Tax the Super Wealthy

[former player]

No budget arguments are occurring here. The amount of revenue this tax would raise is like Uncle Sam walking into the kitchen and grabbing the loose change bucket off the counter to take to a coinstar. We're so focused on some false morality regarding billionaires and little on the trillions of dollars the government is already spending, committed to and proposing. The tax code is supposed to fund government programs not to shackle ankle weights on people. Billionaires haven't taken our agency. They don't control our lives. They pay a less marginal rate because capital gains rates and donations (duh) but still pay more nominally than any of us are likely to make in a lifetime. How terrible.

To be clear, I'm for a more progressive capital gains tax, but to help pay government accumulated debt not to placate conspiracies about rich people. The reality is a wealth tax (including unrealized gains) would require a constitutional amendment or a very loose interpretation of income by the supreme court (extremely unlikely with current justices). This is DOA; a bone thrown out by Democrats to satisfy the mob.

Billionaires buy politicians so they control our lives, they just do it in ways that you don't have to see if you don't want to.  Tech billionaires have more personal information on any of us than can be guessed at by anyone outside the data industry and use it to control/influence what we see on line.

The fact that something probably won't happen doesn't mean that it is right that it doesn't.

[lemonlyman]

No budget arguments are occurring here. The amount of revenue this tax would raise is like Uncle Sam walking into the kitchen and grabbing the loose change bucket off the counter to take to a coinstar. We're so focused on some false morality regarding billionaires and little on the trillions of dollars the government is already spending, committed to and proposing. The tax code is supposed to fund government programs not to shackle ankle weights on people. Billionaires haven't taken our agency. They don't control our lives. They pay a less marginal rate because capital gains rates and donations (duh) but still pay more nominally than any of us are likely to make in a lifetime. How terrible.

To be clear, I'm for a more progressive capital gains tax, but to help pay government accumulated debt not to placate conspiracies about rich people. The reality is a wealth tax (including unrealized gains) would require a constitutional amendment or a very loose interpretation of income by the supreme court (extremely unlikely with current justices). This is DOA; a bone thrown out by Democrats to satisfy the mob.

Billionaires buy politicians so they control our lives, they just do it in ways that you don't have to see if you don't want to.  Tech billionaires have more personal information on any of us than can be guessed at by anyone outside the data industry and use it to control/influence what we see on line.

The fact that something probably won't happen doesn't mean that it is right that it doesn't.

A bit of hyperbole, don’t you think? When is the last time a tech billionaire forced you to do something you didn’t want to do? Seeing some ads or an algorithm trying to get you to click on content in free services is way overrated form of control. And to what end? Do all billionaires see the world in the same way? Which are good and which are bad? If they’re all bad and shouldn’t exist, who decides how to allocate the capital and what are their qualifications?

And ending billionaires is a different issue than taxation. Does taxing unrealized gains change that ability to buy politicians? No. The tax is supposed to pay for something for Americans. It’s clear it’s not about that at all since it’s so poorly thought out as to have virtually no chance of being enacted.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

What we don't see and can't know is what the alternative would look like if the US were more egalitarian.  Maybe there would be less McMansions, less frothing at the mouth about guns, less Fox News, maybe the Fed wouldn't have a 9T balance sheet from bailing out Wall Street and placating politicians...  who knows?  I do know that everyday life felt more free and stable in Norway and people generally worked at jobs they enjoyed, since most jobs paid the same.  The CEO was a 'normal person' that I saw speak several times in person.  My 'boss' genuinely cared if I was happy at work.  When I was there, I could look up anyone's income and net worth (at least tax-wise) and they could look up mine.

It's such an inconceivable way to live for most Americans that they just shrug when these 'billionaire tax' ideas cross their mind, because they can't conceive of the US being anything but economically disparate.  However, now that the problem has grown exponentially, we don't have the economic and social mobility that previous generations enjoyed.

Like I've said before, this situation is unsustainable.  It either needs to start heading in the right direction by choice and deliberate action, or else it will hit a boiling point.  Populism and Trump are an example of where this has started going...

[StarBright]

No budget arguments are occurring here. The amount of revenue this tax would raise is like Uncle Sam walking into the kitchen and grabbing the loose change bucket off the counter to take to a coinstar. We're so focused on some false morality regarding billionaires and little on the trillions of dollars the government is already spending, committed to and proposing. The tax code is supposed to fund government programs not to shackle ankle weights on people. Billionaires haven't taken our agency. They don't control our lives. They pay a less marginal rate because capital gains rates and donations (duh) but still pay more nominally than any of us are likely to make in a lifetime. How terrible.

To be clear, I'm for a more progressive capital gains tax, but to help pay government accumulated debt not to placate conspiracies about rich people. The reality is a wealth tax (including unrealized gains) would require a constitutional amendment or a very loose interpretation of income by the supreme court (extremely unlikely with current justices). This is DOA; a bone thrown out by Democrats to satisfy the mob.

Billionaires buy politicians so they control our lives, they just do it in ways that you don't have to see if you don't want to.  Tech billionaires have more personal information on any of us than can be guessed at by anyone outside the data industry and use it to control/influence what we see on line.

The fact that something probably won't happen doesn't mean that it is right that it doesn't.

A bit of hyperbole, don’t you think? When is the last time a tech billionaire forced you to do something you didn’t want to do?

Billionaires, and even just millionaires, force things or (perhaps as important) block changes  all of the time. To me that is what  Super PACs are all about.

Edit to add: one specific thing billionaire money has forced where I live is that public schools are required to provide transportation for private, religious and charter schools. With more religious and charter schools opening (and sponsored by Pro-Charter and school choice folks) our school taxes are going up year on year, and our transportation resources are spread so thin that the "no service" area for our public schools has gotten larger in the last couple of years.

 And there is a whole slew of consequences that flow from that, including traffic problems, car accidents, infrastructure that can't handle the increased traffic from parents now needing to drop their kids off, the need to hire people to handle the drop off traffic, the larger need for pre and afterschool programs to handle drop off and pick up,  etc.

[DadJokes]

No budget arguments are occurring here. The amount of revenue this tax would raise is like Uncle Sam walking into the kitchen and grabbing the loose change bucket off the counter to take to a coinstar. We're so focused on some false morality regarding billionaires and little on the trillions of dollars the government is already spending, committed to and proposing. The tax code is supposed to fund government programs not to shackle ankle weights on people. Billionaires haven't taken our agency. They don't control our lives. They pay a less marginal rate because capital gains rates and donations (duh) but still pay more nominally than any of us are likely to make in a lifetime. How terrible.

To be clear, I'm for a more progressive capital gains tax, but to help pay government accumulated debt not to placate conspiracies about rich people. The reality is a wealth tax (including unrealized gains) would require a constitutional amendment or a very loose interpretation of income by the supreme court (extremely unlikely with current justices). This is DOA; a bone thrown out by Democrats to satisfy the mob.

