Kind of makes a point to have a wealth tax. As the top 1% of w2 earners are paying a disproportionate amount of tax relative to too 1% of wealth holders.
That or just raise interest rates to force these people to sell more equity
I think that instead of a wealth tax it makes more sense to change how we tax in relation to the financial instruments the wealthy use.
Capital gains: this should just be income.
Unrealized gains: The argument against wealth taxes are often related to unrealized gains needing to sell blah blah. If you get a loan on your stock value, at that moment the gains should be considered realized and you should be taxed via capital gains (which would be at the level of income tax). Ultra-wealthy use loans against their portfolio to avoid realizing their gains. Make that not possible.
Top salary earners, who do manage to save somewhat for retirement end up getting punished by these wealth taxes as well, especially since, generally, you need money in order to be able to move money around, in order to be able to save money on these sorts of taxes.
They get punished by wealth tax because the crooks who implement wealth tax put the limit at some ridiculous point that ends up impacting "normal people". The whole point of wealth tax is to tax the ultra rich, so you could put the limit extremely high like $5M or even $20M and it wouldn't affect anyone except those who can easily afford it. But they don't do that, I assume because they want people to hate it so they can remove it later.
Yeah but every time anyone actually does implement a wealth tax they start it at like $500k or some similarly stupidly low amount and then everyone starts (somewhat rightfully) complaining that granny has to sell her house because she can't afford the tax.
It seems to obvious to me, like just start it at something like $5M. Nobody will be affected who can't afford it. It's like they're trying to implement it in a way that makes people hate it.
Netherlands is €60,000 single / €120,000 married before it kicks in; implemented as a 36% yearly tax on assumed 6% returns (e.g. married; have €200k in investments; you owe something like [200-120] * .36 * .06 = €1728). I think there's some nuance for bad years.
In practice its basically an additional 2% "drag" on market returns as its a yearly tax; not capital gains on sale.
Sole reason we turned down a job there. I don't hate the idea of a wealth tax, but having it kick in at €120,000 is nuts. IMO it's not even functioning as a wealth tax, its a barrier to the middle class accumulating even meager non-property wealth.
(I'm sure I have some details wrong, but broad-strokes this is what I remember from when we turned it down a few months ago)
Such a wealth tax surely should be progressive. If I have $500k I'm not necessarily wealthy-wealthy but I'm heck of a lot more wealthy than someone who only has $5k, or even $50k. I could afford to pay something for the sake of being lucky enough to have a have half a million. Someone with $50M could afford to pay much more.
However, I don't think wealth tax is a good tax. You'd be taxing something you want citizens to have: wealth. It seems that wealth tax is often used as an easy fix to "we can't somehow tax the income of high-earning wealthy people because they arrange the legal ownership of their wealth so that it's hard so let's tax their wealth". What should be fixed instead is profits slipping out of the taxable base. In general, a lower but wider tax base is always better than higher spot taxes that encourage people to optimize. Wealth tax is just a slap-on solution that mostly just encourages tax planning.
The inequality of the distribution is the true issue, and indeed not taxing the wealthy enough does accumulates that. A country should be proud to tax widely and moderately, even the highest earning people and businesses. A country can't compete with a tax haven but a tax haven can't compete with a functioning state and society. Working to tax wealthy people more in par to what ordinary people are taxed would work towards a more equal society. Some of the wealthy people would move away but the country should recognize and maintain that it has other factors of appeal than the tax rate.
> However, I don't think wealth tax is a good tax. You'd be taxing something you want citizens to have: wealth.
Income is far more important to people than wealth is. Income is what let's you buy food. Yet we tax income at quite a high rate. Far better to have a mix of both than the current system of having a lot of one and basically none of the other.
I agree it should be progressive. But to me, the point is not to tax normal people who have worked hard and saved up some money. Many, if not most people will save up $500k over the course of their lives. That's not wealth, thats just a financially responsible person, it's one paid off modest house. These people already pay half their salary in tax every year, they are already severely taxed we don't need to tax them more. In fact I think normal people should be taxed less, even relatively high earners like medical doctors for example.
The point of wealth tax, to me, is to tax the obscenely wealthy people. Those few who are worth more than the entire rest of the population combined, while also basically not paying any tax at all despite their fortunes growing by millions or billions every year.
I actually think it would be reasonable to essentially put a "soft cap" on wealth. Like if you're worth several hundred million dollars you literally can't grow your fortune any more because you're just gaining as much as you pay in tax. Instead of one guy owning multiple companies worth billions of dollars he would have to sell shares to pay his taxes, and now many people own the companies instead. This prevents one person from amassing too much wealth and power.
