Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by eestrada 1041 days ago
> There’s a very large chasm between being successful, and having $10s of billions of dollars in net worth.

Because of marginal utility, there really isn't such a large chasm. Every additional dollar has less utility than the dollar that preceded it. Capping what producers can earn or use their means/money on is a good way to stifle innovation and productivity. Also, what indication is there that the government won't squander taxes from this in the same way they have squandered taxes from so many other things?

1 comments

>Also, what indication is there that the government won't squander taxes from this in the same way they have squandered taxes from so many other things?

Everybody in the US likes to talk about the golden age of the 50s. The top marginal tax rate was pushing 90%.

Empirical data answers your question. Trickle down economics has been a provable disaster with the VAST majority of wealth accumulating in the hands of a few.

> Everybody in the US likes to talk about the golden age of the 50s. The top marginal tax rate was pushing 90%.

The effective tax rate was never actually that high. There are always carve outs to lower the rate.

https://www.aei.org/economics/public-economics/were-taxes-re...

https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-t...

> Empirical data answers your question. Trickle down economics has been a provable disaster with the VAST majority of wealth accumulating in the hands of a few.

At no point did I mention "trickle down economics". I mentioned innovation and productivity, things that are easily measured. The gap between productivity and wages in the US only widely diverged once going off of hard money. This is because the upper class own assets (largely unaffected by monetary inflation) and the lower/middle class own currency (heavily affected by monetary inflation). If the empirical data you speak of is so evident, please provide some references for it. I don't subscribe to "trickle down economics" so I don't know anything about it.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/