The guest was an heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune who actually gave up his money and stated a non-profit focused on inequality; the discussion was pretty hand-wavy about solutions, but still interesting (IMHO)
I know this is usually brought up as a clearly bad thing, but I have a non-rhetorical question: what do we do about it?
In this case, the value of the company Bezos created, Amazon, has gone up because it provided a useful service during the pandemic. If we decide we want to tax that, it seems like the only means we'd have available is to force him to give up shares in his company. Are we essentially saying a company's success entitles the government to take over ownership?
>Are we essentially saying a company's success entitles the government to take over ownership?
This implies that the company is creating wealth all on its own, with no help from the local environment. In reality, we could turn the argument around and ask why these large companies aren't paying their fair share in light of all the pre-existing effort and wealth they benefit from and the negative externalities they disseminate.
A question to ask is whether bezos could have started Amazon if, instead of being a wealthy US citizen, he were a poor non English speaking citizen of say, Madagascar, back in the 90s. He almost surely wouldn’t have.
All that is to say that despite the founder genius culture of worship that exists, success is heavily dependent on the society you are in, and those who benefit the most (through a combination of work, skill, and luck) should be obligated to provide resources to maintain that system, commiserate with their ability to do so.
Bezos’ wealth is largely tied up in Amazon stock, so obviously he would have to sell off portions of that stock in order to pay his obligations, but it’s not like he has some mandate from god to be the king of Amazon à la medieval kings. Further, given that his taxes would be paid in dollars, not Amazon stock, I’m not sure how that constitutes a government takeover.
Antitrust litigation and Caps on personal and private equity fund wealth.
Bezos and the staff at amazon are not hero's even if their platform was very useful in this pandemic; they stand on the shoulders of giants and were only able to build their platform because of the kind of economic system the US built.
There is exactly zero expectation that even if the current group is honest and decent people, that once those staff are retired, die off, or move on, that their successors won't imoverish, abuse, mame, posion, threaten, intimiate, assassinate or kill the next generation of garage geeks inventing world changing technology. Quite to the contrary, that is exactly what monarchs do, and exceedinly rich capitalists always tend to eventually become robber-barrons and monarchs. One only needs to look at the scope of E-bays' cyberstalking campaign to see the threat companies like Amazon represent.
Furthermore, the US and EU governments use antitrust only when there is no other resort for the market and when the companies' entroachment into government is not sufficient to purchase political favors in order to cement their monopoly which many brand-name companies have done.
We need to view income as a form of power and need to cap personal and private equity income as a form of power the same as any law. You can start with a ridiculous number, say .1% of GDP for a company and .005% of GDP for an individual, which comes out to 200bn annual revenue for a company and .005% for an individual. For the company, once they hit that number, they get antitrust laws enforced. For the individual, if they hit that number in net worth\asset valuation, you impliment an absolute tax (no further income can be acquired, you pay all earnings in tax). If they want to keep the game going and not pay it to uncle sam they can give it away or just not save that much and instead spend it.
> If we decide we want to tax that, it seems like the only means we'd have available is to force him to give up shares in his company.
I assume you mean because he'd have to liquidate profitable shares in order to cover his taxes?
If the concern is the attachment of profit-sharing to control, we already have profit-sharing non-voting shares and non-profit-sharing voting shares. The necessary division for maintaining ownership while preventing infinite untaxed wealth accumulation already exists.
So it seems to me, then, that taxing unrealized gains only equates to giving up shares in your company in the same way that taxing income equates to giving up shares in your bank account. Do the taxes cost you future return/interest? Yes. And?
Taxes. We tax the wealth. Aggressively, by raising rates, closing loopholes, and pressuring tax havens.
> entitles the government to take over ownership
Yes, successful or not, yes. Companies and their services exist within society, benefiting from our collective infrastructure, and society has absolute and final power over them. They are not people, with rights. Our economic system gives them extraordinary freedom to pursue wealth. That freedom is not a right. Capitalism is not morally equivalent to inalienable human rights.
This is what happens when the state acts like your nanny. Overzealous local restrictions on businesses is what led to this. The market would have dealt with the threat of infection perfectly. But it wasn't allowed to. And it shows that any sort of government regulation, regardless of intent, will always hurt the small guy, while the Bezos' of the world will find a way to profit from it.
