Do you support an UBI?

[mrswdk]

I see no reason to abide by any law which says I must surrender an enormous chunk of wealth as punishment for dying.

The great thing about an estate tax is that by the time it applies to you, you have no choice regarding whether to abide it

Maybe you like to leave your future entirely up to chance, but I tend to do a little more forward planning than that.

*shrug* Unless you're a lot richer than I think you are, the estate tax I have in mind probably would not affect you at all, so I'm not sure why you are so up in arms about it anyway.

I thought your proposed tax was a blanket 100% estate tax? Or did you omit the part where it only applies to Bill Gates?

I'm just curious what you think gives people the inherent right to forcibly redistribute the entirety of another person's legitimately-earned wealth. That way lies self-criticism sessions and the revival of the Red Guard.

[Metsfanmax]

I thought your proposed tax was a blanket 100% estate tax? Or did you omit the part where it only applies to Bill Gates?

I did not omit it, you just didn't read closely I guess.

To account for the fact that death may be accidental or may occur at an unexpected time, and for the fact that your kids do likely need a little something to get by, I probably support TGD's approach of saying "100% estate tax after $X." X = 100,000 or something, continually adjusted for inflation.

I'm just curious what you think gives people the inherent right to forcibly redistribute the entirety of another person's legitimately-earned wealth.

Ok, if you're asking that question, you clearly didn't read anything at all that I wrote.

[Metsfanmax]

I suspect the individually wealthy constitute a highly visible but relatively small percentage of political donations and the bulk is coming from corporations which are largely owned by institutional investors; pensions, mutual funds, and endowments. (I recall reading there's $10 trillion in retirement investments in the U.S. and I'd venture a guess those with second homes in Montauk are not dutifully making a $5500/year contribution to a Roth IRA ... maybe TGD can correct that if it's wrong.)

The problem of money in politics is inseparable from pluralism and trying to tweak this regulation or adjust that tax won't really have any meaningful impact. If this is really a concern you need to break with the entire notion of the financial democratic system and its two bookends, capitalism and communism. The only serious attempt to do that so far has had some branding issues.

These points are all true, but I am not concerned about money in politics per se. If I donate $100 to Hillary Clinton's campaign (lol), you can be sure that there's someone else out there donating $100 to Jeb Bush's campaign. Donations from typical individuals tend to wash out. On the other hand, there are individual wealthy investors who represent specific interests, and who want specific pieces of legislation (e.g. agriculture subsidies) to be passed. Those things don't have 'opposites;' possibly no one is donating to a Congressman to say "I don't like that agriculture subsidy."

I agree that an estate tax won't actually solve this problem, but it might make some progress.

That's not really what I mean. Person "A" adds $5K a year to a IRA by buying a Vanguard fund. The fund, in turn, is split among a wide variety of investment vehicles; 1% goes to Boeing, 1% goes to Aetna, 1% goes to Archer Daniels Midland, etc. ADM attempts to influence agricultural policy to maximize its profitability so that Vanguard will keep buying its stock and, in turn, Person "A" and a million people like him will keep buying Vanguard. (For the record, Vanguard owns 38 million shares of ADM while there's not a single non-employee "individual wealthy investor" who owns more than 100,000.)

Despite the supercharged rhetoric about campaign finance of late, individuals still donate more to campaigns than PACs do. And for donations of $200 or more (the ones that are reported by law), the average donation is over $2,000. Most people don't have that kind of cash to donate, so if the wealth distribution were significantly more even in this country, that might do something about the effects of at least individual donations. So even though many of the donations come from PACs with explicit business interests like the one you describe, there's quite a bit of room to work with here.

you can't make "progress" as the system either functions or doesn't, it doesn't operate on a sliding scale of goodness

This statement is nonsense in a consequentialist system. Of course we can make progress, if we believe that less corruption is better than more corruption. I may not have fundamentally changed the underlying system, but I may have made the actual world a little better by making politicians slightly more respective to constituent interests. Your statement is tantamount to saying "everything sucks equally unless we can root out all corruption entirely," a stance which I find quite dubious.

[mrswdk]

I thought your proposed tax was a blanket 100% estate tax? Or did you omit the part where it only applies to Bill Gates?

