Grotesque stock valuations for companies.

[Ziggurat]

The claim is the rich are not taxed enough.

That was *a* claim. It wasn’t the claim that started this subthread. Let me remind you of the exchange that started it:

ANY attempt to tax the wealthy more than the poors must be framed as Commies!!11@@1!

We already tax the wealthy more than the poor.

Really?
Surely, you are not talking percentages, which is the only amount that makes sense.

 

[theprestige]

But pay attention to fewer jobs, worse pay, rising prices, crumbling infrastructure, and bad or no healthcare.

Is it malicious envy to want basic needs fulfilled? Is it malicious envy to want every American to have a roof over their heads? Is it malicious envy to want to see Tesla and Amazon employees receive a living wage? To be able to feed their children well? See them get a good education?

Tell me, just how imbalanced does it have to get before you say, "perhaps this has gone too far?"

None of these goals requires a new wealth tax. You should be talking about systemic reform, not cash grabs.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

the question is: do you want the US to be a Rich Country, or do you want some Americans to be rich?
because right now, the US is deeply indebted, and going into a lot more debt at a time of rising interest rates.
Now is the time to massively raise revenue, or future taxpayers will have to pay a lot more.
And it is just a fact that there is a lot more money to be found at the top wealth/income end than at the lower middle and bottom.

Given the number of billionaires moving to Argentina, I guess they have decided to plunder the US and then let it sink.

 

[theprestige]

To be clear, when I'm talking about percentage, I'm talking about percentage of total tax revenue. The top 10% of earners pay about 60% of all the taxes. Even though Warren Buffet's capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than his secretary's salary, he's so much wealthier than her that he's still paying an outsized portion of the country's total tax revenue.

 

[Ziggurat]

the question is: do you want the US to be a Rich Country, or do you want some Americans to be rich?
because right now, the US is deeply indebted, and going into a lot more debt at a time of rising interest rates.
Now is the time to massively raise revenue, or future taxpayers will have to pay a lot more.

It's rather telling that in your response to rising debt, you don't seem to consider the option to reduce spending.

 

[theprestige]

the question is: do you want the US to be a Rich Country, or do you want some Americans to be rich?
because right now, the US is deeply indebted, and going into a lot more debt at a time of rising interest rates.
Now is the time to massively raise revenue, or future taxpayers will have to pay a lot more.
And it is just a fact that there is a lot more money to be found at the top wealth/income end than at the lower middle and bottom.

Given the number of billionaires moving to Argentina, I guess they have decided to plunder the US and then let it sink.

You should be talking about systemic reform, not a new wealth tax.

 

[acbytesla]

That's not true (well, it is in the case of my hypothetical trillion dollar company).

A share is a piece of a company. That company has an intrinsic value. It has assets and liabilities plus - hopefully - income.

A dollar is a piece of US government debt. The government tends to demand dollars off you in the form of taxes. If you don't have the dollars it demands, you can go to prison.

This is the point I have been trying to make. Musk is the head of two companies. One a small car company that has produced about 30 billion dollars in profit over two decades. The other, a space launch company that hasn't produced a profit.

None of these goals requires a new wealth tax. You should be talking about systemic reform, not cash grabs.

Nonsense.

 

[TragicMonkey]

You should be talking about systemic reform, not a new wealth tax.

Both.

 

[Ziggurat]

This is the point I have been trying to make. Musk is the head of two companies. One a small car company that has produced about 30 billion dollars in profit over two decades.

The future value of Tesla depends very heavily on how self driving car technology evolves. Right now, they have the lead. If they maintain or extend that lead, that could be very valuable. This is speculative value, but that's a large part of what the stock market is for: betting on the future.

The other, a space launch company that hasn't produced a profit.

Much like Amazon, any lack of profit is due to heavy investment in development, it is not the sign of a struggling business. And again, stock prices are to a significant extent a bet on the future, and that future includes the possibility of some major advancements with Starship. But even now, even discounting what Starship might become, SpaceX is already an extremely valuable company. They already dominate the global space launch industry with Falcon. You don't have to bet on future developments to recognize the considerable value SpaceX has already demonstrated.

 

[theprestige]

My city keeps trying to tax its way out of its disastrous policies on homelessness. All they can think to do is raise more and more taxes, on lower and lower income levels. It never seems to occur to them that we've got 190 senior directors* of social safety net services, each pulling down six figure salaries every year. The issue is that the city prefers to outsource services for the homeless to private non-profit agencies. These organizations receive a lot of taxpayer funding, but don't have much to show for it, and their accounting is often opaque to the citizens.

The solution here isn't to tax people more, and give more money to these organizations. The solution is to provide these services via a department of the city government, with transparent accounting and more direct accountability to the taxpayers. Contra TGZ, raising taxes to fund a broken system is what impoverishes a community.

