Wealth taxes are a symptom of a broken tax system. If you let someone get to hundreds of billions in net worth and then realize they haven’t been appropriately paying back into the system, it’s already too late. Like the article says they can simply say “no” in a variety of ways, from fighting in court to simply leaving.
> If you let someone get to hundreds of billions in net worth and then realize they haven’t been appropriately paying back into the system
This is to once again mistake net worth for money. Net worth is not real. It is not a good measure of the money someone may be able to realise. They do not have hundreds of billions. There is nothing to tax until they sell some shares.
It's strange that people always make this argument for wealth taxes, but you rarely hear it about property taxes. If "net worth is not real" neither is equity in real estate.
The only reason it works with real estate is because they can put a lien on the house and block the sale of it. They don't have any useful mechanism to stop the sale of a share of stock, but since the government is involved in the transfer (due to the registering of the new house deed) of a house, they can stop that one.
Why can't govt block the sale of stocks? It's not like you would be selling non digitalized assets, govts often freeze and reverse stock sales/trades when they find it to be illegal already.
It's harder for private companies sure, but who will stand in the way of govts if they said we will sanction your if you buy X or Y company?
This entire argument doesn't really hold IMHO
> They don't have any useful mechanism to stop the sale of a share of stock
The SEC exists. As do many other mechanisms by which the government regulates direct and brokered securities trades and sales. You can make the case that some of those controls are poorly/ineffectively implemented, but you can’t claim that it’s not something the government routinely regulates, intervenes in, and sometimes prohibits outright.
Society has deemed it "ok" for a real estate transaction to take days or weeks to process and mountains of paperwork, probably because it is done so rarely in an average person's life. But stock trades are expected to be done quickly in minutes or even milliseconds with high frequency trading. It just isn't feasible to inject government paperwork in the middle of a transaction. Wall Street would revolt if they even tried.
The main reason real estate taxes work so well is that tax evasion is very difficult.
Because the building is standing right where it is, in the open, lit by the sun every day. If you don't pay your tax, the government can just take it.
This compensates for the several philosophical and moral problems with it, and I've seen several economists declare it the best form of taxation there is.
My comment provided a clear and succinct rebuttal to a flawed argument.
Your comment added literally no value, except to be a whiny prescriptivist and to establish that you think you're the center of the universe.
I have no respect for people who hold themselves to lower standards than they hold others. Your father failed at his most important job. He raised a pathetic fucking asshole.
If I sell my house, there's a reasonable expected range of money I can expect for it.
If a majority stock holder in a company sells all of their stock, the price first the first share sold is likely going to be completely different (and substantially less!) than the last share sold.
"It's difficult to accurately value" isn't an argument against taxing net worth. It's like the old (likely apocryphal) Winston Churchill joke, "We already established what type of woman you are, now we are just haggling over price". Just take whatever the proposal is, cut in half, quarter, or whatever fraction you want and you no longer have an argument against it.
Personally my favorite idea for this stuff that I have heard thrown around is to allow people to self value everything. However, that self valuation then becomes a price tag. Let a billionaire's accountants put their own evaluation on their equity in a business. But that becomes a binding offer and some other billionaire could come along and buy them out at that valuation. That creates pricing pressure in both directions, the person is prevented from underpricing their assets due to the threat of another buyer coming in and a person is prevented from overpricing because it increases their taxes. And suddenly all the problems regarding how the government appraises these things disappears.
Forcing people to write a call option on their property without an offsetting risk premium only sounds like a good idea if you neither understand the implications nor the math. Asset values would collapse because risk would go to the moon.
And that ignores that it trivially enables large-scale exploitation and looting by construction.
The market determines the risk, not the asset owner. The owner has no special knowledge of what the risk actually is separate from the market pricing it. You explicitly want them to accurately price it outside of a market, which is effectively impossible, ignoring that the price is highly fluid and dynamic.
If the owner is required to invent a fake risk premium then it virtually guarantees that the risk will be mis-priced. Forced rampant mis-pricing is an exploitable arbitrage opportunity of epic proportions. Every quant worth a damn will make a fortune looting this. No serious policy can ignore this defect. It has the additional political downside that no one can ever own anything anymore in a meaningful way, which won’t be popular.
No one takes this idea seriously because anyone with a modicum of finance math background can see that the math doesn’t math. Political ideology doesn’t even figure into it.
