Earning a lot of money is a pretty damn good proxy for contributing to society. At the very least these people pay some taxes instead of being a drain on society.
It was more than one comment. We judge 'trolling' by its effects. Inflammatory posts on divisive topics provoke flamewars, and that destroys the commons.
This doesn't mean you can't comment on divisive topics. It means that as the topic gets more divisive, comments need to become more thoughtful and more substantive, not less.
What, exactly, do landlords contribute to society? Their assets ARE their value. Frankly, my landlord could die and the only people who would care would be the banks.
All money means is that you convinced someone else to give you money at some point in life.
>What, exactly, do landlords contribute to society?
Efficient allocation of resources to property development. Although that's just a technical distinction, you can get rid of it by separating out the improved vs unimproved value of land (the former is much less problematic than the latter).
>All money means is that you convinced someone else to give you money at some point in life.
Presumably, the convincing is because giving you money is better than the alternatives.
The efficiency there is their contribution to the economy. I think often it is not much of a contribution to society.
(compare a pleasant and profitable development to a development designed to exploit government incentives...the latter may well be more "efficient" in terms of economy)
Yeah, that's how capital markets work in general. If you can charge more and still find a tenant, you're replacing low-value land use with higher-value land use. This is particularly true in commercial real estate. Though that's kind of a side issue to my original point: the excess profits attracts and incentivizes similar investment, which increases the cost of investment, which lowers profit down to the general waterline of the economy.
Georgism brings up some really fantastic points along this line.
If you want to be technically pedantic, exclude the value of improvements on the property. You don't really want to tax the act of replacing an empty lot with a $10MM factory. You do want to tax the right to use land within the catchment of the various services the state provides. Land isn't produced, so you can't disincentivize producing it.
They contributed value by giving a pile of money to the previous owner (part of the economy). Now they're recovering their investment. If they can't recover it in rent/resale, then why would they buy in the first place? Then where would the previous owner get their pile of money from? Ultimately it went back to the original developer who was smart enough to build a house in a good place that people in the future will want. Without that chain of incentives, he could just as well have built it in the desert. That's what I think the value is - incentivizing property development where it'll be needed in the future.
If we look at the real estate visas (i.e. "invest 500k and get a visa") then what happens is that someone brings in 500k from outside and gives it to an american so that they get the real estate. That'a simple 500k upfront gain to the local economy.
What makes that idea difficult is the fact that profits have become decoupled from contribution to society. Anymore, most corporate gains aren't being passed along to the workers, just to the owners. Granted, the equation shifts with small businesses compared to large ones, but the idea that business = improvement is a bit simplistic.
Only the Sith deal in absolutes! I doubt profits have become decoupled from contribution to society as a rule.... there's going to be some statistical distribution of benefit. Understanding those stats will let you make good decisions on immigration. Though, I personally like Trumps idea. As a totally non related aside, New Zealand is a great place to come and innovate if the US isn't going to let you in :)
> What makes that idea difficult is the fact that profits have become decoupled from contribution to society.
This is not true. Anyone can claim that in a certain venture profits are not coupled to the contribution to society, as long as the person refuses to acknowledge or define "contribution to society".
For instance, do you consider T Bone Pickens to have contributed to society via his profits? If no, then what about Warren Buffet?
It is not trickle down economics. It is optimizing for the highest amount of tax dollars.
If you have 2 people, one which will contribute >30K a year in taxes, and another that will contribute 10k a year in taxes, that is free money on the table that we are losing out on, if we don't accept person 1.
But at a very minimum, you can agree that if someone makes more money, then they will pay more in taxes?
Why shouldn't the government optimize for letting people into the country that are going to give it a lot of tax dollars? We could then use those extra tax dollars to do things that society wants.
> if someone makes more money, then they will pay more in taxes?
Absolutely not true for everyone. It depends heavily on how they make their money.
Many very wealthy people are also able to abuse loopholes and decrease their tax bills. Do you remember when people thought Trump didn't want to release his tax returns because they showed he paid zero taxes? Yes, that's a real thing. Billionaires making millions in a given year are able to pay nothing, if they organize their finances correctly.
Also, people have value to the economy outside of tax dollars. They also spend money, fill jobs that aren't filled by domestic workers, and produce babies (which wealthier people produce at a lower rate and which are necessary to fund things like Social Security).
> Anymore, most corporate gains aren't being passed along to the workers, just to the owners
Was this ever the case? I mean, look at the Victorian era and what amounted to forced labor camps in the coal mines of West Virginia – seems like profits are almost always sucked up to the top.
I don't think this is true, because generally people who earn lots of money are in a better position to prevent the taking of that money, via having the capital to pool with other ultra-rich to lobby against taxes, pay accountants to find tax loopholes, etc.
Not if the earner centralizes their profits and hangs on to the capital - then it just furthers our wealth inequality and harms poorer Americans at the expense of wealthy visa-holders. They can still drain our system, they just do it the Walmart way.
Letting people in for a brick of hard cash seems much less likely to foster the sort of values that would result in visa holders not wanting to loot the country for a quick profit.
You're right but your overall argument is wrong for different reasons.
Earning a lot of money is a good proxy for contributing to society, except not everyone makes good money all the time.
I'm an immigrant and if you were to judge me based on my first few years in America, then clearly you shouldn't let me in to America. Now, at a later stage in my life, I would qualify for "startup visa" but if I wasn't already living in America for past 10 years, then I might not wanna come here (might not even be eligible for this visa to be fare).
Your comments in this thread have unfortunately stepped back into incivility, which you have a long history of doing on HN and we have a long history of warning you about.
Fortunately you've mostly fixed this on HN, though not entirely. Please make the adjustments needed to correct this so I don't have to starting pleading with you not to get banned all over again.
(Also, please don't feed trolls. The thing to do with accounts like that is to flag their comments so we can ban them—not pour fuel onto the flamewar.)
Pointing out to someone that you don't share their worldview and in fact find it weird does contribute something, hopefully it pops their little bubble of thinking everyone agrees with them. And no, I didn't insult him, I said his reality tunnel is weird; that you can't tell the difference between insulting a person and commenting on their worldview says a lot about you. You can respect people without respecting their beliefs, you are not your beliefs, no ideas are beyond criticism.
You could, but you could also explain why they're myopic and damaging. I realize it's obvious to you but for the people in general the impression that it passes is that you don't have arguments and resort to name-calling. Seeing as you probably actually have good points to make, it's a shame that this is what transpires.
Posting like this account has been doing will eventually get your main account banned too, so please don't create accounts to do this.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14608078 and marked it off-topic.