Billionaires Blast off

[Derec]

He didn't say "autocracy", he said "aristocracy".

My bad. I miswrote. In either case it makes zero sense.

 

[Derec]

That was a typo. 2019 federal budget was $4.45 trillion.

Ok. My figure was the 2020 budget.

And large part of the budget is mandated by various laws and can't be changed with just annual budgeting. So looking at the entire budget already accounts for the congress's legislative powers.

Not all laws are budget laws though. Congress has the power to pass laws not directly reflected in the budget. For example, Congress may add of remove federal crimes or change penalties on federal crimes. Bezos and the other billionaires have no powers akin to that.

Also, as to mandatory spending. Dems in Congress now want to add to mandatory spending by creating new entitlements such as free childcare and expanded child tax credit, as found in their $3.5T non-infrastructure bill. Since entitlements are hard to remove once enacted, that would mean AOC would de-facto exert power even after she is no longer in office. Bezos and the other billionaires have no powers akin to that.

The figure was based on his net worth growth in the first half of 2020. Granted, it's not a sustainable figure,

It's a highly cherry-picked one.

because Amazon stock skyrocketed during that time. But the point remains, it's way more than the averaged, dollarized influence of a congressperson.

And you are missing the point that the power of a legislator goes well beyond spending money.
And even when it comes to spending money, these figures are the increase in net worth, not how much Bezos is spending each year, which is a less than a billion per year probably. The Congress figure is the actual federal spending each year. So you are not even comparing like for like.

And your claim was that a congressperson is at least an order of magnitude, i.e. ten times, more influential, which is clearly false no matter which way you look at it.

Hard to quantify, but ability to enact federal legislation means a great deal of power. Bezos created a company that sent himself and a few other to the edge of space, and has plans to expand space tourism into orbit and even the Moon. Cool, yes. Employs a lot of people. Yes. Remotely comparable in power to ability to pass federal legislation. Hell no!

 

[Derec]

I won't bother answering your diatribe point-by-point, but this comment is especially ignorant.
AOC does NOT have subpoena powers. The chairman of a committee may have such powers, on majority vote, but not individual Congressmen. And to demonstrate she had an effect on legislation you'll want an example which passed by a single vote.

Congress as a body has subpoena and legislative powers. Nobody claimed she can pass legislation with one vote, so that's a strawman.
AOC is also more powerful than an average Congressman, because she is the leader of the Squad, a far-left group of Congresspeople.

What a nasty remark. The "I kid" just makes it worse. "Although you never know" = "Just asking questions" = JAQ'ing off.

It would be incredibly naïve to believe that this kind of thing does not happen in academia just like it happens in politics.
And AOC certainly has more looks than brains.

Speaking of economics, it is you who demonstrate ignorance. It isn't government spending which might cause inflation; it is spending that is not countered with tax increases.

Not at all ignorant, I just gave an abridged version of her argumentation since this is not the main point this thread.
But yes, you are right, although excessive taxation has its own problems of course.

The thing is that AOC does believe that money printer can just go brrrr to fund her close to $100T "Green" New Deal.

That you don't fall for ALL of Sean Hannity's lies?

I don't even watch/listen to the guy. Maybe the right-winger is you?

So you rant against AOC as though she were more of a problem than the millions of citizens who support Trump's lies and treasons — did she turn you down for a date or something? — and it turns out you've never even skimmed her Wikipedia bio. Wow!

Not everything is about Trump, dudue! And what's so special in her bio? Bartending. Driving 2000 miles (burning over 100 gallons of gasoline in the process!) to North Dakota to protest against oil. What else? What do you think she did that was so impressive before running for Congress?

 

[Derec]

If you are going to take the meme so literally that you think it means they've never paid taxes, I'll do you one better. I say it literally means they've never been to a tax office. I'd bet the vast majority of us here have never been to a tax office to pay their taxes in person.

The meme is clearly implying that billionaires pay no taxes.

 

[Derec]

Then what are your biggest disagreements with the right wing?