I did not omit it, you just didn't read closely I guess.

To account for the fact that death may be accidental or may occur at an unexpected time, and for the fact that your kids do likely need a little something to get by, I probably support TGD's approach of saying "100% estate tax after $X." X = 100,000 or something, continually adjusted for inflation.

I'm just curious what you think gives people the inherent right to forcibly redistribute the entirety of another person's legitimately-earned wealth.

Ok, if you're asking that question, you clearly didn't read anything at all that I wrote.

Yeah yeah, you started trying to present your tax as a pragmatic policy by borrowing some of the stuff that sabotage said but that doesn't change all those comments you made about how inequality is unfair and how rich people owe their wealth to society.

I vaguely recall you saying you support tgd's idea, and I still object.

[saxitoxin]

I suspect the individually wealthy constitute a highly visible but relatively small percentage of political donations and the bulk is coming from corporations which are largely owned by institutional investors; pensions, mutual funds, and endowments. (I recall reading there's $10 trillion in retirement investments in the U.S. and I'd venture a guess those with second homes in Montauk are not dutifully making a $5500/year contribution to a Roth IRA ... maybe TGD can correct that if it's wrong.)

The problem of money in politics is inseparable from pluralism and trying to tweak this regulation or adjust that tax won't really have any meaningful impact. If this is really a concern you need to break with the entire notion of the financial democratic system and its two bookends, capitalism and communism. The only serious attempt to do that so far has had some branding issues.

These points are all true, but I am not concerned about money in politics per se. If I donate $100 to Hillary Clinton's campaign (lol), you can be sure that there's someone else out there donating $100 to Jeb Bush's campaign. Donations from typical individuals tend to wash out. On the other hand, there are individual wealthy investors who represent specific interests, and who want specific pieces of legislation (e.g. agriculture subsidies) to be passed. Those things don't have 'opposites;' possibly no one is donating to a Congressman to say "I don't like that agriculture subsidy."

I agree that an estate tax won't actually solve this problem, but it might make some progress.

That's not really what I mean. Person "A" adds $5K a year to a IRA by buying a Vanguard fund. The fund, in turn, is split among a wide variety of investment vehicles; 1% goes to Boeing, 1% goes to Aetna, 1% goes to Archer Daniels Midland, etc. ADM attempts to influence agricultural policy to maximize its profitability so that Vanguard will keep buying its stock and, in turn, Person "A" and a million people like him will keep buying Vanguard. (For the record, Vanguard owns 38 million shares of ADM while there's not a single non-employee "individual wealthy investor" who owns more than 100,000.)

Despite the supercharged rhetoric about campaign finance of late, individuals still donate more to campaigns than PACs do.

That's a very silly thing to observe as, until 6 months ago, there was a cap on individual donations. If you think $1,000,000 donated by 1,000 people will have more influence than a single entity donating $500,000 you're just very, very detached from either read or experiential reality.

I don't know if you didn't get into Princeton, or you once weren't invited to a polo match in Montauk, or a girl rebuffed you because you weren't on the Social Register, or what, but your religious conviction of smoke-filled backrooms where Scroll & Key and Skull & Bones members decide the fate of the universe makes it sound like you've read The Great Gatsby one too many times.

[DoomYoshi]

If the kid's are useless (or like one of Mao's grandsons, insane) then the social utility of the capital in their hands is unlikely to exist.

To defend your wife's honor, I must challenge you to a duel for what is an attack on people of Chinese ancestry.

In other news, the Bible had the concept the other way. Parents were to give wealth to their children while they lived. Better with a warm embrace than with cold hands (roughly translated from the German).

[_sabotage_]

My wife isn't a fan of nepotism. Chinese people get two gods to choose from, Mao and Deng. While China's system has more or less reverted to its age-old practices, succession has been one of it's few successes (over the emperor, over the false democracy or puppet emperor, the successes are plentiful).

Deng is massively popular, sometimes held near Mao and sometimes above. Hu was a great leader: stable, internally responsive, externally stoic. I would always try to encourage people to slag off their leaders by praising them. Mao would take some licks, but Hu was always well-esteemed.

