U.S. Politics: Attaquer son cul orange!

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Now Saez and Zucman will say that that's a bad exemption because businessmen will shift their assets into their own business to protect it from the wealth tax, but I can't see how that's a problem unless the target of this all is punishing people for doing something well.

Being at the head of a corporation whose profits are higher than most countries' GDP isn't "doing something well."
At some point super-wealth isn't about entrepreneurship anymore, it's only about power.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

15% of the wealth of the top 1% in the U.S. is inherited wealth (Wolff and Gittleman, seemingly hosted by Piketty, or at least a server named for him...), and this has been a declining figure over time. "New money" is where it's at.

Ok so let's get this right. According to this study, 14,7% of the wealth of members the top 1% is due to wealth transfer in a given year (with the authors focusing on 2007).

This study supposedly destroys the myth that the wealthiest inherit their wealth. As in, when somebody dies.
And indeed, the study clearly debunked that myth.
But does that actually mean anyone can conclude that 85,3% of the wealth of the top 1% has been earned ?

Quote

First, there are several questions on what we call “general wealth transfers.” These questions presumably refer to any type of gift or inheritance. Second, there are specific questions on inheritances and gifts of real estate and businesses.

So what the authors are looking at is the proportion of wealth coming from wealth transfers in any given year.
Their study says nothing about aggregate wealth transfers.

And if the top 1% gets a wealth transfer that averages 14,7% of their net worth every year, the aggregate percentage could well be consideraby higher.

Which means that the conclusion...

Quote

While it is true that richer households do receive greater wealth transfers than poorer ones, as a proportion of their current wealth holdings, wealth transfers are actually greater for poorer households than richer ones.

... can only be considered true for a given year.

But since richer households have more to transfer, wouldn't it make sense to assume that wealth is transferred over more than a year?

Imho one should be very very careful about drawing sweeping conclusions from limited data...

[Rippounet]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

Or is it that it's okay for a business to be owned predominantly by one or several individuals, until at a certain point it's no longer fine and they should be nationalized for the public good?

Nationalized... or quite simply broken up.

I do believe such thinking used to be common sense.

[Liffguard]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

So how exactly are new business ventures supposed to happen? Or is it that it's okay for a business to be owned predominantly by one or several individuals, until at a certain point it's no longer fine and they should be nationalized for the public good? Where's the middle ground?

Doesn't make sense to me whatsoever. 

 

In an ideal world, I think I'd like to see all business ventures be employee-owned. In the meantime, we can play around with different policies to diffuse private power. There doesn't need to be one firm line in the sand where on the one hand you have total private, individual control, and on the other the whole project is nationalised. Robust trust-busting, minimum worker representation on corporate boards, strong union protections, workplace democracy. I'm sure more qualified people than me can think of others.

[Fragile Bird]

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

So how exactly are new business ventures supposed to happen? Or is it that it's okay for a business to be owned predominantly by one or several individuals, until at a certain point it's no longer fine and they should be nationalized for the public good? Where's the middle ground?

Doesn't make sense to me whatsoever. 

 

Sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying. There are thousands and thousands of new businesses being started by people every year who are not billionaires or part of the 1%. Surely that will continue.

Bill Gates and his buds started their business in his parents’ garage. Are there no more garages? Michael Dell started his business in his dorm room. Are there no more dorms? 

[Tywin et al.]

33 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

He's much more qualified than Steyer.  NY mayor is enough to make him amongst the 1,000 or so people you'd consider "conventionally qualified" to be the Democratic nominee. 

Not that I think he has a chance to win the nomination - he doesn't.  But if Steyer can poll 2-3% by throwing enough money around, I don't see any reason why Bloomberg couldn't meet or exceed that. 

Perhaps he’s more qualified, but he’s also hated. He got booed throughout his convention speech. Steyer, OTOH, was way out front on impeachment, so he’s at least got that going for him. Bloomberg has no consistency in the base of the Democratic Party.

[Tywin et al.]

34 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Surely everyone around them would fall too?  

Sure. Their wives* would have to accept they can only have 500 pairs of Gucci shoes instead of 600 and their kids can only have one Lambo. The horrors, right?

 

*Yes I know women are billionaires too.

