I doubt there's a way to structure this perfectly given one has to start from the baseline of these taxes being introduced, but is 21-25 a reasonable benchmark?
Naively, it felt like a lot of fluctuations and rubberbanding occurred right after Covid which wouldn't necessary make representative set.
Now that we have the socialist Trump doctrine established with the help of the tech billionaires, we have a precedent for going forward - partially nationalize the private entities.
Start with the startups, and move into the equity funds and family offices. Once you hit certain thresholds, you pay a 2.5% wealth tax or provide 1% equity, capped at 25%.
It’s totally legal now as the toadies on the Supreme Court have adopted an expansive interpretation of executive power.
The "billionaire flight" problem actually illustrates perfectly why you need a wealth tax in the first place: to prevent billionaires from having undue levels of power and consequence on the populus. When you let individuals accumulate outright unreasonable amounts of money you give them a single random individual, with no governing credentials, whose choices should have no bearing on others the ability to indirectly effect the economic fate of thousands or millions of other people just because of their selfishness (to the extent that effects actually materialize, which to large extent they don't anyway...) It's outright laughable that any government would consider giving individuals such power over the fates of the people they are supposed to serve, represent, protect (at least in the liberal democratic tradition).
Humanity should not strive for kingship, whether minted through "god given right" or coin. We should strive for collective, distributive, balanced control of resources.
It's hard to take anyone seriously when they make these kind of ludicrous, absolutist claims. Yes, it's been tried, and continues to be tried, by literally every country on earth, in various formulations. Maybe we haven't quite hit on the winning formula yet, but that's no reason to stop trying.
If you'd read any history, you'd know we'd tried pure unchecked capitalism without redistribution before, too. Late 17th century Britain comes to mind. I don't want to spoil the story too much, but it turns out that "doesn't work" either.
I have. Read up on the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, etc., under communism. Nothing like that has occurred under capitalism. I suggest "The Black Book of Communism" for you. 100 million dead.
Everyone is aware of these schoolboy facts about communism, which is why no-one suggested implementing it. They are instead talking about tweaks to the existing balance, which every developed country has implemented for hundreds of years, and which you as an English speaker certainly come from. So please stop tiring everyone with this teenage straw-maning - you already live somewhere that at least pays lips service to "collective, distributive, balanced control of resources"; we could just do a better job of it.
Research tells us that most billionaires get to be billionaires by being mentally ill.
Very few normal, sane, and well balanced people are capable of doing the things required to become a billionaire. That level of wealth requires such a massive disregard for the well-being of the rest of humanity that it leads to some terrible outcomes. Being so wealthy that nobody can really do anything to get in your way is inherently bad for the human mind.
And you can't have democracy (everyone has an equal say) when you have large wealth inequality, because wealth is power. In practice we have a few billionaires who control everything... that's not democracy, that's oligarchy.
The type of billionaire to be so much of a knob to actually leave over this is exactly the kind of billionaire you want to leave and free yourself and your countrymen of. Some of the most selfish, greedy, maniacal people who will tell the law to bend for them to get out of their way.
People don’t like having their stuff stolen. Maybe that’s regrettable, but it’s a strong and universal preference that has important policy consequences!
Usually these taxes are like 5% or some piss away figure, for someone with more money than they could ever spend. The position to move on that teensy sum for someone so otherwise capitalized is so radical and hardline, its almost a tacit support of anarchy. All the more reason to kick those sorts out from your country where they might muck about and pervert the government further towards their own benefit.
My lord... Taxing billionaires feel more like punishing them out of envy than improving society to people like you and DSA. No matter how much they/their companies carry the economy with taxes, jobs etc, it's still not enough so they must be made poor to please the ego right?
When zucks gigantic boat pulls up and drops anchor, how can I not look at that and see the equivalent of a tick engorged with my blood? There's a lot of money to be made in making people miserable to be sure, doesn't mean I want that sort of business operating in my country, taking advantage of its institutions and people to fatten some tick like zuck.
Be gone, bloodsuckers! I will seek employment at places of businesses that are not so foolish to waste so much money on a chief executive. And wouldn't you know, that is the vast bulk of them. The vast bulk of business owners and executives are not in fact billionaires. That represents a failing. Zuck took advantage of his legal rights to the company to enable that compensation. If the shareholders had better control of the shares with voting rights (zuck possesses super shares so that he cannot lose majority voting control) they would have never let that happen for zuck. He is as much a parasite to his own investors as he is to wider society. Greater even, as that is more directly their money that he is spending fueling up that boat.
