• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

2026 Mid-Term Elections

If I win a car on a game show. I am taxed at its full sticker price as income. As soon as I drive the car off the lot it loses 25% of its value. Do I get a tax refund? No. Neither should the person in your situation.
Try again.

You take the prize, promptly sell it, you tell the IRS the situation and you're taxed on what you got for selling it, not on it's stated market value.
Question: Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?
The problem is your "solutions" cause numerous headaches. We aren't schilling, we recognize that things are the way they are for a reason, you are focused on eat-the-rich without regard for the damage done. Putin and Xi will be happy.
 
It's more than that.

The fundamental problem is land. There's a fixed amount of it in desirable locations. As demand rises the price per square foot goes up. Apartments/condos?? The reality is the more you pack into a square foot of land the more a square foot of the place will cost. The condo might be cheaper per unit, but more of that cost is in things which provide no apparent value to the occupants. (Land, walls, stairs etc.) Thus luxuries become a smaller portion of the total cost and people will favor the nicer place that's a small percent more expensive when they wouldn't have made the same choice with a cheaper place where the same luxury was a higher percentage. Thus the market favors the nice places.

And there's the usual opposition to higher density stuff. A lot of that has a legitimate basis--higher density means more people around and that which is out of place is less likely to be noticed. Thus there is more crime. Amazing how the crime map follows the people. And two lanes supports a lot more traffic than a typical residential street--the practical effect is the more people around the more traffic density on the roads. It is in the interest of the homeowners to keep the density low and to favor ownership over renters. (I've seen this even on our street--used to be entirely owner-occupied. Now it's not. I've found my trash cans on the driveway once--nearby house has far more cars than parking, they're frequently parked in front of our house. Never mind that I put the trash out, they moved the cans to park, the trash guys didn't take them.) I don't kneed to look at the property deeds to know which houses are rentals.
Good to know that Mammon still has his worshippers.
How about trying to actually address the unpleasant reality rather than calling mea sinner?

I don't intend to ever sell, the property value as such means nothing to me. Rather, I'm talking about things which matter to quality of life.
 
So which billionaire stole a public square or park?
Probably the same one that stole your sense of proportion. It is blatantly obvious that the rhetoric around "billionairs" is a metaphor for the top 1% or 10% of wealthy.

But to answer your snide and stupid question - William Harrison
Sheep are the winners in a San Luis Valley land battle that pitted grazing livestock against a billionaire landowner’s new mansion.

In a new court ruling, the descendants of a land grant dating back to before Colorado was a state won the right to keep grazing sheep and cattle on the land they call La Sierra. The ruling, however, ends their right to collect firewood in a 233-acre buffer zone around landowner William Harrison’s new 7,000-square-foot house on the Cielo Vista Ranch.

The ruling comes after a three-day February hearing in Costilla County in which Harrison’s attorneys argued for the buffer zone to prevent land grant heirs from coming near his home on the 77,000-acre ranch. Harrison owns the land but shares rights with hundreds of land grantees, heirs to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant of 1844.
 
The higher the income, the more political power, especially at the billionaire strata. Which, imo, is incompatible with a democratic republic.
Why would you think that? There have been hundreds of democratic republics. When has there ever been a democratic republic where high income people didn't have more political power than low-income people? The only country I know of where high income people didn't have more political power than low-income people was the one where Stalin died owning 900 rubles, six tobacco pipes, and a few shirts, pants and boots. The policies it takes to prevent higher income leading to more political power -- abolition of free speech, for one -- are incompatible with a democratic republic.
And the lack of personal possessions is an illusion.

Whether he directly owned things or simply was given control over them makes no real difference to society. (It does matter at a personal level, though, because it ensures loyalty to the system. If they can take away everything because you disagreed with them...)
Well sure, Stalin had control over everything, but he didn't use it to give himself a life of luxury. Unlike pretty much every other evil overlord, he really wasn't in it for the money. In the immortal words of Doctor Who, "One grows tired of jelly babies, Castellan. One grows tired of almost everything. Except power." The USSR was an incomparably better place to live under Brezhnev, with his fifty luxury cars and his diamond-smuggling daughter, than under Stalin. Trying to make rich people have no more influence than poor people isn't a rational objective.
 