Billionaires buy politicians so they control our lives, they just do it in ways that you don't have to see if you don't want to.  Tech billionaires have more personal information on any of us than can be guessed at by anyone outside the data industry and use it to control/influence what we see on line.

The fact that something probably won't happen doesn't mean that it is right that it doesn't.

Do you really feel that billionaires and the government control your life?

That's a bit dramatic.

[Log]

The fact is the billionaires don’t need to control our lives, or even control the government. They just need to throw enough of a wrench in the legislature to stop anything from ever happening, because the status quo is just fine for them. If they prop up the corpse of the obstructionist party for long enough, they can keep raking in enough cash to be able to do whatever they want without oversight or regulation. If it’s illegal here, they have so much money they can just go do it somewhere else. But they need America to continue to be the land of extreme inequality because here’s where they “earn” it all.

[Arbitrage]

I used to be far more libertarian when it came to this issue.  Now that I'm grown, and have experienced my career, befriended some relatively wealthy people (nowhere near billionaires, but low 7-figure incomes) and seen their lives...I have very little problem with taxing rich people.  They really will be just fine.  The ones I've met didn't really work any harder than my other friends, but had a combination of smarts/skill/luck/advantages that coalesced.  Now the wealthy ones are happily living it up, killing the world faster than the rest of us without a batted eyelash.

I can't even conceive of the billionaires.  Tax away (assuming we direct the taxes toward something useful, like climate change sustainability or health care, or even lowering other people's taxes).

[scottish]

It sounds like the thread is concerned more about the influence the super wealthy have on society than the fact that they're super wealthy.

There's not much point in taxing them to fix this unless the taxation is at such a level that it strips them of all their influence (and all their wealth?)

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

[GuitarStv]

It sounds like the thread is concerned more about the influence the super wealthy have on society than the fact that they're super wealthy.

There's not much point in taxing them to fix this unless the taxation is at such a level that it strips them of all their influence (and all their wealth?)

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Wealth disparity is the cause of the outsized influence that the extremely wealthy have.  Taxation to reduce this wealth gap seems like the most straightforward way to address the issue.  How else would you go about doing it?

[Arbitrage]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Would have to outlaw campaign donations, lobbying...probably would have to get rid of campaigning altogether.  Not necessarily saying that would be bad.

[GuitarStv]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Would have to outlaw campaign donations, lobbying...probably would have to get rid of campaigning altogether.  Not necessarily saying that would be bad.

Can't do that.  Money is speech, remember?

[JGS1980]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Not with this Supreme Court.

[YttriumNitrate]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?  I think your question is flawed in that it presumes that at some point there was 1 person 1 vote levels of influence. Such a thing has never existed.

[dividendman]

It sounds like the thread is concerned more about the influence the super wealthy have on society than the fact that they're super wealthy.

There's not much point in taxing them to fix this unless the taxation is at such a level that it strips them of all their influence (and all their wealth?)

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Wealth disparity is the cause of the outsized influence that the extremely wealthy have.  Taxation to reduce this wealth gap seems like the most straightforward way to address the issue.  How else would you go about doing it?

I guess one way would be to could change the constitution so that people who make/have over $X can't vote.

[seattlecyclone]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Would have to outlaw campaign donations, lobbying...probably would have to get rid of campaigning altogether.  Not necessarily saying that would be bad.

Can't do that.  Money is speech, remember?

Pretty much every method of disseminating an idea requires spending money. The First Amendment would be rendered basically moot if it were interpreted to mean that the government can step in and make restrictions on speech the second someone spends a dollar to boost their message. The right to stand on a street corner and talk to people would be protected. That's about it. Signs and megaphones are right out, and don't even think about starting a blog or a podcast or making a documentary film without the government's say-so.

I fully recognize that the ability to purchase the attention of a large number of people through media is a very powerful thing. I'm all in favor of trying to find targeted ways to reform that power for the greater good, but completely throwing out the legal protections currently afforded to the expression of political thought is not the way IMO.

[scottish]

It sounds like the thread is concerned more about the influence the super wealthy have on society than the fact that they're super wealthy.

There's not much point in taxing them to fix this unless the taxation is at such a level that it strips them of all their influence (and all their wealth?)

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Wealth disparity is the cause of the outsized influence that the extremely wealthy have.  Taxation to reduce this wealth gap seems like the most straightforward way to address the issue.  How else would you go about doing it?

There's no way taxation will ever reach levels sufficient to reduce the wealth gap to address this issue.     The closest we're likely to get is to clamp down on intergenerational wealth transfer, and the wealthy will find loopholes in that too. 

What's really needed is societal change, so that everyone in the US thinks more like everyone in Norway.   (Ok, that's a bit tongue in cheek.)    People need education, ethics, and principles.    Big swaths of the US are going in the opposite direction though.   

A good first step in this direction would be to figure out how to control the mis-information on social media.    There are all these big brained people in Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta, maybe they could do something more worthwhile than ad slinging.    Remember "don't be evil"?

[FIPurpose]

It sounds like the thread is concerned more about the influence the super wealthy have on society than the fact that they're super wealthy.

There's not much point in taxing them to fix this unless the taxation is at such a level that it strips them of all their influence (and all their wealth?)

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Wealth disparity is the cause of the outsized influence that the extremely wealthy have.  Taxation to reduce this wealth gap seems like the most straightforward way to address the issue.  How else would you go about doing it?

There's no way taxation will ever reach levels sufficient to reduce the wealth gap to address this issue.     The closest we're likely to get is to clamp down on intergenerational wealth transfer, and the wealthy will find loopholes in that too. 

What's really needed is societal change, so that everyone in the US thinks more like everyone in Norway.   (Ok, that's a bit tongue in cheek.)    People need education, ethics, and principles.    Big swaths of the US are going in the opposite direction though.   

A good first step in this direction would be to figure out how to control the mis-information on social media.    There are all these big brained people in Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta, maybe they could do something more worthwhile than ad slinging.    Remember "don't be evil"?

Norway literally has a wealth tax. And a tax rate of around 50% for all income and capital gains.

Sounds like the way to think like Norway is to start taxing the wealthy.

[former player]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Would have to outlaw campaign donations, lobbying...probably would have to get rid of campaigning altogether.  Not necessarily saying that would be bad.

Can't do that.  Money is speech, remember?

Pretty much every method of disseminating an idea requires spending money. The First Amendment would be rendered basically moot if it were interpreted to mean that the government can step in and make restrictions on speech the second someone spends a dollar to boost their message. The right to stand on a street corner and talk to people would be protected. That's about it. Signs and megaphones are right out, and don't even think about starting a blog or a podcast or making a documentary film without the government's say-so.

