Billionaires Blast off

[SLD]

SLD, so what are you saying is that Bezos is renting his yacht? What's your problem with that?

No! My problem is that he pays nothing or almost nothing in taxes yet he can easily afford to buy (not rent) a $500 million yacht and afford to build a rocket to give him a joy ride in space. If he paid a fair share in taxes, I could care less what he does with the rest of his money.

 

[Harry Bosch]

SLD, so what are you saying is that Bezos is renting his yacht? What's your problem with that?

No! My problem is that he pays nothing or almost nothing in taxes yet he can easily afford to buy (not rent) a $500 million yacht and afford to build a rocket to give him a joy ride in space. If he paid a fair share in taxes, I could care less what he does with the rest of his money.

I don't buy it. Half the country dosn't pay their share of taxes. Trump is one of the worst. And yet we rise up in outrage at someone legally not paying "their fair share in taxes" as you define it. Something else is going on here.

 

[SLD]

SLD, so what are you saying is that Bezos is renting his yacht? What's your problem with that?

No! My problem is that he pays nothing or almost nothing in taxes yet he can easily afford to buy (not rent) a $500 million yacht and afford to build a rocket to give him a joy ride in space. If he paid a fair share in taxes, I could care less what he does with the rest of his money.

I don't buy it. Half the country dosn't pay their share of taxes. Trump is one of the worst. And yet we rise up in outrage at someone legally not paying "their fair share in taxes" as you define it. Something else is going on here.

For the record, I too have a problem with Donald Trump not paying his fair share in taxes. I understand that they are doing this legally. That’s the whole problem. Our laws are skewed in favor of the uber wealthy who avoid taxes and pay far less of their income in federal taxes than ordinary Americans. The bottom 90% of American wage earners have to pay a 15% Social Security tax (although your employer pays half that’s still coming out of money they could be paying you. They also have to pay their effective tax rate which could be as much as 24% (marginally). Thus for every dollar they earn over about 90K, they pay 40% in taxes. Plus state income taxes in most states. Bezos maybe pays an effective tax rate of 3-4%. And the laws have been written that way because of decades of campaign contributions by these fuckers. The very poor also don’t have to pay much in taxes, but even small wage earners pay more than Bezos as a percentage of their salaries.

Ordinary hard working Americans are getting screwed over by these billionaires who get to enjoy rocket thrill rides, while the rest have to struggle to pay a mortgage, health insurance, and taxes.

 

[TSwizzle]

Ordinary hard working Americans are getting screwed over by these billionaires who get to enjoy rocket thrill rides, while the rest have to struggle to pay a mortgage, health insurance, and taxes.

I don't view it as being screwed over by billionaires. The rest of us are screwed over by unnecessary taxes. In California anyway.

 

[Elixir]

I don't buy it. Half the country dosn't pay their share of taxes. Trump is one of the worst. And yet we rise up in outrage at someone legally not paying "their fair share in taxes" as you define it. Something else is going on here.

One of the things going on HERE is that some people arguing against a wealth tax keep using examples of "If I made ten dollars an hour and you made a hundred dollars an hour", or "If your house was worth 600k...", then ask if YOU should be taxed on its increased value*.

THAT IS NOT ABOUT ANYONE TO WHOM A WEALTH TAX WOULD APPLY.

Wealth tax, in my mind, is not about people making ten or a hundred - or even a thousand dollars an hour. It's about people making tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or MILLIONS of "on paper" dollars per hour whether or not they actually work.
IMO, any reasonable wealth tax would kick in only on increases in paper wealth above some threshold like perhaps 100x the median individual net worth. NOBODY would be hurt by those taxes.
So those are totally strawman arguments.
Mega-billionaire individuals are like economic black holes, sucking up all the wealth in their vicinity and re-distributing bits of it as they see fit while hoarding vast amounts to allow their progeny to do the same.
Sure, I like space exploration, and I'm thrilled for Chef José Andrés having been granted $100M. Those are crumbs off the plate, and IMO most of the entire plate is rightfully owed to the American taxpayers who made up the difference in increased taxes paid and reduced government services.