If I win a car on a game show. I am taxed at its full sticker price as income. As soon as I drive the car off the lot it loses 25% of its value. Do I get a tax refund? No. Neither should the person in your situation.
Try again.

You take the prize, promptly sell it, you tell the IRS the situation and you're taxed on what you got for selling it, not on it's stated market value.
Question: Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?
The problem is your "solutions" cause numerous headaches. We aren't schilling, we recognize that things are the way they are for a reason, you are focused on eat-the-rich without regard for the damage done. Putin and Xi will be happy.
Your position causes numerous headaches. Everything is the way it is for a reason. Your rationale applies to any position. Hence it is not much an argument.
 
The dynamic in play in ‘Murka conceals billionaires’ consumption of “public” assets, largely by privatizing what was once accessible to the public - but that effect is never accounted for.
It's been going on for a long time. As described in the well known 18th century quatrain by that prolific author, Anon:

They hang the man and flog the woman,
Who steals a goose from off the common,
But leave the greater rascal loose,
Who steals the common from the goose.
Um, you do know that "the common" was not a public asset, don't you?

<explanation of what bilby's poem actually meant snipped>
In the US, the commons is a public square or park. In the US, if something is public, it is owned by and open to the public.
So which billionaire stole a public square or park?
Actually, I was simply informing you of the difference in word usage.

While Great Britain and Australia and Canada and the US as well as some other nations share English as their common language, not every word means the same thing from country to country, even disregarding some regional differences such as soda vs pop in the US.
But Zuc
The dynamic in play in ‘Murka conceals billionaires’ consumption of “public” assets, largely by privatizing what was once accessible to the public - but that effect is never accounted for.
It's been going on for a long time. As described in the well known 18th century quatrain by that prolific author, Anon:

They hang the man and flog the woman,
Who steals a goose from off the common,
But leave the greater rascal loose,
Who steals the common from the goose.
Um, you do know that "the common" was not a public asset, don't you?

<explanation of what bilby's poem actually meant snipped>
In the US, the commons is a public square or park. In the US, if something is public, it is owned by and open to the public.
So which billionaire stole a public square or park?

Jeff Zukerberg (SP)? Facebook person. He's trying to steal beach property in Hawaii. In Hawaii (as in Oregon) beaches are public property. Having said that, I don't think that the answer is to tax away paper gains in asset value.
Why not?

This is one reason that I don't think we should allow billionaires:


The lawsuits sparked national headlines and local outrage. Under pressure, Zuckerberg dropped the lawsuits in 2017 and issued a statement saying he wanted to make things right. However, for many residents, the damage was done. The quiet title strategy had exposed the imbalance of power between tech billionaires and island communities, where a modest plot of land carries generational meaning that goes far beyond its market value.

I do not think that one wealthy person should be able to thwart the will (or the possession of property) of an unwilling person or group of persons.
 
It's more than that.

The fundamental problem is land. There's a fixed amount of it in desirable locations. As demand rises the price per square foot goes up. Apartments/condos?? The reality is the more you pack into a square foot of land the more a square foot of the place will cost. The condo might be cheaper per unit, but more of that cost is in things which provide no apparent value to the occupants. (Land, walls, stairs etc.) Thus luxuries become a smaller portion of the total cost and people will favor the nicer place that's a small percent more expensive when they wouldn't have made the same choice with a cheaper place where the same luxury was a higher percentage. Thus the market favors the nice places.

And there's the usual opposition to higher density stuff. A lot of that has a legitimate basis--higher density means more people around and that which is out of place is less likely to be noticed. Thus there is more crime. Amazing how the crime map follows the people. And two lanes supports a lot more traffic than a typical residential street--the practical effect is the more people around the more traffic density on the roads. It is in the interest of the homeowners to keep the density low and to favor ownership over renters. (I've seen this even on our street--used to be entirely owner-occupied. Now it's not. I've found my trash cans on the driveway once--nearby house has far more cars than parking, they're frequently parked in front of our house. Never mind that I put the trash out, they moved the cans to park, the trash guys didn't take them.) I don't kneed to look at the property deeds to know which houses are rentals.
Good to know that Mammon still has his worshippers.
How about trying to actually address the unpleasant reality rather than calling mea sinner?

