he's hanging out with Trump?

10/26/2024 11:30:11 PM

Speaking of hanging out with Trump...I heard John Kelly did A LOT

And he doesn't think Trump should be president ever again.

10/27/2024 12:17:59 AM

John Kelly was a terrible general and an idiot who I hired, and then quickly fired after several years.

10/27/2024 9:44:48 AM

Everyone thought trump would end up destroying the gop which is mostly true. But I think he’s destroyed the Democratic Party too. At least fractured the liberal and progressive factions. The entire country is now more right leaning, and we revere billionaires instead of being skeptical of them.

10/27/2024 2:49:47 PM

Do we?

10/27/2024 2:53:09 PM

As a country… yeah

10/27/2024 3:21:31 PM

Quote :

"I think he’s destroyed the Democratic Party too"

blaming the GOP for our own mistakes, again. both the moderate/liberal and the progressive/illiberal factions have only themselves to blame for their respective missteps. and until both sides take a hard look in the mirror, take accountability for their own errors and fix them, the GOP will keep finding a way to appeal to voters, win elections, and do terrible things on behalf of our country.

Quote :

"we revere billionaires instead of being skeptical of them"

and this is a perfect example. can we please get over the rich/powerful are always evil and the poor/weak are always righteous thing?? the world is complex. people are complex. we have got to stop simplifying the world and everybody in it into innately good and evil. sometimes the rich and powerful do "good" things (like the Carnegie Endowment or developing an affordable EV market), and we should applaud that. and sometimes the rich and powerful do "bad" things (like lobbying for excessively favorable tax policy or other various forms of corruption), and we should call that out. and sometimes the poor and weak do "good" things (like insisting on their right to be treated with dignity and respect), and we should applaud that and sometimes the poor/weak do "bad" things (like organized shoplifting or indoctrinating their children into hating Jews).

[Edited on October 27, 2024 at 7:54 PM. Reason : i just want to see a more nuanced and honest discourse.]

10/27/2024 7:53:02 PM

Damnit, Fred, still making sense

10/27/2024 8:13:46 PM

^^

10/27/2024 9:44:14 PM

speaking of, sam harris had nate silver on the other day. they talked among other things about the way these issues are affecting our current election dynamics.



also, this showed up in my feed tonight. i saw her give a talk on campus earlier this year on academic freedom and free speech. i think she does a good job in this video covering what both parties get wrong on DEI for example. if Democrats were smart, they'd figure out how they've been wrong on this, and fix it. and tbh I think kamala probably represents the faction of democrats who understand these criticisms and don't mind fixing the mistakes, but don't want to cop up to the mistakes because the fringe elements of their base will go beserk and they're just not sure they have the political capital to absorb such an internal revolt. especially when the stakes are so high re: maga. but this ends up turning into what bill maher was speaking to in the other videos I posted. i honestly would be content to just fast forward to 2028 and see which party has regained the most sanity. also, I'm eager to find out what happens with openai and taiwan.



[Edited on October 27, 2024 at 11:14 PM. Reason : site4 is gonna be off the heezy in 2028]

10/27/2024 11:07:11 PM

Sorry, but I cannot listen to or take seriously someone who selected those frames for their glasses.

10/27/2024 11:34:02 PM

that's racist

10/27/2024 11:37:56 PM

More like ableist, because I don't wear corrective lenses (yet).

Quote :

"site4 is gonna be off the heezy in 2028"

Is that a promise?

10/27/2024 11:42:41 PM

off the heezy will mean "offline" in 2028 slang

10/27/2024 11:55:58 PM

the only way i know Bill Maher is still around is that I see stories/videos about him on the Fox News website every time I go there to see the crazy.

10/28/2024 9:47:01 AM

Quote :

" i honestly would be content to just fast forward to 2028 and see which party has regained the most sanity."

Is this facetious, or do you actually think it’s possible for the GOP to leapfrog the Dems in sanity in The next 4 years?