I'm getting the impression you didn't get my "haggling over price" reference. This conversation is in the context of a wealth tax which typically only applies to a very select group of incredibly wealthy people. However, your complaints are all about the scale of the economic problems this would create. That means we can continue to add restrictions to this proposal until eventually all the issues you raised disappear.
For example, imagine we only apply this to people with a net worth over $500B. That's literally only Elon Musk. He has plenty of money to hire his own team of quants to price his assets. We can even be generous with this law and make the purchase price double the valuation. Hell, we can even restrict it to only apply to stock of publicly traded companies so the wealth valuations are highly informed by market pricing. We can just keep adding rules like this until you're out of economic reasons for why a wealth tax and/or this form of valuation can't work. At that point the debate is lost and "we're just haggling over price" because once we apply it to Musk, how can you argue against applying it to Bezos...
Society has already decided that we can compel people to sell their private property for fair compensation via eminent domain. Plus getting the assets in the hands of people who value them more certainly creates utility and presumably increases the tax base via further development.
This type of forced sale happens all the time with public companies. For example, only like 60% of Twitter shareholders approved the sale to Musk, but the other 40% were forced to go along with it regardless of their preference. If Musk can do that to other people, why should some hypothetically richer person not be able to do it to Musk?
And to repeat myself for a third time, we don't need to haggle over price. If we only want this to apply to billionaires, assets worth $50 millions, or whatever, that's fine. If one of the people impacted truly doesn't want to sell, let them set the price as high as make them feels safe. I'm not going to lose any sleep over taxing the emotional desires of billionaires.
> For example, only like 60% of Twitter shareholders approved the sale to Musk, but the other 40% were forced to go along with it regardless of their preference
They signed up to that, though. Tagalonpg/dragalong rights are priced into the share price. That's not the same thing.
I always enjoy when someone takes a quote out of context to refute something I said when the context it was said in completely answers them. Like why didn't you include the sentence before that bit you quoted? Is it because me saying "this type of sale" shows that I was saying they are similar rather than identical? Or why didn't you include my first paragraph? Is it because eminent domain is also priced into everything a billionaire owns?
People absolutely make that argument about property taxes. That's where deferrals or abatements for e.g. elderly or low-income homeowners, or caps on property tax increases come from. Someone may own a home that property taxes price them out of, forcing them to leave their community because they can't actually conjure money from a higher priced home.
I think a lot of tax authorities also don't really aggressively reassess that regularly without a sale, so it also kind of ends up baked in that if you didn't pay that much for the property, it's only theoretically worth that much.
Predatory property taxes were a part of how so many black American farmers lost their land: <a href="https://archive.is/exkhR" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/exkhR
This is all conceding the argument already. Many of us would happily accept these sorts of limitations on a wealth tax if it means there is a wealth tax.
> It's strange that people always make this argument for wealth taxes, but you rarely hear it about property taxes.
I don't like property taxes either, and at minimum would rather they were called something else, and preferably replaced with per-service charges where possible.
But either way they exist to pay for things, and not to just degrade the value of your property simply because you worked to own it.
It's interesting to see the level of discourse change across time as these same points are brought up again and again.
It seems there are many many more people heavily invested in preventing land tax all of a sudden and are very informed whereas when that guy made a land tax visualizer a few months ago... crickets.
Narrative control and algorithm driven propaganda is evident - Most people scrolling any kind of algorithmic feed would be shocked at the intimate detail the algorithm knows their mind, proclivities, aversions.
Another evident thing is that people will start retreating from internet as this gets worse (With LLMs accelerating the trend).
It's the opposite. You've been drip-fed "billionaires cause all the problems" for a few years, and now, as you say, you feel all sorts of things about them, which can rationalise all sorts of bad ideas.
Wealth inequality is worse than any other time in human history. What the wealthy and powerful are funding is division, fascism, the far-right and immigrant hate, so that they don't have to pay more taxes. It's the same divide and rule playbook since forever.
I disagree with you on what is being drip-fed. It's factual that deranged levels of wealth inequality are causing problems, even the billionaire wannabes on HN are starting to see that.
> Wealth inequality is worse than any other time in human history
This is circular. Wealth inequality:
1. Isn't real. It's a paper value that would not survive contact with reality.
2. Doesn't matter. What matters is the absolute level of poverty and whether that's getting better. Someone in poverty in the UK today will still get healthcare, eyecare and dental care beyond the dreams of Henry VIII.
