Why the morbidly rich need to be seriously taxed

[JoeWeber 2,316]

58 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

That would make her six 

You are not where you are on your own steam alone. Thats  cool. Everyone needs a little help to get there. 
Some folks don’t have a smart wife to lean on to make it. Some folks don’t want to spend 20 years in uniform or couldn’t get in to get the benefits you have. But they may also be as deserving as you. Take just one minute out of your day to think about them.

[jakee 1,257]

13 hours ago, brenthutch said:

There’s an old Russian fable about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was Boris had a goat and Ivan didn’t. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared telling him she could grant just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.

Ivan said, “I want Boris’ goat to die.”
 

Lefties = Ivan

I mean, sure. Making Jeff Bezos, a man who pays thousands of employees so little they have to rely on food stamps yet who is so rich he can afford to build a space rocket on a whim, pay a similar tax rate to normal people would be exactly like killing a poor man's only goat. Because Bezos is the peasant in this fable, not the Csar. Obviously.

 

I'm not sure whether you think you're covering it up, but honestly you don't half make it obvious when you realise your arguments run out of juice.

[jakee 1,257]

5 hours ago, brenthutch said:

Question: would you rather have a society where there was massive income inequality yet everyone was better off or a society where everyone was equal yet poorer?

No-one's talking about equal. That's the strawman you fall back on when you realise that what you're saying is indefensible.

BTW, Amazon is a primarily a retailer. Is it really creating societal wealth by selling things cheaper than independant brick and mortar shops coud, driving those business owners nder, and paying its employees so little they have to rely on benefits from the government, funded by the taxes that Jeff Bezos pays so little of?

If you want to get the economy moving and that's your priority, then you really should want to take money from the rich and give to the poor. The ultra rich just sit on vast swathes of their money. They literaly have too much of it to bother doing anything with. The very poor will spend every single extra dollar they get.

[jakee 1,257]

7 hours ago, brenthutch said:

I am juxtaposing the tax cheat and the politician who enriched themselves while creating no value to society with, admittedly, super wealthy billionaires that have actually created real value.

Hunter Biden founded or had ownership in several businesses that did with rich people's money exactly what you think rich people should do with their money. According to you, Hunter Biden is very valuable to American society.

You're also conflating Hunter and the politician, but as far as I'm aware there are no reasonable allegations that the politician cheated on any taxes. Further - as you're very fond of saying, Tesla gets big government subsidies to run its business and pay its employees. Amazon gets away with paying its employees so little they also need government support to survive. This is a huge subsidy for Amazon. So according to you, the politician is instrumental in creating real value in America.

Edited April 7 by jakee

[jakee 1,257]

7 hours ago, brenthutch said:

They have created more jobs and societal wealth than Nancy Pelosi ever did. There would be no Tesla, SpaceX or Amazon if their personal capital was sucked out of them when they were mere millionaires 

The SpaceX that only a lefty would call success? You relly are showing yourself to be quite a fan of socialist economics today.

[brenthutch 384]

4 hours ago, jakee said:

No-one's talking about equal. That's the strawman you fall back on when you realise that what you're saying is indefensible.

BTW, Amazon is a primarily a retailer. Is it really creating societal wealth by selling things cheaper than independant brick and mortar shops coud, driving those business owners nder, and paying its employees so little they have to rely on benefits from the government, funded by the taxes that Jeff Bezos pays so little of?

 

Average salary here in bodunk Pennsylvania is $50,000, no government assistance needed. (BTW you sound like a conservative pining for the good old day of brick and mortar business)

[olofscience 422]

This entire thread is pretty much just Brent jumping at any opportunity to flex. Yep, he's definitely not insecure...

However there's a brutal truth - if society was more equal, with billions more people in the middle class, total global CO2 emissions would be VASTLY more than they are now. Those billions that billionaires are sitting on, doing nothing, are also billions not generating more CO2. (They *are* very very wasteful with CO2 per billionaire, but there's not that many of them)

It really sucks, and we really should be able to alleviate human suffering without increasing CO2 emissions, but our technology is not quite there yet (though in less than 5 years, it will be). So in some weird sense I'm with Brent on this...sort of.

How's that for a typical lefty? But I'm risking an actual discussion on this thread and interrupting Brent's ego trip 

[wmw999 2,129]

10 minutes ago, olofscience said:

This entire thread is pretty much just Brent jumping at any opportunity to flex. Yep, he's definitely not insecure...

Yep.

Wendy P.

[gowlerk 1,915]

1 hour ago, olofscience said:

Those billions that billionaires are sitting on, doing nothing,

Nobody just sits on their money. All of it is working doing something in the economy. Unless you count Scrooge McDuck rolling around in his vault for of gold and cash.

[jakee 1,257]

3 hours ago, brenthutch said:

Average salary here in bodunk Pennsylvania is $50,000, no government assistance needed.

Or to put it another way, needed.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-on-food-stamps-2018-8

"In 2017 nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona was on food stamps, or lived with someone who was, according to data obtained by nonprofit New Food Economyfrom state governments. In both Pennsylvania and Ohio, one in 10 Amazon employees was on food stamps."

3 hours ago, brenthutch said:

(BTW you sound like a conservative pining for the good old day of brick and mortar business)

If it's conservative to point out the reality that Amazon is not a job creator, why do you do the opposite?

[jakee 1,257]

1 hour ago, gowlerk said:

Nobody just sits on their money. All of it is working doing something in the economy. Unless you count Scrooge McDuck rolling around in his vault for of gold and cash.

As has been pointed out before, this is wishful thinking. We live in a world of Scrooge McDucks.

https://www.ft.com/content/7ebfa850-bf2d-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848

Rich people are hoarding cash, and wealth managers are getting frustrated.