10/28/2024 10:46:08 AM

leapfrog? lol, absolutely not. think of it like a distribution from -100 to 100. the GOP in my lifetime maybe hovers around -30. some of the long tail reaches into the -60 range (the VERY long tail slams into -100) and the other end of the long tail maybe pokes through the positive to +20 maybe. don't get too caught up on the specific numbers, this is mostly a directional take. the Dems in my lifetime have maybe centered around +30. part of their distribution dips into negative territory, and you don't even have to get to the long tail to do it. the other end of the tail goes to like +80, maybe even +90.

so between now and 2028, both parties have an opportunity to move themselves more toward positive territory, or more toward negative territory. if trump wins next week, the GOP easily drops another 20-30 points based on what they've already said they have planned. if trump loses, maybe the GOP finally starts to shed some of the maga mentality. maybe. maybe vance runs in 2028 and keeps the nonsense flowing. who knows.

but i'm more concerned with the Dems. I don't expect to be able to convince many GOP let alone MAGA people of their errors. but surely some of the people who are already closer to my own political sphere may be convinced to take an interest in improving our chances going forward. that's what I want. for my political "coworkers" to wise up and stop running our business into the ground.

10/28/2024 1:54:09 PM

Quote :

"and this is a perfect example. can we please get over the rich/powerful are always evil and the poor/weak are always righteous thing?? the world is complex. people are complex. we have got to stop simplifying the world and everybody in it into innately good and evil."

Billionaires are bad. They’re not evil. There shouldn’t be billionaires, every billionaire should basically give their wealth away to charity or entrepreneurs or employees. Money is meant primarily as a tool to allocate resources, not a prize for figuring out how to win or beat the system. You can’t become a billionaire ethically as a result, because it means taking more than you deserve. The existence of billionaires is a bug in the system, it’s an exploit.

Elon Musk is a great example. His interest aren’t aligned with normal people. He wants to squash environmental regulations so spacex doesn’t have to do surveys before launches, he wants to Test full self driving publicly and not face consequences for killing people, he wants to pay his factor workers less and let the managers be racist without fear of being sued. And now that he’s bought himself a president he can do this.

Billionaires aren’t humans, they’re a class of power like Government-People-Corporations-Billionaires-Press

10/28/2024 4:56:37 PM

Quote :

"There shouldn’t be billionaires, every billionaire should basically give their wealth away to charity or entrepreneurs or employees. "

Quote :

"Billionaires aren’t humans, they’re a class of power like Government-People-Corporations-Billionaires-Press"

Dude this isn't even slightly better than what qntmfred was getting at.

10/28/2024 8:39:05 PM

How? Evil implies a character trait defect.

The problem with billionaires is systemic. Our economic system shouldn't allow for them. I don't blame someone who has the right set of avaricious character traits from indulging in the flaws of the system. But insofar as they exist, they are a power structure that government has to treat as a peer, they're not simply individual constituents. Mark Zuckerberg's users base eclipses the population of the USA. Musk is on track to be a trillionaire in a few years. Their interactions with government are more like nation-states, not people. This doesn't make them evil, they're obviously human in their day-to-day lives. But because they are virtual nation-states, it's up to the people through government to control and deal with them (and eliminate future ones from being made because each one is like a shadow government).

[Edited on October 28, 2024 at 11:06 PM. Reason : ]

10/28/2024 11:04:50 PM

Man...I'm left leaning but that sounds pretty unamerican to me. Almost gives me a shiver to think of a government that overbearing

10/28/2024 11:17:26 PM

Quote :

"The problem with billionaires is systemic. Our economic system shouldn't allow for them."

Get that commie shit outta here.

This is the point we're trying to make to you--it's not the details. It's not the nuances of your argument. It's the foundational idea of being opposed to stupendous financial success and that we shouldn't allow it. That's disgusting.

Also, the government should be capable of not being beholden to them, and if they aren't, then we as the electorate should be capable of holding them accountable until they are. If they aren't and we aren't, that's not a billionaire problem, and the solution to it shouldn't be to stifle business success and the pursuit of wealth.

10/29/2024 12:58:26 AM

I'm sure 100 years ago people said millionaires shouldn't exist. The ultra wealthy can exist, they just need to pay more taxes. It's not gonna prevent them from paying their bills, or buying their 10th home

[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 1:18 AM. Reason : .]