There's nothing wrong with reaping the benefits when you are providing people with direly needed goods that local governments foolishly prohibit small shops from selling.
yah there fucking is lol. mega-wealth like bezos has accumulated is so so far beyond "reaping the benefits" of any of his own labor or imagination. that's the lives of workers he's hoarding in the form of wealth too great for him to use.
that is extremely wrong by my moral standards, both personally on him for doing it and collectively on us for allowing it.
[+] [-] mdaniel|5 years ago|reply
The guest was an heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune who actually gave up his money and stated a non-profit focused on inequality; the discussion was pretty hand-wavy about solutions, but still interesting (IMHO)
[+] [-] d23|5 years ago|reply
In this case, the value of the company Bezos created, Amazon, has gone up because it provided a useful service during the pandemic. If we decide we want to tax that, it seems like the only means we'd have available is to force him to give up shares in his company. Are we essentially saying a company's success entitles the government to take over ownership?
[+] [-] Bakary|5 years ago|reply
This implies that the company is creating wealth all on its own, with no help from the local environment. In reality, we could turn the argument around and ask why these large companies aren't paying their fair share in light of all the pre-existing effort and wealth they benefit from and the negative externalities they disseminate.
[+] [-] wbsss4412|5 years ago|reply
All that is to say that despite the founder genius culture of worship that exists, success is heavily dependent on the society you are in, and those who benefit the most (through a combination of work, skill, and luck) should be obligated to provide resources to maintain that system, commiserate with their ability to do so.
Bezos’ wealth is largely tied up in Amazon stock, so obviously he would have to sell off portions of that stock in order to pay his obligations, but it’s not like he has some mandate from god to be the king of Amazon à la medieval kings. Further, given that his taxes would be paid in dollars, not Amazon stock, I’m not sure how that constitutes a government takeover.
[+] [-] TheBobinator|5 years ago|reply
Bezos and the staff at amazon are not hero's even if their platform was very useful in this pandemic; they stand on the shoulders of giants and were only able to build their platform because of the kind of economic system the US built.
There is exactly zero expectation that even if the current group is honest and decent people, that once those staff are retired, die off, or move on, that their successors won't imoverish, abuse, mame, posion, threaten, intimiate, assassinate or kill the next generation of garage geeks inventing world changing technology. Quite to the contrary, that is exactly what monarchs do, and exceedinly rich capitalists always tend to eventually become robber-barrons and monarchs. One only needs to look at the scope of E-bays' cyberstalking campaign to see the threat companies like Amazon represent.
Furthermore, the US and EU governments use antitrust only when there is no other resort for the market and when the companies' entroachment into government is not sufficient to purchase political favors in order to cement their monopoly which many brand-name companies have done.
We need to view income as a form of power and need to cap personal and private equity income as a form of power the same as any law. You can start with a ridiculous number, say .1% of GDP for a company and .005% of GDP for an individual, which comes out to 200bn annual revenue for a company and .005% for an individual. For the company, once they hit that number, they get antitrust laws enforced. For the individual, if they hit that number in net worth\asset valuation, you impliment an absolute tax (no further income can be acquired, you pay all earnings in tax). If they want to keep the game going and not pay it to uncle sam they can give it away or just not save that much and instead spend it.
This does not have to be rocket science.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BugsJustFindMe|5 years ago|reply
I assume you mean because he'd have to liquidate profitable shares in order to cover his taxes?
If the concern is the attachment of profit-sharing to control, we already have profit-sharing non-voting shares and non-profit-sharing voting shares. The necessary division for maintaining ownership while preventing infinite untaxed wealth accumulation already exists.
So it seems to me, then, that taxing unrealized gains only equates to giving up shares in your company in the same way that taxing income equates to giving up shares in your bank account. Do the taxes cost you future return/interest? Yes. And?
[+] [-] w0de|5 years ago|reply
> entitles the government to take over ownership
Yes, successful or not, yes. Companies and their services exist within society, benefiting from our collective infrastructure, and society has absolute and final power over them. They are not people, with rights. Our economic system gives them extraordinary freedom to pursue wealth. That freedom is not a right. Capitalism is not morally equivalent to inalienable human rights.
[+] [-] perryizgr8|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valuearb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beamatronic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazyjones|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8fGTBjZxBcHq|5 years ago|reply
that is extremely wrong by my moral standards, both personally on him for doing it and collectively on us for allowing it.