Jz because of one billionaire, you wanna punish the whole class of billionaires? Is it enough trade off for you that we must be made poorer cz some rich person bought a yacht? Where's your blood coming from lol? It's zuck's property so he can do whatever he wants.. just like how I can do whatever I want with my property.. it ain't like I'm not being subsided by their incredible jobs and taxes which govt takes and redistributes to people who behave like they're owed that money when it's the hardwork/ideas of his.. are you not aware of economic arguments for yacht and how many people are employed due to that alone which he bought out of his own wealth? Why are these economic illiterates infested the hacker news man? It used to be so good who reasoned amazingly well.. look at the state of it now.. it's like we regressed to primates with base impulses.. we're the richest we've ever been and people themselves are satisfied with their economic status but the envy seems to never go away..
Fun story. Massachusetts decided they were going to go after wealthy people by taxing the sale of yachts built in the state. The wealthy simply bought yachts elsewhere, and many thousands of craftsmen were out of a job. The state rescinded the tax.
Yes, a major problem of taxing the billionaires is that they are much more mobile than the rest of us. That is one of many features which help the rich get richer. Once you get to the point where you can live on less than 1% of your wealth annually, you and your descendants won't ever need to work a day in your life, and can migrate around the world, forever consuming the fruit of others labour.
That being said, in the context of the California billionaire tax on the horizon, I mean most of them are clearly bluffing. If taxes were really such a dealbreaker for them, they wouldn't be in California to begin with. That is perhaps one of the absolute worst places in the US to live to minimize your tax burden. NYC is terrible for that too, and yet...
... and yet Florida is booming with rich people that migrated there to avoid taxes.
Like Jeff Bezos. And I personally know a couple wealthy people who moved there to avoid recent taxes. A real estate agent I talked to recently said that half her clients were selling their homes to move away from WA taxes.
Seattle has many vacant office buildings, and Amazon is shifting thousands of its workers to Bellevue due to the taxes. Starbucks moved its HQ to Nashville.
Punishment? Come on. Taxes are not punishment. Especially not when you are worth, once again because people seem to be missing this, a billion dollars.
By all means, let Zuck and Musk and their ilk become trillionaires. That's definitely going to make our lives better. It should trickle down after all. Waiting any day now.
It did trickle down but you are too dense to see that it did. Trickle down economics is basically supply side economics but what would I know. Your envious ilk would doom us all because you are economically illiterate to see the arguments. I didn't say taxation is punishment but your arguments for wealth taxes are similar to punishment because you are not looking to maximise tax revenue, as there are much better ways to do things like Land Value Tax, but you like wealth taxes because you are jealous/afraid and want to punish them for the sin of being wealthy and powerful.
I'm not jealous or afraid or taking a moral position. I'm taking a logical position. One person controlling a billion dollars is simply a failing of the economy. Pass land value tax too. I like taxes. I want billionaires to pay more however the means.
Me directly, no. Someone in our economy does though. Money that would otherwise go to some other use, over gilding Zucks toilet bowl perhaps.
The irony of places like NYC and SF: so much need from education to sheltering and feeding homeless to building out transit or bettering healthcare outcomes. And yet, two hands raise in the air in a shrug, no money for it is the claim. But also yet, steps away from these problems in these two cities, mindbogglingly vast flows of money, the skim of which would solve all these problems occurring outside the doorways of these buildings.
Take any non-billionaire and ask them if, given equal options A and B, they'd prefer to spend X% more on option B. They'll say "no." Billionaires aren't magically different. You'd do the same. This isn't people leaving because they're immoral.
I think recognizing that is important because, whatever your goals are, you likely won't reach them unless your actions correspond to reality. Put yourself in a departing billionaire's shoes for a moment. A country has put together enough political momentum and popular opinion to make taxing you in particular at a rate higher than your countrymen something viable and well supported. Does that sort of antagonistic climate sound like the home you want to spend your remaining years in? No, of course not. The only time I'm willing to not be the sort of "knob" who leaves that sort of nonsense is when I choose to be the kind of "knob" who fights back against such impropriety.
Are some, maybe most, of the departing billionaires selish, greedy, and maniacal? Sure, probably. Is the fact that they're leaving evidence of that? No, absolutely not.