10/29/2024 1:18:10 AM

^^^
We had a 70-90% top marginal tax rate when apple and HP were formed and the tech revolution was kicking off.

It’s not communist or unamerican, but actually correlates with some of the best eras for innovation in the country, while income inequality and housing affordability was better.

The reason you might have a visceral reaction is entirely because of propaganda.

If we had a society that was fairer. Then fascism would be more difficult to take root

And this would actually promote business success, since it would encourage more reinvestment and entrepreneurs. It spreads the wealth in effect. More money going to moonshots and research and public works etc

10/29/2024 2:16:45 AM

CYCLES

10/29/2024 3:21:18 AM

"billionaires are bad, unethical cause this do this and hence proved"
NO ONE CARES... (nothing against you, moron)

10/29/2024 3:27:02 AM

Quote :

"Our economic system shouldn't allow for them."

I disagree. but not because it's communist or anything (I don't think it even is). I mostly just want whichever economic system wins the most (for your preferred set of target outcomes). that's why I like UBI. not because it's an instrument of populism or some socialist redistribution scheme. because I think it's a more optimal and efficient way to construct a society that wins in the long term (especially under the conditions we will increasingly have to adapt to as it relates to AI). it's like fertilizer. you dump a couple hundred billion tons of fertilizer dollars on a handful of people, it's probably gonna go to waste. spread the fertilizer out a bit more and our society will get higher yields.

but besides the optimization part, I also just think that the outrage against billionaires is misplaced. it's mostly a reflection of their own personal financial struggles. which is understandable, but at the end of the day it's an emotional reaction not a rational response grounded in economic theory or even ethics, and ideally we should not be making policy choices based on people's emotions. it's like how maga was born - as the effects of globalism played out, it was a certain segment of the american population that bore a lot of the weight. and they got mad. and reacted by demanding mass deportations. but it's still all just emotions. toddlers throwing tantrums. don't feed into the emotional reaction, understand it for what it is and address the root of the problem instead.

and sometimes people do get wealthy because they do very impressive things. and at large enough scale improve the lives of millions if not billions of people. we should be more grateful for that, appreciate the progress that we have made as a society and the individuals who have outsized contributions to that progress. of course there are also wealthy who inherited it or something, or who use their wealth in ways that are overall detrimental to society, but we should at least be able to celebrate the people who built their wealth in ways that help society. and then it's just a matter of what tax rate they should pay. which again is just a society optimization problem. nothing personal to the billionaires, it's not about taxing them out of existence because they must have done something bad to have so much money. it's just business. the business of running a country.

10/29/2024 12:02:45 PM

Quote :

"and sometimes people do get wealthy because they do very impressive things. and at large enough scale improve the lives of millions if not billions of people. we should be more grateful for tha"

How is having policies that thwarts personal wealth above $999,999,999 counter to this? Elon musk would have still been able to start spacex and buy Tesla if that was the most he could personally make from paypal. If he needed more he finds other people to buy in.

But then PayPal would have been encouraged to give even more people some of their gains, and maybe we could have another spacex and another Tesla from some other guy (or just more people who can comfortably send their kids to college and go on vacations).

This seems obviously more efficient and optimal than just letting individuals amass unlimited wealth, mostly through unethical means. Money was originally meant to allocate food/shelter for large groups of people who have developed specialized skillsets, we shouldn’t lose sight of this. Billionaires are like letting viruses and adware takeover your computer. Sure you can use a computer thats running really slowly and filled with 50 toolbars on your web browser, it takes clever software engineering to make adware still, you have to be wiley about tricking users, but this isn’t how it was meant to be, we don’t need to reward the adware makers for being clever and persistent here.

[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 1:13 PM. Reason : ]

10/29/2024 1:13:26 PM

I don't like the idea of UBI as much as I once did, but I wouldn't care enough to fight against it. The same with minimum wage, I find it odd how some people make it an either/or wit it being good or bad, it isn't just the wage that matters but the politics

BEYOND

[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 1:52 PM. Reason : I hate no policy]

^life isn't what about you "could've done". DONT BE ROBOTIC... embrace...