I fully recognize that the ability to purchase the attention of a large number of people through media is a very powerful thing. I'm all in favor of trying to find targeted ways to reform that power for the greater good, but completely throwing out the legal protections currently afforded to the expression of political thought is not the way IMO.

The thing is, other democracies manage to regulate political spending without any noticeable detriment to either free speech or political discourse.  The USA could have, and did in the past, but the people with money who want to influence politics have probably grown too powerful to let it happen again.

[scottish]

It sounds like the thread is concerned more about the influence the super wealthy have on society than the fact that they're super wealthy.

There's not much point in taxing them to fix this unless the taxation is at such a level that it strips them of all their influence (and all their wealth?)

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Wealth disparity is the cause of the outsized influence that the extremely wealthy have.  Taxation to reduce this wealth gap seems like the most straightforward way to address the issue.  How else would you go about doing it?

There's no way taxation will ever reach levels sufficient to reduce the wealth gap to address this issue.     The closest we're likely to get is to clamp down on intergenerational wealth transfer, and the wealthy will find loopholes in that too. 

What's really needed is societal change, so that everyone in the US thinks more like everyone in Norway.   (Ok, that's a bit tongue in cheek.)    People need education, ethics, and principles.    Big swaths of the US are going in the opposite direction though.   

A good first step in this direction would be to figure out how to control the mis-information on social media.    There are all these big brained people in Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta, maybe they could do something more worthwhile than ad slinging.    Remember "don't be evil"?

Norway literally has a wealth tax. And a tax rate of around 50% for all income and capital gains.

Sounds like the way to think like Norway is to start taxing the wealthy.

You have it backwards.   If you think like Norway you may start taxing the wealthy.  :-)     

Norway's tax rate is progressive.   The top marginal tax rate is about 54% (just like where I live!), but if you make less income, you pay tax at a lower rate.   Here are the tax brackets for the Norwegian surtax.   If I understand their system correctly, you pay a flat tax of 22% or so, and then a surtax based on your income.   Then they account for public insurance payments separately to get up to the 54%.   I may have the details wrong, but I think the basic description is about right.

Bracket tax consists of four steps. You will not pay any bracket tax on the first NOK 184,800 of your personal income.   1 Norwegian krone is worth about 0.11 USD right now.

    Income between NOK 0 – 190,349   No bracket tax
Step 1   Income between NOK 190,350 – 267,899   1.7% bracket tax
Step 2   Income between NOK 267,900 – 643,799   4.0% bracket tax
Step 3   Income between NOK 643,800 – 969,199   13.4% bracket tax*
Step 4   Income between NOK 969 200 – 1 999 999   16.4% bracket tax
Step 5   Income over NOK 2,000,000   17.4% bracket tax

Anyway, back to my point.    If you taxed American billionaires at 54% of all their income (including capital gains and dividends and everything), and 2% of their wealth, do you really think that would be enough to curtail their influence?

[PDXTabs]

Norway literally has a wealth tax. And a tax rate of around 50% for all income and capital gains.

Sounds like the way to think like Norway is to start taxing the wealthy.

I would love to start thinking like Norway. I would point out that both Switzerland and Norway have progressive wealth taxes with top marginal rates of 0.3% and 1.1% respectively AFAIK.

[FIPurpose]

It sounds like the thread is concerned more about the influence the super wealthy have on society than the fact that they're super wealthy.

There's not much point in taxing them to fix this unless the taxation is at such a level that it strips them of all their influence (and all their wealth?)

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Wealth disparity is the cause of the outsized influence that the extremely wealthy have.  Taxation to reduce this wealth gap seems like the most straightforward way to address the issue.  How else would you go about doing it?

There's no way taxation will ever reach levels sufficient to reduce the wealth gap to address this issue.     The closest we're likely to get is to clamp down on intergenerational wealth transfer, and the wealthy will find loopholes in that too. 

What's really needed is societal change, so that everyone in the US thinks more like everyone in Norway.   (Ok, that's a bit tongue in cheek.)    People need education, ethics, and principles.    Big swaths of the US are going in the opposite direction though.   

A good first step in this direction would be to figure out how to control the mis-information on social media.    There are all these big brained people in Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta, maybe they could do something more worthwhile than ad slinging.    Remember "don't be evil"?

Norway literally has a wealth tax. And a tax rate of around 50% for all income and capital gains.

Sounds like the way to think like Norway is to start taxing the wealthy.

You have it backwards.   If you think like Norway you may start taxing the wealthy.  :-)     

Norway's tax rate is progressive.   The top marginal tax rate is about 54% (just like where I live!), but if you make less income, you pay tax at a lower rate.   Here are the tax brackets for the Norwegian surtax.   If I understand their system correctly, you pay a flat tax of 22% or so, and then a surtax based on your income.   Then they account for public insurance payments separately to get up to the 54%.   I may have the details wrong, but I think the basic description is about right.

Bracket tax consists of four steps. You will not pay any bracket tax on the first NOK 184,800 of your personal income.   1 Norwegian krone is worth about 0.11 USD right now.

    Income between NOK 0 – 190,349   No bracket tax
Step 1   Income between NOK 190,350 – 267,899   1.7% bracket tax
Step 2   Income between NOK 267,900 – 643,799   4.0% bracket tax
Step 3   Income between NOK 643,800 – 969,199   13.4% bracket tax*
Step 4   Income between NOK 969 200 – 1 999 999   16.4% bracket tax
Step 5   Income over NOK 2,000,000   17.4% bracket tax

Anyway, back to my point.    If you taxed American billionaires at 54% of all their income (including capital gains and dividends and everything), and 2% of their wealth, do you really think that would be enough to curtail their influence?

Yes, they'd literally have less money by which to buy their influence. In fact, I'd say that they'd be able to buy around 50% fewer politicians than they do today.

[GuitarStv]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Would have to outlaw campaign donations, lobbying...probably would have to get rid of campaigning altogether.  Not necessarily saying that would be bad.

Can't do that.  Money is speech, remember?

Pretty much every method of disseminating an idea requires spending money. The First Amendment would be rendered basically moot if it were interpreted to mean that the government can step in and make restrictions on speech the second someone spends a dollar to boost their message. The right to stand on a street corner and talk to people would be protected. That's about it. Signs and megaphones are right out, and don't even think about starting a blog or a podcast or making a documentary film without the government's say-so.

I fully recognize that the ability to purchase the attention of a large number of people through media is a very powerful thing. I'm all in favor of trying to find targeted ways to reform that power for the greater good, but completely throwing out the legal protections currently afforded to the expression of political thought is not the way IMO.

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

[PDXTabs]

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

Citizens United is unfortunate, but I personally worry more about paid lobbyists.