Going back to my main point, that if your views don't line up with reality then you're likely to make or suggest the wrong courses of action, there are remarkably few worldviews I think are consistent with "we should selectively tax billionaires and everyone who disagrees can fuck off if they want to and we'll be better off therefore." Your statements seem reasonably aligned with <maximize some definition of happiness amongst non-billionaires> from a preferences standpoint, but even for that goal I don't think your proposed actions are close to correct. Other goals seem even less aligned.
This is purely the politics of envy and incredibly short sighted.
I'd suggest a quick review of the Laffer Curve and how capital flight has resulted in places reducing their tax take due to greed/communism/whatever.
If you want to pay more into inefficient bodies, you are free to do it but don't impoverish your nation with nonsense politics when less than 10% pay 75% of all tax.
Lets just let it go to the limits of the argument then. Why tax them at all right? Why have them pay a dime in taxes? They could get scared and shoo off like startled birds after all. Lets not let them pay a dime in taxes then. Free tax USA if you clear a billion dollars.
You have no problems with that proposal, right? Or, are you going to argue in favor of taxes? But, what if they leave?
I’m having a hard time understanding why you’re going so hard for the Laffer curve for your defence here. Like, a quick look at the Wikipedia page says that something along the lines of 70% is probably optimal for revenue generation, and I GUARANTEE you these billionaires aren’t paying anywhere close to that. So why not let’s move them significantly closer? If anything, the Laffer curve would tell us we SHOULD be significantly raising taxes on billionaires.
Exactly this. Europe is set up to benefit hereditary wealth (see NL wealth tax that can be avoided with planning not available to middle class) and who shows as up as eurocrats.
I actually support wealth taxes (say 0.5% like Swiss) but inherited wealth is a way bigger issue than generated wealth.
Looks like a lesson in how to play zero-sum games to lose.
The USA is better at playing the zero-sum game of where to begin a business. Zero-sum because many businesses are winner-takes-all and the country that business starts-up in is the one that wins.
Business founders are greedy (almost by definition), and a country needs to think what marginally motivates a founder to keep on going (or to founding 2nd/3rd business).
Hate Meta, or even hate Zuckerberg, but the USA is winning export earnings from the rest of the world because of Meta (and likewise other billionaire companies).
On the third foot, I'm guessing Zuckerberg has other motivations than more dollars?
The game isn't equitable, and the wealth disparity is heinous, and perhaps even the products are despicable. However everyone in the USA is living off the back of that wealth coming into the country.
It is really noticable in New Zealand where top marginal rate is 39% and GST (sales tax) is 15%. Why work an hour to bring in in a dollar to NZ when you get less than 50 cents (after all the other taxes). Our left parties want to tax wealth at 50%+ (if 2% wealth tax and drawdown of 4% - ignoring inflation which is a huge invisible tax).
Unfortunately most voters are not founders, so they don't understand marginal motivation. And voters don't understand who brings money into the country. Voters just want increasing amounts of money spent, and politicians cater to them.
If anyone here is a game mechanics designer, what do you most notice about the motivation of taxing wealth?
You were making a good point until you compared tax in NZ to the USA. If you're making software eng type of salary you pay less effective tax in NZ compared to California ($200k in both). If you factor in health insurance it grows further. I know because I moved from NZ to CA then back again. I got paid more in CA, but my life wasn't materially better - I was able to save more in NZ.
If NZ really wanted to help startups they'd sort out the tax problems with options so that companies can actually interest people in taking risk by working for new businesses.
Personally, I think I'd be in favour of a wealth tax if I had the kind of wealth that could be taxed. I don't resent the tax I pay now.
Great Britain keeps saying the same thing when people make comparisons on who squandered the North Sea oil wealth and who didn’t. Big or small living within your means, saving and investing always works best in comparison to spending like a drunken sailor.
The absence of economic damage is not evidence of economic growth.
The author concludes that he found no significant negative effects from Norway’s wealth tax reforms. But I think he misses a more important question: Did the reforms contribute to economic growth?
If the economy isn't growing, that is a problem. And if a tax reform fails to improve growth, then the tax only increased government revenue. This might be good thing for goverment, but it bleeds enterpreneurs.
If there is no evidence of a positive contribution to economic growth, I wouldn't call it a successful growth reform.
Then, I think, wealthy people can take more risks. They have enough resources to start over if something does not work. Risk takers have their role in innovations for example.
