Ok, so how would you value your buddy’s pron so you can tax it?
i would find 3 of the lowest comps possible. and take the median multiple. if i had to guess. its 2x. you can actually find this quite easily! its quite different from levered etfs and futures contracts but still fairly easy.
lol
I saw a post recently (maybe marginal revolution) which reviewed wealth taxes and their impacts. The conclusion was it led to inefficient decisions to minimize the tax, such as using too much debt and whatever. But who knows how it’ll actually play out I’m sure you are a fan since it would be great for business 
The best alternative would be just to have a massive estate tax. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a bad thing to accumulate wealth while you’re alive, but having entrenched families who are wealthy for no other reason than being born with rich parents doesn’t help with growth or efficiency.
^ wrong, if I earned my money fair and square and what to leave it to my kids, that’s my decision. I paid my taxes on it and it’s crazy how some people feel like they have a right to it and want to steal it from my family.
I’m sort of with poopenhauer. Reducing priveledge and class entitlement creates a more mobile, free flowing meritocracy. Uber rich kids don’t lack opportunity. Although I also think a real time wealth tax is fine. Call it asset appropriation, or whatever you want, there’s been a huge ballooning of inequality and once in a good while countries require a reset whether by revolution or more peaceful means. Then follow that with a high marginal income tax and you’re all set.
You can literally say that about any tax to ever exist. “I earned my money fair and square, and taxing it when I buy something is stealing it” - Sales Tax
“I earned my money fair and square, and taxing it when I earn it is stealing it” - Income Tax.
I disagree, I paid taxes on it already, they got theirs, why should it be taken from my estate just because I didn’t want to spend it?
Same reason people have to pay sales taxes just because they choose to spend it after they’ve made it, or gas taxes just because they choose to drive, or cigarette taxes on money already made just because they choose to smoke.
This isn’t about being punitive or mean. It’s not even about HPRacing and those of us that worry about whether homes are included in net worth valuation. It’s not even because I have any personal feeling against the uber rich, good for them. But it’s about the long term structure and mobility of the economy.
Anything in life can be framed unfairly. It’s unfair someone watches their six year old die of cancer, it’s unfair some people are born to crack addicts, it’s unfair the son of a CFO gets beat by his Dad. It’s not about making everyone’s life the same or disincentivizing work, if a wealth tax that leaves you still super wealthy makes you want to live under and overpass that’s interesting. But structurally our economy has become governed by tail outcomes with the rise of tech and the marginal utility of Bezos types having $135B vs $5 is pretty small for society and arguably small for him. Socially we went through this once following the anti-trust move in the 40’s with insane marginal brackets and it opened up a period of unprecedented growth. We’ve developed a new class of monarch’s and them hording wealth because their .com took off and only they could know best is the same line of argument that’s been used for centuries by class elites to maintain a moat.
I know it sounds like I’m using loaded terms and I’m not saying this emotionally, just objectively when I think about optimal social structures I think across time looking at the US, we’ve oscillated between the days of the Carnegies and Rockerfellers to anti-trust and 94% marginal tax rates to where we are today where the fortune 400 hold more wealth than all black households and a quarter of latino households combined and its time for another paradigm shift.
Right? Just because I want to buy a pack of gum, there’s this bullshit sales tax. The state just taxes me because I want to freshen my breath? I already paid taxes on it when I earned it, why am I taxed when I spend it!
^I edited and added a slew of paragraphs to my last one.
the issue with a massive estate tax, is that rich people will flee the coutnry in search for more tax friendlyt areas unless we tighten capital mobility first, or be marginally competitive with other countries if you can afford to do lower taxes. as i said before, rich people are the most important peopl of society. they literally pay for everything. so imo, rich people should be given certain privileges or leeway when it comes to things, like immunity from police to speed or able to park their raris at the front even if its for the disabled, anything really to sweeten the pie!
The rich already do that – but there’s no enforcement. I can’t think of a single consequence of the Panama Papers.
I get taxed when I spend money… and I should get taxes when I don’t spend money too? And that money will go to the govt and people who don’t work as hard as I do… people who can’t allocate their own capital properly.
That’s not what made America great. Why change the formula? Imagine if all these rules were in place when the country was founded, no way would it be the best and wealthiest nation in the world.
lol hpr i think people here have firmly established that the rules have been changing for a really long time. bs has pointed out that marginal taxes were at 1 point around 94% in 1944. the us grew its market share 2 ways. during industrial revolution. and post ww2 due to our isolation, the war’s impact on us was minimal compared to europe and asia.
We literally had 95% marginal tax rates at one point during crazy growth. Could you imagine the uneducated pseudo economist crybabies now? The reality is the formula HAS changed, taxes are lower than they’ve been at any point in contemporary history. The economy has also changed and we’re seeing negative wealth effects like existed in the early 1900’s. Besides HP, you’re poor, you’re really not the people we’re talking about, snowflake. But yes, you should get taxed both when you do and don’t spend in the name of having a flexible economy. Especially since the extremely wealthy have no incentive to ever spend $135B (say Bezos).
You’re assuming that there’s only one legitimate type of tax: the one you already paid on income.
I’m pretty sure that that’s not a law of physics.
Nobody likes getting taxed – I’d love it if my income was magically 30-50% higher. However, the rich benefit from their income wether they actually spend it or not. If Bezos doesn’t spend his money, and keeps it in AMZN, then he still disproportionately benefits from taxes. His company still uses roads, the USPS, the police, firefighters, and the workforce (trained using education he didn’t pay for). This wealth still benefits from US taxpayers, so he should pay his fair share wether or not he spends this money. Spending it on goods and services vs. spending it on companies (who consume goods and services) should be taxed at the equivalent race (arguably more so b/c consumption has economic gains).
Just because I’m not the person y’all are talking about and these wealth limits don’t apply to me at the moment and possibly never will, doesn’t mean I can’t say they are wrong. You and I probably do better than a lot of people in the US and when you punishing the people at the top so that theirs less of them, it won’t be long before they start coming for you too. We should stop it before it starts.