I think rich people have too much influence, I probably agree with Garry Tan on a lot but we need to get money out of politics. Let’s face it we’re all meant to get one vote but rich people spend money on this stuff so that they manipulate what and who can be voted for.
I do think that if this current system is the result of democracy + the internet we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy.
Citizens United was the correct decision. I don't understand how you can legitimately restrict political activity. The constitution contains the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Why should certain groups of people not have this right? The constitution also contains the right to freedom of the press. Why should the government get to decide who gets to exercise this right?
Because democracy is "one person one vote", not "one dollar one vote".
Around the same time Citizens United was decided, we also got McCutcheon v. FEC, which invalidated campaign contribution limits basically completely. If we take the logic of Citizens United at its word - that money is speech - then letting someone drop billions of dollars to change an election is like firing a sonic weapon at a bunch of protesters to silence them. So, right off the bat, we have a situation where protecting the "speech" of the rich and powerful directly imperils the speech of everyone else.
But it gets worse. Because we got rid of campaign financing limitations, there has been an arms race with campaign funding that has made all speech completely, 100% pay-to-play. We have libre speech, but not gratis speech.
This isn't even a problem limited to merely political speech. Every large forum by which speech occurs expects you to buy advertising on their own platform now before you are heard. If you, say, sell a book on Amazon or post a video on TikTok, you're expected to buy ads for it on Amazon or TikTok. You are otherwise shut out of the system because discovery algorithms want you keep you in your own bubble and you're competing with lots and lots of spam.
But it is still one person one vote. Money doesn't allow you to buy votes, but it does make it easier to persuade them. Freedom of the press has always guaranteed you the right to print or otherwise publish what you want, but it never said everyone will have the same amount of printing presses or the same amount of ink. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you an audience.
You think you are reducing the influence of the rich, but you are actually just raising the price of entry. A millionaire can donate to a PAC and buy TV ads, but a billionaire can buy or start a newspaper, TV station, or social media network. What are you going to do then, tell the newspapers what they are allowed to print?
There's a fundamental difference between allowing an unlimited amount of opaque money to support arbitrary political campaigns and buying a media company.
The latter does business under its name, is regulated by the FCC, and if publicly traded has financial disclosure requirements.
The former is effectively anonymous, unregulated, and has no requirement to disclose any of its finances.
If folks want post-Citizens, fine -- just require public, transparent disclosure of what individuals are spending on political speech, above a floor ($10,000?).
Every other country on earth has spending limits, the constitution isn’t perfect and it’s being dismantled by the current regime. Maybe it could be updated to say covering up for pedo billionaires should carry extremely harsh sentences, for example…
Not sure that would be enough given the regime and specifically the current supreme court. Such amendments to the constitution would be met with interpretations like "ackshually this country has a long and honored tradition of protecting pedos and the major questions doctrine (a thing we kinda just made up) says that we gotta ignore the text of the constitution and instead just vibes decide that pedos are a-okay in our book" [applies to literally any subject]
Are you saving that an organization should be able to put together a documentary to criticize Trump and his supporters? Because that’s what Citizen’s United allowed. If you don’t support that, then the criticism will only come from rich individuals.
I do so by taking Jeff Bezos' money and giving him a penny. Also by not supporting restaurants that have a Wall-street ticker nor any alcohol producers that have a Wall-street ticker.
I work in automation. We sell solutions to businesses such as Amazon and a number of others like them. They demanded millions in free engineering labor because they are too big not to do business with. Companies are so big in the USA that you become slave labor.
I rarely support business that have Wall-street tickers. I have not personally financially supported Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, ... for years.
I also do not buy any beverages from a Wall-street provider. No Coca-Cola, Pepsi, ...
Ultra wealth are just terrible humans that do not deserve respect for how they treat everyone below them in the economic ladder. I no longer want to help fund the CEO of McDonald's with his golden parachute while they support non-living wages.
I agree with you, in spirit, but I think the true issue lies elsewhere.
Rich people can spend money to influence elections, yes, but how can they do it? through political donations, super-pacs and bribes. Bribes are already illegal. political donations and super-pacs can give politicians the juice they need to get their messaging out, but getting the message across isn't enough to win an election. The people need to vote. Billionaires can spend as much money as they want to support candidates, but a billionaire still only has one vote to cast.
My point is, billionaires can pay for all the political campaigns in the world, but the electorate gets the final say. It's up to us to A) run for office and B) vote for the best candidate (but tell that to the 64% turnout in the 2024 presidential election)
Elections are important, but they're just one part of the political system. A lot of machinations and politics occurs outside the scope of elections or even of the public eye.
Money doesn't just buy ads. It influences the decision of who is a candidate in the first place. It buys operational range. It pays salaries for the right friend of X, the right family member of Y, etc. It buys other bribes, etc.
Then Congress will need to pass legislation to that extent that would also survive a challenge based on the precedent established by the Citizens United case. Or a Constitutional Amendment that would weaken the 1st Amendment.
IOW, it is unlikely to happen in your lifetime. Focus your efforts elsewhere...
If rich techies had too much influence in California, the state government would not look like what it does. I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.
You cherry picked California which is very much an outlier compared to the rest of the country? Are you denying the effect of money affecting political outcomes, the rich wouldn’t spend their money on media and PACs if it didn’t work would they?
I think this is completely missing the point… are you really saying California would be improved by more rich people being able to game the system? I think CA would benefit from more visionary politicians (i.e. not paid for) and more people at the bottom end being able to have homes in the big cities and less wealth accumulation, maybe reducing the gap between power and poverty means we could have better societies. I’m not talking about crazy change btw, reducing billionaires wealth to that of the nineties would allow us to rebuild a lot of great things and employ a lot of people. Putting money into stocks, real estate and crypto does not create wealth.
> I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.
Graybeard here: took me a while to get it, but, usually these are chances to elucidate what is obvious to you :)* ex. I don't really know what you mean. What does the California state government look like if rich techies had even more influence? I can construct a facile version (lower taxes**) but assuredly you mean more than that to be taken so aback.
* Good Atlas Shrugged quote on this: "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check [ED: or share, if you've moseyed yourself into a discussion] your premises."
** It's not 100% clear politicians steered by California techies would lower taxes ad infinitum.
There's simply no way to look at the governing going on in California and think this is what the tech industry or movie industry or (formerly) oil industry wants for one of its traditional homes.
The government there has suffered since it went to basically one-party rule. There's no counterbalance for any bad policy ideas.
Tbh I think its awesome here, arrived 6 weeks ago. (both of these comments suffer from...I think begging the question?...basically, like, what's so clearly _not_ what tech/film/almond growers/whatever want in California?)
There are great tools available that I’m sure you could use to give you a synopsis of how money is used to manipulate political outcomes and entrench wealth and power.
Any action which may be done to influence political outcomes, such as elections, regulation, and enforcement, for personal or business enrichment.
For example, lobbying. Or, posting on social media. Or, creating a social media. Or, controlling a social media algorithm. Or, in the Trump administration, signalling loyalty via donations with the intention of less-strict enforcement (see: every tech company right now).
You'll notice most new regulations like tariffs have specific exemptions carved out for tech companies. The reason that exists is because tech companies have quid-pro gave Trump hundreds of millions of dollars and, in exchange, they have written the laws to get themselves out of jail.
This is sort of just what happens when you allow money to buy decisions. This sucks morally, obviously, but it also sucks economically. Our economy is on the verge of imploding. The only reason it hasn't is because it's being artificially propped up by the regulatory landscape, i.e. the oligarchy is writing the laws such that they will survive, and their competition will not. This also goes hand-in-hand with protectionist policy which, surprise surprise, is the name of the game for this administration.
How coincidental that I was just reading something related [0] before seeing this post.
"Silicon Valley is bad at politics. If nothing else during Trump 2.0, I think we’ve learned that Silicon Valley doesn’t exactly have its finger on the pulse of the American public. It’s insular, it’s very, very, very, very rich. [...] I expect it to play its hand in a way that any rich 'degen' on a poker winning streak would: overconfidently and badly."
And...
“People don’t take guillotines seriously. But historically, when a tiny group gains a huge amount of power and makes life-altering decisions for a vast number of people, the minority gets actually, for real, killed.”
This is an underrated point because the U.S. failure to rein in the excesses of the ultra-wealthy is not just impacting our domestic politics but actually the politics of every country on earth. Imagine if Jack Ma had eventually personally intervened in U.S. congressional elections? That's pretty much exactly what U.S. oligarchs do to other countries regularly.
You are using a lot of obfuscated and loaded language. What, specifically, are the "excesses of the ultra-wealthy" that need to be reigned in? What do you mean by "personally intervened in U.S. congressional relations"?
s/relations/elections/ -- because Elon et. al don't just intervene in the elections of the country they live in, but actually any country he's interested in -- and uses the U.S. as a bludgeon in that effort, see U.S.-U.K. and U.S.-South Africa relations
How is Elon's editorial control of X something the government needs to (or even should have the power to) "reign in?" How is that not freedom of the press just like the owner of the New York Times having editorial control over his newspaper? Same goes for his donation to the PAC. What is the nefarious activity they are engaged in? Why are they not allowed to exercise their freedom of the press in the same way as any other company?