At $5MM farmers are affected. Land is expensive, and it takes a lot of land to farm. At $5k/acre, the old standard 1k acres farm is $5MM, and nowadays that’s probably not enough land to raise a family (only $65k profit), so you really need more land. Estate tax means the kids can’t inherit all the land.
I'm not attached to the random figure I threw out. Put it at $10M then.
That said, if you have $5M invested in a business that makes you $65k a year you're being stupid. Sell the farm, put the money in some safe 5%ish interest vessel like a CD, now you're making $250k doing nothing.
What is the point against wealth tax? That the rich will flee, leaving us.... better off in every possible way?? This is like that episode of futurama where fry befriends the parasites he found at a gas stop
>That the rich will flee, leaving us.... better off in every possible way??
Can you explain why would we be better off when the rich flee?
I see this "we gonna be better off without them" sentiment quite often, but never an explanation how would we be better off? What metrics have you used?
Wouldn't they retain a lot of ability to do that from abroad? A wealth tax targets wealth in your country. We've seen plenty of loopholes for foreign political influence lately and I don't think there are any laws against non-residents holding majority shares in US companies, right?
USSR had no rich and everyone one was poor (except for the party’s apparatus).
So, how would it work here? Why eliminating the rich (whatever is the definition) would achieve a different outcome than that of communist regimes of the past?
This doesn't even make sense. Poverty is a relative term. Poverty requires wealth.
Anyway what little meager juice that these ideological labels had after the cold war is now gone with china as king of the hill.
We can all agree private investment = rapid growth, and state intervention both in terms of social safety nets and actively ensuring fair competition (where that is necessary—banking, anti-trust, food/med production, etc) = stabler economies (or we agreed on this for a few decades after the great depression anyway). It's what the point of the economy is—to serve the disproportionate interests of rich or the collective (one might even say... democratic) interests of people—where there remains substantive disagreement. I hope we can leave this farce behind that how we talk about ideology has any relation to how the terms were actually defined in lieu or acknowledging material reality for a change.
> This doesn't even make sense. Poverty is a relative term.
It makes perfect sense. Citizens of USSR were poorer than their counterparts in the west, didn’t have access to the same variety of food, cloth, etc.
I do remember all these things from my childhood, and my parents made more money than the average because they worked for the oil and gas industry that paid extra. So, when people are trying to sell me the whole “collectivism” and anti-rich sentiment, I am a bit wary because no one can explain how “this time” is going to be different — it seems none of the activists/advocates actually lived in such systems, so they have no clue. I lived the consequences, and I do not want it for myself or anyone else.
I would say the point of the economy is to ensure that both the rich get what they want, but also to ensure that others are not poor and left behind. This is not the case today, and thus a series of reforms is needed. But it’s doesn’t make a believer for the “let’s abolish the rich” thing.
> Citizens of USSR were poorer than their counterparts in the west
Well that's because we're a bunch of greedy bitches who never learned how to play nice with the other kids—capitalism. It would take a hell of a lot more wealth generation for humanity to justify this kind of economic dysfunction.
I mean we made something far worse than the gulag with the american prison system (basically, the punitive theory of rape). It seems we just became all the evil that the soviet system was allegedly supposed to cause from the western perspective 50 years ago.
> Also, you are strongly implying the USSR taxed the wealthy disproportionately. They did not, so your entire argument is silly.
They absolutely did. The tax was 100% and then camps for the whole family.
My argument is not silly, in fact I did not make any. I asked how exactly we are going to be better off without the rich, and what kind of metrics were used to make the analysis. So far there was no answer.
Saying someone’s argument is silly and then walking off is silly.
They won't flee. The tax would have to astronomical to offset the advantages of doing business in the US. If that wasn't true, they would have all disclaimed their US citizenship and moved to Monaco already.
This is not the question I asked. I asked how and why would it be better for the rest of us?
For the record, I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of taxation on the wealthy, but I want to understand why having no rich is better for everyone.
Fair, and I don't believe we'd be better off if they fled. We would be better off if they weren't astronomically wealthy. I don't have a specific number in mind, but "a billion-ish" feels like a reasonable upper bound on wealth.
I'd also note that I would prefer to adjust tax/accounting laws to prevent the accumulation in the first place, not just roll out a blanket "take everything over a billion-ish law" as that feels more like a band-aid than a fix.
Not only rich people affect outcomes of the elections or legislature, unions do as well.