I don't intend to ever sell, the property value as such means nothing to me. Rather, I'm talking about things which matter to quality of life.
I'm also talking about the quality of life for those who are not billlionaires.

I notice what seems to be a kind of mindset that you seem to have that I do not: You seem to worship the power of authority: of police, of at least some government, of the wealthy because it is power, not because it is right.
 
Income is money or value received by an individual or business in exchange for goods, services, labor, or investments. It is the total consumption and saving opportunity gained within a specified timeframe, and serves as the foundation for measuring economic growth, assigning tax burdens, and evaluating wealth. [1, 2, 3, 4] - Legal Information Institute
It was a political decision to exempt stock gains from income.
It was necessary. Trying to tax gains results in a nightmare.

You're going to force anyone who runs a successful corporation to sell it off to pay the taxes. Major punishment for success.
How does that work?

And what exactly is the value of the corporation? We can approximate it if it's widely traded, but stock prices in essence are the net present value of the expected total future earnings. That is horrendously sensitive to the discount rate used on figuring the value of future earnings, and thus horrendously sensitive to expected long term interest rates. And this is just a market consensus, not anything you can truly calculate.

When a company isn't widely traded it gets much worse. What is the value? We've seen tax games based on this--put a bunch of shares of fuzzy value into an IRA. The more specific the item and the less like things are traded makes it even fuzzier. I've seen an attorney throw up her hands over even ballparking the value of something.
What is a fuzzy value? The price of the share is the price of the share.
 
If I win a car on a game show. I am taxed at its full sticker price as income. As soon as I drive the car off the lot it loses 25% of its value. Do I get a tax refund? No. Neither should the person in your situation.
Try again.

You take the prize, promptly sell it, you tell the IRS the situation and you're taxed on what you got for selling it, not on it's stated market value.
Tell that to the 1099 the game show producers send to the IRS.

Question: Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?
The problem is your "solutions" cause numerous headaches. We aren't schilling, we recognize that things are the way they are for a reason, you are focused on eat-the-rich without regard for the damage done. Putin and Xi will be happy.
Great damage has yet to be proven.
 
But Zuc
In the US, the commons is a public square or park. In the US, if something is public, it is owned by and open to the public.
So which billionaire stole a public square or park?

Jeff Zukerberg (SP)? Facebook person. He's trying to steal beach property in Hawaii. In Hawaii (as in Oregon) beaches are public property. Having said that, I don't think that the answer is to tax away paper gains in asset value.
Why not?

This is one reason that I don't think we should allow billionaires:


The lawsuits sparked national headlines and local outrage. Under pressure, Zuckerberg dropped the lawsuits in 2017 and issued a statement saying he wanted to make things right. However, for many residents, the damage was done. The quiet title strategy had exposed the imbalance of power between tech billionaires and island communities, where a modest plot of land carries generational meaning that goes far beyond its market value.

I do not think that one wealthy person should be able to thwart the will (or the possession of property) of an unwilling person or group of persons.
So, long story short, Zuc lost. He tried to steal and was stopped, same as would happen to a regular person who asks a court to let him steal.
 
But Zuc
In the US, the commons is a public square or park. In the US, if something is public, it is owned by and open to the public.
So which billionaire stole a public square or park?

Jeff Zukerberg (SP)? Facebook person. He's trying to steal beach property in Hawaii. In Hawaii (as in Oregon) beaches are public property. Having said that, I don't think that the answer is to tax away paper gains in asset value.
Why not?

This is one reason that I don't think we should allow billionaires:


The lawsuits sparked national headlines and local outrage. Under pressure, Zuckerberg dropped the lawsuits in 2017 and issued a statement saying he wanted to make things right. However, for many residents, the damage was done. The quiet title strategy had exposed the imbalance of power between tech billionaires and island communities, where a modest plot of land carries generational meaning that goes far beyond its market value.