3. Is genuinely a stupid measure. You could "fix" it by burning everyone's possessions until everyone has the same: nothing. Zero inequality, and yet somehow doesn't sound great.
> What the wealthy and powerful are funding is division, fascism, the far-right and immigrant hate, so that they don't have to pay more taxes. It's the same divide and rule playbook since forever.
Absolutely real when Musk can tilt elections in America and fund far right parties in other countries. Your whole “paper wealth” argument holds no weight.
He didn't have to tilt anything in America. The Democrats ran the worst platform in living memory for the 2024 election, and the sooner they stop blaming billionaires for everything and start looking at themselves to improve the sooner they will get back the popular vote.
So did many other people. Any popular podcast will do that. Any media organisation has editorial bias, either in story presentation or even in selection. I don't see why Elon Musk would be singled out there, other than he's an ex-Democrat, and thus like all the ex-Democrats is a target of constant negative mentioning in a lot of one side's media.
> Wealth inequality is worse than any other time in human history
And humans are wealthier than any time in history. They have access to robot slaves that can wash dishes and clothes for them. They can access fruits grown over 1000 miles away for 69c. They have potions that can cure cancer. They have the database of all human intelligence in their pocket, accessible from anywhere on the globe. They have individualized transportation that can travel over 2 miles a minute. They have super intelligent thinking machines for cents.
A big proportion of Americans are struggling to make ends meet on a fulltime wage. No amount of luxuries make up for a lack of necessities. Your argument might have had a smidge of credibility 15 years ago.
That's just the consequence of various other policies that a lot of them probably voted for (or didn't vote against hard enough). If you transform a country a certain way, promising more and more from the government for some people, then everyone else has to pay more. If you pay for it with ZIRP, then you're going to need to pay it back.
The last thing you should do at that point is vote for more policies that will destroy economic activity in the name of "fairness". That's how you got here.
binlog · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
This is to once again mistake net worth for money. Net worth is not real. It is not a good measure of the money someone may be able to realise. They do not have hundreds of billions. There is nothing to tax until they sell some shares.
slg · · focus · HN ↗
colordrops · · focus · HN ↗
fhdkweig · · focus · HN ↗
minraws · · focus · HN ↗
It's harder for private companies sure, but who will stand in the way of govts if they said we will sanction your if you buy X or Y company?
This entire argument doesn't really hold IMHO
zbentley · · focus · HN ↗
The SEC exists. As do many other mechanisms by which the government regulates direct and brokered securities trades and sales. You can make the case that some of those controls are poorly/ineffectively implemented, but you can’t claim that it’s not something the government routinely regulates, intervenes in, and sometimes prohibits outright.
fhdkweig · · focus · HN ↗
ceejayoz · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.sec.gov/files/forms-3-4-5.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.sec.gov/files/forms-3-4-5.pdf
8note · · focus · HN ↗
high frequency traders dont have a right to a business model.
if they want faster trades, they can take full liability for what they own
BurningFrog · · focus · HN ↗
Because the building is standing right where it is, in the open, lit by the sun every day. If you don't pay your tax, the government can just take it.
This compensates for the several philosophical and moral problems with it, and I've seen several economists declare it the best form of taxation there is.
porkshoe · · focus · HN ↗
dwedge · · focus · HN ↗
porkshoe · · focus · HN ↗
porkshoe · · focus · HN ↗
Your comment added literally no value, except to be a whiny prescriptivist and to establish that you think you're the center of the universe.
I have no respect for people who hold themselves to lower standards than they hold others. Your father failed at his most important job. He raised a pathetic fucking asshole.
x3n0ph3n3 · · focus · HN ↗
If a majority stock holder in a company sells all of their stock, the price first the first share sold is likely going to be completely different (and substantially less!) than the last share sold.
slg · · focus · HN ↗
Personally my favorite idea for this stuff that I have heard thrown around is to allow people to self value everything. However, that self valuation then becomes a price tag. Let a billionaire's accountants put their own evaluation on their equity in a business. But that becomes a binding offer and some other billionaire could come along and buy them out at that valuation. That creates pricing pressure in both directions, the person is prevented from underpricing their assets due to the threat of another buyer coming in and a person is prevented from overpricing because it increases their taxes. And suddenly all the problems regarding how the government appraises these things disappears.
jandrewrogers · · focus · HN ↗
And that ignores that it trivially enables large-scale exploitation and looting by construction.
slg · · focus · HN ↗
Once again, this is simply haggling over price. Name the premium you think is justified and add that into the law.
jandrewrogers · · focus · HN ↗
If the owner is required to invent a fake risk premium then it virtually guarantees that the risk will be mis-priced. Forced rampant mis-pricing is an exploitable arbitrage opportunity of epic proportions. Every quant worth a damn will make a fortune looting this. No serious policy can ignore this defect. It has the additional political downside that no one can ever own anything anymore in a meaningful way, which won’t be popular.