- Social illiberalism (also a big disagreement with the illiberal left)
- Mistrust of science
- Government can do a lot of things well. The right wing is as quick to see "the government" uncritically as a monolithic boogeyman.

AOC credits local activists for this triumph, and I see no reason to think otherwise.

I would not call missing out on a lot of good jobs and local tax revenues a "triumph" exactly.

And I doubt she and the "local activists" would be winning if she wasn't so vocal against HQ2.

How would that be inflationary and big spending on military adventures not be inflationary?

GND would be an order of magnitude more expensive than military spending.
Defense spending: ~700G/a
GND: $60T-$100T over 10 years, so $6T-$10T per year.

And you may say our defense spending is too high, but we need robust defense - Dems (minus the Squad and squadesque extremists) and GOP (minus Paulestinians and other isolationists) agree on that at least!
One of the few things where Trump was right is that the Europeans need to contribute more to their own defense. We currently subsidize their own defense, allowing them to spend relatively little.

Because she didn't want to sell out and join some Wall Street firm.

Because in a Wall Street firm you can't just take two weeks off whenever you like it to go to ND to protest against oil?

 

[Derec]

NASA, space research, etc, has benefited the nation and the world. NASA does not prevent others from competing, uses private contractors, suppliers, etc.

I am a supporter of NASA! I think their budget should be increased - much more sensible use of money than subsidizing people having a lot of kids like Dems are doing with their $3.5T abomination. And your second sentence is what I have been saying all along. And if they can get more bang for their budget by hiring SpaceX to do their launching, so much the better!
Note that I did not say that NASA has a monopoly on space but that bilby thinks that governments should have a monopoly on space, and that if they don't, we have "aristocracy" and not "democracy". Which is just silly.

Besos, Musk, et al, are happy to take gov/tax payer funding to the tune of billions, which hardly makes it a NASA monopoly.

In return the government gets a more cost-effective way to get into space. Win, win.
Again, I did not say they have a monopoly, but that bilby said that they (along with Russian, Chinese etc. governments) should have a monopoly, lest we slide into aristocracy.
Next we'll all be searching for "lovely filth down here" just because Bezos flew to the edge of space and Musk sells orbital launches to NASA and others.

The point here is a matter of taking care of the top end while letting the battlers languish.

Battlers? Is that some Aussie slang?

 

[Derec]

Buffett was pointing out that his (and those in his class) percentage of tax is lower than that of the average worker, who earns a tiny fraction of Buffett's income. Do you thinkI this is fair and equatable?

An "average worker" pays very little if any federal income tax due to all the refundable tax credits. I think I remember him talking about this, and I think his point of comparison was his executive assistant or some such. I believe that is a vey well-paid position, and hardly an "average worker".

But yes, her (?) income is mostly salary while Buffett's is almost all capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate.

I think adding one or two capital gains brackets and increasing the rate on capital gains above say 1 million (25%) and and 10 million (30%) would be a good idea.
Also, close some loopholes relative to cost basis at death and the like.
That would increase tax fairness while being a lot easier to implement than redefining what counts as "income" or adding a new tax on wealth.

 

[DBT]

Buffett was pointing out that his (and those in his class) percentage of tax is lower than that of the average worker, who earns a tiny fraction of Buffett's income. Do you thinkI this is fair and equatable?

An "average worker" pays very little if any federal income tax due to all the refundable tax credits. I think I remember him talking about this, and I think his point of comparison was his executive assistant or some such. I believe that is a vey well-paid position, and hardly an "average worker".

But yes, her (?) income is mostly salary while Buffett's is almost all capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate.

I think adding one or two capital gains brackets and increasing the rate on capital gains above say 1 million (25%) and and 10 million (30%) would be a good idea.
Also, close some loopholes relative to cost basis at death and the like.
That would increase tax fairness while being a lot easier to implement than redefining what counts as "income" or adding a new tax on wealth.

Are you claiming that workers get refunded all of the taxes they paid for the year?