[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 1:53 PM. Reason : 1]

10/29/2024 1:51:59 PM

Quote :

"I don't like the idea of UBI as much as I once did"

same tbh

in the sense that if we were reasonably confident that we could throw $100B or $1T or $10T at the next stages of AI development, it would probably be better for humanity overall than that money going to citizens. it's great when companies can pay a dividend, but sometimes when the right opportunity comes along to invest available capital for significantly outsized returns, you choose to invest instead.

definitely still think UBI overall is a good idea (and if we could rewind 100 years and the initial social safety nets were UBI-based instead of a mess of divisive, inefficient and ineffective means tested bureaucracies, most people I think would say yeah let's try the UBI (+ appropriately progressive tax policy to pay for it) thing), and at the minimum remains a top candidate imo for how we will have to adapt the economies of the future in a world that is accelerating along a technologically-driven path of prosperity and wealth creation. also - it's far better to raise the income floor than to lower the ceiling

[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 6:05 PM. Reason : and of course the GOP has already started turning UBI into a boogeyman. fools.]

10/29/2024 5:57:24 PM

Quote :

"We had a 70-90% top marginal tax rate when apple and HP were formed and the tech revolution was kicking off."

There were--by design--so many loopholes back then that the effective tax rates weren't much more progressive than they are now.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-10-31/taxes-werent-more-progressive-in-the-1950s

Quote :

"The reason you might have a visceral reaction is entirely because of propaganda. "

WTF, the hubris necessary to declare that my aversion to this ideology and set of policies is due to propaganda. This is more evidence of our broader point that you (and others) don't "get it", and you're self-defeating as a result.

...and in an environment where the net effect of that is losing to Trump, it's harming all of us.

Quote :

"And this would actually promote business success, since it would encourage more reinvestment and entrepreneurs. It spreads the wealth in effect. More money going to moonshots and research and public works etc"

OK, I don't have data on this--but I expect you don't either.

What I will say is that I am a relatively active angel investor and small-time LP in a small VC fund.

There is no fucking way I would take those sorts of risks with my capital if it was just going to be confiscated by the taxman. I would go part-time at my day job tomorrow morning, and plan to take easy street at a lower income level to avoid the taxes, and just work a couple of days per week until I'm older than dirt, and spend most of it instead of investing a large percentage of my income in high-risk, high-reward tech startups that are seeking to advance things and reap a huge reward, but often fail.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is no way that institutional investors--who have a fiduciary duty to their LPs, and are the real drivers of venture capital--would be pouring money into their own moonshot ventures if the risk-adjusted reward wasn't there. Forced to reap less reward, you can be assured they'd damn sure take less risk (and then leverage up on that if necessary to drive returns).

Quote :

"How is having policies that thwarts personal wealth above $999,999,999 counter to this? Elon musk would have still been able to start spacex and buy Tesla if that was the most he could personally make from paypal. If he needed more he finds other people to buy in."

In practically every case, they do have other people buy in...but if you had policies like that, founders would either be (1) less inclined to found and invest in companies to begin with, or (2) exit the companies earlier at a lower multiple, probably at a very juvenile stage in the company's development, which would place a ceiling on what they'd accomplish. From an investment perspective, the majority of the money is institutional money anyway (pension funds, university endowments, etc). Any individual investors would just form shell companies and family offices, etc to invest through.

Quote :

"But then PayPal would have been encouraged to give even more people some of their gains"

Dude WTF are you talking about? PayPal wouldn't have just given the money away.

Quote :

"mostly through unethical means"

That's an absurd claim. What do you have to back that up? (unless we're talking about your sort of unethical, where it's by definition unethical to be rich to start with).

Quote :

"Money was originally meant to allocate food/shelter for large groups of people who have developed specialized skillsets"

Money was originally meant to be a shitload more efficient than bartering.