Another way to examine the American inequality trend that Bomb#20 for one denies, is to examine the difference between average and median net worth in the US.
I'm having a hard time finding net worth stats, but I suspect they will reflect the income inequality increases shown in this graph:




* in fact I AM taxed on its increased value

 

[Canard DuJour]

Another way to examine the American inequality trend that Bomb#20 for one denies, is to examine the difference between average and median net worth in the US.
I'm having a hard time finding net worth stats, but I suspect they will reflect the income inequality increases shown in this graph:

View attachment 34565

I'm afraid net worth stats utterly dwarf that (be perpared to scroll) :

 

[SLD]

Another way to examine the American inequality trend that Bomb#20 for one denies, is to examine the difference between average and median net worth in the US.
I'm having a hard time finding net worth stats, but I suspect they will reflect the income inequality increases shown in this graph:

View attachment 34565

I'm afraid net worth stats utterly dwarf that (be perpared to scroll) :

View attachment 34567

This is a good graph, but we need it showing everyone at 100 in 1962. So we can show much they are ahead of the rest of relatively.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against billionaires, or against them spending their money however they want. I’m against billionaires who pay taxes at a far less level than ordinary Americans. All while claiming we can’t afford to spend more money on social programs and infrastructure. Things that benefit ordinary Americans. Billionaires going on space junkets doesn’t benefit people. It’s just their version of Disneyland. (Where the rest of us have to wait three hours to go on to Space Mountain.)

 

[SLD]

Ordinary hard working Americans are getting screwed over by these billionaires who get to enjoy rocket thrill rides, while the rest have to struggle to pay a mortgage, health insurance, and taxes.

I don't view it as being screwed over by billionaires. The rest of us are screwed over by unnecessary taxes. In California anyway.

But we are taxed such because they are not!!!! Yes we are being screwed by unnecessary taxes. But if the billionaires were taxed at the same rates we were, we would find that we would accomplish far more with our tax money.

And I get that there’s a lot of government waste out their. Just run for Congress and try to cut defense spending. See what happens.

 

[TSwizzle]

Ordinary hard working Americans are getting screwed over by these billionaires who get to enjoy rocket thrill rides, while the rest have to struggle to pay a mortgage, health insurance, and taxes.

I don't view it as being screwed over by billionaires. The rest of us are screwed over by unnecessary taxes. In California anyway.

But we are taxed such because they are not!!!!
Yes we are being screwed by unnecessary taxes. But if the billionaires were taxed at the same rates we were, we would find that we would accomplish far more with our tax money.

And I get that there’s a lot of government waste out their. Just run for Congress and try to cut defense spending. See what happens.

Something is very wrong here. During this pandemic where many, many businesses were forced to close for an extended period of time to "flatten the curve" it now seems California has billions of dollars of surplus tax money. Even after billions of dollars paid out in covid relief and fraudulent unemployment claims, California is swimming in money. Newsom is absolutely giddy as he throws this surplus money around like a drunken sailor.

 

[Canard DuJour]

This is a good graph, but we need it showing everyone at 100 in 1962. So we can show much they are ahead of the rest of relatively.

Everyone at 100 what in 1962? The graph is self-explanatory.

No doubt some prat is about to say "yeh, but it's all appreciation of paper assets like shares, mostly in their own companies, win-win, yay!!"

No, it imposes real costs - and financial instability - on the rest of the economy:

For on the macro, society-wide level, there must be a growth in indebtedness of the economy when assets are traded at rising prices.

This indebtedness takes the form of both rising commitments for the real sector to finance asset transaction out of wages and profit, and rising actual debt levels. When the asset was sold at a profit, someone else bought the asset at the new, higher price. He or she financed this either by diverting liquidity away from real-sector transactions, or by borrowing – at higher levels than did the first buyer. Therefore asset price booms are accompanied by rising debt and by a slowdown in real-sector nominal growth.

..as the author shows HERE.

..or as becomes evident when too many such asset holders try to monetise them at once. There aren't enough dollars in circulation or real goods and services, so central banks have to buy the assets to prevent meltdowns.

 

[TomC]

But we are taxed such because they are not!!!!
Yes we are being screwed by unnecessary taxes. But if the billionaires were taxed at the same rates we were, we would find that we would accomplish far more with our tax money.

And I get that there’s a lot of government waste out their. Just run for Congress and try to cut defense spending. See what happens.

Something is very wrong here. During this pandemic where many, many businesses were forced to close for an extended period of time to "flatten the curve" it now seems California has billions of dollars of surplus tax money. Even after billions of dollars paid out in covid relief and fraudulent unemployment claims, California is swimming in money. Newsom is absolutely giddy as he throws this surplus money around like a drunken sailor.