[sologdin]

wealth of the top 1% has been earned

earned or not, seizing sums above a certain enhanced subsistence level is what is needed, and that will be considered a 'despotic inroad' irrespective of how either the property or the seizure is characterized; the holders of the assets will not submit to parliamentary procedure and the rule of law.

[Rippounet]

2 minutes ago, sologdin said:

wealth of the top 1% has been earned

earned or not, seizing sums above a certain enhanced subsistence level is what is needed, and that will be considered a 'despotic inroad' irrespective of how either the property or the seizure is characterized; the holders of the assets will not submit to parliamentary procedure and the rule of law.

And yet how the seizure is characterized matters a great deal if we are to at least attempt to use what little democracy we have.

Fun fact: there's a... let's say "rumor" that when the yellow vests movement was at its peak the president got some phone calls from... let's say "prominent citizens" urging him to "give away" stuff to calm the masses.
It's estimated that the measures subsequently taken by the government amount to 17 billion €.

The rich fucks are acutely aware that they are the minority. Maybe they won't submit to parliamentary procedure, but they can definitely be scared enough to give a few more scraps to the masses...

[Ran]

13 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Imho one should be very very careful about drawing sweeping conclusions from limited data...

Well, yes, it's economics. But this is  why Saez and Zucman (and Pikett) trying to completely flip economics on its head with their high wealth tax proposals gets me, since they, too, are playing with excessively limited data in which they make a number of controversial (among economists) decisions to get to their conclusions. 

This 6% figure from Warren is purely driven by the political need to find funding for M4A that doesn't touch the middle class. It's not based on what's actually the best economic practice, which is something that is being and will continue to be debated. 3%, I wouldn't have been so concerned about as it gives a sufficiently long enough time frame to decide whether it's really working as expected or not, but 6% without exception, especially when coupled with the rest of the proposals -- which, in isolation, all make sense individually but all together may be wildly high (for example, capital gains tax is proposed to be aligned with income tax, which is fine... but that means a 37% rate, not a 20% rate. To pay a $6 billion wealth tax, you'll have to sell $9.5 billion in assets, exacerbating the unsustainability of this. In two years, 20% of that fortune is gone, and the revenue you are expecting to pay for M4A is down as well and you can only hope you're right that M4A will increase the tax base elsewhere).

I'm just disappointed by Warren on this. The numbers in her proposal are largely pie in the sky, making a bunch of optimistic assumptions. Saez and Zucman assumed a 15% tax avoidance rate at 2%... and then a 15% avoidance rate as 6% as well? Really? She's still my favored candidate, but I don't think this is going to go anywhere because of how unrealistic it is.

 

[argonak]

33 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Nationalized... or quite simply broken up.

I do believe such thinking used to be common sense.

Breaking up big businesses used to be a Republican thing.  Good old Teddy.  I wish he was alive today so I could hear what he'd say about Trump.

[Fragile Bird]

Just saw Trump’s usual ‘press conference’ running to the helicopter. Now he’s calling for the whistleblower’s lawyer to be charged with treason, and is still ranting about the ‘perfect’ call.

Why does he keep referring to himself in the 3rd person? Surely that alone should give rise to questions about his mental condition. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

 

What examples are there of private companies trying to curb their impact on climate change without government pressure?

How can we know what they would have done without Government pressure?  These companies don’t exist in a black box where Government and Public pressure don’t exist.  Regardless here’s an article from 10/2018 (cnn) listing private actors fighting climate change:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/09/business/climate-change-companies/index.html

I still don’t think relying upon the State to push space exploration is a reasonable or efficient long term strategy.

SpaceX has done much more than NASA has in decades (plural) in under a decade.  That’s not a bad thing.

[Bonnot OG]

Ah the billionaire supporters are a plenty in here. Sickening.

[Kalbear Total Landscaping]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How can we know what they would have done without Government pressure?  These companies don’t exist in a black box where Government and Public pressure don’t exist.  Regardless here’s an article from 10/2018 (cnn) listing private actors fighting climate change:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/09/business/climate-change-companies/index.html

I still don’t think relying upon the State to push space exploration is a reasonable or efficient long term strategy.

SpaceX has done much more than NASA has in decades (plural) in under a decade.  That’s not a bad thing.

Conversely there is no specific indication that musk is responsible for that, or that if he didnt lead spacex that it wouldn't happen. 

[Tywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

And yet how the seizure is characterized matters a great deal if we are to at least attempt to use what little democracy we have.