My political studies teacher used to say that the vote is decided by middle-age rural French Quebec ladies. Under such circumstances, I would reject my own idea. But if all inhabitants were given 100 points to either vote up or down a specific program that they felt were socially beneficially and that capital which was otherwise not engaged was put toward one of these programs at the choice of the investor, then it would have a chance.

What's more important than dealing with income inequality is bringing the classes together. Then, if the inequality persists, at least it doesn't happen in an abstract vacuum for those who may take umbrage.

[mrswdk]

Bringing the classes together means what?

[_sabotage_]

Socially.

It's both easier to neglect and condemn while enjoying the perks of being a wallflower.

Make people involved in the nitty gritty and they may put some effort in making it less nitty gritty. Let others see that people are working towards making things less nitty gritty and they may be less inclined to blame the nitty gritty on social policy.

[Metsfanmax]

That's a very silly thing to observe as, until 6 months ago, there was a cap on individual donations.

Yes, but that cap was already at a level that is out of reach for almost all Americans. Since the average donation was $2200, that means that most of the itemized donations were basically at the level of the cap. Now, you can straw man my argument into saying that I am talking about deals made in smoke-filled rooms if you want, but that is really not my point. Instead, I am saying that because the bulk of the donations come from the wealthy, decisions made by politicians will be more responsive to the desires of the wealthy. Politicians know who donate to their campaigns, so their actions will in general be designed not to piss these people off. This is already enough to do things that are pretty damaging to the nation's poorest. You don't have to hate the homeless to do some serious damage to them; you just have to be pretty meek on redistribution of wealth, because the people you want to distribute away from happen to be the ones funding your campaign.

There is also the separate effect of large contributors who are lobbying for specific laws. I have in mind here people like the Koch Brothers or Tom Steyer. You can't read much about their influence from the cap on donations because the vast majority of their influence comes in PAC support, but they are clearly still doing the thing I was talking about earlier.

[Metsfanmax]

Yeah yeah, you started trying to present your tax as a pragmatic policy by borrowing some of the stuff that sabotage said but that doesn't change all those comments you made about how inequality is unfair and how rich people owe their wealth to society.

I do believe that inequality is unfair and that rich people owe their wealth to society. The reason I support the 100% estate tax above a certain threshold is that if the threshold is zero, it will likely end up hurting the poor more than it helps. It would be different if we already had the universal basic income.

I vaguely recall you saying you support tgd's idea, and I still object.

What, you object because you don't like my intentions, regardless of whether it's a good policy idea?

[saxitoxin]

That's a very silly thing to observe as, until 6 months ago, there was a cap on individual donations. If you think $1,000,000 donated by 1,000 people will have more influence than a single entity donating $500,000 you're just very, very detached from either read or experiential reality.

Yes, but that cap was already at a level that is out of reach for almost all Americans. Since the average donation was $2200, that means that most of the itemized donations were basically at the level of the cap. Now, you can straw man my argument into saying that I am talking about deals made in smoke-filled rooms if you want, but that is really not my point. Instead, I am saying that because the bulk of the donations come from the wealthy, decisions made by politicians will be more responsive to the desires of the wealthy. Politicians know who donate to their campaigns, so their actions will in general be designed not to piss these people off. This is already enough to do things that are pretty damaging to the nation's poorest. You don't have to hate the homeless to do some serious damage to them; you just have to be pretty meek on redistribution of wealth, because the people you want to distribute away from happen to be the ones funding your campaign.

There is also the separate effect of large contributors who are lobbying for specific laws. I have in mind here people like the Koch Brothers or Tom Steyer. You can't read much about their influence from the cap on donations because the vast majority of their influence comes in PAC support, but they are clearly still doing the thing I was talking about earlier.

A down payment on a Ford Fiesta ($2200) does not have more influence than a single entity donating $500,000. Maybe you mean to be talking about bundlers? Even then, I don't think you'll find anything to match the largely cartoonish caricature you've painted here as I don't believe there are many bundlers among the idly rich.

As for your perspective that $2200 is a wildly exorbitant sum accessible only by people whose last name are Mars or Vandenberg, I don't know what to tell you. The last political rally I attended had about 400 people there and, when the call came for donations, a good 8 or 9 wrote checks at the cap. And from the look of them, no one in that room had horses they were stabling at the Southampton Hunt Club. Politics is important enough to some people that they spend 1% or 2% of their income every other year supporting a candidate in whom they believe strongly.

