
An open letter to Paul Graham - jm3
https://medium.com/@RickWebb/an-open-letter-to-paul-graham-3d4f3369fe76
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gexla
> If a billionaire is taxed 80% on the year he or she earns that billion, they
> will still be worth $200 million.

I have never been a billionaire, so I don't know how this works. How do you
earn a billion dollars? I'm guessing in most cases this would be paper wealth
(ownership of businesses) and you would pay taxes on that wealth when you cash
out. I'm also guessing that there are loads of loopholes here and that almost
nobody would subject themselves to an 80% capital gains tax.

Edit: And of course, rich people can lobby to create more loopholes. Poor
people just have to pay their taxes.

~~~
morganvachon
> _And of course, rich people can lobby to create more loopholes. Poor people
> just have to pay their taxes._

Indeed; it's been that way since the dawn of Man, and will likely continue
until we're extinct. Every civilization there has ever been was conceived by
the wealthy and built on the backs of the poor, with the tax man sitting in
the middle pulling the strings.

The last two people on earth will likely die fighting over which one owes the
other more.

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bonobo3000
What? I get the article was provocative, but this doesn't make any sense..

* If a startup/piece of technology takes $X to make (VC money, costs of running business etc.) and makes more than $X, it DOES grow the pie. This is almost a definition of the word technology (before it came to mean tech related to computers specifically). A skilled person can take $10 of wood and make a $50 chair out of it - thats value creation.

* The progressive tax on rich - PG was saying basically the same thing here, not sure what you are attacking. quote:

> For example, let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the
> process. That's much more likely to work than attacking wealth in the hope
> that you will thereby fix poverty. [9] And if there are people getting rich
> by tricking consumers or lobbying the government for anti-competitive
> regulations or tax loopholes, then let's stop them.

I think he was just talking about rich people kind of being demonized by the
media, they like to paint a story of rich as the oppressive ruling class which
everyone else needs to rise up against. That only divides people, there are
peaceful solutions too..

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> I think he was just talking about rich people kind of being demonized by
the media, they like to paint a story of rich as the oppressive ruling class
which everyone else needs to rise up against. That only divides people, there
are peaceful solutions too..

I think what divides people in the first instance is that 20% of them hold 80%
of the wealth (or similar).

"Peaceful solutions" is an interesting turn of phrase also. I guess you could
see the exchange of wealth as a kind of war, but in that case the person who
took all the money for themselves and left very little for everyone else to go
by is actively trying to win that war. In that sense the only "peaceful
solution" is to play dead.

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NhanH
Even at 0% GDP growth, the total assets of the nation is still growing, so the
pie of wealth is growing as well. Did I miss something?

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johngalt
> So by taxing the wealthy and spending it on services, we can better ensure
> that the level playing field you allude to continues to exist.

You could tax the rich at whatever rate you feel appropriate and still be
deficit spending at current spending levels. So I guess the good services you
expect should already be there.

Plenty of tax money goes into the government coffers, and they spend even more
than what goes in. It's rare to see good services in return.

------
orionblastar
No matter how well you market or sell basic income, it has to be paid with by
taxes on someone.

The people being taxed for basic income will feel like they are being targeted
or hunted.

We are reaching a social security crisis as the Baby Boomers retire and there
will become more people on social security than working to pay taxes to
support it. Either the fed increases taxes on workers or they print up more
money and go into debt.

Whomever becomes President in 2016 is going to have to clean up social
security as well as address this income inequality issue and basic income.

In all honesty if you put a 80% tax on the rich, they will just move out of
the USA to a nation with lower taxes and move their business and jobs there.

~~~
Mz
I agree with you (previously:
[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-
obsol...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-
before-we-opened.html)), but I don't see where this article is talking about
basic income. Did I miss the reference?

Thanks!

~~~
orionblastar
One of the ways to address income inequality is to implement a basic income.
While the article didn't mention it, it sort of hinted at it. In order to make
a poor person have enough money to get a good education you have to give them
a basic income so they can live off it and pay for their education with it.

Many nations in the EU have some form of basic income, but their populations
are smaller than the USA and they don't pay much for their military because
NATO protects them.

~~~
chipsy
> Many nations in the EU have some form of basic income

No, they don't.

