$10-20 an hour is better than minimum wage and a few years ago I worked a labor job that "only" paid $12.00/hr.
Is Jeff Bezo's personal net worth the causation behind someone not being able to support a family?
What about Zuckerberg, what is the average salary of a FB employee? If its above a certain amount is that a "moral" billionaire?
I would argue that pursuit of profits can lead to bad things for employees... but I never understood going after billionaires when their wealth is almost exclusively because they created a company worth billions. If that were the case, everyone making minimum wage should have seen their salaries skyrocket when these billionaires lost great %'s of their wealth over the last year.
I personally see rent/CoL being the problem. I don't know of solutions but I do feel going after billionaires is just a waste of energy. I'm a bit bias as my work has some crossover with "wealth and finance" (trading stocks) but all too often these ideas about "taxing rich people" just blow up and leave everyone worse off.
TL;DR, they tax each trade on the market. It makes a fraction of what it was projected to make and never comes close to making more than they did before by just taxing the capital gains (profit from trading). Its an idea I've seen showing up more and more.
My view is that "creating" a billion dollar company is a misleading description. I view it more as "capturing" a billion. You mention FB. With network effects, it is inevitable that there will be a few large dominate social media companies. If it wasn't Zuckerberg it would have been someone else. I view these people not as pioneers pushing us forward but as lottery winners. Why should the lucky one on top capture most of the value? The people like Newton and Einstein who actually had revolutionary ideas were not even close to billionaires.
I am not sure why you feel that "taxing rich people" makes everyone worse off. 60 years ago a man with a high school diploma could support a middle class life for a family of 4. Taxes on the highest earners were much higher than they were today. 60 years before that there was no federal income tax and people worked 14 hour days in dangerous conditions while Carnegie and Rockefeller amassed wealth on scales not seen until today.
But yes I agree with you that a tax on each market trade is lol stupid. But I think it is a straw-man argument along with setting the tax rate at 100%.
> I am not sure why you feel that "taxing rich people" makes everyone worse off. 60 years ago a man with a high school diploma could support a middle class life for a family of 4. Taxes on the highest earners were much higher than they were today.
Tax rates were higher but there were far more deductions. The effective rate was similar to that of today.
60-70 years ago a man with an HS diploma could support a family due to massive demand for labor. This was mainly because America was the economic engine that provided for the reconstruction of the world after WW2. Go back another 15 years to pre-WW2 and shit was pretty bleak even with high taxes.
> You mention FB. With network effects, it is inevitable that there will be a few large dominate social media companies. If it wasn't Zuckerberg it would have been someone else.
It was someone else, it was MySpace and Friendster and other trashy shit. Facebook brought a vastly better user experience that seems mundane in retrospect but it won because it was so much better. Like it or not, Facebook did innovate a lot early on and had a unique, clean, consistent experience. They made social media mainstream. It was not a given this would happen.
> Facebook brought a vastly better user experience that seems mundane in retrospect but it won because it was so much better.
My impression is more that FB won because of Zuck's talent/luck/vision for weird acquisitions (instagram, whatsapp) that paid off in ways nobody foresaw. Facebook was by no means the clear winner then, and I would argue most of it's success since then has been first-mover in global markets. FB engagement has been in decline in the US for years.
>Why should the lucky one on top capture most of the value?
Because they were first or best to do it. MySpace was already a thing, several other social media sites but today they're mostly dead while FB is not. Luck does have a lot to do with it. I feel trying to quantify luck though will get us no where. Trying to "correct" for it, even more so.
>The people like Newton and Einstein who actually had revolutionary ideas were not even close to billionaires.
Do you think they should be? I cannot think of a reason... but I do understand what you mean.
>I am not sure why you feel that "taxing rich people" makes everyone worse off.
I think it would be hard to quantify it but yes, I do think people are "worse off" - not by much though, if you're going by metrics like salary. I'm thinking about all the advances we've made. I don't see half the stuff happening if not for the ability for excess money to be invested. I mean, the very thing we're talking on for instance (and yea maybe it could have been on some other site like FB or reddit) but those are also because of investing.
>60 years ago a man with a high school diploma could support a middle class life for a family of 4. Taxes on the highest earners were much higher than they were today. 60 years before that there was no federal income tax and people worked 14 hour days in dangerous conditions while Carnegie and Rockefeller amassed wealth on scales not seen until today.
I don't see how the two are related though. There were a lot of things different about back then vs today.
I would like to see the focus be on rent and CoL as I see those as way more of a problem than if Jeff Bezos has $50b or $100b. (his wealth has fluctuated like crazy with covid and divorce).
>But yes I agree with you that a tax on each market trade is lol stupid. But I think it is a straw-man argument
I'm glad you agree and also glad its not like twitter or reddit where we have to try to score cheap condescending shots in to "argue" lol... but alas. I would say if its the very thing presidential candidates like Bernie and Andrew Yang are saying they would like to get done, I would consider that beyond a straw man.
>Because they were first or best to do it. MySpace was already a thing, several other social media sites but today they're mostly dead while FB is not. Luck does have a lot to do with it. I feel trying to quantify luck though will get us no where. Trying to "correct" for it, even more so.
