when they get sick, but I'm not sure how taxation is gonna look as the proportion of old people increases. Obviously increasing retirement ages helps here, but that's mostly just a massive tax on blue collar workers, who are much less likely to be able to continue working into their 70s, whereas for many cubicle jockeys, it's a lot more plausible.
Lionga 9mo ago
Countries in which the income disparities ARE so high are also the ones where the "poor" are the richest. They just feel poor in comparison not in absolute terms. 70K a year is poor in California, but top 1% rich in almost any country in the world. Low income disparities are countries like Albania, Afghanistan, Armenia to name the first three with below 30 GINI income.
- samiv 9mo ago
  This is an anomaly and left over from the time when middle class was growing after the 2nd world war. We (Western countries) are dismantling all the back stops and the process will reverse and move all the wealth to the few rich people in the capital class. When this process is complete the poverty levels in the west will equal those of the countries you mentioned, Afghanistan etc. The USA and UK are leading the process since they started to pursue this goal aggressively during the 80s with Reaganism and Thatcherism.
  - ghufran_syed 9mo ago
    and you’re claiming the process still isn’t complete more than 40 years later? shouldn't the wealth gap between the poor in the US vs the poor in Afghanistan be starting to get smaller if your argument is correct?
- dns_snek 9mo ago
  And this is exactly why nominal $ amount comparisons are completely pointless. Someone who makes $70k in southern or eastern Europe is living like a king (or living at least good life anywhere in Europe) while someone making $70k in expensive parts of California is going to struggle. Wealth is equal to your share of the overall resources, $ amounts are just an abstraction.
m463 9mo ago
your post has a mistaken question. The actual question is: "If we tax tax them, will they leave? (losing the planned tax revenue/backfiring)" It is pretty easy to avoid state taxes - just move to a different state.
- Balinares 9mo ago
  Research shows that they mostly don't, for all the screeching about it. https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/jun16asrfeature.pdf https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/ju...
rayiner 9mo ago
Taxing billionaires isn't "necessary to raise enough tax revenue." Total personal income in the U.S. is 26 trillion annually: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income. For the most part, that's real money that reflects goods and services in the real economy. The increase in wealth of billionaires in 2025 was $1.5 trillion: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-1-5-trillion-richer-trumps-first-year/#:~:text=Corporate%20Taxes,Kass%2C%20ATF's%20executive%20director. https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-1-5-trillio... Most of that isn't even real money--it's people betting on AI. (As an aside, is the government going to give huge tax refunds when the AI bubble bursts and all that "wealth" disappears?) If the U.S. just taxed people the way they do in Germany we could raise trillions in revenue without resorting to tricks like one-time wealth taxes. The focus is on billionaires because Americans want a German-style welfare state without German-style taxes on the middle and upper middle class.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
port11 9mo ago
Countries with low inequality tend to have strongly progressive taxation systems — Belgium, Sweden, Finland, etc. The billionaire class isn’t a necessity, it’s a failure of morality to overpower the affordances of hyper-growth capitalism.

by koe123 9mo ago

chipgap98 9mo ago

Who said "we have to tax them, or else they leave"? That doesn't seem to be what anyone is saying. The issue is that this group is threatening to leave if they are taxed. I agree you should want to avoid having an income disparity like this, but we are where we are. The goal of this tax is to help correct that disparity.

oklahomasports 9mo ago
Not a legitimate goal. But yeah if the government needs revenue they should raise it.

