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What silicon valley millionaire is advocating against taxing the rich? The only one I know of that has an opinion is Gates, and it's exactly the opposite of wh

What silicon valley millionaire is advocating against taxing the rich? The only one I know of that has an opinion is Gates, and it's exactly the opposite of what you're implying.

lutusp 13y ago
Warren Buffett also advocates higher taxes for the rich: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-... Quote: "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice." Buffett, Gates and many other super-rich people have decided to give most of their fortunes to charity, not to their children.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  Wouldn't putting your fortune into a charitable trust (like the Gates foundation - iirc a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization) basically count as a way to evade paying full tax on it (estate taxes, etc)? Not that I'm saying giving your money to charity is bad, but it seems like a way to reduce your tax burden while still being able to direct the money towards things you were interested in doing anyway.
  - dublinben 13y ago
    Only if you're using that foundation as a way to funnel the money to your heirs. The Gates Foundation is spending a lot of that money right now, while Bill is still alive.
    - kevingadd 13y ago
      Yeah, sorry - I wasn't implying anything bad about Gates, I think he's doing great stuff - it's just unclear to me whether it's possible for someone to use a foundation like that as a tax dodge. I don't know if he represents the average or if he's actually a positive outlier.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > it's just unclear to me whether it's possible for someone to use a foundation like that as a tax dodge. Only if burning money in your yard counts as a tax dodge. Setting up a foundation doesn't allow the money to be redirected to the donor in any way, and the donor doesn't even get to specify how the money is spent, except in a broad philosophical sense (i.e. "The goal of my foundation is to help education", things like that). > I don't know if he represents the average or if he's actually a positive outlier. Even among well-known philanthropists, Gates is an outlier. His willingness to tackle polio, and his project to redesign condoms to make them more effective, are both wise and daring projects. Unlike smallpox, polio only exhibits symptoms in a small minority of those infected, so it is very difficult to identify, control and eradicate. It's going to be much harder to eradicate polio than it was to eliminate smallpox, the first dramatic pathogen extinction that was based on simple human effort.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Wouldn't putting your fortune into a charitable trust (like the Gates foundation - iirc a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization) basically count as a way to evade paying full tax on it (estate taxes, etc)? This may appear to be true at first glance, but compare using capital to set up a foundation versus using the same capital to grow one's fortune in equities and other investments. The latter choice is better overall when a combination of growth and tax issues are taken into account. This means that people who set up foundations do it because they want to change the world, not because they want to avoid taxes.
    - kevingadd 13y ago
      Thanks! Informative.
devcpp 13y ago
The Republican party is far from broke, so I'd say "many". Example: the Koch brothers. They're not very much upvoted on Reddit or HN though, and generally don't use social networks a lot, so we don't hear about them as much. They don't need popularity anyway: they have money. Bill Gates is one of the few who really seems to want to give back, so we read about him a lot. It's a better news story than "Shocking! Another Rich Guy Turns Out to be Greedy" or "Wealthy Person Still Not Giving a Lot of Money".
kevingadd 13y ago
Off the top of my head, from recent memory: We have Tom Perkins complaining that the desire to have the rich contribute fairly is a 'Progressive Kristallnacht', tech nutjob Tim Draper advocating a scheme to basically wall off Silicon Valley from the poors in the rest of the state, and various SF tech firms monopolizing public resources (like bus stops, for example) without paying anything resembling a fair market rate. Less directly, we have people like Peter Shih and Greg Gopman spouting antisocial rants about how their lives are inconvenienced by the poor and disadvantaged, and how the world would be a better place without all these poor people (rephrased, obviously). There are certainly level-headed silicon valley millionaires out there who just want to buy a quiet house somewhere and live a happy family life. As long as they pay their taxes and don't lobby to make the planet worse, I have no problem with those people. The issue is that you can easily come up with as many bad examples as good ones, when it comes to these 'new money' types. The money in SV obviously does not go directly to the most deserving; some people just get lucky, other people get their money through deceit and outright theft, and other people have the vast majority of their money siphoned off by outside forces like patent trolls. It would be unusual if all these millionaires WERE good people.
- josefresco 13y ago
  Sooo we probably shouldn't lump them together, and should instead call them out specifically (as you did in your reply). I'm not even going to touch the "new money" comment...
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    'New money' is not a slur (at least in this case), I'm using it to indicate that these are people who came into money recently and have typically not progressed to the point where they are using it responsibly and thinking long-term.
    - josefresco 13y ago
      Anecdotally I would think "old money" would be more against taxation than new money folks. If you were born into money, and never lived poorly I would assume that you'd have a hard time empathizing with the plight of the less fortunate. Also, holding onto your mountain of cash that someone handed to you is different than someone with an earned high income. It would seem to me that old money people would be more active in reducing taxes on investments (which they've arguably succeeded in doing) and new money folks would be more concerned with income taxing.

What silicon valley millionaire is advocating against taxing the rich? The only one I know of that has an opinion is Gates, and it's exactly the opposite of what you're implying.

lutusp 13y ago

Warren Buffett also advocates higher taxes for the rich: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-... Quote: "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice." Buffett, Gates and many other super-rich people have decided to give most of their fortunes to charity, not to their children.

kevingadd 13y ago
Wouldn't putting your fortune into a charitable trust (like the Gates foundation - iirc a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization) basically count as a way to evade paying full tax on it (estate taxes, etc)? Not that I'm saying giving your money to charity is bad, but it seems like a way to reduce your tax burden while still being able to direct the money towards things you were interested in doing anyway.
- dublinben 13y ago
  Only if you're using that foundation as a way to funnel the money to your heirs. The Gates Foundation is spending a lot of that money right now, while Bill is still alive.
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    Yeah, sorry - I wasn't implying anything bad about Gates, I think he's doing great stuff - it's just unclear to me whether it's possible for someone to use a foundation like that as a tax dodge. I don't know if he represents the average or if he's actually a positive outlier.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > it's just unclear to me whether it's possible for someone to use a foundation like that as a tax dodge. Only if burning money in your yard counts as a tax dodge. Setting up a foundation doesn't allow the money to be redirected to the donor in any way, and the donor doesn't even get to specify how the money is spent, except in a broad philosophical sense (i.e. "The goal of my foundation is to help education", things like that). > I don't know if he represents the average or if he's actually a positive outlier. Even among well-known philanthropists, Gates is an outlier. His willingness to tackle polio, and his project to redesign condoms to make them more effective, are both wise and daring projects. Unlike smallpox, polio only exhibits symptoms in a small minority of those infected, so it is very difficult to identify, control and eradicate. It's going to be much harder to eradicate polio than it was to eliminate smallpox, the first dramatic pathogen extinction that was based on simple human effort.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Wouldn't putting your fortune into a charitable trust (like the Gates foundation - iirc a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization) basically count as a way to evade paying full tax on it (estate taxes, etc)? This may appear to be true at first glance, but compare using capital to set up a foundation versus using the same capital to grow one's fortune in equities and other investments. The latter choice is better overall when a combination of growth and tax issues are taken into account. This means that people who set up foundations do it because they want to change the world, not because they want to avoid taxes.
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    Thanks! Informative.

devcpp 13y ago

The Republican party is far from broke, so I'd say "many". Example: the Koch brothers. They're not very much upvoted on Reddit or HN though, and generally don't use social networks a lot, so we don't hear about them as much. They don't need popularity anyway: they have money. Bill Gates is one of the few who really seems to want to give back, so we read about him a lot. It's a better news story than "Shocking! Another Rich Guy Turns Out to be Greedy" or "Wealthy Person Still Not Giving a Lot of Money".

kevingadd 13y ago

Off the top of my head, from recent memory: We have Tom Perkins complaining that the desire to have the rich contribute fairly is a 'Progressive Kristallnacht', tech nutjob Tim Draper advocating a scheme to basically wall off Silicon Valley from the poors in the rest of the state, and various SF tech firms monopolizing public resources (like bus stops, for example) without paying anything resembling a fair market rate. Less directly, we have people like Peter Shih and Greg Gopman spouting antisocial rants about how their lives are inconvenienced by the poor and disadvantaged, and how the world would be a better place without all these poor people (rephrased, obviously). There are certainly level-headed silicon valley millionaires out there who just want to buy a quiet house somewhere and live a happy family life. As long as they pay their taxes and don't lobby to make the planet worse, I have no problem with those people. The issue is that you can easily come up with as many bad examples as good ones, when it comes to these 'new money' types. The money in SV obviously does not go directly to the most deserving; some people just get lucky, other people get their money through deceit and outright theft, and other people have the vast majority of their money siphoned off by outside forces like patent trolls. It would be unusual if all these millionaires WERE good people.

josefresco 13y ago
Sooo we probably shouldn't lump them together, and should instead call them out specifically (as you did in your reply). I'm not even going to touch the "new money" comment...
- kevingadd 13y ago
  'New money' is not a slur (at least in this case), I'm using it to indicate that these are people who came into money recently and have typically not progressed to the point where they are using it responsibly and thinking long-term.
  - josefresco 13y ago
    Anecdotally I would think "old money" would be more against taxation than new money folks. If you were born into money, and never lived poorly I would assume that you'd have a hard time empathizing with the plight of the less fortunate. Also, holding onto your mountain of cash that someone handed to you is different than someone with an earned high income. It would seem to me that old money people would be more active in reducing taxes on investments (which they've arguably succeeded in doing) and new money folks would be more concerned with income taxing.