 

[DBT]

He didn't say "autocracy", he said "aristocracy".

My bad. I miswrote. In either case it makes zero sense.

It makes sense if you take the trouble of understanding it. Which may be difficult to do for someone who is trying to justify a situation where a small percentage of the population hold or control most of the nations wealth.

 

[Derec]

Basically they want to create a new tax - afaik unprecedented in the history of modern taxation - where unrealized capital gains are taxed.

Not unprecedented. Australia taxes unrealized capital gains on foreign stocks; the discrimination is supposed to incentivize Australians to invest in Australian companies instead of doing the rational thing and diversifying.

Interesting. Do you know how it is being implemented. For example, if a stock rises from $100 to $200 one year, but drops to $100 again the next, is the taxpayer due a refund?

 

[Derec]

It makes sense if you take the trouble of understanding it.

Nope. It makes no sense no matter how you look at it. The private sector plays an important role in space, and making space off limits to all non-government actors would be a stupid thing to do.

Which may be difficult to do for someone who is trying to justify a situation where a small percentage of the population hold or control most of the nations wealth.

Do not try to change the subject. How much wealth is controlled by what fraction of people is a different thing altogether than what bilby is saying - that space should be a government monopoly and that companies such as SpaceX should not exist even if they are a lot more efficient than governments building launch vehicles.

 

[Derec]

Are you claiming that workers get refunded all of the taxes they paid for the year?

For almost half, yes. They actually can get more in a tax refund than they paid through withholdings - an effective negative tax rate, due to all the so-called refundable tax credits such as EITC and Child Tax Credit (recently greatly increased by the Biden administration).

You can play with a tax calculator like this one.

For example, I put a married couple making $50k with 3 dependents and got federal income tax of -$2.7k (for a tax rate of -5.5%). Of course, a single guy making half that pays $1.3k in federal income tax, for a tax rate of 5.3%. Positive mind you. The tax system is rigged against the child free and the Biden administration is making the childfree discrimination worse!

 

[Canard DuJour]

Okay, then what is it they mean by saying GDP growth has slowed because of increasing rich-poor income gaps? Normally that would mean if only we'd arranged for a smaller gap it would have stopped the growth from slowing -- i.e., it would have increased GDP. That's what it is to make a causality claim.
Well, there are two ways to arrange for a smaller gap: make the poor richer or make the rich poorer. But to say adding wealth to the poor increases GDP is practically a tautology: we don't need IMF economists to tell us that. So if the IMF is saying something substantive it seems it would have to be that subtracting wealth from the rich increases GDP.

No, it is saying if the poor's income increased at a faster rate than the rich's (which does not require subtraction of wealth from the rich), then GDP growth would have been faster.

But that's not what "because" means. It's just a claim of correlation across possible worlds, not a claim of causation. There might be some third factor causing both GDP growth to slow and rich-poor gaps to increase.(etc)

There is almost certainly a range of third factors causing both (hence I use the term "associated with", not "because").

I cite the slowdown in growth not as an argument for punitive taxation, but to address accusations of "zero-sum thinking". Whatever the precise causality, the results have been negative sum.

Nor do I attribute any such argument to the IMF. Rather, the IMF reluctantly acknowleges that neoliberal policies have not, as they anticpated, resulted in both increased inequality and productivity. We got the inequality without the productivity.

Hopefully this will save you the effort of constructing a 10,000 word strawman.

 

[Derec]

"It will trickle down!"
Nope. They'll build spaceships with it.

Those are not mutually exclusive. The money spent on spaceships is not shot into space. Blue Origin for example has over 3,000 employees that get paid, in addition to buying stuff from suppliers that also hire people. And those employees spend that money in the local economy.

Now, you might say, why not impose confiscatory taxes on Jeff Bezos et al and distribute the proceeds directly to people?
Well, creating prosperity though jobs is better than putting more people on the dole and giving them money for nothing.

