solstice

People will always act in their own rational self interest. Idk where people get this idea from that you can legislate market forces. It's like legislating the tides or the seasons. The commies around here walking around bitching about all these mean rich people are so naive it's really incredible.

This is a super basic apples and oranges concept, please try and keep up.

Your original comment was bitching about 4% not being a fair share when you are paying 24%. Wealth tax is not the same as income tax.

I think everyone is subject to income tax in the US when the income is taxable to them, yes. Eventually all of these big bad mean rich people will pay tax on their unrealized gains one way or another. No need to create a wealth tax because eventually the income tax will kick in, I promise you. There's no need to fuck with the tax code even more, and by doing so totally breaking accounting and tax concepts in a way that only government can, just out of this populist notion that they aren't paying their fair share, whatever that means.

If you're talking about eminent domain, the gov has to pay fair market value for the assets it takes, at least in the USA. So you're just flat out wrong using that as an example because in this context you guys are talking about the government forcing someone to provide something to somebody else for free, or just seizing their property (!) to do it themselves.

I'm looking for you to be able to articulate a specific rule or set of rules with hard numbers and thresholds that applies to literally everyone. You can walk around all you want saying rich people are big bad meanies and should give this poor woman free housing. But it turns out people will always act in their own rational self interest, and until you can figure out a way to codify your values into law, you might as well be writing letters to santa. I wish everything were perfect and nobody wants for anything, but the universe just doesn't work that way. It's hard to believe there are so many people naive enough to not know this by now.

I'm definitely in the wrong place because all I'm hearing is a bunch of morons.

the government should control the property and not charge rent. It’s not that hard to understand

Yes it is hard to understand because we are having this conversation despite it being a ridiculous idea. If the gov controls the property and doesn't charge rent, it doesn't lower the cost. The value of that property doesn't go away. It just changes hands from the private owner into the gov agency (or worse, agent) who controls who gets to live there. Imagine a neighborhood where everything costs $10k/month to live there, but you control who gets to live in that one place that costs $1,000/month. Think of how powerful a position that is. The value of that rental property didn't magically disappear just because the government waived its magic wand and said so. Economics doesn't work that way, and it's really frustrating talking to people who don't get this. You can't solve these issues by decree.

My post was in response to someone bitching about borrowing against property with unrealized gains to avoid tax, try and keep up.

Wouldn't a wealth tax increase risk of assets being stored and hidden outside the US?

Americans are already taxed on worldwide income. If there's a wealth tax and they tried to get around it by storing assets outside the US, wouldn't hiding it be much the same as attempting to hide non-US income?

Any comments on whether a wealth tax is even constitutional, since the 16th amendment only authorizes an income tax and not a wealth tax?

Do they get a deduction when they repay the loan on the back end, if they had to pick up income for the loan when it was received?

Wouldn't it be disruptive to cap executive pay during lean years, or startup years, or recession years etc? Wouldn't that create even more incentive than there already is to aggressively pump up income in order to meet arbitrary quarterly/annual earnings goals to keep executive comp high? What if there was a lot of income last year, little income this year, and a lot of income next year, etc. Should everyone's income seesaw up and down or could we maybe plan around cash flow a little bit?

"Yearly audits of accounts held by wealth management firms to ensure that no one is fiddling with the books" is such a loaded sentence full of ignorance and naivete I really can't begin to respond to it besides telling you that it instantly identifies you as someone who doesn't know wtf they're talking about and shouldn't be commenting on such things.

Finally, Bezos is still the executive chair of Amazon and still holds 990 million shares as of November 2023 so idk what you're talking about with that last sentence. Link to the SEC Form 4 Proxy Statement, a primary source document despite the shady url: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/0978cda1-fd60-4d80-bdc4-e6911372e1a3.pdf or you can find it here dated November 1 2023: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/sec-filings/default.aspx

Yeah and then they pay interest on that loan, which is income to the lender for them to pay tax on; then when the original loan comes due the billionaire either refinances and pays even more interest, or pays back the loan by selling their appreciated assets and then - yes - pays tax on the income. So either way the tax is getting paid, now or later, and you have no idea how frustrating it is to see people parroting this over and over and over, and downvoting you for pointing it out.

Maybe there's a difference between wealth and income, but nobody around here would care about such things.

I agree with you but the culture around here is exceptionally infuriating for anyone who understands a thing about finance/accounting/tax/money in general so good luck.

Right, if only this mean rich person would go against their best interest and do something stupid. But they didn't because there's zero incentive to do so, because what you and everyone in this thread is suggesting is a bad decision to make of one's own free will. So other folks are arguing the gov should step in and, what, force the owner to rent their unit to the squatter for free just because she's old I guess?

I challenge you to codify your position. Meaning, if someone is over X years of age they get free rent? Or the gov pays their rent? Or if someone is over such and such net worth they have to give free rent to people? Or something? You're just not making any sense and you're arguing out of pure pathos, emotionally laden incoherent thoughts that you can't build a functioning economy out of.

Man it's always govt with you people. I challenge you to codify your feelings into actual policy with facts and figures rather than loaded emotional imagery like 'govt should pay for housing for everyone.'

I read something recently analyzing what tends to happen when there's tons of artificially cheap public housing. Market forces determine housing prices regardless of government interference, so when the govt rules by decree that their public housing will be cheaper, the price differential doesn't go away, it just changes form. And more importantly, it changes hands. The price difference changes form from money into power, and it changes hands from the landlord into the govt agency or official in charge of determining who gets to live there and benefit from the lower cost. Make sense?

I don't disagree that housing costs are out of control. I think everyone is missing the point though, and the cause. It isn't mean rich people being evil bastards charging people too much. Right now what we are seeing is the natural result of decades of exponential economic growth. Real estate is an asset like any other with prices strongly positively correlated with other asset classes. If everything is growing exponentially like equities, of course real estate is going to grow along with them. I don't know what the solution is, but it certainly isn't anything suggested in this thread.