What's wrong with a sovereign nation taking steps to reduce or eliminate the influence of a non-citizen who they feel is acting against the best interests of that nation?
If a nuclear capable country like France decides that someone like Elon Musk is acting against the best interests of their country they can ask him nicely to stop and if he continues they can use force to reduce the perceived threat.
This all seems completely in line with the day-to-day norms of contemporary society as well as historical norms.
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.
1. X is not, and has never been, "the press".
2. If you were to have categorized them this way previously, botting and pay-for-reach have made it definitely not that way now.
3. It is bad when any individual can shift the politics of the entire globe simply because they have enough money. Feel free to insert your most hated left-wing billionaire instead of Elon, I still believe the same thing.
It's not, since voluntary transactions can happen as a result of said squabbling without resorting to the violence of 'power.' Maybe we need more of that and less of ramming decisions down the throats of the powerless.
Yeah I sometimes think you could have a government you select, e.g. each state could have its own rules and laws and the federal government should not have the power to overrule them. Then you could choose if you wanted immigration or lower taxes or whatever, seems like a good system who can suggest it?
Yes the 10th amendment was supposed to ensure a lot of that that but it was largely waived away during the progressive era and in acts related to the civil war. But cuz slavery for some reason it also has to apply to all sorts of other things that have nothing to do with slaves or even civil rights (in the sense of negative rights) and you are racist or love slaves or something for pointing this out.
Is it? In the US, our constitution is setup to prevent absolute democracy from occurring. The idea of an absolute democracy where the government always acts on the will of the majority as an ideal is hardly a universal value.
Yes, that is my point. You can't take power out of politics, and you can't take money (which is one form of power) out of politics. Best you can do is manage it.
They are obviously related, but it is a very loose correlation. If a billionaire (who does not pay me) gives me an order I will laugh in his face. If a traffic cop gives me an order, I will comply.
Perhaps the billionaire can't buy your willingness to do something, but they can very much affect the material world around you, and therefore, you.
If you rent they can probably find a way to kick you out of your apartment. If someone around you _is_ willing to take an order, influencing what people around you do very much influences you. If they want something from you, and you're not willing to sell it, there will be people willing to steal it, etc.
Money very much is proxy of power. Perhaps not everything can be bought, sure. But money gives you operational range to attempt to impose your will when it doesn't.
for a lot of people in the newly rich class, a kind of virtual currency best compared to a high score in a videogame. Symbolic and representing status. It's why when they attempt to translate it into power this particular class thankfully fares fairly badly, from the article:
"TogetherSF, a similar nonprofit backed by venture capitalist Michael Moritz, crashed and burned after the 2024 elections when its $9.5 million ballot measure to reform the city charter lost to a progressive counter-measure backed by about $117,000."
It has actually been scientifically proven otherwise in crowd theory : with the right setup, the crowd is more effective to take a good decision that the top1 best decision maker.
Exemple : a crowd playing chess may beat the top1 chess player, even though the crowd individually cannot beat him.
Hell no, California has this and it’s a catastrophe. Prop 13 is one of the worst policies enacted by a democratic polity in the 20th century, and has been wrecking the state for decades.
So do you believe in democracy or not? And I do not mean this as a loaded question because the value of democracy is a legitimately arguable point. If the majority of Californians want caps on property tax, then I do not see a good argument that they should not get it that is also compatible with democracy.
Democracy can mean a lot of things: direct, representative, etc. Voting for yourself is different from voting for your constituents. Ideally, the latter will also consider community effects.
If you put a question to the electorate like 'should we tax only people whose last name begins with an X, Y or Z?', it's liable to pass.
Nobody really advocates for Direct Democracy. It isn't viable: 'tyranny of the majority' etc.
Most Western governments are Liberal Democracies - where some issues aren't subject to a vote - partly so that the mob can't persecute outnumbered subgroups.
Why do you think that similar law could not be passed without direct vote? The problem is not direct democracy but the fact that it is being done in a wrong way.
Voting should be done without anonymity, online. One should be able to either vote for everything manually, or delegate the vote to any other person.
If some change is supported by 100% of the voters it should be implemented immediately. But if smaller percent supports the change, then there needs to be a vesting time (e.g. 10 years for 60%, infinity for 50%+1).