Plus, we get cool spaceships out of it, unlike with the 'confiscatory tax' plan favored by you and this unimaginative memester. It did not even a funny picture; a really low effort! At least the other one had a drawing of New Shepard.

 

[TV and credit cards]

"It will trickle down!"
Nope. They'll build spaceships with it.

Those are not mutually exclusive. The money spent on spaceships is not shot into space. Blue Origin for example has over 3,000 employees that get paid, in addition to buying stuff from suppliers that also hire people. And those employees spend that money in the local economy.

Now, you might say, why not impose confiscatory taxes on Jeff Bezos et al and distribute the proceeds directly to people?
Well, creating prosperity though jobs is better than putting more people on the dole and giving them money for nothing.

Plus, we get cool spaceships out of it, unlike with the 'confiscatory tax' plan favored by you and this unimaginative memester. It did not even a funny picture; a really low effort! At least the other one had a drawing of New Shepard.

It’s really a matter of how much the prosperity faucet trickles. We can always find someone benefitting somewhere from someone else’s capitalism. Even if that someone is just the shoeshine boy.

I don’t think people who build spaceships for a living are in much danger of ending up on the dole anytime soon.

Would you not find it easier to defend Musk alone in boldly capitalizing in markets where no billionaire has gone before: space, EVs, rural ISP than to defend a billionaire who’s apparent goal is to satisfy his whim to go into space himself and a quick turnaround to profitability sending other bored billionaires to do the same? Or to defend the billionaire who shares his technology with others when he could better maintain market dominance by keeping it to himself? I refer to not just Musk sharing any advances in space exploration but in his recent announcement in making available Tesla chargers to all EVs.


Why anyone would group Elon Musk in with the likes of Jeff Bezos is beyond me.

 

[DBT]

It makes sense if you take the trouble of understanding it.

Nope. It makes no sense no matter how you look at it. The private sector plays an important role in space, and making space off limits to all non-government actors would be a stupid thing to do.

Which may be difficult to do for someone who is trying to justify a situation where a small percentage of the population hold or control most of the nations wealth.

Do not try to change the subject. How much wealth is controlled by what fraction of people is a different thing altogether than what bilby is saying - that space should be a government monopoly and that companies such as SpaceX should not exist even if they are a lot more efficient than governments building launch vehicles.

I wasn't changing the subject. Billionaires 'blasting off into space' is related to the broad issue of excessive wealth concentration. Especially considering that billions in Government money, taxes paid by workers, subsidizes their activities. Funds that could boost a national or international space program. NASA has an impressive record, for instance, and could benefit from an increase in funding.

 

[Swammerdami]

I keep getting drawn into these interminable and pointless message-board disputes. (I think it's a character flaw, but I'll try blaming imbalance of neurotransmitters ... or maybe generalized virus anxiety!) But I do not like to let untruths stand when they're directed at me.

Congress as a body has subpoena and legislative powers. Nobody claimed she can pass legislation with one vote, so that's a strawman.
AOC is also more powerful than an average Congressman, because she is the leader of the Squad, a far-left group of Congresspeople.

YOU said AOC has subpoena power. She doesn't. Congress and the State of California both have subpoena power. If AOC "has subpoena power" because she's a member of Congress, then I have subpoena power because I'm a voting citizen of California.

YOU said AOC can pass legislation. Anything she helps pass in the near-term is something Crowley (or any other Bronx Congressperson) would have voted for anyway.

And do the other "Squad" members acknowledge AOC as their "leader"? No, they're simply aware that she gets lots of publicity. (Publicity in part due to the hard-on you and other right-wingers have for her! )

Derec: 0 for 3.

It would be incredibly naïve to believe that this kind of thing does not happen in academia just like it happens in politics.
And AOC certainly has more looks than brains.

Very insulting and unsubstantiated. And AOC is smarter than you.

Derec: 0 for 5

Speaking of economics, it is you who demonstrate ignorance. It isn't government spending which might cause inflation; it is spending that is not countered with tax increases.

Not at all ignorant, I just gave an abridged version of her argumentation ...