It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain why our city council prefers to funnel tax money to their chosen NGOs, regardless of results. What I still can't figure out is why so many of my fellow citizens seem to prefer it as well. As far as I can tell, it's just a characteristic idiocy of the left. The right professes trickle-down economics. The left professes wealth redistribution.

We're already among the top spenders per capita in primary education, but our education quality is still poor.

We're already among the top spenders per capita in healthcare, but our healthcare quality is still poor.

Portland, OR levies more taxes than any other city in the US except New Your, and on lower income brackets than even New York does. And yet it's chronically unable to find enough money to pay for basic services like pothole repair, let alone things like homeless shelters and drug rehab services.

These are all examples of systemic problems that plague America (or parts of America). Increasing tax revenue won't solve them. It will just put more money in the hands of people who are incompetent at best, corrupt at worst. Both acb and TGZ have made it clear that they're not actually interested in reforming these broken systems. They just want to get more money out of the hands of "the rich", and will spout whatever "morality" rhetoric they think will win the debate.

 

[theprestige]

Both.

No. Not both.

 

[theprestige]

I like how SpaceX has drastically undercut ULA, a military-industrial conglomerate, but somehow it's SpaceX that's the money-wasting, taxpayer-bilking villain. If you want to know why our social safety net is so threadbare, maybe start by asking Boeing and Lockheed why their space launch service has been so ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ expensive all these years. Not asking Elon Musk how much more of his money we can have. His company has already saved taxpayers billions of dollars in launch costs. To the point where ULA has petitioned the government for taxpayer-funded subsidies, to stay in a business where it actually has to compete for contracts. Even a revolutionary communist should have realized by this point that the problem isn't too few taxes, and the solution isn't to put our hands even deeper into Elon's pockets.

This isn't like Russia, where kleptocrats looted the nation's sovereign wealth. Elon Musk isn't sitting on top of an oil monopoly, from which he can embezzle at will. If anyone is looting America's sovereign wealth, it's the average American. It's our middle-class cars that burn all the gasoline. It's our middle-class retirement funds that invest in firms that try to corner the real estate market. It's our air travel, our drop-shipped orders of cheap goods from China, our wasteful and corrupt local governments, that make America what it is. Not Elon Musk's compensation package.

 

[acbytesla]

You should be talking about systemic reform, not a new wealth tax.

Understand, that is exactly what I've been screaming for. For decades. The bigger problem I see is how we compensate. How we overvalued investment and undervalue work. How someone like Musk can be worth almost a trillion dollars running two grossly underperforming companies. The present economic system is untenable.

Every day we march faster towards a dystopian Orwellian America. This is all the result of how income and wealth are distributed in our present economic system. How this ends is inevitable is because of that distribution. Money equals power. And power corrupts. The few have accumulated so much money, they control the levers necessary to make reforms.

 

[acbytesla]

I like how SpaceX has drastically undercut ULA, a military-industrial conglomerate, but somehow it's SpaceX that's the money-wasting, taxpayer-bilking villain. If you want to know why our social safety net is so threadbare, maybe start by asking Boeing and Lockheed why their space launch service has been so ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ expensive all these years. Not asking Elon Musk how much more of his money we can have. His company has already saved taxpayers billions of dollars in launch costs. To the point where ULA has petitioned the government for taxpayer-funded subsidies, to stay in a business where it actually has to compete for contracts. Even a revolutionary communist should have realized by this point that the problem isn't too few taxes, and the solution isn't to put our hands even deeper into Elon's pockets.

This isn't like Russia, where kleptocrats looted the nation's sovereign wealth. Elon Musk isn't sitting on top of an oil monopoly, from which he can embezzle at will. If anyone is looting America's sovereign wealth, it's the average American. It's our middle-class cars that burn all the gasoline. It's our middle-class retirement funds that invest in firms that try to corner the real estate market. It's our air travel, our drop-shipped orders of cheap goods from China, our wasteful and corrupt local governments, that make America what it is. Not Elon Musk's compensation package.

Oh the ◊◊◊◊ it isn't.

 

[Ziggurat]

How someone like Musk can be worth almost a trillion dollars running two grossly underperforming companies.

I understand your opinion about Tesla, but why on earth do you think SpaceX is underperforming? It isn't. It's performing incredibly well. I don't think you understand SpaceX and what it has accomplished at all.

 

[Ziggurat]

Oh the ◊◊◊◊ it isn't.

Do you know what the term "sovereign wealth" means? It's distinct from just "wealth".

 

[theprestige]

Oh the ◊◊◊◊ it isn't.

It very much isn't. I even spelled out the very important distinction in that same paragraph.

 

[acbytesla]

I understand your opinion about Tesla, but why on earth do you think SpaceX is underperforming? It isn't. It's performing incredibly well. I don't think you understand SpaceX and what it has accomplished at all.

It hasn't accomplished enough to justify that share price.

 

[acbytesla]

It very much isn't. I even spelled out the very important distinction in that same paragraph.

A distinction without a difference.

 

[theprestige]

A distinction without a difference.

It's a huge difference.