This allows people to either trade support for policies (i'll vote yes for your initiative if you vote for mine, or give me money), or to get high level of support locally and try out various laws on local level.
The same site that manages voting should also show detailed budget of city/state/country, where people can see where their taxes are being spent and should be able to redirect the money they have paid.
Billionaire goes: get $10 off at my store, called Scamazon, for these votes (lists votes). And naturally even the $10 is manipulated to be recouped with dynamic pricing.
Prop 13 isnt bad. Its all the money pumped in to political
advertisements that turn this from "1 person, 1 vote" to "1$, 1 vote".
And that goes to the heart of the matter, that corporations aren't people, no matter what some court or law says. And they should be heavily restricted on speech. (I include spending money on political adverts and similar.)
Humans can commit crimes worthy of the death penalty. Wells Fargo shouldn't exist due to their decade long fraud. Nor should United Health Care, for actively denying humans their health coverage until the humans died. Or countless other cases.
When a company gets "killed", and all assets get assigned to the wronged, I'll start to believe they are humans. Haven't seen that yet. Likely won't ever, in the USA.
If you think you've incurred damages due to a company's illegal actions, you can go to court already. If the company is liable and its assets do not suffice to pay full compensation, it enters bankruptcy proceedings and ultimately gets dissolved, just like you're saying.
Prop 13 is a nothingburger. Median homeownership period in california vs nationally is only like 2 years longer. It shouldn't be affecting costs that much in other words since median property is back to market rate every 15 years or so.
And what costs are we talking about anyhow? Tax shortfalls for local government? Decades later that has been rectified through other taxes and funding mechanisms and we still get new roads and schools in california. Housing costs increasing? I would say the fact that cities today are zoned within a few percentage points of present population levels (vs zoned for 10x present population levels pre 1970) is the actual source of that sucking sound from the chest.
That's not really the point. Prop 13 is known to be a huge disincentive to efficient transfers in home ownership - people will strenuously avoid selling their homes and buying something that's closer to the kind of shelter they actually prefer, because they might have to pay a higher assessed property tax if they did that. These effects are very real and well documented.
All reactions are taking this comment seriously, but I think it can be also read as "money equals power" (which I strongly believe - there's some power without money and sometimes money without power, but mostly those two are fungible) - and then pointing to the futility of getting money out of politics, since politics is about power.
But really what people mean is "prevent paid political advertisement of all kinds", which seems about as hard as "get rid of all kinds of advertisement" - at some point, you're back to power, communication, attention.
Hard problems. Probably there's a reason all ancient democracies did not survive.
Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections. If it really did, Hillary Clinton would have been president twice. It's just that candidates with a ton of support tend to raise a ton of money.
Low-information elections are where money seems to help. I think we can throw that on the pile of 'your democracy is only as good as your electorate', and we have an electorate where most people can't even name their US House rep, much less their representatives in state and local politics.
Obviously campaigns need money to operate. The question is whether a random firehose of money will win an election, or if the reason we see that money is because the campaign already has a lot of supporters who want to contribute.
The underlying effects of where the money comes from seems to matter a lot more that that the money exists. If a campaign does not have money, they likely that that campaign does not have supporters. However the opposite is not true. If a campaign has money, it is still not certain whether or not that campaign has any supporters, because that money could all be coming from narrow interest groups.
“Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections“
Your earlier statement, in which you claim that “money doesn’t effect result” followed by a useless distinction of high or low info elections. You’re really trying to dance a fine line of nonsense here.
“ We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between campaign expenditure, campaign contributions and winning probability.”
From the same article you posted and the first academic journal result if you Google “studies on how money influences elections”.
>Our finding is in line with existing results in the literature regarding the US House elections that incumbent candidates gain less from spending, compared to their contender counterparts. This is due to diminishing returns that occur at a certain point, after which incumbent candidates can increase the winning probability only marginally (Green & Krasno, 1988). However, this finding is in contrast with other studies considering electoral systems in Brazil, Japan, or India, where spending effectiveness is equally applicable for both incumbents and contenders (Johnson, 2013; Lee, 2020; Samuels, 2001).
So yea, sorry for providing two scholarly journal articles from two different political eras that support my thesis.
I didn’t realize that this was a bad faith discussion. Now I know.
Not really possible. There's at least 40 more years of citizens united before any practical ability to restrict money in politics becomes constitutional again.
> we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy
Not true. The plurality that voted in the current administration are generally pleased with the state of things. Democracy is working as expected. It was close, but this is what more people wanted.