For example, New York’s Health Act failed because teachers unions opposed it on the grounds of “protecting the hard fought contract benefits”. In other words, union leadership realized that with this bill becoming a law unions would be less needed, so they fought for their interests while disregarding interests of others.
> Unions represent the interest of a large group of people, they arrive at policy through debate and consensus.
Well, in this case, how come preventing access to healthcare to NYS residents is in the interest of the teachers? And, why would teachers think that they are the only ones who deserve good health care?
Unless… the unions have no feedback mechanism to ensure that they operate the way you think they operate, and they do what any other politician does — they want to stay in power I exchange for keeping just enough of the voting base like you more than the next guy. So, in this case, it’s perfectly reasonable for a union leadership to fight this law — it simply a preservation of power thing.
>Well, in this case, how come preventing access to healthcare to NYS residents is in the interest of the teachers? And, why would teachers think that they are the only ones who deserve good health care?
I am not familiar with the particulars, but I am sure there is information published by the union explaining their position in more detail.
I reject your suggestion that I am ignorant how unions operate. I have been a member of a union for many years. Larger decisions are decided by voting.
Like democracy, unions are not perfect. But historically unions have been effective at negotiating rights for workers (weekends, 8hour workdays etc.)
I would argue they are one of the few ways labour has been able to impact policy and law.
> I reject your suggestion that I am ignorant how unions operate. I have been a member of a union for many years.
I was a member of a union as well.
> Larger decisions are decided by voting.
After they went through the filter of the leadership, either via the “bargaining committee” or any other form of delegation, selection to which can be based on votes or appointments.
You can Google yourself how teacher unions opposed NYS health care bill, and why they deemed it necessary to justify their position with “protecting the fought for benefits” among other things.
No, they are single individuals who have more speech than me via dollars. They are groups of people. I may have problems with particular unions or particular actions but they’re a million times better than a single illegal immigrant being able to manipulate politics on his own whims.
I care about outcomes, and I do not give unions any more slack or good will just because they are “troops of people”. They do shitty things too, and the results are bad for everyone involved. So, what’s the difference? There is none.
>Yea, I actually believe a bunch of people agreeing with an action has a difference in quality vs one oligarch or king getting to unilaterally decide.
This is a false dichotomy.
> They may end up doing shitty things but the group has buy in from a lot more people than one asshole deciding how we get to live our life.
Well, a group of teachers in a union decided for the whole state that they (the teachers) deserve health insurance more than the rest of the state.
I understand that for some people it's fine because their team wins. I am not one of those, I am for outcomes that benefit the most, and not select few that managed to sway power just because they are teachers.
> > Yea, I actually believe a bunch of people agreeing with an action has a difference in quality vs one oligarch or king getting to unilaterally decide.
> This is a false dichotomy.
no, its my fucking opinion. I didnt say it was fact. You see the word "believe" in that text?
I don’t need to see a word believe. Beliefs are not based on rational arguments, and your arguments are irrational, so no need to use specific words, I can infer from between the lines.
Is it though? Those same unrealized gains are used by those same alleged paper-billionaires to borrow money and live lavish lifestyles ("Buy, Borrow, Die").
They literally get to eat their cake and have it too.
this is principally why banking exists at all, farmers needed to borrow against a harvest that hadn't yet been planted.
I'd suggest some controls or limits to it, but the lenders assume the risk ( except for all the times the public has had to bail them out) and they're grown up corporations who can decide for themselves.
I should add, that the money they borrow does get taxed when it is spent on the indulgences you make reference to.
Yes, but it isn't taxed federally as income tax, which is the problem we're probably trying to solve.
IE, every dollar I earn gets taxed twice - as income, then as sales tax.
Rich guy only pays the sales tax.
And there's a fundamental difference between "borrow to keep the business running smoothly" and "borrow to buy a mega-yacht". Legally, not so much, as you say, but hell's bells, the super yacht market really shouldn't exist.
Sure, and there's plenty of opportunity to build regular yachts (which are still massively expensive). When I say super-yacht, I mean the 100 meter monstrosities preferred by the likes of Bezos and Zuckerberg. I take no issue with the type of yacht owned by "mere millionaires".
Any normal person can implement the same strategy in any brokerage account.
Regardless, if that's the actual anti-social behavior we should change that tax treatment specifically, versus a broad paper wealth tax with unintended consequences.
If Elon musk can spend $500 million dollars every election year (in addition to everything else he does) the gains aren't unrealised and he can pay $500 million in taxes every year. Really the amount he can afford to pay and should fairly pay, imo at least 3%, would be much higher than $500 million.
