[ntSean]

You’re exactly right- but it isn’t a timeless problem. Government has the ability to reform inheritance and taxation.

However, theres no political will, because those with money, can lobby better than those without.

Ironically America rejected the monarchy, and yet has replaced it with an oligarchy.

[rl3]

>You’re exactly right- but it isn’t a timeless problem.

It's a timeless problem insofar that it dates back to ancient times while remaining unsolved today.

[germandiago]

> Government has the ability to reform inheritance and taxation. However, theres no political will

IMHO it is not right to try to make people that earn more than us the target to be sacked. I think it is a bad thing. It is not a matter of you have less or you have more . It is a matter of respecting people who make money legally or inherit it by the will of their own relatives or whatever. I do not think anyone should be entitled to put hands into that for any single reason whatsoever unless that money has been stolen or made in illicit ways. That is the only valid reason IMHO.

[dreinhardt]

There is a sound argument that to create wealth you need a society. We all contribute to it and if we didn’t there wouldn’t be a society and even if you had a billion dollar or a few tons of gold you couldn’t get anything.

At the point where the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny fraction of members of society becomes detrimental to the functioning of our society it is necessary to redistribute before society stops functioning.

How you feel about isn’t very important.

[pibechorro]

If I build a raft out of driftwood, risk my life in deep water, and bring back nurishment for my family while you starve on land; its to my advantage to help you but its by no means my obligation nor am I better off because of "society". Its not a zero sum game and individual effort is not dependent on an imaginary collective.

[nucleogenesis]

If you built that raft using plans, materials, and labor of society, then you risk your life to go out to the deep water to get food, then your contribution is just the last bit. To suggest it’s so important that the others involved deserve no spoils of your work (put another way - you say your effort deserves more spoils or sole control of the spoils) - then you’re selfish at the very least (although I’d say you’re among the worst kinds of humans to share society with) and exactly the reason why laws that extract aggressively from the wealthy are the only way to inch capitalism toward something resembling equity for most.

[germandiago]

That would be true if you get plans, materials and labor for free. What you do is to pay for it under mutual agreement. So you do not contribute the last bit. You contribute in all the chain, because each of those people got what they wanted so that you can build what you wanted.

Your argumentation is incorrect.

By the way, what is equity? If you come spoil me because I make money, what kind of equity is that if you do it to me just because I make money? Equity would be to not spoil anyone. Trying to punish them on the basis that they make money (or that they make little, I do not care) is not equity. It is something else.

[Mckckdk]

Would you support 99% of your income be extracted because you contributed only the last bit?

[germandiago]

On top of that it is not true you contributed the last bit. Take a look at my reply. You contribute in all the chain, always.

There is no other way. You are not going to get anything for free in that chain. Every step in the chain, from employing to get products to work to deliver your stuff are paid in one way or another.

[germandiago]

To create wealth you need a society. But it is not less true that the society makes you wealthy because they need YOU. It is an exchange.

When it is detrimental? Who decides that? I am against monopolies. Telling from offices all the others what to do or not when they are not harming anyone is also a monopoly. Governments are monopolies in many areas.

What makes you think that with fewer regulations there would be even more uneven wealth? I cannot reply to this, since it is just fiction, but fewer regulations means more services, which unfavors monopolies and drops prices for services. Making people more elligible for acces to those services as well.

[zarzavat]

What happens when the wealthy people decide that they don't like what you have planned for them and decide to set up somewhere else? Exit visas?

Wealthy people get to choose which jurisdiction they submit themselves to. That's just how the world is.

[Sander_Marechal]

That's where global taxation comes in. See e.g: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/1/22756934/g20-oecd-15-perc...

[Krisando]

Did you know that's only covering 19 countries + EU?

[sokoloff]

Is there strong evidence that the concentration of wealth has reached the point where that is detrimental to a point where society is in danger of stopping functioning?

[rjmunro]

> society is in danger of stopping functioning

We shouldn't have to wait for society to nearly break down in some catastrophic way before we try to make things better.

Some sort of society will continue to "function", but it is likely to be a worse society for everyone, even the ones nearer the top of the wealth curve as they will constantly be worried about being robbed etc.