For the angry people who want wealth distribution instead of viewing taxes as a benefit to the public and its services, what if every tax were not only for economic growth?
What business are in Norway that would have an opportunity to relocate? Norway gets its wealth from oil. Anyways it's strange to look at an oil state for capital flight when we have the example of France, which is much larger, and not dependent on geological resources for wealth.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 36.9 ms ] threadNaively, it felt like a lot of fluctuations and rubberbanding occurred right after Covid which wouldn't necessary make representative set.
Start with the startups, and move into the equity funds and family offices. Once you hit certain thresholds, you pay a 2.5% wealth tax or provide 1% equity, capped at 25%.
It’s totally legal now as the toadies on the Supreme Court have adopted an expansive interpretation of executive power.
Now that they're doing their best to undermine American democracy, perhaps we should do more to encourage them to leave.
He seems to have come to that conclusion, fwiw.
Who was complaining about that? Not me.
Humanity should not strive for kingship, whether minted through "god given right" or coin. We should strive for collective, distributive, balanced control of resources.
Or the 4,400 millionaires Musk created with the SpaceX IPO.
> We should strive for collective, distributive, balanced control of resources.
It's been tried many times. Doesn't work.
It's hard to take anyone seriously when they make these kind of ludicrous, absolutist claims. Yes, it's been tried, and continues to be tried, by literally every country on earth, in various formulations. Maybe we haven't quite hit on the winning formula yet, but that's no reason to stop trying.
If you'd read any history, you'd know we'd tried pure unchecked capitalism without redistribution before, too. Late 17th century Britain comes to mind. I don't want to spoil the story too much, but it turns out that "doesn't work" either.
I have. Read up on the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, etc., under communism. Nothing like that has occurred under capitalism. I suggest "The Black Book of Communism" for you. 100 million dead.
> it turns out that "doesn't work" either.
You'll need to be more specific.
> Google sez
I see the problem.
If that's your best argument, billionaires are in trouble.
Very few normal, sane, and well balanced people are capable of doing the things required to become a billionaire. That level of wealth requires such a massive disregard for the well-being of the rest of humanity that it leads to some terrible outcomes. Being so wealthy that nobody can really do anything to get in your way is inherently bad for the human mind.
And you can't have democracy (everyone has an equal say) when you have large wealth inequality, because wealth is power. In practice we have a few billionaires who control everything... that's not democracy, that's oligarchy.
Be gone, bloodsuckers! I will seek employment at places of businesses that are not so foolish to waste so much money on a chief executive. And wouldn't you know, that is the vast bulk of them. The vast bulk of business owners and executives are not in fact billionaires. That represents a failing. Zuck took advantage of his legal rights to the company to enable that compensation. If the shareholders had better control of the shares with voting rights (zuck possesses super shares so that he cannot lose majority voting control) they would have never let that happen for zuck. He is as much a parasite to his own investors as he is to wider society. Greater even, as that is more directly their money that he is spending fueling up that boat.
Fun story. Massachusetts decided they were going to go after wealthy people by taxing the sale of yachts built in the state. The wealthy simply bought yachts elsewhere, and many thousands of craftsmen were out of a job. The state rescinded the tax.
Like Jeff Bezos. And I personally know a couple wealthy people who moved there to avoid recent taxes. A real estate agent I talked to recently said that half her clients were selling their homes to move away from WA taxes.
Who are you gonna tax when they leave?
"what percentage of federal taxes do the top 1% pay?"
and the response:
"38.4% of all federal individual income taxes."
2. income comes from many sources, not just wages. Capital gains taxes, for example.
Top 1% wage earners is not the top 1% wealthiest.
By all means, let Zuck and Musk and their ilk become trillionaires. That's definitely going to make our lives better. It should trickle down after all. Waiting any day now.
Have you ever paid Meta anything? Has Meta ever taken any money from you?
> He is as much a parasite to his own investors
None of his investors were unwilling. They can also pull out any time they want.
The irony of places like NYC and SF: so much need from education to sheltering and feeding homeless to building out transit or bettering healthcare outcomes. And yet, two hands raise in the air in a shrug, no money for it is the claim. But also yet, steps away from these problems in these two cities, mindbogglingly vast flows of money, the skim of which would solve all these problems occurring outside the doorways of these buildings.
A tough nut to crack I guess.
Or did you freely give it to him in exchange for a product?