________________

I'm open to the idea of UBI, depending on the circumstances and details and broader tax/welfare state approaches. I'm not a cheerleader for it, but I'm not opposed to it per se. I'd be perfectly willing to discuss and evaluate that, if I was a policy maker.



[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 6:47 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 6:47 PM. Reason : ]

10/29/2024 6:44:37 PM

So much good in the post above

I particularly liked

Quote :

"WTF, the hubris necessary to declare that my aversion to this ideology and set of policies is due to propaganda. This is more evidence of our broader point that you (and others) don't "get it", and you're self-defeating as a result. ...and in an environment where the net effect of that is losing to Trump, it's harming all of us."

10/29/2024 9:23:30 PM

Quote :

"Dude WTF are you talking about? PayPal wouldn't have just given the money away."

Spend/invest/salaries/stock buybacks, basically anything that doesn’t involve giving more of it to thiel and musk.

Quote :

"That's an absurd claim. What do you have to back that up? (unless we're talking about your sort of unethical, where it's by definition unethical to be rich to start with)."

Walmart should not have employees on food stamps while the founders are collectively the wealthiest family on the planet. You can’t become a billionaire without underpaying your employees.

I just don’t accept or believe a cap at a billion dollars is stopping founders from working. If you listen to bill gates and Steve Jobs, they always say they’re not doing it for the money. Even Elon musk says spacex is about the passion for him. If anything a cap on wealth will actually draw more visionaries out of the woodwork who would settle for a measley $999 million dollars with a true vision and passion.

Case and point:
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-economy-trump-hardship-b2637850.html

Something tells me it’s not musk and his wealthy friends that face the headship but the rest of us. And historically this is terminal for a country and economy. If musk and trump go through with this we’re looking at 2 decades of disaster and famine that we might never recover from. This is what leads to civil wars.

^ eh Fred said it was only emotion that people don’t like billionaires. For me it seems logical and optimal that there’s no billionaires, it would lead to an economy golden age. The same exact levels of wealth would exist, but be distributed to more people.

[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 9:48 PM. Reason : ]

10/29/2024 9:44:20 PM

Quote :

"Spend/invest/salaries/stock buybacks, basically anything that doesn’t involve giving more of it to thiel and musk."

You know Theil and Musk hold substantial equity, and they make more money on stock buybacks, right?

and if they have a huge cash surplus, they already are generating more than they judge that they can effectively spend/invest. That's among the first moves when your company is a cash machine--use that cash to grow into a bigger cash machine until you can't efficiently do that. At some point as the company matures and you can't consistently can't do that, you do dividends and buybacks...both of which are gonna put money in the pockets of executives...

unless they don't hold substantial equity in the companies they are running, which is concerning at best. It aligns interests to have founders/execs have skin in the game.

Quote :

"Walmart should not have employees on food stamps while the founders are collectively the wealthiest family on the planet."

This becomes a discussion about (a) minimum wage and (b) thresholds for receiving welfare programs. Neither of which are decisions which should be driven by how rich the Walton family is.

WM's wages are driven by market forces in many/most cases (certainly not federal minimum wage). If you fuck with that by increasing minimum wage, they will probably cut staffing and over the long term, invest in automation. It might be a case of be careful what you wish for. Low-paying entry level jobs are not a career move to raise a family on, but they do serve a purpose in the economy.

Quote :

"You can’t become a billionaire without underpaying your employees. "

Straw man.

and false.

Quote :

"If you listen to bill gates and Steve Jobs"

why would you listen to them when you think they shouldn't exist anyway?

Or are left-leaning billionaires a little less shouldn't exist?

Quote :

"Case and point: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-economy-trump-hardship-b2637850.html Something tells me it’s not musk and his wealthy friends that face the headship but the rest of us. And historically this is terminal for a country and economy. If musk and trump go through with this we’re looking at 2 decades of disaster and famine that we might never recover from. This is what leads to civil wars."

Straw man, again. If we accept that this is bad policy, or at least taking it to that sort of extreme is bad policy, that still doesn't make billionaires bad. That just makes Trump and Musk--2 people--advocates for a bad policy.

Also, not to be pedantic, but "case in point."