This article is about American wealth inequality so I’ll assume you’re talking about the US. The US already taxes global income, so moving away is not enough. You could renounce citizenship, but then you lose all the benefits of citizenship and you must pay capital gains an all assets whether you sell them or not.
The “they’ll just leave” argument doesn’t really hold up in this case.
There is not one discussion without this "argument".
But, let's say, they do. And they also have to stay out.
Wouldn't that be.. kinda nice actually?
Your taxes would stay the same either way.
Yes, of course, there would be less luxury spending, but the millions of normal people still exist. And they spend and they produce.
Why not let the ultra wealthy just leave and idk go to mars or something?
Kick them out, seize their assets, run society without them if they do not want to be part of it anyway.
Hey so this isn't true. In places where they have researched this, a small number of people do move, but the additional tax of those who don't completely outstrips what was lost.
They can personally move, but they can't move the source of their wealth. Bezos can move, Amazon can't. Bezos moving away will only reduce his taxes if we let it.
Where are they going to go? If they wanted to go live in a 3rd world country with no taxes, they already would. Everyone is getting tired of their BS and your lame, repetitive arguments.
The best of the best do work at Amazon. Their cloud infra is world class. They just cannot compete in the ai/ml space with different economics. It’s an operational company and not one to do tech innovation.
Basically you want to run an LLM, Amazon. You want to build an LLM not Amazon
Yes and No. If you are a citizen and have “AI” experience there’s plenty of startups offering base salaries in excess of the average Microsoft total comp.
I’m at +100k people company, and they only spend 20usd a month on copilot and they talk about AI daily. Anyway you can switch Claude to whatever in the drop down they have. But they are moving all away from this as they think 20 usd is too much and want to self host.
Crazy that SpaceX has similar commitments to AWS/GCP. Means it’s very bullish for SpaceX given they produce their own energy turbines and have the best ability to deal with supply chain constraints
There are lots of wildly profitable enterprises that we regulate or make illegal.
If everyone else is selling boiled orphan elixir, you'd be leaving money on the table not to boil yourself some orphans. But maybe we decide that boiling orphans isn't an industry we want as a society, and legislate consequences for doing so.
> If not Amazon, someone else would ship this. At least if you ship it you can make it less shitty.
I'm sure someone's thinking that, and it's a bullshit rationalization. Don't turn yourself into a villain because you think someone else might beat you to it.
Also, if true, it's a stark indictment of capitalism, and how it pushes people towards malign and harmful activities.
I think we all understand capitalism is inherently flawed. I also think this a bit more nuanced than black and white.
The biggest issue with capitalism is that it rewards the people with no moral compass with power. In a broken system like this, no change will ever come unless people start to decide to do something about it. This comes in two forms: replacing the system, and reforming the system. Both of these require influence. The more influence a person has, the more change they can enact. And let's face if, we live in a system where money can directly be converted to power and influence (see our elections and politics as a whole). To make real changes you have to play the game, and unfortunately there are a lot more evil people playing the game than good. To try to skew that ratio in the right direction a little bit is a good idea in my books.
> The biggest issue with capitalism is that it rewards the people with no moral compass with power. ... To make real changes you have to play the game, and unfortunately there are a lot more evil people playing the game than good. To try to skew that ratio in the right direction a little bit is a good idea in my books.
And you do that by developing, building, and marketing, a tablet for toddlers?
I don't think any of what you say makes sense, if you think about it for even a little bit:
1. Even an individual at the top of capitalism doesn't have the right kind of influence to "replace or reform it."
2. Even if one could amass that kind of influence for that goal, the path to get there through "winning at capitalism" would probably corrupt the person before they had any influence to wield.
3. And even if you could get that high without being corrupted, there's no guarantee. Most of the people trying will end the game accomplishing nothing better slinging cancer-sticks and brain-rot for babies.
4. The actual path towards fixing it may not be an "only I can fix it" collaborationist arrogance. It could be letting it get worse and putting your efforts into highlighting those contradictions to motivate more robust collective action.
LLM and full rewrite are a recipe for cooking something that still has flaws but also doesn't work that well. The root cause is that PDF is an old format from a more innocent era. A new document standard that keeps up with the technical and security advances, learns about the lessons PDF taught us, and allows for easy conversion from old PDFs, would be the ideal solution.
Who am I kidding, I think the PDF format will outlive us.
Because it’s a high-level interpreted language. Still memory-safe!
Rust is interesting because it’s a low-level language with strong memory safety. That makes it a good fit for projects like coreutils. I’d argue it makes it a bad fit for many other projects that get rewritten in it, though. Not everything actually needs to be in a low-level language with compile-time memory management.
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