I do not think that one wealthy person should be able to thwart the will (or the possession of property) of an unwilling person or group of persons.
So, long story short, Zuc lost. He tried to steal and was stopped, same as would happen to a regular person who asks a court to let him steal.
Zuckerberg is or should be treated as a ‘regular person.’ He wasn’t and his attempt to acquire property further his own private use from people who were unwilling to sell cost them and the court system time, money and stress that they did not need to suffer.

If you or I wished to purchase property, we or our agents would approach the property owners directly and not seek to acquire it by stealth means. I doubt you or I would face even been aware that Zuckerberg’s ‘quiet tactics’ existed.

No means no even if you have billions of dollars. Or it should The fact that people can be forced into court proceedings to retain something of their own that some wealthy person covets illustrates one reason we should limit the amount of wealth that can be acquired or held by a single person or corporation(s).
 
But Zuc
In the US, the commons is a public square or park. In the US, if something is public, it is owned by and open to the public.
So which billionaire stole a public square or park?

Jeff Zukerberg (SP)? Facebook person. He's trying to steal beach property in Hawaii. In Hawaii (as in Oregon) beaches are public property. Having said that, I don't think that the answer is to tax away paper gains in asset value.
Why not?

This is one reason that I don't think we should allow billionaires:


The lawsuits sparked national headlines and local outrage. Under pressure, Zuckerberg dropped the lawsuits in 2017 and issued a statement saying he wanted to make things right. However, for many residents, the damage was done. The quiet title strategy had exposed the imbalance of power between tech billionaires and island communities, where a modest plot of land carries generational meaning that goes far beyond its market value.

I do not think that one wealthy person should be able to thwart the will (or the possession of property) of an unwilling person or group of persons.
So, long story short, Zuc lost. He tried to steal and was stopped, same as would happen to a regular person who asks a court to let him steal.
Zuckerberg was not stopped by the civil or criminal courts but the court of public opinion. And, of course, the real issue is that should have been no need to stop this behavior in the first place. Congratulations on missing the entire point.
 
The people living below the poverty line in point of fact use a great deal of common property
Unevidenced assertion, and unclear at that.
Is “a great deal” more or less than what a billionaire consumes? More or less than the average US citizen?
Pretty vacuous statement in the absence of any facts or figures.
... says the guy who said they're 'hardly using any “common property”'. Pretty vacuous statement in the absence of any facts or figures.

As for how it compares to a billionaire's use, we'd have to take it item by item. They use Medicaid, emergency rooms for non-emergency medical problems, social services, food stamps, EITC, and public parks and sidewalks as homes more than a billionaire would. Medicare, could be the same. Roads, less. Public schools and police protection, that's going to depend on how you measure it and I'd expect estimates to vary wildly. And of course there are plenty of other things impoverished people use less or not at all that I didn't include because it was a list of counterexamples to your claim. But the question in dispute wasn't whether they consume less than a billionaire, but whether the billionaire's use is disproportionately greater compared to the ratio of their tax bills. You've produced no facts to back up your claim about that.
And how do you even measure?

Do you count the police time dealing with criminal activity directed at the billionaire as due to the billionaire or due to the criminals?

And what counts as using a road? Do panhandlers accepting money from a car use the road?

Medicare and public school--why do you think the answer would be anything other than "less"? They're more likely to go to private options.
 
The dynamic in play in ‘Murka conceals billionaires’ consumption of “public” assets, largely by privatizing what was once accessible to the public - but that effect is never accounted for.
It's been going on for a long time. As described in the well known 18th century quatrain by that prolific author, Anon:

They hang the man and flog the woman,
Who steals a goose from off the common,
But leave the greater rascal loose,
Who steals the common from the goose.
Um, you do know that "the common" was not a public asset, don't you?