[former player]

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

Citizens United is unfortunate, but I personally worry more about paid lobbyists.

Ways to deal with paid lobbyists are:
1) You require all gifts/money/hospitality/travel to elected officials to be registered, and put a monetary limit on what can be accepted.
2) You outlaw insider trading by elected officials and require cabinet members to either sell individual share holdings or put them into a blind trust run by impartial trustees.
3) You drastically reduce the numbers of party political appointments to the administration (ie stop the "revolving door" of officials/lobbyists).
4) You establish a sufficiently large, professional, non-party affiliated/appointed class of civil servants that can develop policy and legislation to the orders of the administration, so that the administration and lawmakers do not have to rely on lobbyists for ideas and the means to implement them.

Basically, what most European democracies do.

[StarBright]

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

Citizens United is unfortunate, but I personally worry more about paid lobbyists.

FWIW - I used to worry more about paid lobbyists too. But superpacs have (smartly) increased the scope of the strategy all the way down to tiny local races and it is WILD to see in person.

Here is my anecdote: During our last election cycle Freedom Works held events in my town that were co-located with v. conservative candidates running for school board. 

At first, a lot of us wrote the v. conservative candidates off. They had just moved to town within the year, no one knew who they were, neither of them had children who attended our schools. They were running against a local mother who was a former teacher, current high school band volunteer, active member of the community and had a PhD focusing on special ed. She was a shoe-in, until she wasn't.

The Freedom Works related folks held workshops on how to protest CRT and mask requirements, and a few days later our school board meetings were shut down with protestors. Some of us started to notice the flood of political supporters for the candidates in our town facebook group. The conservative candidates ran targeted facebook ads and robocalls and filled our mail boxes and front doors knobs with materials. They were everywhere.

FWIW - I have never in my time in this town received materials for someone running for the board - I went to the debate and met them when they walked around my neighborhood. So this was new and different.

It took an exhaustive, labor intensive social campaign in the last three weeks of the election for the local candidate to eek out a win by a few points. And it was basically local, working parents (mothers) on zoom at 11pm frantically coming up with with free and "easy" ways to point out how bad the two newcomers were. But I guarantee we wouldn't have the time or energy (and already didn't have tens of extra thousands of dollars to spend) to keep this going long term.

Parents with work and kids have a hard time competing with funded candidates. As a person who cares deeply about politics, it has been one of the hardest things for me to accept - that there is so little I can do.

(FWIW I also think the "working a w2 job w/kids" thing and general demographics contribute to the candidate gap we see in down ballot races when looking at Rs vs Ds.)

[seattlecyclone]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Would have to outlaw campaign donations, lobbying...probably would have to get rid of campaigning altogether.  Not necessarily saying that would be bad.

Can't do that.  Money is speech, remember?

Pretty much every method of disseminating an idea requires spending money. The First Amendment would be rendered basically moot if it were interpreted to mean that the government can step in and make restrictions on speech the second someone spends a dollar to boost their message. The right to stand on a street corner and talk to people would be protected. That's about it. Signs and megaphones are right out, and don't even think about starting a blog or a podcast or making a documentary film without the government's say-so.

I fully recognize that the ability to purchase the attention of a large number of people through media is a very powerful thing. I'm all in favor of trying to find targeted ways to reform that power for the greater good, but completely throwing out the legal protections currently afforded to the expression of political thought is not the way IMO.

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

Honestly I don't mind the Citizens United decision at all.

For reference, the actual case at issue was that a non-profit organization put together a documentary film critical of Hillary Clinton, and they wanted to play it prior to the 2008 presidential primary. The law at the time said that corporations (including non-profits), as well as labor unions, weren't allowed to advocate for or against candidates within a certain time period of an election.

If some billionaire wanted to pay for the same film out of his own pocket that would have been totally legal. If some filmmaker had put together a GoFundMe to raise money to his own bank account to pay for the film, that also would have been legal.

One potential pitfall with the GoFundMe model is that there's little accountability—the filmmaker gets the money with few strings attached. Historically when groups of people sharing a common interest start to grow past a certain size and amount of money, they find it worthwhile to start a formal organization such as a non-profit corporation to manage the organization's affairs separate from the members' personal bank accounts. This enables a formal governance structure to ensure accountability and continued progress toward the group's stated mission. This exact structure is what allows multiple smaller donations to combine and compete with the voices of wealthier individuals, and we're supposed to think that's a bad thing?

[JGS1980]

Are there no ways to get back to 1 person 1 vote levels of influence?

Would have to outlaw campaign donations, lobbying...probably would have to get rid of campaigning altogether.  Not necessarily saying that would be bad.

Can't do that.  Money is speech, remember?

Pretty much every method of disseminating an idea requires spending money. The First Amendment would be rendered basically moot if it were interpreted to mean that the government can step in and make restrictions on speech the second someone spends a dollar to boost their message. The right to stand on a street corner and talk to people would be protected. That's about it. Signs and megaphones are right out, and don't even think about starting a blog or a podcast or making a documentary film without the government's say-so.

I fully recognize that the ability to purchase the attention of a large number of people through media is a very powerful thing. I'm all in favor of trying to find targeted ways to reform that power for the greater good, but completely throwing out the legal protections currently afforded to the expression of political thought is not the way IMO.

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

Honestly I don't mind the Citizens United decision at all.

For reference, the actual case at issue was that a non-profit organization put together a documentary film critical of Hillary Clinton, and they wanted to play it prior to the 2008 presidential primary. The law at the time said that corporations (including non-profits), as well as labor unions, weren't allowed to advocate for or against candidates within a certain time period of an election.

If some billionaire wanted to pay for the same film out of his own pocket that would have been totally legal. If some filmmaker had put together a GoFundMe to raise money to his own bank account to pay for the film, that also would have been legal.

One potential pitfall with the GoFundMe model is that there's little accountability—the filmmaker gets the money with few strings attached. Historically when groups of people sharing a common interest start to grow past a certain size and amount of money, they find it worthwhile to start a formal organization such as a non-profit corporation to manage the organization's affairs separate from the members' personal bank accounts. This enables a formal governance structure to ensure accountability and continued progress toward the group's stated mission. This exact structure is what allows multiple smaller donations to combine and compete with the voices of wealthier individuals, and we're supposed to think that's a bad thing?

7.5% of total political donations in the past decade were contributions by just 12 individuals. SeattleCyclone, do you think this gave those individuals a greater than proportional power over us little folks?

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/12-megadonors-accounted-75-political-giving-past-decade/story?id=77189636

[PDXTabs]

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

Citizens United is unfortunate, but I personally worry more about paid lobbyists.

FWIW - I used to worry more about paid lobbyists too. But superpacs have (smartly) increased the scope of the strategy all the way down to tiny local races and it is WILD to see in person.

Here is my anecdote: During our last election cycle Freedom Works held events in my town that were co-located with v. conservative candidates running for school board. 

At first, a lot of us wrote the v. conservative candidates off. They had just moved to town within the year, no one knew who they were, neither of them had children who attended our schools. They were running against a local mother who was a former teacher, current high school band volunteer, active member of the community and had a PhD focusing on special ed. She was a shoe-in, until she wasn't.

The Freedom Works related folks held workshops on how to protest CRT and mask requirements, and a few days later our school board meetings were shut down with protestors. Some of us started to notice the flood of political supporters for the candidates in our town facebook group. The conservative candidates ran targeted facebook ads and robocalls and filled our mail boxes and front doors knobs with materials. They were everywhere.

Again, I don't like Citizens United, but wouldn't half of that stuff be allowed even under Citizens United? Does Citizens United even cover Facebook ads? I genuinely curious.

[StarBright]

Was the US known for oppression of ideas prior to Citizens United?  I'd actually argue that the ruling has made speech less free in the US because now the rich are better able to outshout those with less money, while simultaneously increasing corruption in the political system.

Citizens United is unfortunate, but I personally worry more about paid lobbyists.

FWIW - I used to worry more about paid lobbyists too. But superpacs have (smartly) increased the scope of the strategy all the way down to tiny local races and it is WILD to see in person.

Here is my anecdote: During our last election cycle Freedom Works held events in my town that were co-located with v. conservative candidates running for school board. 

At first, a lot of us wrote the v. conservative candidates off. They had just moved to town within the year, no one knew who they were, neither of them had children who attended our schools. They were running against a local mother who was a former teacher, current high school band volunteer, active member of the community and had a PhD focusing on special ed. She was a shoe-in, until she wasn't.

The Freedom Works related folks held workshops on how to protest CRT and mask requirements, and a few days later our school board meetings were shut down with protestors. Some of us started to notice the flood of political supporters for the candidates in our town facebook group. The conservative candidates ran targeted facebook ads and robocalls and filled our mail boxes and front doors knobs with materials. They were everywhere.

Again, I don't like Citizens United, but wouldn't half of that stuff be allowed even under Citizens United? Does Citizens United even cover Facebook ads? I genuinely curious.

The politicking itself is 100% allowed and Citizens doesn't change that. I was highlighting it as an example of what outsized money can do to disrupt a small local election.

My concern comes from millionaires in other states trying to influence my kids' school. I know donors are anonymous, but more than half of the operating revenue of the org that got involved (so millions) came from only 4 people.

Maybe they aren't out of state? But even if they are in state, I want to know who they are and why they care so much about my school district, you know?

And I know it sounds nuts, but also, it IS nuts. We had two people move into our school district weeks before the filing deadline, have no children in our schools, and then run well funded and targeted campaigns, coordinated with a national organization fueled by anonymous donors and then they came way closer to winning than anyone thought possible.

Tax the people funding these shenanigans so they'll stop messing with our schools please! :)

[js82]

Taxing the rich is like treating an illness instead of preventing an illness. If workers who generated the wealth were fairly compensated at every point in the production, transportation and sales cycle, there would be less wealth for individuals at the top to hoard and no need to redistribute that wealth via taxes. The gap between the average worker's pay and the top executive's pay is much greater than it was 40 years ago. Shrinking that gap is what we should be focused on.

I agree to an extent, but you almost have to do it to have any prayer of fixing the problem.  You have to break the gross power imbalance somehow.

What a lot of lower-income people who oppose taxing high incomes/net worths more aggressively miss, is all the *secondary* consequences of income/wealth inequality:

-A ton more resources(both labor and capital) end up going to serve the minor whims of the very rich, instead of the needs of middle/lower income individuals.  Billionaires have no trouble commissioning superyachts, but getting developers to build starter homes is like pulling teeth.

-Too much concentration of power is always dangerous.  If you think government overreach is bad, you should also be massively concerned about the powers that near-monopolies (or individuals with >$100 Billion in net worth) are capable of wielding over our daily lives.  Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Elon Musk's politics, the fact that one person could hypothetically buy a large media company and completely change its policies on what information it allows/doesn't allow on a whim is tremendously problematic in and of itself.

-As an extension of the above, gross discrepancies in wealth lead directly to gross discrepancies in political/institutional influence.  For example - while I'm relatively well off, my university's richest alum has enough money that it would take a full decade of classes of students with my net worth, to match his degree of potential donations.  When 1 uber-rich dude has over 10,000 times the financial impact of a fairly typical upper-middle-class individual it leads to all kinds of warped incentives for institutions to do things that aren't in the interest in the majority of their members.

I could go on, but I won't.  Wealth inequality on the extreme high end needs to be drastically reduced by one means or another.  Its societal harm is greater than most recognize.

[eyesonthehorizon]

Do billionaires divert resources to the construction of their super yachts (or, let’s say ultra-luxury housing) other than by making it more profitable for someone to do that work, compared to building affordable housing?

Would those consumers be as inclined, in such numbers, to make it more profitable work if there were a wealth tax of 90% over, say, $100mm?

[eyesonthehorizon]

I used to be far more libertarian when it came to this issue.  Now that I'm grown, and have experienced my career, befriended some relatively wealthy people (nowhere near billionaires, but low 7-figure incomes) and seen their lives...I have very little problem with taxing rich people.  They really will be just fine.  The ones I've met didn't really work any harder than my other friends, but had a combination of smarts/skill/luck/advantages that coalesced.  Now the wealthy ones are happily living it up, killing the world faster than the rest of us without a batted eyelash.

I can't even conceive of the billionaires.  Tax away (assuming we direct the taxes toward something useful, like climate change sustainability or health care, or even lowering other people's taxes).

This sums me up too. There's a limit to how much money can significantly improve a person's life, & there's certainly a limit to how much consumption can improve a person's life. Which I'd hope that we in the FIRE community, especially, would know: we're statistically likely to be or arrive in the top five or ten percent in the country, have experience with affluence, & be aware that there comes a point at which pursuit of a "higher score" is flatly pathological.

Beyond a point (& I'd say the proposals for steep wealth taxes on centa-millionaires & up, or income taxes on five million & up, or estate taxes on fifty million & up, or even some combination, all allow FAR beyond that point) we accomplish nothing more than letting individuals concentrate & hoard resources, real property & power, to the tune of crushing their fellow man & our one finite planet, the only benefit of which being that they can play at being gods - which, since this is a discussion of the US, also feels foundationally misaligned with the American experiment as a whole under which we are notionally created equal.

It took knowing enough very affluent people - many of whom I certainly quite like, admire, & relate to - & understanding what money could buy to really see that there's just no wholesome rationale for concentrating resources to that extent. None. It's not that the harms "outweigh" the benefits, there are no benefits; whereas there are enormous, measurable harms.

[JGS1980]

I used to be far more libertarian when it came to this issue.  Now that I'm grown, and have experienced my career, befriended some relatively wealthy people (nowhere near billionaires, but low 7-figure incomes) and seen their lives...I have very little problem with taxing rich people.  They really will be just fine.  The ones I've met didn't really work any harder than my other friends, but had a combination of smarts/skill/luck/advantages that coalesced.  Now the wealthy ones are happily living it up, killing the world faster than the rest of us without a batted eyelash.

I can't even conceive of the billionaires.  Tax away (assuming we direct the taxes toward something useful, like climate change sustainability or health care, or even lowering other people's taxes).

Beyond a point (& I'd say the proposals for steep wealth taxes on centa-millionaires & up, or income taxes on five million & up, or estate taxes on fifty million & up, or even some combination, all allow FAR beyond that point) we accomplish nothing more than letting individuals concentrate & hoard resources, real property & power, to the tune of crushing their fellow man & our one finite planet, the only benefit of which being that they can play at being gods - which, since this is a discussion of the US, also feels foundationally misaligned with the American experiment as a whole under which we are notionally created equal.

In the US, we used to have similar thoughts in regards to the size and economic/political power of corporations. This led to the breakup of giants like AT&T and Standard Oil back in the day. Have we collectively decided that it really is okay for companies to grow without restrictions?

[FIPurpose]

I used to be far more libertarian when it came to this issue.  Now that I'm grown, and have experienced my career, befriended some relatively wealthy people (nowhere near billionaires, but low 7-figure incomes) and seen their lives...I have very little problem with taxing rich people.  They really will be just fine.  The ones I've met didn't really work any harder than my other friends, but had a combination of smarts/skill/luck/advantages that coalesced.  Now the wealthy ones are happily living it up, killing the world faster than the rest of us without a batted eyelash.

I can't even conceive of the billionaires.  Tax away (assuming we direct the taxes toward something useful, like climate change sustainability or health care, or even lowering other people's taxes).

Beyond a point (& I'd say the proposals for steep wealth taxes on centa-millionaires & up, or income taxes on five million & up, or estate taxes on fifty million & up, or even some combination, all allow FAR beyond that point) we accomplish nothing more than letting individuals concentrate & hoard resources, real property & power, to the tune of crushing their fellow man & our one finite planet, the only benefit of which being that they can play at being gods - which, since this is a discussion of the US, also feels foundationally misaligned with the American experiment as a whole under which we are notionally created equal.

In the US, we used to have similar thoughts in regards to the size and economic/political power of corporations. This led to the breakup of giants like AT&T and Standard Oil back in the day. Have we collectively decided that it really is okay for companies to grow without restrictions?

Basically yes, Reagan adopted Bork's stance on antitrust which came down to arguing that economic efficiency should be considered equally with protection of competition.

The Supreme Court has cited Bork's book in probably a half dozen antitrust rulings undoing most of the protections that anti-trust legislation afforded. So now the rule that the federal government follows is more or less "Can a merger promise lower prices to consumers?" And if the company can prove that their merger will result in a positive outcome for consumers, then the merger can go forward.

This has led to the giant monopolies we have today.

[Chris22]

I used to be far more libertarian when it came to this issue.  Now that I'm grown, and have experienced my career, befriended some relatively wealthy people (nowhere near billionaires, but low 7-figure incomes) and seen their lives...I have very little problem with taxing rich people.  They really will be just fine.  The ones I've met didn't really work any harder than my other friends, but had a combination of smarts/skill/luck/advantages that coalesced.  Now the wealthy ones are happily living it up, killing the world faster than the rest of us without a batted eyelash.

I can't even conceive of the billionaires.  Tax away (assuming we direct the taxes toward something useful, like climate change sustainability or health care, or even lowering other people's taxes).

This sums me up too. There's a limit to how much money can significantly improve a person's life, & there's certainly a limit to how much consumption can improve a person's life. Which I'd hope that we in the FIRE community, especially, would know: we're statistically likely to be or arrive in the top five or ten percent in the country, have experience with affluence, & be aware that there comes a point at which pursuit of a "higher score" is flatly pathological.

Beyond a point (& I'd say the proposals for steep wealth taxes on centa-millionaires & up, or income taxes on five million & up, or estate taxes on fifty million & up, or even some combination, all allow FAR beyond that point) we accomplish nothing more than letting individuals concentrate & hoard resources, real property & power, to the tune of crushing their fellow man & our one finite planet, the only benefit of which being that they can play at being gods - which, since this is a discussion of the US, also feels foundationally misaligned with the American experiment as a whole under which we are notionally created equal.

It took knowing enough very affluent people - many of whom I certainly quite like, admire, & relate to - & understanding what money could buy to really see that there's just no wholesome rationale for concentrating resources to that extent. None. It's not that the harms "outweigh" the benefits, there are no benefits; whereas there are enormous, measurable harms.

Except for a majority of the billionaires people rail against (Musk/Bezos/Zuck/Gates/etc) that wealth is tied to control of the companies they founded/run. I don’t think Bezos or Musk or whomever cares if they have $20B or $200B, but they do care about maintaining control of their companies. If you remove their wealth (force them to sell stock) you effectively remove their control. That’s not insignificant.

[FIPurpose]

I used to be far more libertarian when it came to this issue.  Now that I'm grown, and have experienced my career, befriended some relatively wealthy people (nowhere near billionaires, but low 7-figure incomes) and seen their lives...I have very little problem with taxing rich people.  They really will be just fine.  The ones I've met didn't really work any harder than my other friends, but had a combination of smarts/skill/luck/advantages that coalesced.  Now the wealthy ones are happily living it up, killing the world faster than the rest of us without a batted eyelash.

I can't even conceive of the billionaires.  Tax away (assuming we direct the taxes toward something useful, like climate change sustainability or health care, or even lowering other people's taxes).

This sums me up too. There's a limit to how much money can significantly improve a person's life, & there's certainly a limit to how much consumption can improve a person's life. Which I'd hope that we in the FIRE community, especially, would know: we're statistically likely to be or arrive in the top five or ten percent in the country, have experience with affluence, & be aware that there comes a point at which pursuit of a "higher score" is flatly pathological.

Beyond a point (& I'd say the proposals for steep wealth taxes on centa-millionaires & up, or income taxes on five million & up, or estate taxes on fifty million & up, or even some combination, all allow FAR beyond that point) we accomplish nothing more than letting individuals concentrate & hoard resources, real property & power, to the tune of crushing their fellow man & our one finite planet, the only benefit of which being that they can play at being gods - which, since this is a discussion of the US, also feels foundationally misaligned with the American experiment as a whole under which we are notionally created equal.