Fun fact: there's a... let's say "rumor" that when the yellow vests movement was at its peak the president got some phone calls from... let's say "prominent citizens" urging him to "give away" stuff to calm the masses.
It's estimated that the measures subsequently taken by the government amount to 17 billion €.

The rich fucks are acutely aware that they are the minority. Maybe they won't submit to parliamentary procedure, but they can definitely be scared enough to give a few more scraps to the masses...

This is something my grandfather always drilled into me. He never understood why his fellow members of the country club were so greedy and self-centered (he was the president of it for a long time, btw). Eventually when wealth gets too concentrated, there will be an uprising, and no matter how high you build the walls, the dam will break and the water will wash all your riches away.  

But you know that better than us, cake eater.

[Rippounet]

15 minutes ago, Ran said:

Well, yes, it's economics. But this is  why Saez and Zucman (and Pikett) trying to completely flip economics on its head with their high wealth tax proposals gets me, since they, too, are playing with excessively limited data in which they make a number of controversial (among economists) decisions to get to their conclusions.

Well to be fair, the system is extraordinarily complex so very few people (if any) can claim to understand it perfectly.

But Saez, Piketty... etc have a lot of data coming from previous decades when the rate of taxation on the highest income brackets was considerably higher than it is now (throughout the West at least). In fact, from a modern perspective (20th century) it's hard to understand why Western countries have moved away from progressive taxation... And difficult not to see it as a purely ideological move.

I'll probably be more informed on all this once I finish Piketty's amazing latest book on the ideologies of inequality... in 2020 (I love Piketty but man, his books are loooooong reads...).

15 minutes ago, Ran said:

This 6% figure from Warren is purely driven by the political need to find funding for M4A that doesn't touch the middle class. It's not based on what's actually the best economic practice, which is something that is being and will continue to be debated. 3%, I wouldn't have been so concerned about

I'm not enough of an expert but... 6% still sounds like a terribly small percentage to me.

I agree that increasing tax rates should be done incrementally though. You could get to 6% in 4 years maybe?

And then start moving to 15% in Warren's second term. A man can dream.

[Paladin of Ice]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

As to Bloomberg, what is he thinking. I’d be shocked if he even gets a percentage point in polling. Like literally nobody wants him. I have no idea what the play is here other than a narcissistic vanity stunt.

Oh, I think it’s pretty simple to grasp what he’s thinking. It’s the same thing a lot of candidates are thinking "My personal vision of how to react and go forward is the only one that is right, if nobody else is bright enough to see how obviously right it is, then I have to get in there and save the country from all these obviously wrong people. And because I’m obviously right, all I need to do is say it the right way and everyone else will come around and see the light."

This framework is particularly likely for Bloomberg, who’s definitely arrogant and convinced of his rightness at all times.

[Bonnot OG]

14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Conversely there is no specific indication that musk is responsible for that, or that if he didnt lead spacex that it wouldn't happen. 

People do realize musk is an abusive union busting piece of shit that intentionally has his workers work in horrible conditions and steals ideas on top of also being a tantrum throwing egomaniac yea? 
 

no clue why people like that apartheid benefiting sack of shit.

 

He’s a Technocrat neo-colonialist. Just some venture capitalist, there is nothing interesting about having enough wealth to invest in technology. All of those technologies he invests in heavily rely on top-down exploitation of labor and resources all over the world, then creating technologies that only serve the wealthiest percents of the world. You can see this basic paradigm in everything he has done.

All of what he does are just vanity projects and he barely keeps his word. Also calls anyone that doesn’t play his game of being a pedophile, like that diver in Thailand that said his help wasn’t needed, which set musk off because he’s a fucking infantile pud.

 

 

[Rippounet]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

But you know that better than us, cake eater.

lol, it took me waaaay too long to get that joke.

I had a brilliant Belarussian student a couple of years ago who wrote a splendid essay presenting progressive taxation as a means of population control.
She told me such a perspective was rather standard in Eastern Europe.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

43 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Conversely there is no specific indication that musk is responsible for that, or that if he didnt lead spacex that it wouldn't happen. 

That’s fair.  Without Musk, can we say with confidence that SpaceX would still exist?
 

This whole discussion seems to be a derivation of the “great person” idea of history about which there has always been a great deal of debate.