<explanation of what bilby's poem actually meant snipped>
In the US, the commons is a public square or park. In the US, if something is public, it is owned by and open to the public.
So which billionaire stole a public square or park?
I don’t know. That’s kinda the point.
There’s some glaring examples like Yellowstone Club in Montana, which was built on formerly public lands that were acquired through “land exchanges”. It is now associated with some kind of a billionaire club. There are a lot of “Private” beaches … no idea who owns them or who is. Only that I am not, unless I want to paddle some miles.
Perplexity-
“billionaires and wealthy families have bought up large private land holdings across the U.S., often limiting access to land that had previously been public or widely accessible.
You don’t always have to purchase public lands to limit their use by the public.
 
If I win a car on a game show. I am taxed at its full sticker price as income. As soon as I drive the car off the lot it loses 25% of its value. Do I get a tax refund? No. Neither should the person in your situation.
Try again.

You take the prize, promptly sell it, you tell the IRS the situation and you're taxed on what you got for selling it, not on it's stated market value.
Question: Why are you schilling yourself for the massively wealthy? Do you think you will be one of them someday?
The problem is your "solutions" cause numerous headaches. We aren't schilling, we recognize that things are the way they are for a reason, you are focused on eat-the-rich without regard for the damage done. Putin and Xi will be happy.
I'm pretty certain some in here are saying they want the rich to pay tax, not turn the rich into snacks.

Also, what is your "solution"?
 
You received an increase in value.
Did you 'recieve' the car as an investment, for it's resale value? Most folk get cars to drive em till they wear-out, you expect them to devalue. Should you get a tax return for it's wear n tear.
Every car has 'value' in it's usefulness. It has monatery value only if sold. Till then any increase in value is just a pipe dream. Just someone's opinion, not an increase in actual money.
Most people do not buy Aston Martins in order to drive them until they wear out. I suspect that most people who buy Aston Martins purchase them assuming their value will hold, long term or perhaps increase.

Now, if you are talking about your average SUV or sedan pick up, you’d likely be correct. People drive them until they feel it is no longer worthwhile to keep them going. That’s what we do in our family.
Actually most luxury cars fall in value a little faster than regular cars. The used market is very small.
Only a little faster??

Luxury cars have parts with luxury car prices. Maintenance costs are high even once the car has lost it's luxury car value.
 
I'm pretty certain some in here are saying they want the rich to pay tax, not turn the rich into snacks.
The rich already pay tax. Toni and her Ilk want to tax billionaires so much, they cease to be billionaires. She is ignoring all the negatives of that plan, like forced sales of stock holdings.
 
I said taxing someone not to raise revenue but in order to hurt them -- to tax them so heavily you kill their incentive to produce more wealth and thereby reduce revenue -- is treating them as an enemy. Sanders-style 100% tax brackets and Toni-style billionaire elimination treat the uber-wealthy as an enemy.
But Eisenhower’s ~91% top marginal rate didn’t seem to create a lot of enmity, or inhibit innovation, or keep the Uber wealthy from becoming even wealthier.
In fact, in that quaint era, it was considered patriotic to be able to contribute so much to the commons.
Billionaires are not the problem now, it’s the race between them that urges them to minimize any such contribution, and eliminate it entirely if possible.

The first American billionaires (JD Rockefeller, Henry Ford) had died by Eisenhower’s time. No new billionaires were created during the Eisenhower administration* and yet, that era is still widely held out as the most prosperous in American history, and was inarguably a more egalitarian society than the one that had spawned the previous billionaires.

I keep harping on that model because I think it was superior in every regard, to what’s going on now. I admit that other things have changed - most notably, all the easily extracted natural resources in America had not been tapped. But the economic stratification that the high marginal tax rate tended to mitigate, was a GOOD thing IMO.

* possible exception, JP Getty whose wealth was estimated at over 700m in 1957
You continue to believe the 91% rate was real.

No new billionaires were created because the money was left in corporations but used for personal purposes. Tax evasion. And many other schemes existed to keep it from being income in the first place.

And there's also the issue of scale. The people at the top of the pile get there but major innovations. There was no reason for major innovations as the market was driven by filling out the huge void left by WWII. Money didn't need to innovate. You call it egalitarian, but it was also a period of stagnation. Once the low-hanging fruit (existing tech filling out the market) was gone we went back to innovation.
 