Take any non-billionaire and ask them if, given equal options A and B, they'd prefer to spend X% more on option B. They'll say "no." Billionaires aren't magically different. You'd do the same. This isn't people leaving because they're immoral.
I think recognizing that is important because, whatever your goals are, you likely won't reach them unless your actions correspond to reality. Put yourself in a departing billionaire's shoes for a moment. A country has put together enough political momentum and popular opinion to make taxing you in particular at a rate higher than your countrymen something viable and well supported. Does that sort of antagonistic climate sound like the home you want to spend your remaining years in? No, of course not. The only time I'm willing to not be the sort of "knob" who leaves that sort of nonsense is when I choose to be the kind of "knob" who fights back against such impropriety.
Are some, maybe most, of the departing billionaires selish, greedy, and maniacal? Sure, probably. Is the fact that they're leaving evidence of that? No, absolutely not.
Going back to my main point, that if your views don't line up with reality then you're likely to make or suggest the wrong courses of action, there are remarkably few worldviews I think are consistent with "we should selectively tax billionaires and everyone who disagrees can fuck off if they want to and we'll be better off therefore." Your statements seem reasonably aligned with <maximize some definition of happiness amongst non-billionaires> from a preferences standpoint, but even for that goal I don't think your proposed actions are close to correct. Other goals seem even less aligned.
I'd suggest a quick review of the Laffer Curve and how capital flight has resulted in places reducing their tax take due to greed/communism/whatever.
If you want to pay more into inefficient bodies, you are free to do it but don't impoverish your nation with nonsense politics when less than 10% pay 75% of all tax.
You have no problems with that proposal, right? Or, are you going to argue in favor of taxes? But, what if they leave?
The logical limit of your argument is communism and everyone with the ability to read a history book knows that results in corruption and death.
What's the plan?
Forced revaluation and selling of assets once per year?
Who values privately held assets?
Most people actually do have lived experience with communism, just that it's within the scope of their own family unit.
Europe could benefit a lot from breaking the stranglehold of old money.
I actually support wealth taxes (say 0.5% like Swiss) but inherited wealth is a way bigger issue than generated wealth.
The USA is better at playing the zero-sum game of where to begin a business. Zero-sum because many businesses are winner-takes-all and the country that business starts-up in is the one that wins.
Business founders are greedy (almost by definition), and a country needs to think what marginally motivates a founder to keep on going (or to founding 2nd/3rd business).
Hate Meta, or even hate Zuckerberg, but the USA is winning export earnings from the rest of the world because of Meta (and likewise other billionaire companies).
On the third foot, I'm guessing Zuckerberg has other motivations than more dollars?
The game isn't equitable, and the wealth disparity is heinous, and perhaps even the products are despicable. However everyone in the USA is living off the back of that wealth coming into the country.
It is really noticable in New Zealand where top marginal rate is 39% and GST (sales tax) is 15%. Why work an hour to bring in in a dollar to NZ when you get less than 50 cents (after all the other taxes). Our left parties want to tax wealth at 50%+ (if 2% wealth tax and drawdown of 4% - ignoring inflation which is a huge invisible tax).
Unfortunately most voters are not founders, so they don't understand marginal motivation. And voters don't understand who brings money into the country. Voters just want increasing amounts of money spent, and politicians cater to them.
If anyone here is a game mechanics designer, what do you most notice about the motivation of taxing wealth?
If NZ really wanted to help startups they'd sort out the tax problems with options so that companies can actually interest people in taking risk by working for new businesses.
Personally, I think I'd be in favour of a wealth tax if I had the kind of wealth that could be taxed. I don't resent the tax I pay now.
So, in my opinion, we cannot reasonably extrapolate from policies implemented in Norway to predict whether they would work in California or the U.S.
An oil scheikhdom is not the place to draw generalizations from when compared tk advanced industrialized countries.
The author concludes that he found no significant negative effects from Norway’s wealth tax reforms. But I think he misses a more important question: Did the reforms contribute to economic growth?
If the economy isn't growing, that is a problem. And if a tax reform fails to improve growth, then the tax only increased government revenue. This might be good thing for goverment, but it bleeds enterpreneurs.
If there is no evidence of a positive contribution to economic growth, I wouldn't call it a successful growth reform.
Then, I think, wealthy people can take more risks. They have enough resources to start over if something does not work. Risk takers have their role in innovations for example.