[germandiago]

At the same time, we should not be taxing people who make societies work with their money on the basis of "just in case" when the "just in case" means deincentivating those people, which create the wealth in the first place, and, on top of that, stealing them in the name of redistribution without any evidence of doing something good.

In fact, I would say there is plenty of evidence that too much redistribution impoverishes societies and, on top of that intervention, there is always a layer of corruption, way more than in more free countries (free as in non-economic intervention to wealth).

[deanmoriarty]

I do not agree at all. Governments should try to make life fair for people. In my opinion, once a person reaches something like $10M net worth (I took a number purely based on the current 1% of wealth in the US, but I’m not married to it), taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds to provide free services to the population, like education, healthcare, affordable housing and infrastructure.

I am saying this very naively without reflecting on the effects it would have on the economy, the inflationary forces and the overall corporate productivity. So I realize my view is mostly a romantic utopia, but nobody should be allowed to hoard billions, especially by inheritance.

[strken]

The problem with this is that wealth often means ownership of capital, capital often means ownership of a private company, and so you have a peculiar situation where the government takes gradual ownership of your business once it starts to do well.

There's probably a way to work around this by making it non-voting stock or something, but it's still an inherent dampener on growth, because there's no incentive to grow, and on RnD, because there's no concentration of capital. A silicon fab is worth billions; does your system imply that the only way to build one is to either arrange a consortium of 10,000 people or government funding? HN exists because of PayPal; should the PayPal money have been spent entirely on free services? How are you going to stop the black market[0]? What are the alternate routes to power in your society, and are they better than acquiring money?

You can envisage worlds where this does function, but there's a lot of work to put in regarding the specifics, and doing the work makes you realise their might be a lot of downsides.

[0] Around 80% of North Koreans' income was once acquired through the black market: https://web.archive.org/web/20110924095232/http://www.atimes...

[rjmunro]

> A silicon fab is worth billions; the only way to build one is to either arrange a consortium of 10,000 people or government funding

That's how most large stuff gets built now. "a consortium of 10,000 people" is a corporation. There are lots of them on the NYSE etc.. Government funding also happens a lot.

Federal Tax rates in the USA when Intel was founded were 70%.

[missedthecue]

the consortiums on the NYSE are investing to be richer in the future. If you've already hit the $10M cap, what's the point? If your semi fab investment does well, you have to sell something else to stay within the law.

[strken]

You don't just have to sell your assets, you have to spend the money from the sale too. If you still want to improve your future, that means you spend it on things that don't show up as wealth. Some of those are going to be great (education, prestige from endowments, charitable donations), but others are less so (bribery, lobbying, attaining political power, money laundering, self-interested "charities" like building a park next to your own house).

[xtiansimon]

“…peculiar situation where the government takes gradual ownership of your business once it starts to do well.”

I get the gist od the argument, but to call it ownership is perverse. It’s like insurance companies and their ~$300 salvage fee they charge if you have an accident and the repair cost is greater than the ‘value’ of the vehicle. They argue if they pay you for the full value of your vehicle, they are in effect buying the vehicle from you. If you decide to keep the vehicle, they will attempt to claw ‘salvage value’ or the amount they get from a junk yard. So far I’m 1 for 1, arguing the vehicle has to be for sale for ownership to pass to another.

Another thing I find perverse is the expectation of continual year to year growth—-to infinity.

[pb7]

>taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds to provide free services to the population, like education, healthcare, affordable housing and infrastructure

There won't be too many proceeds because people would simply stop working at that point. I'm far from being taxed at 100% (~50% marginal all in) and my motivation to increase my pay is already very low. I optimize for fewer hours worked at the same pay now.

[kevincrane]

> I'm far from being taxed at 100% (~50% marginal all in) and my motivation to increase my pay is already very low.

Do you think that's because you're already making enough money to put you at or near the top tax bracket? Sounds like your lack of motivation is because you're already making enough and don't need more, not that the government might get an extra 8% out of you.

[pb7]

I would definitely work (a bit but not infinitely) more if taxes were significantly lower.