It took knowing enough very affluent people - many of whom I certainly quite like, admire, & relate to - & understanding what money could buy to really see that there's just no wholesome rationale for concentrating resources to that extent. None. It's not that the harms "outweigh" the benefits, there are no benefits; whereas there are enormous, measurable harms.

Except for a majority of the billionaires people rail against (Musk/Bezos/Zuck/Gates/etc) that wealth is tied to control of the companies they founded/run. I don’t think Bezos or Musk or whomever cares if they have $20B or $200B, but they do care about maintaining control of their companies. If you remove their wealth (force them to sell stock) you effectively remove their control. That’s not insignificant.

Are you just making things up?

Gates owns almost no Microsoft stock at this point (< 1% ownership)

Musk, Bezos, Zuck etc all only own 10-20% of their respective companies. They could all be voted out tomorrow if that's what the actual owners of the company decided. None of them own a majority of shares.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

Except for a majority of the billionaires people rail against (Musk/Bezos/Zuck/Gates/etc) that wealth is tied to control of the companies they founded/run. I don’t think Bezos or Musk or whomever cares if they have $20B or $200B, but they do care about maintaining control of their companies. If you remove their wealth (force them to sell stock) you effectively remove their control. That’s not insignificant.

Musk would be pretty bummed if his wealth were only $20B or tied up in TSLA stock, he wouldn't be able to finance his purchase of TWTR!  Bezos might also struggle to finance his $500M Superyacht... 

Not sure where you're coming up with this theory that wealth taxation will cause CEO's to lose control of their companies.  Perhaps you've never heard of super-voting shares?

Different share classes also have different voting rights. For instance, a company's founders, executives, or other large stakeholders may be assigned a class of common stock that has multiple votes for every single share of stock. This super-voting multiple is about 10 votes per higher class share, although some companies may choose to make them much higher.

Super-voting shares give key company insiders greater control over the company's voting rights, its board, and corporate actions. The existence of super-voting shares can also be an effective defense against hostile takeovers since key insiders can maintain majority voting control of their company without actually owning more than half of the outstanding shares.

Voting issues aside, different share classes typically have the same rights to profits and company ownership. Even though retail investors may be limited to purchasing only inferior classes of common stock for a given company, they still enjoy a proportionally equal claim to the company's profits. In these cases, investors see their fair share of a company's returns on equity (ROE), although they do not enjoy the voting power their shares would normally provide in the absence of dual classes.

[eyesonthehorizon]

In the US, we used to have similar thoughts in regards to the size and economic/political power of corporations. This led to the breakup of giants like AT&T and Standard Oil back in the day. Have we collectively decided that it really is okay for companies to grow without restrictions?

Basically yes, Reagan adopted Bork's stance on antitrust which came down to arguing that economic efficiency should be considered equally with protection of competition.

The Supreme Court has cited Bork's book in probably a half dozen antitrust rulings undoing most of the protections that anti-trust legislation afforded. So now the rule that the federal government follows is more or less "Can a merger promise lower prices to consumers?" And if the company can prove that their merger will result in a positive outcome for consumers, then the merger can go forward.

This has led to the giant monopolies we have today.

Thanks for summing that up better than I could. We've lost the political will to regulate & now, in the absence of independent players, almost everything you buy or use comes back to the same corporate behemoths who leverage size to keep the field barren of any viable competition via scooping & lobbying. Innovation suffocates, except at the high end for what are typically waves of useless luxuries; the masses receive minimum-viable upgrades to incentivize further cycling through consumer goods, which is depleting tangible resources for nearly no human benefit. Meanwhile the whole country falls behind, going abroad feels like time travel.

Profit as a sole, superceding motive rapidly becomes a paperclip maximizer problem.

[js82]

Do billionaires divert resources to the construction of their super yachts (or, let’s say ultra-luxury housing) other than by making it more profitable for someone to do that work, compared to building affordable housing?

Yes.

In the case of ultra-luxury housing, it's fairly obvious: one person hording a LOT of land/space inherently impacts the per-capita amount of space available for others, and then supply and demand does its thing.

Or, in a less direct example, it's more lucrative to make stuff for price-insensitive rich people than for middle-class or poor people who are more frugal out of necessity.  If you're producing fewer goods targeted at middle/lower incomes because you're chasing profits by selling stuff to the ultra-rich, you're indirectly driving up prices for people of more average means.

Wealth inequality has all kinds of consequences like this:
-Developers are only building McMansions, not affordable homes
-The car market: Many automakers have simply stopped trying to make affordable cars, because there's WAY more margin in a $50k luxury SUV than a $20k Civic/Corolla, simply because wealthy consumers care less about trying to get the best possible deal than their poorer counterparts
-Inequality in education/infrastructure funding: Rich areas pay more local taxes, which means they get better schools, better roads, cleaner water (Remember Flint?) while poorer areas struggle with these foundational aspects required to build a thriving society.

[YttriumNitrate]

Are you just making things up?
...
Musk, Bezos, Zuck etc all only own 10-20% of their respective companies. They could all be voted out tomorrow if that's what the actual owners of the company decided. None of them own a majority of shares.

Before you go accusing people of "just making things up" please learn about different classes of shares and their respective voting rights.

[js82]

Do billionaires divert resources to the construction of their super yachts (or, let’s say ultra-luxury housing) other than by making it more profitable for someone to do that work, compared to building affordable housing?

Yes.

In the case of ultra-luxury housing, it's fairly obvious: one person hording a LOT of land/space inherently impacts the per-capita amount of space available for others, and then supply and demand does its thing.

Or, in a less direct example, it's more lucrative to make stuff for price-insensitive rich people than for middle-class or poor people who are more frugal out of necessity.  If you're producing fewer goods targeted at middle/lower incomes because you're chasing profits by selling stuff to the ultra-rich, you're indirectly driving up prices for people of more average means.

Wealth inequality has all kinds of consequences like this:
-Developers are only building McMansions, not affordable homes
-The car market: Many automakers have simply stopped trying to make affordable cars, because there's WAY more margin in a $50k luxury SUV than a $20k Civic/Corolla, simply because wealthy consumers care less about trying to get the best possible deal than their poorer counterparts
-Inequality in education/infrastructure funding: Rich areas pay more local taxes, which means they get better schools, better roads, cleaner water (Remember Flint?) while poorer areas struggle with these foundational aspects required to build a thriving society.

It's curious that you said "yes," but then describe transactions in which the first step is that someone indeed makes a more profitable choice to deal with the billionaire. I'm not saying you're wrong about the subsequent effects at all, but it's a nice sketch of why you can't pretend that eliminating the top step of the capitalist ladder doesn't also negatively affect people farther down (notwithstanding that you're supposing that it will benefit people perhaps even further down). And maybe you're fine with that, but taking away profit-maximizing decisions clearly makes some people worse off, which is what opens the door to the rational interest of (some) non-billionaires in objecting to structural changes even when they're described as only applying to the billionaires.