drorco 9mo ago

Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

mcntsh 9mo ago
> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? It's simply because money is compoundable. The more money you have the more you can make, and the more you make means less other people have.
- Lionga 9mo ago
  money (or more exact wealth) is not a null sum game.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- drorco 9mo ago
  OK that's one thing, but still there are many new billionaires that didn't exist a few decades ago, let alone a few years ago. Why did they become billionaires and the wealth didn't distribute over a much larger group?
  - hrimfaxi 9mo ago
    Is the rate of billionaire generation increasing? Maybe that is the distribution in practice.
    - drorco 9mo ago
      Maybe, I think it definitely happened with millionaires, there are probably many more millionaires these days compared to a few decades ago. Inflation helped too for sure. But I think still a lot of people would argue the distribution is too unequal.
  - mcntsh 9mo ago
    Wealth doesn't go straight up, it bubbles up. And thinking about bubbles, imagine what happens when the GenAI one pops. The wealth some new billionaires had will go up in smoke, their assets will go on sale, and they'll be gobbled up by the old billionaires.
- kjshsh123 9mo ago
  There's a finite amount of money. There's not a finite amount of wealth. Having lots of wealth does not mean other people have less. If that were the case, there'd be as much wealth today as there was 1000 years ago. Making a company and having it valued at whatever value, does not remove that amount of wealth from other people.
mcny 9mo ago
Not to be too glib but my mom would ask counter questions like this: Why is it that we have to trim out nails when they grow? Why not leave it natural? Why do we remove the weed in between the pavers in our backyard? Why not let it be natural? The fact is the world around us needs constant work. Our capitalism is no different. It needs constant pruning or it becomes gluttonous. There was a book I think which said most people involved in illegal drug trafficking are barely getting by, most of the income is soaked up at the top. I don't remember the point the bio was trying to make but it feels like that way for any enterprise these days. The richest people in the US have reportedly increased their net worth by over 1.5T over the course of the last year or so. How is this sustainable?
- drorco 9mo ago
  Isn't this basically Entropy? Why do stars fuse and spread out their energy? Can't they just keep it all in? They are going to blow up/die out eventually, how is this sustainable? The notion I'm getting is that these forces that drive change are bigger than all of us, and they are inherently unsustainable in the larger scale of things, pretty similar to how solar systems are not really sustainable in a scale much larger than us, but not that is still pretty small in a universal scale. So for your perspective it might be unsustainable, but for the bigger system what you describe is smaller than a grain of sand.
  - mcny 9mo ago
    The point is everything needs work. We can't just say oh capitalism produces billionaires so billionaires must be good.
    - drorco 9mo ago
      Or in the absence of other competing systems which can be shown to be more efficient, we could say OK seems like billionaires are part of this ecosystem. If you'd like, similar to how we don't like mosquitos but they are nevertheless an important part of the current ecosystem, whether we like it or not. Though if we ever find a better alternative, they'd definitely be in a hard spot.
vladvasiliu 9mo ago
I think there's clearly a question of envy which doesn't seem addressed. I'm not particularly in favour of high taxation, but I think that the argument is a bit more subtle than that. The general point is that "the ultra rich" are able to benefit from a whole host of loopholes which allow them to pay proportionally less than the plebs. Now, this specific point seems somewhat debatable, judging by the fact that people don't seem to agree; I personally have not looked into the matter to form an opinion. Maybe our tax code hasn't kept up with the financialization of the economy. In any case, this whole tax increase thing, at least as I see it in France, since to spill over to "regular rich people", as in engineers or similar who "just" have a relatively high salary. Another issue, which I think is different but is rolled into complaints about rising tax rates is what the state actually does with the money. As in "I'm ok with paying tax, but not to fund this or that thing". In France, specifically, many "public service" offices have closed, having people either travel great distances or fight half-assed computer systems, while, at the same time, the number of public servants (so, cost) has increased.
palmotea 9mo ago
> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Luck always plays the biggest role. Maybe the billionaires would have always been successful in some way, but not be a billionaire or even a millionaire. Also, your argument sounds like a just-so story designed to support the status quo. > the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent. Is is really a good idea to be ruled by the people with the greatest "wealth attraction?" > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. Yes, because regardless of anything else, the wealth imbalance has been politically destabilizing. Your comment strikes me as out-of-touch quantitative thinking: making certain easily-measured numbers going up the highest goal, while ignoring other things that are harder to quantify. That's a blind spot shared by a lot of people, especially tech people.
- drorco 9mo ago
  I'm mostly trying to make sense of the world and so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. We can try and moderate it as a system (e.g some forms of democracy, socialism, etc.) to maybe lower the amplitudes, but it would be ignorant to deny that this might be a core part of current human nature. Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. Now imagine, there'd be some alien government, who'd be like "whoa humans are making way too disproportionate progress compared to the other species, let's tax/prune them so they don't get too much power".
  - ahf8Aithaex7Nai 9mo ago
    > ... so far I found out that looking at it as a chaotic thermodynamic-like system makes the most sense. What do you mean, you found that out? And what does that have to do with anything? > So in regards to this economic issue, it seems that human personality traits that lead to disproportionate power/influence/money are distributed non-uniformly to an extreme extent. To me, that doesn't sound like an observation, but rather an interpretation. We could apply various epistemological carpet beaters to see what remains. One would be the critique of ideology. A few others can be found in the philosophy of science. It also seems to contradict your reference to thermodynamics. Wouldn't that mean that personality traits don't play a role at all? We don't look at individual particles, and certainly not at their personality traits. > Humans themselves are a specie with disproportionate power & influence compared to other species, so I think it would only make sense if this trait would also apply within the specie. I cannot understand this conclusion at all. Why should the structural relationship to other species be reflected within the species itself?
RGamma 9mo ago
There's many shades of grey between financial laissez faire and enforced equality. This entire "taxes are theft/unnecessary" (and frankly extremist in the neutral definition of the word) thinking is destroying the US politically and socially right now. Do you not see this? Probably because you don't feel it in your pocket (yet, let's see what happens when the USD crashes. I will feel it too, no doubt.) There's the belief that the economy can be a mighty tool to improve our lives, but isn't it going pretty much overboard since some time? Is this materialistic growth-at-all-costs ideology really making average US lives better these days? From the outside the US feels like a runner that is stretching its arm towards the finish line (total automation) while also falling on their ass.
koe123 9mo ago
> Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly? Compound interest, and as (admittedly) an armchair economist I buy into the argument that goes along the lines of: "when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth". In my view, r has been greater than g for some time now. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. To me, it is clear that while Europe optimizes for quality of life to a large extent, Americans really drink the coo-laid and enthusiastically optimize for shareholder value. I highly encourage you to give life in Europe a go at some point. I hope you'll return (or stay) also having reached the same perspective.
- kjshsh123 9mo ago
  This isn't a view thing though. We have the data. What you're saying is what Piketty said. Only issue is, when you account for depreciation, you find that r>g applied to housing (so boomer NIMBYs) not billionaires. This is not a Karl Marx thing, but a Henry George thing. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-rise-in-the-net-capital-share/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-...
- drorco 9mo ago
  I'm not American. I did stay for months though in the US (SF, NY) and Europe (Italy, France, Greece, PT, DE, more) at times. I think for competitive and talented people, US in general offers much more lucrative opportunities as long as you're OK with the US specific drawbacks. For non-competitive people, living in Europe would probably be a more convenient. I think the problem though is in the future, both the US and Europe has grave societal and economic issues but from the different angles. Europe lacks economical drive and seems to discourage change on a cultural level. The US on the other hand seems to be an extreme catalyst. I'm not familiar enough with quantitative data to judge on the compound interest, nevertheless I think in the last few decades we have already been witness on the global level to major changes in wealth: empires like UK have shrank, giants like China have risen. This had been very different a few decades ago and is an anecdote at least that compound interest can only do so much for empires, in the face of major changes.
dv_dt 9mo ago
Look for the Sugarscape model research studies. With uniform equally distributed starting point, fairly unbiased rules, and a set of random early wins, large disparities tend to accumulate over time without active policy to counteract it.
- jibal 9mo ago
  Which is why there should be active policy to counteract it.
jibal 9mo ago
> One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed That's not an argument, it's a completely counterfactual assertion ... or rather, the assertion that this is the cause of uneven distribution of wealth. > Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality. But of course it's not true, it's just an attempt to justify a morally bankrupt sociopathic ideology.
rawgabbit 9mo ago
You could have asked the same question when slavery was legal. Why is slavery not evenly distributed. Social injustice has been the default since the beginning of known history. Social justice is something that has to be fought for.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
1718627440 9mo ago
Because a tree has better access times than a list, so some amount of hierarchy results in a better performance than unstructured set of individuals. As directing people means more available work force for ones goals, and money represents ability to do something and availability to resources, some people will have more money than others.

gruez 9mo ago

>Organizing your country with more sustainable growth where income disparities aren't so high means you don't have this problem to this extent. Sounds like US vs Europe. Having redistributive policies funded by taxes works well until your most productive people flee for a country that doesn't, and you steadily lose ground to competitors economically.

ozlikethewizard 9mo ago
Americans like to act like they've beaten European nations in some kind of battle, but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens? Not try to make the biggest corporations? In which case, even taking the whole of Europe as an average (which you shouldn't), by every metric beyond GDP its ahead.
- gruez 9mo ago
  >but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens? It's going to be hard to provide all of that when you don't have the money for it (eg. fiscal crisis in France right now), or if you get invaded by your neighbor (or any other competitor) eclipses you economically and then uses that to subjugate you. The european model of reaping the peace dividend and using it to fund a more generous welfare state worked from 1990s to 2010s, but is breaking down with the rise of china and russia, and is further exacerbated by sluggish growth and the demographic/pension crisis.
  - disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
    > the demographic/pension crisis. This is the actual issue, which we often avoid talking about because it's grim. Like, health care is expensive, old people health care is really expensive, and the proportion of old people in many Western countries is increasing over time (because of a fall in birth rates). I believe the FT had a good article about this recently, where they showed that the vast majority of extra spending from government was on old people. Now, clearly, society doesn't want to just shoot old people when they get sick, but I'm not sure how taxation is gonna look as the proportion of old people increases. Obviously increasing retirement ages helps here, but that's mostly just a massive tax on blue collar workers, who are much less likely to be able to continue working into their 70s, whereas for many cubicle jockeys, it's a lot more plausible.

Lionga 9mo ago

Countries in which the income disparities ARE so high are also the ones where the "poor" are the richest. They just feel poor in comparison not in absolute terms. 70K a year is poor in California, but top 1% rich in almost any country in the world. Low income disparities are countries like Albania, Afghanistan, Armenia to name the first three with below 30 GINI income.

samiv 9mo ago
This is an anomaly and left over from the time when middle class was growing after the 2nd world war. We (Western countries) are dismantling all the back stops and the process will reverse and move all the wealth to the few rich people in the capital class. When this process is complete the poverty levels in the west will equal those of the countries you mentioned, Afghanistan etc. The USA and UK are leading the process since they started to pursue this goal aggressively during the 80s with Reaganism and Thatcherism.
- ghufran_syed 9mo ago
  and you’re claiming the process still isn’t complete more than 40 years later? shouldn't the wealth gap between the poor in the US vs the poor in Afghanistan be starting to get smaller if your argument is correct?
dns_snek 9mo ago
And this is exactly why nominal $ amount comparisons are completely pointless. Someone who makes $70k in southern or eastern Europe is living like a king (or living at least good life anywhere in Europe) while someone making $70k in expensive parts of California is going to struggle. Wealth is equal to your share of the overall resources, $ amounts are just an abstraction.

m463 9mo ago

your post has a mistaken question. The actual question is: "If we tax tax them, will they leave? (losing the planned tax revenue/backfiring)" It is pretty easy to avoid state taxes - just move to a different state.

Balinares 9mo ago
Research shows that they mostly don't, for all the screeching about it. https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/jun16asrfeature.pdf https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/ju...

rayiner 9mo ago

Taxing billionaires isn't "necessary to raise enough tax revenue." Total personal income in the U.S. is 26 trillion annually: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income. For the most part, that's real money that reflects goods and services in the real economy. The increase in wealth of billionaires in 2025 was $1.5 trillion: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-1-5-trillion-richer-trumps-first-year/#:~:text=Corporate%20Taxes,Kass%2C%20ATF's%20executive%20director. https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-1-5-trillio... Most of that isn't even real money--it's people betting on AI. (As an aside, is the government going to give huge tax refunds when the AI bubble bursts and all that "wealth" disappears?) If the U.S. just taxed people the way they do in Germany we could raise trillions in revenue without resorting to tricks like one-time wealth taxes. The focus is on billionaires because Americans want a German-style welfare state without German-style taxes on the middle and upper middle class.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

port11 9mo ago

Countries with low inequality tend to have strongly progressive taxation systems — Belgium, Sweden, Finland, etc. The billionaire class isn’t a necessity, it’s a failure of morality to overpower the affordances of hyper-growth capitalism.