The math is pretty simple. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. I get paid X to work Y hours. My free time Z is 24-Y hours. It's not worth it to trade any more of my remaining Z hours just to have >50% immediately taken away. I don't get any more hours in a day by working more. Instead, I increase my hourly income (the accurate value of my labor) by cutting Y to 1/2 or 1/3 while still making X. I work less, have more free time, and government doesn't make more from my labor than I do. Easy. (Note: If I were to magically find a job that paid twice as much with the same crazy good work-life balance, I would of course take it regardless of marginal taxes. But such magic is hard to come by and not worth the risk at this point.)

Advanced version: on top of the marginal rate being 50%, I live in an expensive place where not only does it get taxed higher as if I'm uber rich, but I get to pay more for all of my expenses. It's like a double fuck you. Even less motivation. This stuff is real and anyone who's in my position has given it some thought even if it's not so formulaic, hence the outflow of people from CA to cheaper, less tax-y places.

[thrashh]

People aren’t moving out of CA to less tax-y places. They’re moving to cheaper places (with less to offer).

There’s a net migration of rich people into CA (and there always has been). It’s the lower income that move out because they simply can’t afford CA. Rich people can afford CA and so they move here.

[deanmoriarty]

Great! Let’s put a wealth tax of 10% a year in addition to the 100% marginal tax rate, that will move some asses!

[dalmo3]

Move to another country?

[klipt]

America taxes its citizens globally, so they can't escape just by moving.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

10m+ is not the money you earn by working. It's money you earn by owning something.

[cercatrova]

If you work in tech, you might make 10 million in 30 years or so. What are you owning at that point, stocks? And what's wrong with making money by owning something?

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

1) After having worked in tech for 30years, value of your stocks/real estate will far exceed the sum of all your salaries received.

2) Nothing wrong, just stating the facts.

[chrismcb]

It isn't even a romantic utopia, it is more like a living hell. Rich people create businesses and jobs, that is usually how they are wealthy. If the marginal tax rate guess up to 100% sorry 10 million, there is very little incentive for people to earn more than 10 million. And either they will stop trying to earn, out they will move. On top of that, these people don't earn as much as you think they do. In addition, these people don't burn money, they spend it. Which allows others to earn money.

[HWR_14]

Other than butler or yacht captain, what jobs do rich people create?

[sokoloff]

Over half of the jobs held by HN posters, for starters.

[HWR_14]

Well, that's a non-answer. What types of jobs are those?

[germandiago]

> taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds to provide free services

I think you are pretty cruel to people that produce useful things for others. You are saying that people who offer something valuable for others should be mercilessly punished.

What you are saying is that people that contribute less than these people to society should be gifted with the effort of people that are useful to the society, making the wealthy (I mean licit wealth, of course, not criminal one) a means for others to live in better conditions.

Also, you are proposing to violate the principle of people being equal under the law. If I earn xyz, they spoil me, if I earn "too much". If I earn nothing and do not contribute in any meaningful way (even to sustain myself), then I am a blessed person that can get things for free.

Not a good arrangement to create wealth for others, if you ask me. Besides being terribly unfair.

[fragmede]

> The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread-the rich as well as the poor.

-Anatole France

Turn it up to $100 million instead of $10. What you call unfair, is obscene, that outsized level of influence that one person should be able to have on society. The problem is the sheer amount of wealth so far beyond what a single person could use up in one life, while others languish and go hungry. Capitalism is merely a way of organizing society. The cruelty doesn't have to be the point. In order to incentivize the rich, we give them money. To incentivize the poor, we take more away. Who then go hungry. Is that the American dream? That I should be able to afford $1,500 bottles of champagne while my countrymen starve for not working hard enough?

[germandiago]

You are missing something here: if I earn little, I can build a business to earn more.

If you are a worker you are exchanging comfortability for risk. You will make less, for sure. I am myself employed. But every month I get the bill. If you do not want that, risk your capital.

I wonder if it is so bad to work so hard for others, why don't more people build a business? There must be something we are not being honest about here, otherwise everyone would build one.

