Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | kansface's comments login

What is your management stick?

Can't we consider the cost of energy as a general tax on the economy? If all economic output is N% cheaper in the US, we'd expect compounding effects.


Why not just read a book or two?


I’d recommend a Japanese platform bed.


> They seem like a fantastic solution

for which problem? They don't replace the need for a framework nor do they make writing in one easier. They don't make dev ex better. What is the actual use case? If they were highly useful, they would be used.


Creating self-contained components that don't rely on loading extra management code, in a standard way.

Maybe they aren't useful because the modern trend of web development is to not care about speed or size as much.


What percent of the rest of the population is confused by not using red & green?


The choice of color here is not obvious to me. For example, greener could mean more money, i.e. more expensive. Also red connotes debt/negative in accounting, while black is surplus/positive. If you're eating a tomato, red is good and green is bad (unless fried I guess).


>What percent of the rest of the population is confused by not using red & green?

Presumably none if you build your site in an accessible manner. It costs basically nothing to accommodate the 1/12 of the population that has color-blindness.


> I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax

I very strongly believe you to be wrong:

1. Unrealized gains is unworkable. Billionaires will spend tens or hundreds of millions yearly to avoid paying literally billions in taxes because the expected value is net positive. The IRS won't win chasing down money scattered across the globe. This is not a productive use of capital.

2. Taxing unrealized gains causes extreme capital flight. This is _bad_ for the US.

3. Taxing unrealized gains will lead to corporations and startups incorporating outside the US and keeping their assets outside of the US. This is _bad_ for the US.

4. Founders would very quickly loose control of the companies they started, including before they exit. That is really bad for startups and the ecosystem.

5. This is almost certainly illegal in the US at the federal level.

6. Every tax for the wealthy eventually targets the middle class.


1. Capital gains tax is already essentially optional for the richest now with various tricks. Of course taxing people is difficult, are you saying because it’s hard let’s not bother?

2. Where will the capital go (all the best investments are in the US), if this happens lots of great businesses will be available to buy at a discount to people with smaller than $100m stock portfolios

3. Potentially true but I would still set up my business in the US and just pay the tax, if I make $100m it’s $20m for the government and I rate that as a great deal to be honest.

4. Why is a one off 20% tax going to lose founders control, this is only about companies post IPO.

5. IANAL are you?

6. If the rich continue to be able to accumulate wealth without paying taxes on it forever I think that is the road to serfdom personally. Taxation of the rich will make everyone better off. I pay over 50% tax in Europe, maybe if the rich were paying their share this could be reduced!


5. This has been brought up so many times by in the past few years and is very unlikely to pass scrutiny.

---

The federal government has the ability to tax "income." Unrealized gains are not income as gains have not been clearly realized.

The closest legal definition for "income" comes from:

The Glenshaw Glass case

In Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., 348 U.S. 426 (1955), the Supreme Court laid out what has become the modern understanding of what constitutes "gross income" to which the Sixteenth Amendment applies, declaring that income taxes could be levied on "accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion". Under this definition, any increase in wealth—whether through wages, benefits, bonuses, sale of stock or other property at a profit, bets won, lucky finds, awards of punitive damages in a lawsuit, qui tam actions—are all within the definition of income, unless the Congress makes a specific exemption, as it has for items such as life insurance proceeds received by reason of the death of the insured party, gifts, bequests, devises and inheritances, and certain scholarships.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_U...

See case law section


> 3. Potentially true but I would still set up my business in the US and just pay the tax, if I make $100m it’s $20m for the government and I rate that as a great deal to be honest.

You've described the wrong type of tax. I make $100m and 20% goes to the government is not controversial. It's my business is valued at $100m and so I pay $20m to the government regardless of how much my company is "making".

> 4. Why is a one off 20% tax going to lose founders control, this is only about companies post IPO.

Got it. So no more IPOs and every public company is about to go private.


If you have 100M in unrealized capital gains it should be no big deal to sell some of those gains to cover the tax. Just convert the shares to non voting shares if you want to keep control.


Why does no one read the actual proposal before commenting?

It specifically states that this only applies to individuals with 80% of their wealth in tradeable assets. No founder is going to lose control because this doesn’t apply to them!


Surely that would just mean no IPOs ever again right?


I can IPO, sell some shares and make billions but have to take 25% in tax or I can not do that and what happens? How do I turn my non IPO shares into profit? Presumably if you liquidate to cash you owe the capital gains right?

You’re still going to end up making a higher valuation on the stock market than you would trying other means to avoid this tax.


I'd love to. I'm genuinely interested in how this policy could be implemented and would love to read their suggestions. I think it's very hard to pull off successfully. Can you provide a link?

I thought Harris was adopting the President's 2025 budget proposal [1], which doesn't specifically state this is specific to tradable assets, but according to the downvoters I'm wrong about that. As far as I can tell it provides no comment on how "wealth" is determined.

[1] https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/tax-policy/revenue-p...

I suppose the whole argument is moot anyway as the President doesn't pass a budget, Congress does. And this document is really about communicating priorities, not actual policy.

And if one wants to get really persnickety, Harris didn't actually say anything. Some people working for her campaign did.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/us/politics/kamala-harris...


Shares of a company are tradeable assets, no? Maybe not before the company is public depending on wording, but definitely after.


Because that detail, like the $100milliom limit are irrelevant details subject to change. (Most) People have the ability to synthesize issue and are worried of the proposal's fundamental core:

"Do we want the government to tax unrealized gains?"

No. I find it very scary frankly, even though I believe that the top 0.01% of the US population are parasitical and their financial and political clout should be reined in.


This is correct. Understanding is math.


I wonder what percentage of cyber attacks come from a country that extradites to the US in practice? I didn't find any handy statistics online.


Jamming signals is way easier in that regard, but I don’t know how effective it is in practice.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: