4 ms·
How exactly do you propose keeping a founder from becoming wealthier once their company scales past the point where they are worth a hundred million?
by nfw2 4mo ago
How exactly do you propose keeping a founder from becoming wealthier once their company scales past the point where they are worth a hundred million?
- didibus 4mo agotax?
- pclowes 4mo agoOn what? You force the company to break up and liquidate so they can pay taxes? You force the founder to give up their private property just because it is valuable? Remember these are not dollar bills in the founders bank account. It is just the company they created is now very valuable. It does not mean it is liquid.
- paulryanrogers 4mo agoOwners being able to lock the value generated by workers solely within their family for generations has been tried. It ends in feudalism.
- nfw2 4mo agoAre you proposing changing inheritance laws or are you proposing forcing companies to sell their stock in a firesale to be in accordance with the IRS? Be clear in your propositions please.
- paulryanrogers 4mo agoProgressive taxation, taxes on CG, inheritance taxes, and a well funded and non-partisan IRS.
- nfw2 4mo agoNone of these will prevent someone from gaining more than 100M. That is what is under discussion. I am not against more progressive taxes. Which party is the IRS partisan towards? What do you mean by partisan?
- paulryanrogers 4mo agohttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/experts-warn-trump-immunity-from-irs-audit-could-undermine-trust-in-tax-system https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/experts-warn-trump-imm... https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-irs-investigations-left-leaning-groups-democratic-donors-612a095e https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-irs-investigations...
- nfw2 4mo agoI agree these are partisan and bad developments. It is also unrelated to the question at hand about how to prevent people from gaining over 100m which people have been able to do under the heretofore non-partisan irs
- bluecheese452 4mo agoWhat do you mean by “is”? What do you mean by “you”? By clear.
- seventytwo 4mo agoIt doesn’t end in feudalism. It ends in guillotines.
- blackoil 4mo ago> You force the founder to give up their private property just because it is valuable? That's how taxes work.
- didibus 4mo ago> On what? On the business income, on the sale of shares, on their wealth, on loans, on estate and inheritance, etc. Breaking up the company is another avenue, it could increase competitiveness and make the markets freer, open up more options for employees to shop around for employer, etc. Raising minimum wage, stronger overtime rules, paid family leave, mandatory paid vacation and sick leave, non-compete restrictions, profit-sharing requirements, and other regulation that favors the employee is yet another avenue... There are ways if the will is there.
- atq2119 4mo agoThe straightforward solution to this is to allow the tax to be paid in kind, to be paid into a sovereign wealth fund. Owe 1M$ in taxes and have ownership stakes in a company worth 1B$? Fine, transfer a 0.1% share of ownership in the company into the SWF.
- bwhiting2356 4mo agoanti-trust
- idiotsecant 4mo agoIt's mind boggling that you view the solution to this as so counter to the interests of the capital class that you can't even speak it aloud You tax them. Wealth inequality of this magnitude is toxic to democracy. It's simply too much power. These men aren't gods, they are just flesh and blood and usually really terrible people. We are not staff at their resort. Let them live in luxury for the rest of their life, great. But they don't get to have more political power than half a million people put together.
- taffer 4mo ago> It's mind boggling that you Please don't do this. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nfw2 4mo agoSo you're saying the obvious solution is to force founders to liquidate all shares necessary every year to keep their wealth under 100M? How to keep short sellers from feasting on this? Who will the buyers be if everyone is selling around tax season? If the stock crashes because there is government-mandated short interest and no long interest are they off the hook? On the point of democracy, none of the candidates who spend the most on major elections seem to be winning much lately, Bloomberg, Harris, Cuomo, Steyer, etc.
- esseph 4mo ago> On the point of democracy, none of the candidates who spend the most on major elections seem to be winning much lately, Thomas Massie was just ousted in the most expensive house primary in US history. The difference between 1-2 mil that is normally spent and the $30+ million spent on that election alone.
- nfw2 4mo agoTom steyer spent half a billion to not even make it onto the final ca ballot
- siliconc0w 4mo agoThe market is supposed to do that. Once an opportunity is identified there is a rush to compete and margin disappears, so the people still get the new, better thing, but for much cheaper. What can happen though is that companies figure out how to prevent meaningful competition to preserve high margins. They're worth millions for the innovation but they get to billions through anti-competitive and extractive practices.
- nfw2 4mo agoMost things don't behave like pure commodities regardless of anything that can be considered monopolistic.
- knorker 4mo agoI agree with you on it being hard. But we can start by not forgiving CG on death. That seems like a no brainer with no downsides. No downsides I respect, at least. "We want to keep the business in the family" should be ignored.
- jonfromsf 4mo ago100%. I don't understand how anyone defends the "death loophole" for capital gains. If you get rid of it you could actually get rid of estate taxes, which are a kludge to capture some of the capital gains that are given away by resetting the basis at death. It's a nutty system we have right now.
- nfw2 4mo agoMy question was how do you prevent anyone from having over 100M? No motte and baileys please.
- tensility 4mo agoGuillotines are the classic method, and they are likely coming if we don't change course.
- nfw2 4mo agoRevolutionaries often overestimate the appetite in the general populace for revolution. Also I'm not sure guillotines will be able to do much against the killer drones that palmer luckey is making
- joquarky 4mo agoReverse lottery.
- deaux 4mo agoBy taking the excess yearly, and that's very doable. When Bezos divorced, Mackenzie Bezos was awarded 25% of their Amazon shares valued at over 38 billion dollars. Just by the above being possible, that means there's no reason why such a "divorce" couldn't happen once per year, and there's also no reason why it has to be 25% rather than "everything above 100M". It means that the tools for this exist. The government takes the place of Mackenzie Bezos. During the divorce, not a single mention of "oh it's just _impossible_ to take 25% of Jeff Bezos' Amazon shares, it will cause collapse". Just all of a sudden if you replace MacKenzie Bezos with "the government" or "the pension fund", suddenly there's all kinds of supposed reasons why it can't happen - even though there's zero reason why it couldn't. No "but technically they will temporarily have over 100M in the intermediary period" please.
- paulryanrogers 4mo agoTaxes. If they want to externalize the costs then society should socialize excessive surpluses.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]