Quote :

"The same exact levels of wealth would exist, but be distributed to more people."

No, no, no. This is a fundamental place where your entire ideology on issues like this is flawed. It is not a zero sum game. There isn't a fixed wealth pie that gets divided up. The exact same levels of wealth would not exist.


[Edited on October 29, 2024 at 11:04 PM. Reason : ]

10/29/2024 10:53:06 PM

Quote :

"There is no fucking way I would take those sorts of risks with my capital if it was just going to be confiscated by the taxman."

But you do, right? You get taxed now, and you take risks with your capital anyway. You'd keep doing it if you were taxed a little more. There's no doubt a ceiling past which you wouldn't, but you're not close enough to being a billionaire that a 99% top marginal tax rate over $999,999,999 would represent a realistic ceiling.

Quote :

"there is no way that institutional investors--who have a fiduciary duty to their LPs, and are the real drivers of venture capital--would be pouring money into their own moonshot ventures if the risk-adjusted reward wasn't there."

I would argue that moonshots are properly the domain of the government, which is literally what put us on the moon and which, without a profit motive, can invest and take risks for the betterment of humanity in a way unthinkable to private industry. They will at times do this inefficiently. Whether they will do it less efficiently than throwing billions down the Metaverse hole is an open question.

Quote :

"Neither of which are decisions which should be driven by how rich the Walton family is."

Extreme wealth inequality is an evil in itself, and one which abundant research and historical experience teaches us is bad for countries, societies, and eventually economies. And having entities like Elon Musk who can single-handedly manipulate the government and world affairs is definitely an evil in itself, and that's the most solid point moron has made here. Because this...

Quote :

"Also, the government should be capable of not being beholden to them, and if they aren't, then we as the electorate should be capable of holding them accountable until they are. If they aren't and we aren't, that's not a billionaire problem, and the solution to it shouldn't be to stifle business success and the pursuit of wealth."

Is horse shit. Billionaires so wealthy that they can act as peers to the government is absolutely a billionaire problem, and the way we make the government not be beholden to them is by making the government put them in their place, and the way you do that is by making it so they don't have more money than God.

---

Got to go now, but I'll close this post by saying I don't have some strict "one billion dollars" cutoff, but tax rates at the higher margins are too low and the whole tax structure is too weak about drawing off wealth that comes in forms other than income and realized capital gains.

[Edited on October 30, 2024 at 4:32 PM. Reason : ]

10/30/2024 4:30:53 PM

Quote :

"But you do, right? You get taxed now, and you take risks with your capital anyway. You'd keep doing it if you were taxed a little more. There's no doubt a ceiling past which you wouldn't, but you're not close enough to being a billionaire that a 99% top marginal tax rate over $999,999,999 would represent a realistic ceiling. "

Right, I'm not close to being affected by such a policy. My point was in the response to the idea that squashing stratospheric financial success would promote more investment in moonshot ventures. I'm far from a billionaire, and I'm not a tech mogul, but I do a pretty substantial (by "regular person" standards) amount of investing in early stage tech startups. These companies do things like advancing the state of the art or maybe even outright revolutionizing things like a novel way testing chemotherapy efficacy and optimizing it for a single, individual patient...or rapid blood testing requiring only a minute amount of blood (a little like what Theranos promised)--which is particularly useful for caring for premature babies with very little blood volume, but also was utilized widely in the COVID pandemic. Or...another company developing a next-generation capability for modeling environments and running simulations for development of autonomous vehicles (passenger cars, yes, but also all sorts of other stuff--forklifts in warehouses, etc.) I probably hold equity in about 20 startups now.

For a while, I was seriously looking into becoming a professional VC. I might still do that someday, but I'm putting that on the back burner for now (but that's another story).

At any rate, tech ventures are a subject that I'm better versed on than most people.

...and I contend that what moron is advocating for here would either just get circumvented, or would have a very deleterious effect.

In short, my point is that "There's no doubt a ceiling past which you wouldn't"--not that I'm personally close to such a ceiling.