Oh, it will absolutely make *some* people worse off, and it's intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.  But the people that might get hurt indirectly are a very, very small slice of the population, and assuredly are not people making $15/hr - they're largely the management of luxury goods purveyors who - while not ludicrously wealthy, are still extremely well off in comparison with people who are doing physical labor.

People mostly object to policies like this not out of rational interest, but out of astroturfed BS ginned up by special interests - conscious campaigns engineered by the ultra-wealthy designed to put middle class vs. working class, working class vs. the unemployed, and so forth - to redirect attention away from the real, core issue.

That notwithstanding, reducing wealth inequality via tax policy is absolutely not "taking away profit-maximizing decisions" - it's merely restructuring the decision criteria, since rational economic decisions would be dealing with a different presumed wealth distribution as an input.

[FIPurpose]

Are you just making things up?
...
Musk, Bezos, Zuck etc all only own 10-20% of their respective companies. They could all be voted out tomorrow if that's what the actual owners of the company decided. None of them own a majority of shares.

Before you go accusing people of "just making things up" please learn about different classes of shares and their respective voting rights.

K. Zuckerberg is the only one out of the ones listed doing this. So 1/4? He's making up an ad hoc reason as to why Billionaires want to keep their money other than billionaires like money. He didn't quote any billionaires saying that they'd lose voting power.

My guess is that > 90% of CEO's do not hold anything close to a majority voting position. And any Billionaire could simply take out a loan to pay taxes avoiding the sale anyways. It's all a completely moot point.

[LennStar]

Are you just making things up?
...
Musk, Bezos, Zuck etc all only own 10-20% of their respective companies. They could all be voted out tomorrow if that's what the actual owners of the company decided. None of them own a majority of shares.

Before you go accusing people of "just making things up" please learn about different classes of shares and their respective voting rights.

K. Zuckerberg is the only one out of the ones listed doing this. So 1/4? He's making up an ad hoc reason as to why Billionaires want to keep their money other than billionaires like money. He didn't quote any billionaires saying that they'd lose voting power.

My guess is that > 90% of CEO's do not hold anything close to a majority voting position. And any Billionaire could simply take out a loan to pay taxes avoiding the sale anyways. It's all a completely moot point.

Like Elon Musk loaning a few pennies to buy Twitter.
Banks are institutions that loan you money, if you can prove that you don't need it. - Mark Twain, probably. Sounds like him. I love his sarcasm.

[scottish]

Are loans to avoid capital gains tax from selling shares something that started up with the low interest rates since the financial crisis back in 2008?   Or have they been in use for much longer than that?

I'm just thinking that 5% interest payments will add up to more than your capital gains tax over 5-10 years or so....

[dandarc]

Are loans to avoid capital gains tax from selling shares something that started up with the low interest rates since the financial crisis back in 2008?   Or have they been in use for much longer than that?

I'm just thinking that 5% interest payments will add up to more than your capital gains tax over 5-10 years or so....

It is basically the don't payoff your mortgage play on steriods - avoiding the taxes is only part of the equation. If you can borrow at good terms and have good investments, you'll become a lot richer over time if you do that to fund your lifestyle vs. just selling the good investments.

Even if there were no tax differences at all it is a good financial move - if you can get sufficiently good terms on the debt, which the billionaire types tend to have more access to than most of us.

[JGS1980]

Are loans to avoid capital gains tax from selling shares something that started up with the low interest rates since the financial crisis back in 2008?   Or have they been in use for much longer than that?

I'm just thinking that 5% interest payments will add up to more than your capital gains tax over 5-10 years or so....

If you were a bank, would you rather get 2% on 1 Billion dollars, or 5% on 1 Million dollars?

Money talks, and I bet these guys get wonderful rates you and I could only dream of.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

There is also something to be said for the name / brand recognition.  Just as companies compete to give Warren Buffet preferred shares or attractive bond yields that the average investors don’t get, banks want to be able to claim Billionaires as clients.  Companies give the ultra rich free swag in hopes they’ll be photographed using / wearing their products.

I recently watched a TED talk with Musk where he claimed that a 30 minute meeting he attends regularly resulted in $100M extra profit for Tesla.  Thus it would be wasteful for him not to use private jet travel…. The perspective of Billionaires is just to hard for us plebeians to understand I guess, heaven forbid we all have equal wealth and opportunity to shape the future.

[scottish]

Are loans to avoid capital gains tax from selling shares something that started up with the low interest rates since the financial crisis back in 2008?   Or have they been in use for much longer than that?

I'm just thinking that 5% interest payments will add up to more than your capital gains tax over 5-10 years or so....

If you were a bank, would you rather get 2% on 1 Billion dollars, or 5% on 1 Million dollars?

Money talks, and I bet these guys get wonderful rates you and I could only dream of.

If I were a bank I'd want to understand the risk attached to the loan before setting the  interest rate.    If Elon Musk was borrowing money and all his wealth was tied up in Tesla (with a P/E of 120 and lots of competition trying to ramp up), I'd be thinking about other collateral.    I don't actually know where Mr Musk keeps his wealth, this is just an example.   

I was curious about the history -- the bank isn't going to give anyone a rate below the fed's interest rate and that's on its way back up.

[eyesonthehorizon]

There is also something to be said for the name / brand recognition.  Just as companies compete to give Warren Buffet preferred shares or attractive bond yields that the average investors don’t get, banks want to be able to claim Billionaires as clients.  Companies give the ultra rich free swag in hopes they’ll be photographed using / wearing their products.

Not even just the ultra-rich; having a million or more at an institution was enough to get pretty swanky goodies just a decade or so ago. Think promotional iPads, golf equipment.

[markbrynn]

One thing that I didn't see mentioned in this thread (I read pretty much all of it), is that part of this equation is to provide as much happiness to your society as possible. All this talk of wealth here and there sometimes seems to forget about what's the point of all of this. If you were to set up a society from scratch, wouldn't the goal to be to create conditions that improves the lives of as many citizens as possible. So, wealth creation is important, but if all of that wealth is used in the service of a limited number of the citizens, what's the point?

I live in a country (the Netherlands) that doesn't get everything right by any means. However, we seem to have found a way to allow most of the people, even on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale to live comfortably (enough income, reasonable housing, personal safety, etc.). It sounds, from a distance, that a large number of US citizen do not benefit from the great wealth of the country. The lack of caring for the happiness/comfort/safety for other people in your society (city, state, country, etc.) feels like a lacking to me. I don't want to punish the super wealthy. I want them to care about how to improve the lives of others. If they (or anybody else) have that ability, why wouldn't they want to help?