High-net worth individuals (HNWIs) — people with at least $1m in investable assets — are increasingly shunning equities. In the first quarter of this year, HNWIs held nearly 28 per cent of their portfolios on average in cash, according to the Capgemini World Wealth report.

[brenthutch 384]

7 minutes ago, jakee said:

As has been pointed out before, this is wishful thinking. We live in a world of Scrooge McDucks.

https://www.ft.com/content/7ebfa850-bf2d-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848

Rich people are hoarding cash, and wealth managers are getting frustrated.

High-net worth individuals (HNWIs) — people with at least $1m in investable assets — are increasingly shunning equities. In the first quarter of this year, HNWIs held nearly 28 per cent of their portfolios on average in cash, according to the Capgemini World Wealth report.

So 72% is invested in the economy. BTW holding cash in an inflationary environment is not a good idea.

[olofscience 422]

1 hour ago, gowlerk said:

Nobody just sits on their money. All of it is working doing something in the economy. Unless you count Scrooge McDuck rolling around in his vault for of gold and cash.

There's a lot of economically-useful gold just sitting in gold vaults underground in London. That gold could be used for various coatings, corrosion protection, etc. but they're just sitting there because some rich people think they should be used to "store" their money instead.

We're animals, and we just like hoarding and accumulating stuff. This is why capitalism is flawed - money's net flow is upwards, where it will stop and accumulate. The upwards flow, and downwards flow (i.e. trickle down) are not equal. Since they're both just money you can add the numbers together and they cancel out, and what remains is the net flow.

[billvon 2,406]

2 hours ago, olofscience said:

However there's a brutal truth - if society was more equal, with billions more people in the middle class, total global CO2 emissions would be VASTLY more than they are now. 

Which is why we should be putting a LOT of effort into EV's, electric aviation, hybrid marine drives etc,  Sure, they are expensive at first.  But the one people who CAN afford them are . . . billionaires.  And shortly after that, the middle class.

[jakee 1,257]

21 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

So 72% is invested in the economy. BTW holding cash in an inflationary environment is not a good idea.

Compared to taxes, of which 100% is recirculated. I guess that's suddenly not such a good metric anymore.

[gowlerk 1,915]

47 minutes ago, olofscience said:

There's a lot of economically-useful gold just sitting in gold vaults underground in London.

Don't forget all the "money" tied up in Bitcoin and the like. 

[SkyDekker 1,129]

On 4/5/2024 at 6:19 PM, brenthutch said:

Do you think Bezos would have built Amazon if he ended up with $1.5 million? 

How did you get from $150 billion to $1.5 million? Absurd argument.

Regardless, I am pretty sure Bezos in his wildest dreams didn't think he would get to a $200 Billion net worth when he started selling books over the internet. 

[SkyDekker 1,129]

On 4/6/2024 at 9:41 AM, brenthutch said:

Shifted my wife’s 401k into a Roth that will be taxed at ZERO.  

When you roll a 401K into a Roth you have to pay taxes on the converted amount in the year of conversion.....

[SkyDekker 1,129]

On 4/6/2024 at 10:03 AM, brenthutch said:

There’s an old Russian fable about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was Boris had a goat and Ivan didn’t. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared telling him she could grant just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.

Ivan said, “I want Boris’ goat to die.”
 

Lefties = Ivan

Is there? Can you find the actual fable and who wrote it?

[brenthutch 384]

2 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

How did you get from $150 billion to $1.5 million? Absurd argument.

Regardless, I am pretty sure Bezos in his wildest dreams didn't think he would get to a $200 Billion net worth when he started selling books over the internet. 

I guess my point is, if Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were excessively taxed earlier, we would not have the Tesla, SpaceX, and Amazon that we have today. They earned it, they followed the rules of the game I don’t begrudge their success. If you are so concerned about healthcare and hunger maybe we should redirect the nearly trillion dollar being wasted on a futile attempt to control weather.

[SkyDekker 1,129]

On 4/6/2024 at 5:48 PM, brenthutch said:

would you rather have a society where there was massive income inequality yet everyone was better off

What utopia do you live in?

[brenthutch 384]

2 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

When you roll a 401K into a Roth you have to pay taxes on the converted amount in the year of conversion.....

I am aware. I sold one of my rentals to cover the conversion and to fund the kids 529. 

[SkyDekker 1,129]

On 4/6/2024 at 6:37 AM, GeorgiaDon said:

When MAGA types are asked about the mythical "Again"  time they want to return to, they generally vaguely refer to the post-WWII years.  Back when Men were Men (or cowboys, or test pilots), women knew their place (baking cookies while barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen), and the color line was in full force.

Agreed, which I why I am so perplexed when Republicans object to trans-women playing sports. They normally rejoice in male domination.

[brenthutch 384]

13 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

Agreed, which I why I am so perplexed when Republicans object to trans-women playing sports. They normally rejoice in male domination.

But isn’t a trans woman a woman and not a man?

Just a woman with a history of using performance enhancing hormones to get an unfair advantage in sports.

Edited April 8 by brenthutch

[SkyDekker 1,129]

14 minutes ago, brenthutch said:

I guess my point is, if Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were excessively taxed earlier, we would not have the Tesla, SpaceX, and Amazon that we have today. They earned it, they followed the rules of the game I don’t begrudge their success. If you are so concerned about healthcare and hunger maybe we should redirect the nearly trillion dollar being wasted on a futile attempt to control weather.

But you think $50 billion for Bezos would be excessive. Even if it drops his net worth to a staggering $150 billion. So make your argument based on that "excessive taxation".