Quote :

"I would argue that moonshots are properly the domain of the government"

I would agree that the government taking moonshots (literal or otherwise) can be properly within its domain, but not that it should be exclusively the government's domain. I don't think that would be desirable at all. Think about all the advances that we'd be doing without if it were left up to the government. Hooooooly shit, you can't be serious here.

Quote :

"and which, without a profit motive, can invest and take risks for the betterment of humanity in a way unthinkable to private industry."

This...investing and taking risks thing...

Who do you think the government is largely investing in?

And...what exactly do you think their motive is?

Quote :

"Extreme wealth inequality is an evil in itself "

Disagree, but now we're largely talking ideology and philosophy. If that had been moron's argument, my response would have been "OK. Disagree, but whatever." My problem is that it seems that his position is derived from just such an ideology and philosophy, but the arguments he put forth to justify it are bullshit.

Just say "I don't like it when people get rich" and leave it at that.

Quote :

"Is horse shit. Billionaires so wealthy that they can act as peers to the government is absolutely a billionaire problem, and the way we make the government not be beholden to them is by making the government put them in their place, and the way you do that is by making it so they don't have more money than God."

Elon Musk is a special case in that he is literally the richest person in the world, and arguably the richest person in human history in real terms. There's a world of difference between him and your "garden-variety billionaire" worth a few bil.

...but regardless, I think the solution is to demand better of government to include enacting and enforcing guardrails, not making it illegal to be rich.

Quote :

"tax rates at the higher margins are too low and the whole tax structure is too weak about drawing off wealth that comes in forms other than income and realized capital gains."

Now THAT I agree with. I don't like the idea of "soaking the rich"; I don't like the idea of "fuck it, hell yeah that expenditure is a good idea! We'll just make rich people buy it for us!" That's bullshit.

However, I also don't think that someone worth $500mm or $5B should get off easy with a the tax curve going regressive at its very highest point, while a neurosurgeon or investment banker or business owner making $850k/year gets absolutely jailraped by the IRS.

Raising marginal rates won't cut it, for the reasons you mentioned.

I think we could add a 3rd long-term capital gains and investment income level in addition to the 15% and 20% levels that currently exist. Make the threshold high as shit, like above $10mm/year of investment income or something, and not taxed at a super crazy rate--I don't know, 30-35% or something. Basically not to make the curve meaningfully more progressive--just keep it from going regressive at the far edge.

...and then you have to do something about unrealized gains. I think that's distasteful and undesirable in the context of regular people--even those who are extremely high-earning--but you'd have to phase in something about unrealized gains, or tighten up on circumventing estate taxes, or most likely both. Ideally it would be phased in, and only impact very, very high levels of wealth, just to have the very upper 8-figure set and 9-10 figure set playing by...well, it wouldn't be the same set of rules as the rest of us, but a set of rules comparable in effect to the rest of us.

[Edited on October 30, 2024 at 6:56 PM. Reason : ]

10/30/2024 6:55:29 PM

Quote :

"why would you listen to them when you think they shouldn't exist anyway?"

Lol for real

10/30/2024 8:54:38 PM

It's just so crazy! Trump and team constantly disparage their opponents, going as far as to call them enemies of the country and threaten imprisonment (and worse), but Biden's gaffe is just the worst thing!!

10/31/2024 9:05:08 AM

Quote :

" I don't think that would be desirable at all. Think about all the advances that we'd be doing without if it were left up to the government."

Possibly here we're working with different meanings of "moonshot." I'm thinking of large, expensive projects which do not offer near-term payouts. It's true that driving up taxes on the ultra-rich would not increase private investment in these, but I'm all for the government being the primary driver of them.

Quote :

"This...investing and taking risks thing... Who do you think the government is largely investing in? And...what exactly do you think their motive is?"

I think the engineers will keep engineering even if they can't one day become multi-billionaires. I think there are people who will manage those engineers and provide other support services even if they can't become multi-billionaires. I think the only people who might be turned off are either already multi-billionaires or well on their way to joining their ranks, people who we might normally need to provide capital but, whoops, we've got the government to do that on these projects.

