The super-rich and where they hide their wealth

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by LafayetteBis, Jul 15, 2020.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you want to go after the wealth of the rich because you are "not sure" if it was ever taxed?

    Wow, step back and think logically about that for a little while.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2020
  2. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, I want to go after the rents of privilege because they were never earned, whether they were ever taxed or not. The wealth of the rich just happens to consist mainly of the rents of privilege.
    Oh, I have; never doubt that for a second.
     
  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    60% and 32% of who?
     
  4. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Okay, well, the 'rents of privilege', as you put it, are very different from actual wealth itself, isn't it?

    You may actually be talking about something a little bit different.

    Maybe you want the capital gains tax to be increased, or just counted as part of regular income?
    (How familiar are you with tax law?)


    I hope you're not just automatically assuming that, as a blanket across the board, because you are painting things with a very wide brush.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2020
  5. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Yes, but there is a big overlap -- and the larger the accumulation of private wealth, the bigger the overlap tends to be.
    I don't want income or capital gains to be taxed at all. But if we are going to tax income, it is perverse and inefficient to tax capital gains at a different rate because that just gives people a reason to find ways to take earned income as capital gains, or vice versa.
    Enough to know it is an appalling mess for one reason and one reason only: when a tax is as evil as a tax on earned income, it has to be complicated to be tolerable.
    I said "mainly."
     
  6. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So? What are you saying?
    Are you only just saying what you stated, or is that statement intended to have some sort of political implications?

    I mean, what do you think should be done about it, specifically?
    You say there's a big overlap, but what does that have to do with anything?
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  7. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You don't??? Then why did you seem to be complaining about the rich in this thread?

    Or have we all totally misunderstood something about what you've been saying here?
     
  8. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Unlike 99% of people, I am aware that income tax only helps the rich, by depriving the ablest of the poor of the opportunity to accumulate enough capital to offer them competition, and by leaving their privilege-based assets untouched. Capital gains taxes look good on the surface because almost all capital gains are based on privilege; however, they enable to rich to profit from privilege by the simple expedient of never selling it. The way to address the problem of privilege is by taxing (or better, when possible, abolishing) privilege per se, which is far fairer and more efficient than taxing either income or capital gains.
    You've probably just swallowed the rich's propaganda that only economic activity -- income, sales, value added -- can be taxed, never privilege.
     
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    I'm saying the more wealth someone owns, the less of it tends to be earned by any commensurate contribution to production, and the more just legally taken by exercise of privilege -- i.e., legal entitlements to do so.
    I would have thought the political implications should be obvious.
    Abolish privileges that can be abolished, like IP monopolies and private bank debt money issuance, and tax away the value of those that can't, like land titles and broadcast spectrum allocations.
    It has everything to do with practically everything in economics.
     
  10. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    My question is, do you think we should judge people by their wealth? I mean enact economic/tax policies based on an individual's accumulated wealth as the determining parameter.

    You have already acknowledged that they may or may not have already paid taxes on that wealth, when it went to them as income.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2020
  11. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, that comes down to how exactly you define "privilege".

    Is this the reason the Left wants interest rates to go down close to zero?
     
  12. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation.
    I'm not aware that the left wants that. I have no view on whether interest rates should be higher or lower, because IMO interest rates are not the real issue. Who creates money, and when, and how, and why are the real issues.
     
  13. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, any more than we should judge people's health by their weight. A 2m tall professional basketball player who weighs 120kg is in very different health from a 150cm sedentary woman who weighs 120kg.
    No. See above. To pretend there is no difference between earned and unearned wealth is dishonest and evil.
     
  14. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    bringiton, you're being very vague about what you would want to do.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2020
  15. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Maybe because you are asking about principles, not specifics.
     
  16. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Tell me, is there a fundamental difference between a rich person who waits five years and then spends his money, versus a rich person who dies, leaves his money to his son, and then his son spends the money?
    Do you think the first scenario is somehow better than than the second?
     
  17. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, you only seem to be talking about feelings.
    But the way I see it, all those feelings of yours are pretty much irrelevant because it seems you don't have a way to translate them into policy recommendations.

    One could try to guess what your policy recommendations might be, based on your expressed feeling, but every time those are specifically brought up, you have denied them. So it's anyone's guess what you actually want to do with those feelings.

    Or is this some innate trait of the modern Progressive Left, with politics being all about feelings and mental ways of seeing things, and not actually about solid tangible policy positions?
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2020
  18. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Garbage. I have identified the relevant facts of objective reality.
    More garbage. I have identified the key policies needed to secure liberty, justice and prosperity.
    I would suggest more reading and thinking about what I write, and less assuming about what I mean.
    I have stated a number of solid, tangible policy positions. You just choose not to know what I said.
     
  19. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What I mean is that you seem to be constructing a perceived reality, that nevertheless seems irrelevant, because every time we ask you about how exactly that reality of yours would effect what type of policy decisions there should be, you deny it.
    You say it should be obvious, but every guess I make, you say that's not what you would want to do. So apparently it's definitely not so obvious.