I said taxing someone not to raise revenue but in order to hurt them -- to tax them so heavily you kill their incentive to produce more wealth and thereby reduce revenue -- is treating them as an enemy. Sanders-style 100% tax brackets and Toni-style billionaire elimination treat the uber-wealthy as an enemy.
But Eisenhower’s ~91% top marginal rate didn’t seem to create a lot of enmity, or inhibit innovation, or keep the Uber wealthy from becoming even wealthier.
In fact, in that quaint era, it was considered patriotic to be able to contribute so much to the commons.
Billionaires are not the problem now, it’s the race between them that urges them to minimize any such contribution, and eliminate it entirely if possible.

The first American billionaires (JD Rockefeller, Henry Ford) had died by Eisenhower’s time. No new billionaires were created during the Eisenhower administration* and yet, that era is still widely held out as the most prosperous in American history, and was inarguably a more egalitarian society than the one that had spawned the previous billionaires.

I keep harping on that model because I think it was superior in every regard, to what’s going on now. I admit that other things have changed - most notably, all the easily extracted natural resources in America had not been tapped. But the economic stratification that the high marginal tax rate tended to mitigate, was a GOOD thing IMO.

* possible exception, JP Getty whose wealth was estimated at over 700m in 1957
You continue to believe the 91% rate was real.

No new billionaires were created because the money was left in corporations but used for personal purposes. Tax evasion. And many other schemes existed to keep it from being income in the first place.

And there's also the issue of scale. The people at the top of the pile get there but major innovations. There was no reason for major innovations as the market was driven by filling out the huge void left by WWII. Money didn't need to innovate. You call it egalitarian, but it was also a period of stagnation. Once the low-hanging fruit (existing tech filling out the market) was gone we went back to innovation.
Really? What was Elon Musk’s innovation?
 
I said taxing someone not to raise revenue but in order to hurt them -- to tax them so heavily you kill their incentive to produce more wealth and thereby reduce revenue -- is treating them as an enemy. Sanders-style 100% tax brackets and Toni-style billionaire elimination treat the uber-wealthy as an enemy.
But Eisenhower’s ~91% top marginal rate didn’t seem to create a lot of enmity, or inhibit innovation, or keep the Uber wealthy from becoming even wealthier.
In fact, in that quaint era, it was considered patriotic to be able to contribute so much to the commons.
Billionaires are not the problem now, it’s the race between them that urges them to minimize any such contribution, and eliminate it entirely if possible.

The first American billionaires (JD Rockefeller, Henry Ford) had died by Eisenhower’s time. No new billionaires were created during the Eisenhower administration* and yet, that era is still widely held out as the most prosperous in American history, and was inarguably a more egalitarian society than the one that had spawned the previous billionaires.

I keep harping on that model because I think it was superior in every regard, to what’s going on now. I admit that other things have changed - most notably, all the easily extracted natural resources in America had not been tapped. But the economic stratification that the high marginal tax rate tended to mitigate, was a GOOD thing IMO.

* possible exception, JP Getty whose wealth was estimated at over 700m in 1957
You continue to believe the 91% rate was real.

No new billionaires were created because the money was left in corporations but used for personal purposes. Tax evasion. And many other schemes existed to keep it from being income in the first place.

And there's also the issue of scale. The people at the top of the pile get there but major innovations. There was no reason for major innovations as the market was driven by filling out the huge void left by WWII. Money didn't need to innovate. You call it egalitarian, but it was also a period of stagnation. Once the low-hanging fruit (existing tech filling out the market) was gone we went back to innovation.
I don’t think you are making a lot of sense. Post WWII saw a great deal of growth as the world rebuilt after the war. There was definitely a lot of innovation as materials used in wartime were adapted for civilian use and some innovations used during the war stayed around ( margarine).

Some of your sentences don’t make sense? I think you are typing expecting the rest of us to fill in blanks for the missing logic?
 
Back
Top Bottom