My other observation is not a strawman. As I previously said, I also support a 100% estate tax in theory, however, your reasoning for it sounds like you just finished binge-winging Scandal on your Netflix account. I'm sorry.

[Metsfanmax]

A down payment on a Ford Fiesta ($2200) does not have more influence than a single entity donating $500,000. Maybe you mean to be talking about bundlers? Even then, I don't think you'll find anything to match the largely cartoonish caricature you've painted here as I don't believe there are many bundlers among the idly rich.

This isn't a response to my argument. I don't even know what point you are trying to make here. My point is that there are two effects to worry about: that the average donation comes from the wealthy, so that on average politicians are more concerned with the effects laws have on the wealthy than on the poor; and, that individual donations on the level of $500,000 do have the ability to influence legislative outcomes. If you think they don't, you are being willfully naive.

As for your perspective that $2200 is a wildly exorbitant sum accessible only by people whose last name are Mars or Vandenberg, I don't know what to tell you. The last political rally I attended had about 400 people there and, when the call came for donations, a good 8 or 9 wrote checks at the cap. And from the look of them, no one in that room had horses they were stabling at the Southampton Hunt Club. Politics is important enough to some people that they spend 1% or 2% of their income every other year supporting a candidate in whom they believe strongly.

The Open Secrets statistics indicate that the number of people donating above $200 was about 700,000 people, or 0.2% of the US population. There may be a few lower middle class people who care enough about politics to donate even 1% of their salary, but for the most part these people are not the people who donate to campaigns. If $2200 is 1% of your personal income then you are already in the top couple percent of the US income distribution, which is the point I am making: the people who are contributing are also the people who actually have something to lose from wealth redistribution policies, as it is the people who earn maybe $200,000 or more per year who are most aggressively targeted for higher tax rates.

[notyou2]

HOLY f*ck!!!!!

LOOK AT ALL THE SOCIALISTS!!!!!!

[Lootifer]

FWIW I am not really a supporter of a 100% estate tax as it is simply too hard to regulate. History has shown that things that are hard to regulate, but still are, tend to be gamed and have lots of unintended consequences (I like it conceptually but there are easier ways to redistribute wealth).

In terms of funding a UBI I would suggest it be covered by:

a) a more graduated income tax scale (higher rates for higher earners), and,

b) a 1-2% revenue tax on businesses (adjust standard business tax to compensate ofc)

As much as some of you are disgusted like loot, i feel the same about you guys. We are genetically programmed to reproduce and take care of our offspring.

To be fair "disgusted" isn't really what I feel, its more disappointment.

I firmly opposed class systems, implicit or explicit. There is absolutely zero reason the children of wealthy children deserve a better start in life than poor children - to me its analogous to gambling (which I also oppose), you roll the dice and get lucky with your parents? Well played... I have no issue with wealthy kids being more "comfortable", but education, health and wellbeing should be 100% homogenized in my opinion.

Yes I can understand the genetic programming, but surely as a society we can recognize that genetic programming here is contrary to what is a fair and equitable way of running our society('s)? I believe that this is where the individual incentives leading to optimal outcomes (ie. free market) fails.

Also if you think it's relevant: no I don't have children, but I hope that if/when I do that I will still feel the same, this maybe naïve of me but I cant control that.

[Lootifer]

Socially.

It's both easier to neglect and condemn while enjoying the perks of being a wallflower.

Make people involved in the nitty gritty and they may put some effort in making it less nitty gritty. Let others see that people are working towards making things less nitty gritty and they may be less inclined to blame the nitty gritty on social policy.

While I agree, political institutions worldwide are designed to prevent this from happening.

I'd love to be politically active, but as there is not a single political party that aligns with my views (social or anarcho libertarianism), nor would one ever survive (thus I am not going to start one) then there is little point. The only real option for the likes of BBS and myself (even though we are quite different in our practical views) is to try and point how bad the existing structure is.

[DoomYoshi]

Socially.