    I am having trouble seeing how your perspective then is actually politically relevant. What you seem to want us to identify is a vague correlation, but what would we use that correlation or idea for??
    If we can't use it for anything, it seems to be irrelevant.

    So do you care to tell us what we can do with your idea?
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2020
  20. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    I have stated the relevant policies that I advocate many times, but maybe not all in one place:
    1. Replacement of the private bank-issued debt money system with a publicly issued fiat money system whose only mandate is price stability as measured by a commodity price index, not consumer prices or asset prices. The resulting seigniorage on public money issuance would constitute revenue for the national government.
    2. Elimination of taxes on private economic activity and transactions including incomes, sales, profits, producer goods, gifts and inheritances, except for Pigovian taxes at the national level on socially harmful activities like pollution, consumption of alcohol and tobacco, etc.
    3. Abolition of privileges like IP monopolies that aggravate scarcity.
    4. Recovery by junior governments of the full publicly created unimproved rental value of land for public purposes and benefit, through a system of location subsidy repayment (LSR). This would include a universal individual exemption (UIE) to ensure that all resident citizens have free, secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity.
    5. Public, non-profit ownership of natural infrastructure monopolies like the local road and national highway systems, railroads, water supply and sewer systems, electric power and natural gas distribution systems, seaports and airports, etc. This ownership would be local for local infrastructure like city streets, airports and sewer systems, national for geographically extensive infrastructure like railroads, highways and water supply systems.
    6. Private ownership of privately created value, and for-profit private operation of competing productive enterprises.
    7. Public funding but private provision of goods and services characterized by market failure conditions, like education and health care.
    8. Public provision of in-kind support for those unable to be responsible for supporting themselves by reason of chronic illness, disability, physical, emotional or intellectual infirmity, advanced age, or similar conditions.
    OK, see above, spelled out in I hope sufficient detail.
    It is a general outline of public institutions that would secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.
    To influence public discourse in the direction of liberty, justice and prosperity.
    Vote for people who advocate liberty, justice and prosperity for all. And if no candidate is advocating those things, maybe you should run.
     
  21. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That list you provided doesn't seem like it really has anything directly to do with the your thesis in this thread.

    I know you feel it does, but I think in terms of strict logic it does not.

    Can you, for example, select just one of those on your list and then tell us how "all privately held wealth not being taxed" is a reason strongly justifying that specific thing you want to do?

    Can you see the disconnect there?

    Because the connection you seem to be trying to make seems like a HUGE stretch.

    As if some wealth somehow not being taxed when it was earned (and there are several different potential ways one could perceive that to happen) somehow has something to do with that list of things.

    You simply are not being specific enough or clear enough.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2020
  22. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Maybe economic relationships are not as obvious to others as they are to me.
    Sure: #4. A land parcel might have been bought for $1K 70 years ago, and is now worth $1M. That is $999K in privately owned wealth -- i.e., 99.9% of that asset's value -- that has never been taxed as income (the cumulative property taxes will have come to a low single-digit percent of its value). When it is inherited, the stepped-up cost basis means no capital gains tax is owed on it if the heirs sell it; and if they don't sell it, it will continue to appreciate tax-free. Policy #4 effectively recovers that publicly created land value for public purposes and benefit.
    No.
    Economic relationships are often subtle and counter-intuitive.
    It also has to do with #1 and #3 because like land wealth, most privately held wealth based on debt money issuance and IP monopolies consists of uncrystallized capital gains, and has therefore also never been taxed as income.
    Does the above explanation help?
     
  23. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You are aware of capital gains tax, are you not? If you buy land later sell it for more money, you do have to pay tax on the difference.

    Now, I may be against those profits from land for other reasons, but it does show that these are not profits on which no tax was paid.


    I don't believe that is true, but if it was, you might certainly have a point.

    Are you talking about extremely rich people with multiple houses or big buildings?
    Because if you're only talking about one house that the person actually lived in, this doesn't sound so bad.

    Well, if that is true, then shouldn't your focus be more on finding ways to prevent those exemptions from taxes and stopping the loopholes?
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2020
  24. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    But you pay nothing until you sell it, and depending on where it is, if the land is under your principal residence, or you reinvest the proceeds of the sale, etc. you may not pay any capital gains tax, either. In any case, as long as you do not sell it, the added value has passed into your hands without being taxed.
    No tax was ever paid on the increase in the owner's wealth as long as the land was not sold. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.
    It is most definitely true, and I would suggest that you trouble yourself to become better informed on subjects you post about so often.
    It's all inherited assets.
    Whether you think it "sounds bad" or not is beside the point. No tax has ever been paid on that wealth increase, either by the deceased or the heirs.
    No, because merely taxing the capitalized rents of privilege as income misses the point that such institutions and income tax are both wrongful in any case.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2020

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