I'm not from California. So I don't know. But I find this claim lacking in credibility.

Could someone back up the claim that California is swimming in money?
Tom

 

[ZiprHead]

But we are taxed such because they are not!!!!
Yes we are being screwed by unnecessary taxes. But if the billionaires were taxed at the same rates we were, we would find that we would accomplish far more with our tax money.

And I get that there’s a lot of government waste out their. Just run for Congress and try to cut defense spending. See what happens.

Something is very wrong here. During this pandemic where many, many businesses were forced to close for an extended period of time to "flatten the curve" it now seems California has billions of dollars of surplus tax money. Even after billions of dollars paid out in covid relief and fraudulent unemployment claims, California is swimming in money. Newsom is absolutely giddy as he throws this surplus money around like a drunken sailor.

The evidence that states that locked down fared far better economically compared to states that didn't has been posted here before.

 

[Shadowy Man]

But we are taxed such because they are not!!!!
Yes we are being screwed by unnecessary taxes. But if the billionaires were taxed at the same rates we were, we would find that we would accomplish far more with our tax money.

And I get that there’s a lot of government waste out their. Just run for Congress and try to cut defense spending. See what happens.

Something is very wrong here. During this pandemic where many, many businesses were forced to close for an extended period of time to "flatten the curve" it now seems California has billions of dollars of surplus tax money. Even after billions of dollars paid out in covid relief and fraudulent unemployment claims, California is swimming in money. Newsom is absolutely giddy as he throws this surplus money around like a drunken sailor.

I'm not from California. So I don't know. But I find this claim lacking in credibility.

Could someone back up the claim that California is swimming in money?
Tom

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.sa...overnment/capitol-alert/article251482308.html

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When people say Bezos's tax rate is 1% or whatever the popular accusation is, what they are complaining about is the fact that he doesn't have to pre-pay tax in 2021 on his, say, 2031 income. Oh the horror! You don't have to pre-pay tax in 2021 on your 2031 income either.

So this would argue that long term capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as personal income, yes?

I'm not seeing how it argues that -- the two issues seem unconnected to me. Feel free to walk me through it if you care.

But all the same, yes, long term capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as personal income, I think. On the other hand, long term capital gains should be calculated with the basis adjusted for inflation. The way they do it now, the government inflates the currency and then measures purchase price in bigger units than it measures sales price in, which means part of the calculated capital gain is fictional income, but you're really taxed on it. The lower capital gains rate (very roughly) compensates for the higher alleged gain.

It's not "very roughly"--the two numbers are very close.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm not from California. So I don't know. But I find this claim lacking in credibility.

Could someone back up the claim that California is swimming in money?
Tom

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.sa...overnment/capitol-alert/article251482308.html

It seems to be saying they cut back more than they needed to in response to the pandemic.

 

[laughing dog]

I'm not seeing how it argues that -- the two issues seem unconnected to me. Feel free to walk me through it if you care.

But all the same, yes, long term capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as personal income, I think. On the other hand, long term capital gains should be calculated with the basis adjusted for inflation. The way they do it now, the government inflates the currency and then measures purchase price in bigger units than it measures sales price in, which means part of the calculated capital gain is fictional income, but you're really taxed on it. The lower capital gains rate (very roughly) compensates for the higher alleged gain.

It's not "very roughly"--the two numbers are very close.

How roughly the lower rate compensates for the effects of inflation depends on the rate of inflation and for how long the asset is held. There is no way the tax rate (a fixed number) can adequately compensate for nominal gains for all realized assets.

A better way which is more accurate is to adjust the capital gains for inflation and then treat the adjusted income as income for tax purposes.

 

[fromderinside]

How are capital gains different from normal (ordinary) income in reference to inflation. They are both acquired over the course of a year in which the inflation took place.

 

[SLD]

How are capital gains different from normal (ordinary) income in reference to inflation. They are both acquired over the course of a year in which the inflation took place.

Capital gains could be not realized for many years, decades even.

 

[fromderinside]

How are capital gains different from normal (ordinary) income in reference to inflation. They are both acquired over the course of a year in which the inflation took place.

Capital gains could be not realized for many years, decades even.

And over that entire time income, recent records indicate, remained static for many years even as inflation inched up at 2 percent a year for those many years. Why should capital gains benefit from inflation if income isn't adjusted with raises IAC inflation?

 

[DBT]

The consequences of wealth concentration;