It's both easier to neglect and condemn while enjoying the perks of being a wallflower.

Make people involved in the nitty gritty and they may put some effort in making it less nitty gritty. Let others see that people are working towards making things less nitty gritty and they may be less inclined to blame the nitty gritty on social policy.

While I agree, political institutions worldwide are designed to prevent this from happening.

I'd love to be politically active, but as there is not a single political party that aligns with my views (social or anarcho libertarianism), nor would one ever survive (thus I am not going to start one) then there is little point. The only real option for the likes of BBS and myself (even though we are quite different in our practical views) is to try and point how bad the existing structure is.

You should support the Christian family party.

[mrswdk]

Yeah yeah, you started trying to present your tax as a pragmatic policy by borrowing some of the stuff that sabotage said but that doesn't change all those comments you made about how inequality is unfair and how rich people owe their wealth to society.

I do believe that inequality is unfair and that rich people owe their wealth to society. The reason I support the 100% estate tax above a certain threshold is that if the threshold is zero, it will likely end up hurting the poor more than it helps. It would be different if we already had the universal basic income.

That's nothing but ideology.

I vaguely recall you saying you support tgd's idea, and I still object.

What, you object because you don't like my intentions, regardless of whether it's a good policy idea?

How is it a good policy idea? Mao tried the same thing and as we all know, he wasn't very good at making practical policy choices.

[Metsfanmax]

Yeah yeah, you started trying to present your tax as a pragmatic policy by borrowing some of the stuff that sabotage said but that doesn't change all those comments you made about how inequality is unfair and how rich people owe their wealth to society.

I do believe that inequality is unfair and that rich people owe their wealth to society. The reason I support the 100% estate tax above a certain threshold is that if the threshold is zero, it will likely end up hurting the poor more than it helps. It would be different if we already had the universal basic income.

That's nothing but ideology.

Well I think ideology is an unfair word. It is a moral belief, that is true.

I vaguely recall you saying you support tgd's idea, and I still object.

What, you object because you don't like my intentions, regardless of whether it's a good policy idea?

How is it a good policy idea? Mao tried the same thing and as we all know, he wasn't very good at making practical policy choices.

Mao implemented an estate tax for all wealth above $100,000? Did not know that. How did it work out?

[mrswdk]

I firmly opposed class systems

lol. Good luck with that. Even communist countries have different social classes. You are chasing a ghost,

[mrswdk]

Yeah yeah, you started trying to present your tax as a pragmatic policy by borrowing some of the stuff that sabotage said but that doesn't change all those comments you made about how inequality is unfair and how rich people owe their wealth to society.

I do believe that inequality is unfair and that rich people owe their wealth to society. The reason I support the 100% estate tax above a certain threshold is that if the threshold is zero, it will likely end up hurting the poor more than it helps. It would be different if we already had the universal basic income.

That's nothing but ideology.

Well I think ideology is an unfair word. It is a moral belief, that is true.

Tomato, tomato.

I vaguely recall you saying you support tgd's idea, and I still object.

What, you object because you don't like my intentions, regardless of whether it's a good policy idea?

How is it a good policy idea? Mao tried the same thing and as we all know, he wasn't very good at making practical policy choices.

Mao implemented an estate tax for all wealth above $100,000? Did not know that. How did it work out?

Mao declared that Old Money should be taken from those who had it and given to those who 'deserved' it. He presided over an impoverished country from beginning to end.

[mrswdk]

Socially.

It's both easier to neglect and condemn while enjoying the perks of being a wallflower.

Make people involved in the nitty gritty and they may put some effort in making it less nitty gritty. Let others see that people are working towards making things less nitty gritty and they may be less inclined to blame the nitty gritty on social policy.

Whether or not one has sentimental ideas about laborers, the facts would not change.

[saxitoxin]

A down payment on a Ford Fiesta ($2200) does not have more influence than a single entity donating $500,000. Maybe you mean to be talking about bundlers? Even then, I don't think you'll find anything to match the largely cartoonish caricature you've painted here as I don't believe there are many bundlers among the idly rich.