His approval has been hovering around 40%, which is pretty typical for him and is still higher than his lowest levels in term one. He has a lot of opposition, but most of those are people who voted against him. Those that did vote for him are generally pleased.
On the surface, pretty much any polling you can point to will have trump close to his global minima, despite only being 25% through his term. While he started his polling in the high 40's/low/50's (as usual).
Losing 10 points in a year is pretty radical change. About the same change as term 1, but it did rise after that. I'm not so certain it's rising this time between the dozen Watergate level scandals in the wild.
----
Now, under the surface, the makeup of the approval is more polarized than ever. D's started abysmally and sunk to single digit levels. R's started 90 percent and fell some 4-5 points in comparison, but is still extremely high. The real dips really come from the fallout of Independents cratering like a rock. Maybe I need to review more polling numbers, but that sort of split was truly eye opening. The Independent numbers definitely suggest that there's some voter regret at work in such a short time
Such a group is not a PAC or a Super PAC, but anonymizes donors. It can be used as a vehicle to transfer money to a Super PAC while only naming the dark money group and keeping the donors secret.
> Garry’s List is structured as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, a tax designation that lets the group bankroll campaigns while affording donors a measure of secrecy they would not enjoy if giving directly. They are traditionally known as “dark-money” groups because they can spend on elections without revealing all their donors.
At this point it's just boring to have another rich asshole using government to protect their own interests. There's no substance or principle to it, it's just whatever policies makes CA more favorable to other rich assholes.
Which would be hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating.
All they can talk about is how they’re all going to leave the state if it happens, but then are more than willing to try to spend more stopping it than they would just contributing their fair share in taxes.
Don’t like it? Great, leave - but stop trying to buy elections.
YC is always talking about how important SF is (due to hand waiving reasons like "innovation environment," I would find it highly ironic if a wealth tax was all it took to get top YC people to abandon the state.
You can take your money, but you can't take the pwoerhouse institutions nor good weather California brings. The invisible hand will happily fill any vacancies.
Everyone loves deciding what their "fair share" of other people's net worth (not even income!) is.
Sorry, but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness, and rightfully opens up questions about slippery slope, how "temporary" they claim this to be, and so on.
It's not surprising they are leaving the state or using their resources to try to stop it.
Your statement is ignoring the systematic growing inequality in the US between the ultra wealthy and everyone else. And the use of those funds to influence politics (because of Citizens United, etc) to create polices that benefit themselves - it is for the ultra wealthy a virtuous circle:
>but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness
why? The federal government is taking around 22% from me this year and I'm in a low bracket. If I had the money from my last full time job in tech it'd be 24%. You're saying billionaires shouldn't pay the state they reside in 5% more?
Tanentially, that's only one bracket despite it being triple the salary. gotta love that part time minimum wage work in CA still pushes me that close to my financial peaks.
The government is taking 22% of your INCOME. Not your entire net worth. This is vastly different.
HNW don’t have their net worth sitting in a pool of cash like Donald Duck as much as Reddit would like to believe. Its property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.
to have to go through the administrative burden of valuing all that, and then attempting to liquidate at some reasonable market value just to pay one time levy (allegedly lol) is insane, and will rightfully be challenged in court
> property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.
it is only “unrealized” when they have to pay taxes. but walk into a bank and ask for a loan (which is of course what they do) and all of a sudden that shit is all “realized” and here’s millions of dollars to ya…
>to have to go through the administrative burden of valuing all that, and then attempting to liquidate at some reasonable market value just to pay one time levy (allegedly lol) is insane, and will rightfully be challenged in court
Cool, let's do it. We know the IRS, especially when auditing the rich tend to be one of the highest value employees of government they will sue no matter how cut and clear the tax code is anyway.
Its really weird we're on HN and we're using an excuse of "but it's hard, so let's not do it". I didn't choose tech because it was easy. Why should the government we fund be just as defeatist?
I bet Garry Tan will find that going after him for the wealth tax won’t poll well so he will find a different angle. Thus it won’t be a debate about a wealth tax, it will just be the standard make your opponent look bad in order to unseat him.
Ok, so what is the problem here? Why can't Gary Tan engage in standard political activity like anybody else? This is his fundamental right as a citizen of a democracy.
The issue is unlimited spending. Rich people can tilt the political system to benefit themselves by their ability to spend unlimited and then push for things that enrich themselves like lower taxes that doesn’t benefit society at large.
The biggest example of this in the US is the health system that is more expensive and has worse outcomes than other countries. There is a huge and growing gap in the us between ultra wealthy and the rest of the population and it is a virtuous circle for the ultra wealthy with their ability to spend unlimited in politics.