By the way, noone that makes their own wealth are to be blamed of the bad luck of others. I think we should help those people you mention. Those people starving. But voluntarily or offering them the chance to cooperate with the society. Unless they have some handicap, if they do not want to cooperate it is not me who is to be blamed. In that case, it would be them who are the person to look at for trying to live from others. And for that, it does not matter I can afford that champagne or not.

Besides that, the fact that people like that exist does not mean other people are poorer. I could open a website now and get rich and I would not be making anyone poorer, just making myself richer. And probably others, to operate the website itself.

[orangecat]

taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds

What proceeds?

[dijonman2]

I cannot disagree more. There is a simple principle in life: we must cooperate to survive. The moment we subsidize people getting something for free it materially changes motivation to work, which is a slow but fatal death. Free doesn’t exist. Everyone must earn their keep.

[barbazoo]

What a harsh world that would be.

[dijonman2]

Isn’t it the world we currently live in?

[barbazoo]

Not where I live fortunately. We have social systems that care about people that cannot "earn their keep".

[GavinMcG]

Do schoolchildren need to earn their education?

[pb7]

After they receive their education and mature into fully functioning adults, of course.

[vasco]

That's the expectation built into all modern societies. That's what it means to pay tax when you grow up.

[zarzavat]

That's clearly not how it works. Kids who drop out of primary/secondary education don't get to pay lower taxes in adulthood. Taxes pay for current spending, and the taxes you pay are in return for living in a society.

[908B64B197]

> once a person reaches something like $10M net worth

I'll re-write your proposal:

"Once a person reaches something like $10M net worth they start donating huge sums of money to the charities they have created and who has their family members on board. One of them fully restored and is doing the maintenance on an authentic Gulfstream aircraft from the beginning of the century! An other one has created a school for the (still minor so he can’t claim his $10M yet) heir and a fund to send one student (chosen by the family) to Harvard on a full ride should he be accepted".

[kutenai]

The concept of "government should.." is fundamentally flawed. As soon as "government ... " starts taxing all the money from the right, then the GOVERNMENT simply BECOMES the rich, and that same power will corrupt those in power, be they democrat, republican, socialist.. it does not matter.

Once government "takes" all of the capital "for the presumed good of society", government will very rapidly become the enemy. Corruption will grow and grow, and society will be in the position of a corrupt, all powerful government.

It does not work folks. Read history, don't relive it like a bunch of idiotic sheep

[ProjectArcturis]

But the laws are written by the rich...

[pibechorro]

100% agree. It's the moral thing.

[Wolfenstein98k]

No one has ever prevented intergenerational wealth, and it is so innate and natural to humans that you're bordering on Soviet territory when you decide to fight all that and try and end it.

(If you're just talking about reducing it that's fine, but we already do that massively with the tax and transfer system, and I think you guys have estate taxes too.)

[ntSean]

I suppose if I were to suggest a 70% tax - you might think that too would bordering on a Soviet policy?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/high-income-earners-tax-ra...

Taxes are so nominal, that the haircut is almost non-existent. Beyond theory, I’m very well aware as my close friend inherited a property portfolio, and is now set for life.

Unfortunately, most are not as lucky, and therefore we should not rely on the inheritance lottery to act as our social security.

[germandiago]

Reducing it should also be forbidden in my opinion.

We should not be entitled to steal the effort of others. Every person can do what they deem right with their things.

It is not a matter of how much. By that reasoning I could make legal hitting people, even if it is bad, as long as I do not kill anyone. Would that make hitting people better? I do not think so. The action is still hitting.

The same way, the action is still stealing wealth for whatever reasons. Not a right choice.

[dreinhardt]

In a finite world of limited resources, how couldn’t it be a question of how much?

[nyokodo]

> In a finite world of limited resources

Resources are indeed finite, but value is not. The wealth of new ideas, figurative and literal, is practically infinite. Your statement sounds very much like the zero sum fallacy.

[germandiago]

It is not the main question. Why? Because not all wealth is done by resource-intensive business. Developed countries rely a lot on services not only primary and secondary sector.

Also, by having more offer available, prices are dropped. That benefits everyone, making them automatically wealthier, since now services are at the reach of more people at a lower price.