The plight of nonproductive members of the capital class is not very important to me. They serve a function; by and large, they'll continue to serve it if some stratospheric ceiling is put on the amount of wealth they can accumulate. And to the extent that they won't, the government is an alternative.

Quote :

"Disagree, but now we're largely talking ideology and philosophy....Just say "I don't like it when people get rich" and leave it at that."

It's not philosophical, it's economics. The preponderance of research on the topic suggests that high levels of wealth inequality are bad for economic growth because, among other things, it drives down growth and increases the likelihood of political crises. A cursory glance at a gini coefficient map shows that we're not exactly in great company. The wider the wealth gap, the wider the the gulf in political influence between the wealthy and the rest. It erodes and eventually destroys majority rule. People with more money are always going to have more opportunities than those with less, but that effect is turbocharged when the difference between rich and poor is so staggeringly immense. The result is a suppression of talent among the poor and promotion of the talentless among the rich. The only philosophical questions here are, "Do we want a strong economy and a stable democracy?" If the answer is "Yes," then extreme income inequality is bad.

Quote :

"I think the solution is to demand better of government to include enacting and enforcing guardrails, not making it illegal to be rich."

For someone who says "straw man" as much as you do, you sure use the tactic a lot. Nobody is talking about banning being rich. Even under the most draconian interpretation of what's being discussed here, you can still be stupid rich.

What you're asking for is some hypothetical, undefined "guardrail," somehow to be imposed to prevent co-option by an already co-opted government, and which will somehow defend itself against the vast economic and legal resources of the ultra-wealthy. Even if such a thing existed and could be implemented, it would solve one part of the problem. And it would only do that temporarily, since extreme wealth lets you buy votes to destroy guardrails, which is exactly why a shadow oligarchy is incompatible with democracy.

10/31/2024 9:11:42 AM

Oh, and since I forgot to mention: in theory I don't mind people getting rich. In practice, the vast majority of wealth is acquired through means illegal, unethical, or at least extremely distasteful. Inheritance, of course, but also labor exploitation, environmental destruction, and wanton disregard for public health; and that's before we get into the various kinds of corporate piracy and hedge fund shenanigans that occasionally collapse the entire economy and frequently destroy businesses or, in the case of media companies, the entire fourth estate as a pillar of functioning democracy. These methods, I mind.

I don't think it's practical to get rid of all that. It may not even be desirable to totally extinguish them; maybe a little amorality leavens the economic bread. But right now, the scales are tipped way in their favor, and it's high time someone puts their thumb on the other side to balance things out, reduce the harm of negative externalities, and use more of the proceeds of greed to some positive end.

10/31/2024 10:02:59 AM

<3

11/1/2024 1:25:18 PM

I've found this discussion very interesting.

(and I agree with most of Grumpy's points)

11/1/2024 2:21:42 PM

If Kamala wins, and democrats hold the house and senate by some chance.
Why shouldn’t they curb stomp the MAGAs with every possible legal remedy with swift and decisive legislation/DOJ actions?

There would be some retaliation but probably in 4 years it would be forgotten

But I feel like there’s been waaayy too much FA and not enough FO

11/2/2024 12:32:17 AM

YOU WON'T GET IT

11/2/2024 1:22:15 AM

imagine my shock to see some of y'all doing this thing

11/2/2024 12:17:28 PM

Can you tell what's being done without having to watch Bill Maher?

11/2/2024 2:02:58 PM

i was gonna do an AI generated version but you get the idea. just imagine papa bernie's sweet soothing voice. or AOC if you're into that kind of thing.

11/2/2024 2:30:36 PM

Thanks

11/2/2024 2:33:05 PM

I agree with Maher ( )...to an extent. Yeah, it's not exactly calling for a firing squad, and yeah, chickenhawks are fair game for this sort of criticism. But the imagery of saying she should go 1 vs. 9 certainly has more of a "Let's see her get killed" vibe than a "Let's see her put some skin in the game" vibe.

11/4/2024 8:17:32 AM

Meanwhile, he did say that the reporters in front of him should be shot, so...

11/4/2024 10:52:47 AM