So what? The constitution guarantees you equal rights under the law and an equal vote in each election. It does not guarantee you equal political influence. Same as you have the right to freedom of speech and of the press, but you are not guaranteed an audience.
No one is stopping him, but they would be if the people in this comment section had their way. You are absolutely not required to cheer him on, and in fact you have the right to oppose him. But that isn't happening here. Nobody in these comments is exercising their first amendment rights to argue against any of his political opinions. They are using their first amendment rights to argue that the government should use its monopoly to restrict Gary Tan's right to make his argument at all.
I want to do some improvements on my house. So I take out a home equity loan. Oops! Actually since my house is worth $500K more than when I bought it, now I have to pay $100K to the government since the gain is now realized by using the asset as collateral!
You get points for effective use of rhetoric, but it's more of a solvable challenge and not a deal breaker.
The goal of a borrowing tax would be to prevent someone with a a $200 mil stock portfolio living off the "buy, borrow, die" strategy and not home equity loans on mere middle class millionaires.
Capital gains, for example, on a primary residence already have an exclusion of a certain amount. There's no reason a borrowing tax can't kick in only after one has let's say 10mil in assets or securities.
Heck, you could even exempt primary residences regardless of value, so you should be fine
I mean most taxes like this have an 'above X amount' clause. Such as the gains you get taxed on when selling your home. California it's $500K in gains if you are married so extrapolating that your scenario would be covered.
The only reasonable argument I can think of is that the fantastic wealth accumulated at the top was substantially driven by the $37 trillion of debt the USA finds itself in. And it needs to be clawed back somehow.
It's actually much simpler than that. We need to pay down the debt, and because the rich have most of the money they are going to need to do most of the paying down whether or not they directly are responsible for it or benefited from it. It's simple math. But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid. Income an capital gains rates can be increased.
> I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it?
One reason a wealth tax is controversial and less precedented is that it taxes unrealized gains.
Another alternative would be to raise taxes on high income rather than wealth. In the 1950s people were taxed at something like 90% for every dollar over $400,000. We could go back to something like that but adjust that $400,000 to something like a couple of million, to match inflation.
This essentially puts a cap on wages. The money you make below the cap would be taxed at the same rates we pay today. Once you get above that amount, you keep most of what falls below, but the government would take almost all of what's above the cap.
I think if you do it that way you would also have to tax interest and capital gains similarly to wages. That's another loophole that's very commonly exploited in the last few decades, investment income gets taxed lower.
- government lobbying for tax codes and loopholes, made specifically to benefit them
- abuse of various systems like H1B's and even SNAP (e.g. Wal-Mart) to subsidize their lack of payment to american taxpayers
- extracting value from public research (funded by taxpayers) and creating private products for sale. Sometimes they may even try to patent such breakthroughs for themelves despite public invention
- engaging in dark patterns and anti-competitive, anti-union behavior to extract wealth in ways that would potentially be proven illegal... had they not paid off the judges
- Performing untold of, actually illegal grifts (cases like SBF are only the tip of the iceberg)
And at this rate we may have to throw in "abusing funds to protect against the most heinous criminals imaginable".
Need I go on? There's pratically no such thing as a billionaire who earned their net worth.
A wealth tax is a great idea if your goal is to make everyone a whole lot poorer especially in the longer term, and not very much otherwise. It's pretty much saying that you want pure populist envy to be the priority, over and to the detriment of long-term prosperity.
Well on the bright side it's a complete mask off moment for the tech community. I think it is good for these people to expose themselves to the public. They will show you who they really are if you let them.
“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects”. -- Louis Brandeis
I'd prefer to see more of them do so, personally. That said, to watch Tan wading into a local fistfight about school curriculum and housing zoning and whatnot in the age of ICE abduction, targetted political prosecution and wanton macroeconomic regulatory chaos seems... frustrating.
I mean, I kinda agree with him about most of the centrist stuff. But really, Gary? This is what you need to be spending your money and time on?
I wouldn't even be surprised at this point. Seems like the files will unironically unravel 90% of the elite class at this rate.
What an absolute pathetic hill to die on. You have the riches to fund entire industries, explore the whole world or even beyond, to please any hedonistic pleasure you have... but many chose to do one of the 3 unthinkable things in modern humanity.
I dunno about "demand". But sure, I think most of us would prefer people prioritize like we do. And in particular many of us would view this kind of hobby project as tone deaf and tell people about that in public.
My freedom to tell Tan (or you) that he's being an idiot stems from the same place as his freedom to spend his own money on what he wants.
Hot take: what has democracy done for us lately? Besides re-electing Donald Trump?
If something can't go on forever, it will eventually stop. That applies to any system that gives stupid people the same political voice as the rest of the electorate. I mean, it seems kind of obvious, doesn't it?
>what has democracy done for us lately? Besides re-electing Donald Trump?
You have the order backwards. This is their exact strategy; spend decades breaking government then have the breakers say "see? government is broken!". Lack of functioning democracy got us Donald Trump.
Why do you think this year they are so gung ho on trying to disenfranchise voters for a midterm? Because they know they are cooked if democracy starts to work again. If nothing else, Mamdami's 6 weeks show exactly how a "government that works for its people" can work. Let's keep pushing for that.
I hate that their politic's explicit goal is to make my, yours, and everyone else's lives actively worse. Government is not a business.
We're not getting better healthcare, more and better jobs, more efficient transportation, better city infrastructure, nor more houses. We aren't even getting the cool things shown in cyberpunk dystopias. Hell, we can't even ask for them to follow the law these days.
Why would I want to support them getting into politics? There's a difference betweeen them having different thoughts on how fund, say, self drving cars (which I'm not a fan of) and then all of that above.
People extracting value from labor to enrich themselves at the expense of society and then using those riches to further corrupt society, to the point where a few dudes own most of the country does not align with my politics.
That's why I'm a socialist and I would invite anyone who thinks things might not be going in the right direction to consider that as well.
The Mission Local is a good source for hyperlocal Bay Area news, but it does have a strong SF leftist/progressive political tilt in most of its articles, and Gary Tan is a favorite boogieman for these types. Here's what they have to say about his malign influence in the article:
> But the operation is also a media venture: Garry’s List started with a blog pillorying public-sector unions as “special interests,” attacking the ongoing teachers’ strike, and denouncing the proposed billionaire tax.
- Public sector unions are special interests. This is a plain fact.
- The current teacher's strike in San Francisco, even if it succeeds, will only push the district into insolvency, prompting a state takeover. The state will then cut much more aggressively. Maybe this would be a good thing though, although probably not what the union intended. Advocates of the strike are literally demanding the district spend its reserves on a couple years of raises.
- I'm certainly no billionaire, but the proposed tax will do nothing more than push the extremely small and mobile group of billionaires to take their business elsewhere. It's unlikely to raise tax revenues over the long run.
> the proposed tax will do nothing more than push the extremely small and mobile group of billionaires to take their business elsewhere
This is often claimed but has yet to be shown to actually be true. Billionaires want to live in the nicest places with the best amenities just like everyone else.
But let's pretend for the moment that it is true. Good. Billionaires are not a net positive influence anywhere.
> The privacy absolutists will tell you that license plate cameras are “Orwellian.” But here’s what I know: unsolved crime means more innocent people get hurt and maimed and killed. Flock has audit trails. There’s accountability. The people who benefit from keeping murders unsolved aren’t victims—they’re criminals.
jesus christ. assuming he's not going to start syndicating this, who is this even pandering to?
Tan isn't exactly non-violet either, so more confused on the tangent:
>He once tweeted that seven of the city’s supervisors — all progressives — should “die slow, motherfuckers” in a late-night polemic. The tweet, which Tan said was a joke, prompted hateful mail and police reports.
“Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew,” he wrote in a since-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, to his 408,000 followers during the early morning hours of Saturday. “Die slow motherfuckers.”
Tupac must have been rolling over in his grave, drunk or not this was absolute cringe and unacceptable from a public figure.
Among the many weird things that the U.S. have but real democratic countries don't, the most promiscuous of them is this flow of private money into politics.
Campaign financing, U.S. style, is just legalized bribing. In any healthy democracy it would be illegal. In the U.S. is just the way things are.
Watching things from outside, it feels like the US is a pay-to-win democracy. It's hard to say where exactly the line between lobbying vs. corruption is drawn.
he's been "clarfying his position" for a decade at this point. This isn't new behavior in the slightest, and it's only been more emboldened as of late.
I don't know if I agree or not with his views, but the fact that he's moving from complaining about something, to doing something about his beliefs, has convinced me to move from a negative to a significantly positive view of him, as a person; to reiterate, regardless of whether I agree with said views.
The will to fight for what one believes in - I think we can all agree that is an admirable human trait that would result, for those who do follow his views, in him being labeled as a hero and defender of people's rights.