I do not see the problem. At least, not so far.

Indiscriminate redistribution by force has a long history of failure and it makes places poorer, not wealthier.

[elzbardico]

It doesn’t matter what we think is right. The more the people who have, have more than the people who doesn’t have, the closer we are to a time when the don’t haves will say: “fuck that, I was born in the same world as you, why should you have all the nice things just because you were born to the right parents.

Só, the choice is simple: you can pay more taxes now, or just hope that the masses won’t do a revolution and send you to the guillotine all the while you scream about your god given constitutional rights to property.

[germandiago]

Or alternatively a revolution can be done the other way around: effort is a holy thing. It cannot be stolen.

Or people who provide services go to the strike and stop producing. What would happen?

[elzbardico]

Yeah. Keep believing that. It worked so well to the Romanovs

[germandiago]

Dreaming is free. Lol! I want a world where what a rich did or what a homeless received voluntarily from someone has the same value: it cannot be stolen on any basis. No matter the explanation, justification, good will they explain they have and what they will do with it. You earn something, you manage it. You want something, you deal.

[jz391]

Bolsheviks are not a great example of a success story to bring up in support of your argument...

[HWR_14]

Estate taxes apply to less than 2,000 estates. And, by the way, as soon as you enter that you don't pay capital gains taxes. Meanwhile, those taxes are avoided in a thousand ways.

[VictorPath]

Until 10000 years ago, there was no such thing as intergenerational wealth or surplus, everyone was a migratory hunter gatherer before that owning what they carried. Some people in the Amazon still live like this.

So the notion that massive intergenerational wealth is innate to humans and natural is absurd. Or if it is innate and natural, then the lack of that is innate and natural as well. Most of behavioral modernity had none of this at all, it is a relatively new phenomenon, not "innately human".

[germandiago]

There is one thing that is innate. I can tell you.

I saw it from my nephews recently. One was building a castle, like five floors high with some stuff. The younger kid comes and destroys it. His brother gets deeply annoyed and started to cry. Why? Because he spent time building it.

They are three and one years old. Do you think anyone taught them to get annoyed when the castle is destroyed? No, it is innate: what takes effort has a value for humans.

We did not have the level of wealth of today before, but every single human that puts time somewhere wants to be the ruler of that effort. That is innate I think. I saw it clearly with my nephew's reaction. Noone taught him that.

Looks like a good experiment to me.

[ntSean]

Your experiment speaks to how we interpret transgressions, and for that, it is true- taxes are seen as robbery.

Does your nephew now own the sand he used to build that castle? I would hope not, as I think we’d agree, many kids would suffer!

And likewise, many people believe so strongly in their ownership of money, that they don’t mind if others suffer.

[germandiago]

> taxes are seen as robbery

Taxes are robbery. If you did the same to your neighbor under threat, you would end up in jail. If a mafia does that, they go to jail.

If the government does it, they do not. And they did not ask you to adhere to a contract. It works with reversed logic from what we do in real life with others.

There is no single logical justification to say it is not robbery. That is independent of whether what they do with that money is good or bad. A different discussion.

> And likewise, many people believe so strongly in their ownership of money.

Which represents just that you offered something worth that money to others, in the absense of threat or violence. So yes, now it belongs to them because of an exchange.

> that they don’t mind if others suffer.

Or even worse, some people subtract that money from us by providing no value, unlike the average of humans who at least sells something or provides a service and pretends that the people providing services or products are worse than the person subtracting in exchange of nothing under the threat of prison.

Also, it seems that to you the person being subtracted the money they earned and spent time to get it(could be money or anything else, I am talking about effort) do not suffer. I guess they do not have a soul or feelings or do not deserve the same respect as the others.

[HWR_14]

> Taxes are robbery.

I'm fine with you not paying taxes, as long as you leave my country and renounce your citizenship. After that, make whatever you want on a boat in the ocean or in Somalia. But no one who thinks taxes are theft ever does that, because they want all the benefits of society my taxes pay for.