This isn't a response to my argument. I don't even know what point you are trying to make here.

yes, that's clear

My point is that there are two effects to worry about: that the average donation comes from the wealthy, so that on average politicians are more concerned with the effects laws have on the wealthy than on the poor; and, that individual donations on the level of $500,000 do have the ability to influence legislative outcomes. If you think they don't, you are being willfully naive.

Nothing you have said shows that "the average donation comes from the [individual] wealthy." In 2004, the last year for which I could find data, 65% of donations came from people earning under $250,000 and I have no reason to believe that has changed substantially. That's the income range of successful professionals like dentists, or metro attorneys, or engineers. The children of people earning $125K or $175K a year are not the idle rich, attending the Kent School before graduating into a lifetime allowance, which is the thesis you've been pushing. (Further, you have nothing to show the 35% above $250K are part of the idle rich, versus productive new money.)

Second, the working and middle class are donating in numbers not reflected in FEC reporting (as I explained in my post three messages ago), albeit unwittingly and proxied by the brokerage houses in which trillions of dollars of their wealth is held.

Third, bundlers are also largely heeled from the commercial interests of publicly traded companies owned by pensions, endowments, mutual funds, and their own executives; there's no one on either of these bundler lists that are the scions of Gilded Age industrialists with trust funds and surnames with a Van or Von prefix.

The bottom line is that commercially-motivated giving to advance the interests of exchange traded companies is most certainly a more significant factor in political influence than what kids in East Hampton are doing with their trust funds. Your worldview seems to be largely drawn from what you've seen on made-for-TV movies.

[Metsfanmax]

Nothing you have said shows that "the average donation comes from the [individual] wealthy." In 2004, the last year for which I could find data, 65% of donations came from people earning under $250,000 and I have no reason to believe that has changed substantially. That's the income range of successful professionals like dentists, or metro attorneys, or engineers. The children of people earning $125K or $175K a year are not the idle rich, attending the Kent School before graduating into a lifetime allowance, which is the thesis you've been pushing. (Further, you have nothing to show the 35% above $250K are part of the idle rich, versus productive new money.)

You're strawmanning my position by saying that it is about the astronomically wealthy, but it is not. I count anyone making in the ballpark of $200,000 as wealthy. This is certainly in absolute terms, but it's also fairly true in relative terms, since less than 5% of the country makes that much. Laws in this country generally protect and advance the interests of those people more than they do the people who make $20,000. The complete ethical failure that is our social welfare system is a testament to that fact. We're not very serious about helping the poor here, because politicians are more concerned about protecting "the middle class." I have a hard time getting worried about the middle class (dentists, engineers, etc.) when there are still people here who don't know where their next meal is coming from. Yet it is those types of people, and also those who are more wealthy, that are the target of political posturing.

Second, the working and middle class are donating in numbers not reflected in FEC reporting (as I explained in my post three messages ago), albeit unwittingly and proxied by the brokerage houses in which trillions of dollars of their wealth is held. You simply didn't seem to understand.

Yes, and the fact that this is true does not imply that the donations coming from individuals are irrelevant to views that politicians hold. It just means that politicians are being influenced by many people on many different issues. (Though I don't know that many people who are at the poverty level who have shares in ADM.) Now, the important part here is that even though working class people do have some level of indirect influence on politicians through the investments they make in publicly traded companies, the decisions made by corporate executives are not with the intent of making Joe the Plumber richer. They are made with the intent of making themselves richer. That will often coincide with taking actions to improve their share price, but again the only reason they're improving their share price is to make themselves richer.

The bottom line is that commercially-motivated giving to advance the interests of publicly traded companies is most certainly a more significant factor in political influence than what kids in East Hampton with trust funds do. Your worldview seems to be largely drawn from what you've seen on made-for-TV movies.

Even if your argument that it is a "more significant factor" is true, that doesn't mean we should just stop caring about other problems.

[Lootifer]

I firmly opposed class systems

lol. Good luck with that. Even communist countries have different social classes. You are chasing a ghost,

Totally. Doesn't stop me thinking it's shit though.

Oh you keep mentioning communism: I am pretty anti-communism. Most humans are fundamentally incapable of being non-corrupt, and all are incapable of not being self-interested. Designing a system that is reliant on the leaders being non-corrupt and putting their self interest to the side is never going to work in practice.