Even worse. You now claim to know better, so your injection of a falsehood was deliberate.

Derec: 0 for 6

I don't even watch/listen to the guy. Maybe the right-winger is you?

In your post you named another Congresswoman I had never heard of, and still haven't Googled, despite that MTG and Boboert were available. I'll bet that even though you pretend not to be a right-winger, that example was a Democrat.

Derec: 0 for 7
(If I'm wrong and you picked a Repug, give yourself three brownie points! )

So you rant against AOC as though she were more of a problem than the millions of citizens who support Trump's lies and treasons — did she turn you down for a date or something? — and it turns out you've never even skimmed her Wikipedia bio. Wow!

Not everything is about Trump, dudue! And what's so special in her bio? Bartending. Driving 2000 miles (burning over 100 gallons of gasoline in the process!) to North Dakota to protest against oil. What else? What do you think she did that was so impressive before running for Congress?

She founded a company, and was named Person of the Year at a non-profit where she worked. Her bartending and waitressing jobs were to help her mother avoid eviction.

Whether YOU think founding a company and being named Person of the Year are "impressive" is irrelevant. YOU claimed that bartending was her ONLY job.

IOW, you were unable to find Wikipedia — do you need a link? — or, trying to read it, experienced cognitive difficulties understanding the English.

There are plenty of right-wingers at least as stupid as you, but doubling down on your ignorance after being advised to check Wikipedia, and preferring the sound of your own hand clapping because you don't know how to read Wikipedia? That's three demerits!

Derec: 0 for 10

Next contestant?

 

[Bomb#20]

because Amazon stock skyrocketed during that time. But the point remains, it's way more than the averaged, dollarized influence of a congressperson.

And you are missing the point that the power of a legislator goes well beyond spending money.

It should also be pointed out that even when we're considering only how much money they spend, the federal budget is a substantial underestimate of the dollarized influence of a congressperson. Congresspersons order an awful lot of other people to spend their own money to give Congress what it wants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfunded_mandate

Not unprecedented. Australia taxes unrealized capital gains on foreign stocks; the discrimination is supposed to incentivize Australians to invest in Australian companies instead of doing the rational thing and diversifying.

Interesting. Do you know how it is being implemented. For example, if a stock rises from $100 to $200 one year, but drops to $100 again the next, is the taxpayer due a refund?

I don't know, sorry. A guy who emigrated from Australia to the U.S. told me about their tax rule 20-odd years ago; your question is one I should have thought to ask.

 

[Bomb#20]

But in reality the workers are getting more out than they put in too

How can a worker get out more than they put in? That doesn't make any sense. You're saying a worker gets paid more than his production value.

"His production value" isn't a thing. Concepts like "production value", "exchange value", "use value" and "surplus value" are relics from classical economics, i.e., economics as it was misunderstood before the "marginal revolution" in the 1870s and 1880s.

Pre-marginal theories of economics treat "value" as if it's some sort of conserved substance that flows out of a worker into a product as it's constructed, and the "value" extracted from each worker can be added up to compute the "value" of the product. The substance is, inevitably, unobservable. It is the western equivalent of "qi" from traditional Chinese medicine.

 

[ZiprHead]

But in reality the workers are getting more out than they put in too

How can a worker get out more than they put in? That doesn't make any sense. You're saying a worker gets paid more than his production value.

"His production value" isn't a thing. Concepts like "production value", "exchange value", "use value" and "surplus value" are relics from classical economics, i.e., economics as it was misunderstood before the "marginal revolution" in the 1870s and 1880s.

Pre-marginal theories of economics treat "value" as if it's some sort of conserved substance that flows out of a worker into a product as it's constructed, and the "value" extracted from each worker can be added up to compute the "value" of the product. The substance is, inevitably, unobservable. It is the western equivalent of "qi" from traditional Chinese medicine.

I call bullshit.

https://www.google.com/search?q=worker+production+value&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS926US926&oq=worker+production+value&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30.9029j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8