[gitgrump]

This Randian view of taxes is exhausting. If taxation is theft, then you're complicit every time you drive on a road. For the sake of your conscience, the only moral thing to do is to move into the woods and depend on nothing and nobody.

Good luck.

[ntSean]

> There is no single logical justification to say it is not robbery

It is the cost to you living in society; a society which provides infrastructure such as roads, education, sanitation, and food. A society which provides customers and a marketplace to trade in.

The roller coaster of watching you add and edit this comment was truly an experience. Have a great day.

[thrashh]

Somewhere can’t be robbery if you continue to permit it everyday… if you actually believed your words, you’d move to the middle of nowhere with no Internet and electricity or roads.

And it’s not robbery if you’re getting something from it everyday, which you clearly are because you’re posting on the Internet and drinking clean water.

[lloydgrossman]

>Taxes are robbery.

You're anti fire department?

[dwaltrip]

Pre-agricultural tribes could have had forms of wealth — an ornate spear or knife, a prized shawl, a special ceremonial bowl, etc — that they passed down.

It seems quite likely to me that as soon as we started crafting and carrying things around, we developed complex behaviors around who gets which things.

[HWR_14]

Frequently those things were buried with the people who made them.

[inglor_cz]

It is not really possible to determine who made the grave goods found next to a skeleton (or urn). Some specialization of work is seen in hunters and gatherers already. Not everyone makes their own spearheads or cotton strings etc.

[sokoloff]

I suspect that whatever wealth they did have was carefully passed to the next generation and, further, that people who didn’t do that were less likely to have their DNA represented in the modern human pool.

[jrs235]

Revenue and earnings made via a government provided and recognized privilege of limited liability are fair game for the government to regulate (edit: and tax).

If individuals wish to operate outside of limited liability, un-shielding all their assets to the consequences of their actions, then they can keep all their revenue/earnings.

I think it's BS that limited liability orgs commit acts that damage the environment and others, pay dividends to share holders, salaries (and bonuses) to officers and employees, and then go bankrupt when they are then being held to account for their actions and leaving little to nothing to their victims because there is no ability to claw back the money they paid out.

Quid pro quo. They get limited liability for being regulated. Don't like being regulated? Then forego limited liability.

[nybble41]

For the most part limited liability is a private agreement between you and your creditors, not a get-out-of-jail-free pass to avoid any and all consequences when you cause deliberate or negligent harm to someone who never agreed to those terms. To be sure, there have been instances where the government shielded someone from liability unjustly or failed to "pierce the corporate veil" when doing so was arguably warranted. However, such cases are very much in the minority compared to instances where limited liability is used purely to protect personal assets from being seized to pay the corporation's debts in the event of a business failure or contractual dispute.

[pibechorro]

You aren't ever going to fix that via regulation. In fact, it makes it worse as it always under a long enough timeline gets captured by the powerful and in turn it becomes a barrier to entry and we get Monopoly, Oligarchs, etc.

If you want equality of opportunity, you need to fight furiously for complete free speech and complete freedom of trade. The change has to come from the individual bottom up.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

They renamed 'aristocracy' to 'meritocracy' and we fell for it.

[Mckckdk]

The vast majority of billionaires and millionaires are self made.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Define 'self made'. How many truly started out with no significant advantages conferred by the wealth of their progenitors?

[Mckckdk]

Self made means they didn't inherit their millions/billions

[inglor_cz]

Not a self made millionaire, but I have seen plenty of people starting with significant advantages to crash and burn. The amount of money that can be spent on dodgy business projects, or, worse, various harmful substances, is insane.

IMHO by far the best "significant advantage" you can have is a shrewd, practical brain combined with low levels of blind arrogance and some kind of "people talent". In normal peacetime conditions, people like that tend to rise fast.

[sokoloff]

Being born in the late 20th century and in a developed, wealthy country is are both massive advantages, even if your parents are middle-class school teachers (as mine were).

If those two facts constitute "significant advantages", then the obvious answer is "none of them", but that doesn't seem a productive place to draw the line.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

How many billionaires come from a family of middle class school teachers or the like though?

[sokoloff]

I thought we were discussing "millionaires and billionaires", not just billionaires.