Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by anonym29 317 days ago
Obviously he isn't working 130 billion times harder, but he may be some combination of 130 billion times as much (privileged upbringing × strategically focused × economically impactful × smarter × harder working × luckier × n other relevant factors) than the typical American, that I can seriously consider.

I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system.
2 comments
JadeNB 317 days ago
> I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system.

Pays to whom? Verifying this claim seems to require a definition of "the system." If you literally mean all money expenditure, then almost certainly this is literally true. But it's not obvious to me that the expenditure on, for example, Bezos' vanity space trip benefited "the system" more than someone spending a much smaller amount, but dispersed more widely through the community. Or, if it did, it's not obvious to me that the additional benefit was in any reasonable proportion to the additional expenditure.

link
anonym29 317 days ago
>Pays to whom? Verifying this claim seems to require a definition of "the system."

Taxes paid to governments. "The system" being governments - federal, state, county, city/locality.

Cash receipts out of the system would include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, WIC/SNAP, cell phone vouchers, housing vouchers, transportation vouchers, SSI/SSDI, and even all tax credits (including indirect tax credits, like Elon Musk receiving a tiny percentage of total Tesla profits, which are themselves a non-100% percentage of vehicles sold, which are themselves purchased overwhelmingly with customer money that does not come from tax credits, of the percentage of cars sold that are even eligible for tax credits).

And yes, I do count those slivers of indirect EV tax credits as receipts for Musk, however significantly those dollars are diluted before they reach Musk, and count them against his contributions (which include the highest individual income tax bill ever paid by anyone in history).

link
Paracompact 317 days ago
> I also figure he, like Elon Musk, pays orders of magnitude more than his fair share, if we consider the definition for "fair share" to mean everyone pays the same amount of direct cash transfer into the system and gets the same amount of direct cash receipt out of the system.

I appreciate the clarity, but this is a bizarre definition of fair share. Do you really believe that everyone gets the same amount of usage from, and contributes to the same amount of wear and tear on, municipal and infrastructural resources? Do you believe that industrialists do not ravage the earth and society while chasing profits? These externalities measure in the billions (when they can even be quantified at all) for players like Amazon.

link
anonym29 317 days ago
>Do you really believe that everyone gets the same amount of usage from, and contributes to the same amount of wear and tear on, municipal and infrastructural resources?

No, I do not believe that, but it's worth noting that taxing income has no direct relationship to usage-based taxation of public resources. There are people who pay millions in income taxes while making negligible use of roads, and there are net tax recipients who contribute no net taxes at all driving 40-ton 18-wheelers inflicting vastly more damage to roadways than 99% of people. If we want to tax externality costs, we should tax externality costs, not income.

>Do you believe that industrialists do not ravage the earth and society while chasing profits?

Regarding externality costs: see above. Income and externality costs are not the same, nor are they necessarily closely correlated.

link
Paracompact 317 days ago
Of course! I think carbon taxes and the like are a great idea. If we had the social technology and the social consensus to enact pay-what-you-use schemes for everything, we might be close to a utilitarian utopia already. (For example, I have no idea how to compute the marginal benefit to an individual derived from living in a society that values egalitarian access to higher education, even if that individual does not choose to access those resources directly; but such would be necessary to pursue a rigorous calculation of that individual's fair share.)

Lacking that utopia, we have to estimate. You say income taxes are an unfair mechanism; what do you think is fairer?

link
anonym29 316 days ago
Consumption taxes, rather than production taxes.

Taxes are a disincentive - this is why we tax vices.

We want to disincentivize rampant, mindless consumerism that fuels the externality costs, right?

Tax buying things - any things - all things - much heavier, tax the act of working to earn an income to survive much less.

Want to buy a car? Pay a big tax. Want to work hard to earn money to pay your bills and feed your family? Shouldn't be taxed for that.

link