I think this is a fundamental feature a winner take all/most market. FB beat out myspace and happened to win, but if not them it would have been someone else. 5 billion internet connected social animals is the value, not the app that facebook built.
>Do you think they should be? I cannot think of a reason... but I do understand what you mean.
I don't think they should be because I don't think billionaires should exist. But I do think the value they created was much bigger than the value Zuck created. They were better at creating value than capturing it.
>I don't see how the two are related though. There were a lot of things different about back then vs today. I would like to see the focus be on rent and CoL as I see those as way more of a problem than if Jeff Bezos has $50b or $100b. (his wealth has fluctuated like crazy with covid and divorce).
The two are fundamentally related. Gdp per capita is higher now than it was in the 60s, yet the median person is no better off. That can only be explained through how the wealth distribution has changed between now and then. Whether Jeff Bezos is worth 50B or 100B doesn't matter too much. The issue is that the wealthiest are capturing a larger percentage of income now than they did 60 years ago. I don't view our age as being more innovative than a time where we invented the atom bomb and went to the moon and other cool shit. And we paid for it with taxes! Jeff Bezos isn't more innovative than those guys, he is just having his workers piss in bottles to squeeze out every last cent. It is a return to the bad old days of Rockefeller.
>I would consider that beyond a straw man.
Did not realize that Yang supported it, learn something new everyday. Would like to hear his reasoning beyond the short blurb on his website as he has always struck me as deep thinker.
>I think this is a fundamental feature a winner take all/most market. FB beat out myspace and happened to win, but if not them it would have been someone else. 5 billion internet connected social animals is the value, not the app that facebook built.
What do you feel is the "solution" ?
>I don't think they should be because I don't think billionaires should exist. But I do think the value they created was much bigger than the value Zuck created. They were better at creating value than capturing it.
How much do you think they should be worth and why? I have some ideas, however I think it just comes down to the fact that some things are more easily monetizable than others. I don't think that's necessarily a problem.
>That can only be explained through how the wealth distribution has changed between now and then.
How do you come to this conclusion? I feel there are more factors than any one person can point to for the reason why people are "worse off"
>The issue is that the wealthiest are capturing a larger percentage of income now than they did 60 years ago.
Is it income? I still fail to see how Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates etc. Having an ownership in their respective billion dollar companies makes the average person worse off.
> I don't view our age as being more innovative than a time where we invented the atom bomb and went to the moon and other cool shit.
It depends on what you view as "innovative" - by this logic, I fail to see how going to the moon helped the average person. I can agree with the sentiment though.
>Jeff Bezos isn't more innovative than those guys, he is just having his workers piss in bottles to squeeze out every last cent.
I don't think Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because of this.
Stuff like that certainly happens at other places, you just don't hear about it because its not as interesting.
These aren't billion dollar companies by a long shot. Poor working conditions aren't exclusive to billion dollar companies.
I'm not defending it though, that is terrible. I've worked in a warehouse and thankfully I never had anything like that happen but I did see some questionable things.
>Did not realize that Yang supported it, learn something new everyday. Would like to hear his reasoning beyond the short blurb on his website as he has always struck me as deep thinker.
I feel you. I really liked him. Still do I suppose, its just I do algotrading and I was shocked to see all that about "profitable algorithms" - I don't think he personally wrote that but I guess he has to be responsible for what is on his site. I will have to see if he's ever been asked about it directly.
A shocking amount of people seem to think they know how "wall street" works... I don't even know and would be silly to pretend but I do know that trying to eradicate "profitable algorithms" and imposing FTTs would be disastrous. That is what I'm worried about in regard to "going after billionaires". I'm not an economist though, so I can't pretend to know what will or will not happen. All I know is that the same principals when applied to "wallstreet" or trading in general always end in disaster and only end up hurting the "average person" indirectly.
I'm bias though, as I've personally worked on a few things that were only possible because it was funded by wealthy people with an idea. To me I hardly see a difference if their company is worth $100m or $1b. I suppose it affects how many projects they can realistically start... but eh.
$10-20 an hour is better than minimum wage and a few years ago I worked a labor job that "only" paid $12.00/hr.
Is Jeff Bezo's personal net worth the causation behind someone not being able to support a family?
What about Zuckerberg, what is the average salary of a FB employee? If its above a certain amount is that a "moral" billionaire?
I would argue that pursuit of profits can lead to bad things for employees... but I never understood going after billionaires when their wealth is almost exclusively because they created a company worth billions. If that were the case, everyone making minimum wage should have seen their salaries skyrocket when these billionaires lost great %'s of their wealth over the last year.
I personally see rent/CoL being the problem. I don't know of solutions but I do feel going after billionaires is just a waste of energy. I'm a bit bias as my work has some crossover with "wealth and finance" (trading stocks) but all too often these ideas about "taxing rich people" just blow up and leave everyone worse off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...
TL;DR, they tax each trade on the market. It makes a fraction of what it was projected to make and never comes close to making more than they did before by just taxing the capital gains (profit from trading). Its an idea I've seen showing up more and more.