No one takes this idea seriously because anyone with a modicum of finance math background can see that the math doesn’t math. Political ideology doesn’t even figure into it.
slg · · focus · HN ↗
For example, imagine we only apply this to people with a net worth over $500B. That's literally only Elon Musk. He has plenty of money to hire his own team of quants to price his assets. We can even be generous with this law and make the purchase price double the valuation. Hell, we can even restrict it to only apply to stock of publicly traded companies so the wealth valuations are highly informed by market pricing. We can just keep adding rules like this until you're out of economic reasons for why a wealth tax and/or this form of valuation can't work. At that point the debate is lost and "we're just haggling over price" because once we apply it to Musk, how can you argue against applying it to Bezos...
kerenskiy · · focus · HN ↗
slg · · focus · HN ↗
This type of forced sale happens all the time with public companies. For example, only like 60% of Twitter shareholders approved the sale to Musk, but the other 40% were forced to go along with it regardless of their preference. If Musk can do that to other people, why should some hypothetically richer person not be able to do it to Musk?
And to repeat myself for a third time, we don't need to haggle over price. If we only want this to apply to billionaires, assets worth $50 millions, or whatever, that's fine. If one of the people impacted truly doesn't want to sell, let them set the price as high as make them feels safe. I'm not going to lose any sleep over taxing the emotional desires of billionaires.
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
They signed up to that, though. Tagalonpg/dragalong rights are priced into the share price. That's not the same thing.
slg · · focus · HN ↗
ndriscoll · · focus · HN ↗
I think a lot of tax authorities also don't really aggressively reassess that regularly without a sale, so it also kind of ends up baked in that if you didn't pay that much for the property, it's only theoretically worth that much.
lelandfe · · focus · HN ↗
cucumber3732842 · · focus · HN ↗
slg · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
I don't like property taxes either, and at minimum would rather they were called something else, and preferably replaced with per-service charges where possible.
But either way they exist to pay for things, and not to just degrade the value of your property simply because you worked to own it.
jandrewrogers · · focus · HN ↗
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
the_sleaze_ · · focus · HN ↗
It seems there are many many more people heavily invested in preventing land tax all of a sudden and are very informed whereas when that guy made a land tax visualizer a few months ago... crickets.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45425770">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45425770
> but I struggle to even conceptualize what land value means
One of the first comments. Now there are dozens of people who are suddenly well versed in "georgeism"?
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
Another evident thing is that people will start retreating from internet as this gets worse (With LLMs accelerating the trend).
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
I disagree with you on what is being drip-fed. It's factual that deranged levels of wealth inequality are causing problems, even the billionaire wannabes on HN are starting to see that.
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
This is circular. Wealth inequality:
1. Isn't real. It's a paper value that would not survive contact with reality.
2. Doesn't matter. What matters is the absolute level of poverty and whether that's getting better. Someone in poverty in the UK today will still get healthcare, eyecare and dental care beyond the dreams of Henry VIII.
3. Is genuinely a stupid measure. You could "fix" it by burning everyone's possessions until everyone has the same: nothing. Zero inequality, and yet somehow doesn't sound great.
> What the wealthy and powerful are funding is division, fascism, the far-right and immigrant hate, so that they don't have to pay more taxes. It's the same divide and rule playbook since forever.
This is just your media consumption showing.
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
polski-g · · focus · HN ↗
And humans are wealthier than any time in history. They have access to robot slaves that can wash dishes and clothes for them. They can access fruits grown over 1000 miles away for 69c. They have potions that can cure cancer. They have the database of all human intelligence in their pocket, accessible from anywhere on the globe. They have individualized transportation that can travel over 2 miles a minute. They have super intelligent thinking machines for cents.
Life has never been better for mankind.
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
The last thing you should do at that point is vote for more policies that will destroy economic activity in the name of "fairness". That's how you got here.