"Garry's List" is just straight up AI slop. This is a window into the coming AI-enabled era of astroturfing from wealthy individuals for their pet causes.
I don't think the elite think all voters are dumb more like they think they're easy to manipulate to vote for something (which is largely true). Anecdotally I easily get manipulated by the type of information I consume. I occassionally catch it after the fact or a conversation with others but there's no telling how much I've just accepted that's manipulated.
From that angle it's a game of who has the money, power, and diatribution to enact this manipulation.
Twitter being a prime example. Is Elon "right"? Maybe but the main point is it doesn't matter as he has the distribution.
If you have money but low to no distribution -> you do what gary is doing. Maybe he'd be interested in removing rights to vote but someone like Zuck would NOT because he has outsized ability to influence as he sees fit.
It's way too early to fix California. The average California voter, which HN is a good sampling of by the way, really believes that California is fine, and that there's no corruption or grift, and that they can tax billionaires more without them simply leaving the state (because CA is magical and unique (it's the 4th largest economy in the world, don't you know!) and they'll come crawling back to be a part of it). It's going to take awhile for people to change. As the saying goes "science progresses one funeral at a time". People put ideology above the evidence in front of their eyes. (That "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command" Orwell quote is making the rounds, which is ironic because most people don't need a party to tell them to disbelieve uncomfortable facts!) We have to wait for a new generation to grow up with the visible corruption to fully internalize it. Then it can be fixed. I can't help but think that Tan's efforts would be better spent trying to get a startup scene going somewhere where you can park your car without getting the windows smashed.
>and that they can tax billionaires more without them simply leaving the state (because CA is magical and unique (it's the 4th largest economy in the world, don't you know!) and they'll come crawling back to be a part of it)
more like because data from other wealth taxes has shown that millionaires don't leave that easily. If they are, they are replaced by others
It fell, like much of the post COVID world. But somehow, I don't think that 600m tax opportunity cost contributed to 112 billion dollar drop in GDP. And then after that it basically stayed flat (rose by 1 billion, or.2% rise)
So, not too convinced this is a net loss for society. Studies in New York (pre Mamdmi) show that more people will come in than leave if the area is desired enough.
I didn’t say the tax gap caused the drop in GDP. I did say the capital flight caused the tax to wildly underperform revenue estimates, which is objectively true.
I love how this goes from “there’s no evidence wealthy move” to, when presented with evidence wealthy move, “well, ok, I’m not convinced this is a net loss for society”
It won't work. The Trump admin has so thoroughly betrayed its voters that independent voters no longer want anything to do with billionaires like the all-in people lying to them for 4 years before an election.
To me, tech entrepreneurship looks more like some form of "lemon socialism." It feels more centrally planned than ever, and a company's success has much more to do with your relationships with capital than anything else. It's why we're seeing so much money invested into a bunch of similar takes on AI. Founders with a real vision of the future aren't really accepted into VC that has almost wholly accepted the FOMO strategy of investment.
I used to hold a lot of respect for Paul Graham and his essays, but I've realized his stances on things are pretty elementary, and largely come back to his ego or wealth management. People like Graham and Tan don't seem to really care about human flourishing, and they certainly don't seem to have any coherent vision of the future. Graham, like Andreessen, was technically good enough during a veritable tech gold rush, and Graham's lieutenants like Tan and Altman were lucky more than anything--just in the right place at the right time versus having started anything of value.
I am *absolutely* cynical and jaded when it comes to tech nowadays, so no need to call me out there. These people remind me of the high modernists, that tech will solve all problems, and we don't have to care too much as to how we solve those problems. Just handwave, and AI will solve all problems. But I think how we solve problems matters, and the entrepreneurship meritocracy that Tan and Graham allude to does not exist, and it never did.
I just find it abhorrent that while 15% of American households are food insecure, a company like Anthropic spent millions on a superbowl ad just lamenting OpenAI's ad strategy. Or that the Trump administration dropped a FTC case against Pepsi and Walmart for colluding to price out grocery competition. Or that Facebook and Google have been shown to have pushed for apps to addict people to their slop content. Or that tech capex this year alone rivals the Louisiana Purchase or the amount America spent on building out the railroads[1].
We're not solving the right problems because capital is entirely disconnected from the every day reality of Americans in this country. But by all means, let's aim to replace 50% of white collar workers with AI and handwave that prices will come down.
It's pretty simple: you don't get to that kind of wealth without having a few screws loose in the ethics department. There are some exceptions but they are just there to confirm the rule.
I do think that if this current system is the result of democracy + the internet we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy.