[vicnov]

not a fan of defending billionairs, but is mostly a useless populist slogan*

You can do full Dekulakization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization) on them and it won't change anything in current economic situation.

Confiscating 100% of all billionaire wealth (~$8.4T) covers - ~1.1 years of federal spending (~$7.4T) - ~4.4 years of deficits (~$1.9T) - ~23% of debt (~$36T):

and pretty much kills US ability to rely on private sector (and I dont think we have a way to rely on public sector)

The sooner we all start focusing on things that actually matter -- like improving democracy, quality of education (btw spending more may not solve it) etc -- the faster we will improve situation.

Cities like NYC pretty much can afford UBI (look at per capita spending on homelessness, public schools etc). Taxing more may not be the answer.

*it should be studied what motivates people to repeat it

[cloverich]

IMO its a useful populist slogan because it solves a different problem: The power that comes with being a billionaire. E.g. its all well and good to focus on fixing democracy instead, but if (some specific) billionaires are focused on deploying their wealth to destroy democracy, then what?

I've generally come around to believe that we need to limit wealth from a purely power / control point of view.

[scottyah]

I think it's a great system of checks and balances- billionaires are only created by dealing with a lot of people and successfully solving a lot of problems. Once they have it, it's work to hold on to the money though. Politicians don't really produce anything measurable to show if they've helped or hurt society, and so they work to devalue the meaning of the dollar.

If you get rid of wealthy people's power, what takes its place other than politicians?

[godwinson__4-8]

Hi again. You are definitely correct on the first point. But the second point shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economy works. Our economy highly favors capital over income. The only way to make billions and then lose it all is to be a complete degenerate. They will always be wealthy. The amount of money these people lose on a given day as the stock market bobs around demonstrates that once achieved, money in the hands of the wealthy operates on a level the average American really can't fathom. Over time, they will always continue to do well. Deploying capital, once earned, is not hard. If it is work, it must be one of easiest things to do in the world. It's like saying trust fund babies have to work hard. If it was hard to hold onto wealth our society would be an extremely different one. It's in fact so easy that a lot of the economics around startup investing comes from the phenomena that rich people get bored with their own money. Why settle for boglehead style returns when you can yolo millions of dollars into a potential > 10x return. How do you even spend a billion dollars? You really can't. The only way is to put it into things were again, it is far more advantaged than actual income. Yes there is some work involved in vetting and talent etc. But don't buy into all the hype. A lot of it comes down to luck and getting to the point where you have the capital to spread your bets, knowing the economics mean that even if you lose, you will still win. It's the getting there that is hard. Not the staying there.

It's very important to acknowledge this. Because this wealth is retained long after w/e the societal problem addressed that created the wealth is solved. It is an open question how to deal with that problem, which becomes a societal issue in its own right. I however also share your hesitancy to turn over said gains to politicians, who don't seem to solve any problems or produce any solutions. Unfortunately we shouldn't also forget that they are society's elected proxies. Perhaps we can strive for a system were both politicians and billionaires are weakened in furtherance of some notion of the common good. The idea of "reinvestment" need not be either a wholly public or private enterprise. Most successful societies understand the checks and balances lie somewhere in thinking less in terms of a public/private dichotomy and more like a public/private partnership. The United States used to operate more like this, before the Reagan era ushered in a time of pronounced deference to capital [1]. It would really not take much to bring things back into a more reasonable balance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics

[danans]

> Confiscating 100% of all billionaire wealth (~$8.4T) covers - ~1.1 years of federal spending (~$7.4T) - ~4.4 years of deficits (~$1.9T) - ~23% of debt (~$36T):

Adding a wealth tax doesn't mean eliminating existing income taxes.

> Cities like NYC pretty much can afford UBI (look at per capita spending on homelessness, public schools etc).

Perhaps , but what about poor states like West Virginia or Alabama. It's not universal if they don't receive benefits also.

[godwinson__4-8]

Just remember those states are already handout states. They take more money in than they give back. They also have some bizarre cultural hatred for the blue states and cities that make this country an economic superpower. The idea NYC shouldn't do its best to take care of its own because people in Alabama aren't getting enough is nonsensical. Imo they already get far more than they deserve.

[scottyah]

It mostly goes back to when mortgages (then other debts) were handled by local banks by law, then people in NYC changed those laws so all the money was routed to them. It's not like NYC is just purely more productive, it just found a way to ensure all money must go through them, and they take some of it as almost a form of a new tax. Not that this more central form of banking is all bad, but when almost all the "real" work (farming, building, factories, etc) is done outside the city and they have no real say in the matter it leads to resentment.

[godwinson__4-8]

This point is overly generous.

Contingency around wealth occurs in myriad ways. It's not like other blue cities are not wealthy. Obviously the financialization of the economy is quite evident in New York in particular, as it is in places like London or Shanghai or Hong Kong. This was often preceded by times when these cities were also notable as ports and more "real" (to use your phrase) centers of trade. Other blue cities do well for different reasons. The fact is the kind of "real" work you have described has been devalued over a long period of history, and going back to that is not desirable. Even in Roman times, Rome was not were the food was made. If you are a country today, as back then, were the greatest thing you can achieve is "food" and "building" you are considered a weak society. These are things humanity has already solved for centuries ago. Since the dawn of civilization. That's what civilization is. Advances since have always come with some degree of "financialization" or "service economy". If that makes you upset then you can give up the medicine, peace, science, etc that comes with civilization and go back to when "real" work was extremely valued because you had to kill for your food everyday. What could be more "real" than that?

I understand the resentment of poverty to wealth. This is not what I am referring to when it comes to Alabama and New York. The cultural resentment towards NYC in particular from these places is egregious. It's not about wealth, it's about religion, it's about diversity, and it's about demonization.

It's become such a thoughtless exercise on the mainstream right to essentially claim that people in New York City are not "real Americans". That they don't have "American values". To the point where when people like Ted Cruz get openly challenged on this it feels like something of a revelation. The moment Trump turned another such diatribe against Cruz was another strong signal he was going to take over that party.[1] And yet this lazy rhetorical convention has not retired. It is disgraceful. Why do major political candidates in a system with only two parties engage in such transparent attacks on a city of millions of their fellow citizens? Obama made one little "cling to their guns" comment and was forced to prostrate himself in apology. Meanwhile in these "red" states treating New Yorkers or other blue states as almost satanic is par for the course. This is not the resentment of wealth alone.

It would be one thing if it was just empty political rhetoric. But it is not. People in New York do not obsess over people in Alabama. We don't fantasize about sending our national guard into their states, or stealing their elections, or deporting their populations who don't look like us. We don't obsess about crime rates in their cities, which are worse in many red states per capita than our own. We tolerate the fact that most guns used in inner city crime, our so-called "gun free zones" come from guns in poorly regulated red states, as if the southside of Chicago houses weapon manufacturing factories. As far as I can tell the resentment from people in Alabama or Arkansas and the like comes from wanting to return to an age where they could pelt young black girls with hatred and abuse for wanting to go to school and having to suffer the federal government sending troops there to tell them to act like the civilized society they claim to be [2]. If you do not acknowledge a very specific type of hatred has been festering in these places for sometime I would suggest you are not paying enough attention and need to reacquaint yourself with your history. If we didn't have to protect people like the Little Rock Nine the same resentment would not exist. When Southern plantation owners could depend on enslaved labor, the gap between the North and the South was not so vast. Many of the framers understood in the long run this was not sustainable, and that a civil war was likely inevitable if "all men are created equal" was to actually succeed.

Along these lines, something we may wish to consider in the future is returning to a spirit of federalism, that is, a weaker federal government and more autonomous states. That is, provided retrograde states like Alabama or Arkansas do not once again use such a framework as a pretext to perpetuate a system of racial slavery onto their own citizens. Perhaps the average person in Alabama has learned enough that for the time being the best thing for them is to leave them not only more in charge of their own affairs, but far less in charge of our own. Who will they blame for their condition then? If the states somehow replicated a civil war style secession in peace would Alabama suddenly be enriched? Would the price of food suddenly disobey the laws of demand and supply? Is their plan to make no money at all? These are people who don't think tariffs affect prices. Then when their farmers predictably lose money blue states get robbed to pay the subsidy. All while this constant drumbeat of cultural war emanates from these places.

Imo we don't need to bend over backwards to indulge their resentment. We have suffered these types of people long enough. We already have debates within NYC about wealth and poverty. We don't need to add the ingredients that come from places like Alabama or West Virginia. Hillbilly Elegy style takes would be a little more palatable if people like JD Vance didn't come in and transparently serve the Epstein criminal class and call Americans who don't want their neighbors rounded up like dogs "domestic terrorists". I'll take John Brown over JD Vance any day of the week.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM6qRl3dSME [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine

[danans]

> The idea NYC shouldn't do its best to take care of its own because people in Alabama aren't getting enough is nonsensical. Imo they already get far more than they deserve.

Absent a federal wealth redistribution, yes NYC must do its best for it's residents. I'm not disagreeing with that. A federal wealth tax, however, would tax Alabama billionaires as much as it would tax NYC billionaires.

[godwinson__4-8]

Good point. It is a good thing as you point out to remember that even so called "poor states" also suffer from pretty severe wealth inequality, in some cases perhaps more stark than one would find in the blue cities, if only because the floor can appear far wider and lower.