I would much rather tax the wealthy, so that we could create a society where we don't have children who need a "financial head start"
I read a book nearly a decade ago, that I think is worth highlighting.
> The book's central thesis is that members of the global elite are using philanthropic institutions to preserve a system that concentrates wealth and power at the top at the expense of societal progress. Giridharadas examines the narrow limits of modern philanthropy, claiming that rich donors avoid contributing to causes which could undermine their own lofty status. He argues that in some cases, the political lobbying efforts of wealthy donors may reduce the government's ability to address inequality.
Had a conversation with a us friend who works with philanthropy. That person agreed that philanthropy is ugly, but let me know that it is better than nothing while the US has its current ways.
You could simply fix that. In what world does a billionaire pay for a countries' contribution to the United Nations, an institute they helped found and which has its main seat in that country... it's shameful, really.
The top 10% of the earners in the US are paying 72% of the taxes collected. I'd assume most of the posters here from the US fall into that category. ($178k/year AGI). Are you willing to pony up more of your income for taxes?
> Are you willing to pony up more of your income for taxes?
The taxes don't have to come from income, there were plenty of tax cut extensions + some new ones that could have been let go without increasing the individual upper-middle-to-lower wealth class taxes and greatly cut down budget deficit with the increased revenue. Instead the extensions of the 2017 cuts are going add some 3.7 trillion over the next 10 years.
I pay as much tax as I can, and claim for none of the allowances I could. Some people actually understand that their tax is important. edit: I'm not in the US, but there's a lot of brits with your attitude too.
I was of that mindset until I learned how currencies and central banks work. The government doesn't need our tax money. US dollars aren't a fixed resource. With fractional reserve banking and interest rates, central bank controls how much new money is entering the economy. Taxes are a way to take some money out of the economy. However the economy runs warm at 2-3% inflation on average. Economy can technically run without any taxation if inflation is kept under control, and productivity of goods and services is going up.
State and city institutions get loans just like we do, sometimes at lower interest rates than individuals can. During covid, loan rate was lower than inflation. That is essentially free money.
It's a complex subject. We've been all told that US debt is a massive timebomb that will explode, however many other countries have higher debt:gdp ratio.
I'm not saying one shouldn't pay their taxes. I'm saying don't pay more tax than you need to. US govt can create money out of thin air either via congress approval or fed interest rate.
It's an interesting point, but "US govt can create money out of thin air either via congress approval or fed interest rate" has spectacular knock-on effects that you'd need to wilfully ignore. I recommend David Graeber's `Debt: The First 5,000 Years` for some good reading on the subject.
the non profit space relies on Congressional deadlock
I know several people that vote for and donate to campaigns for senators on the other side of the aisle just to help ensure gridlock
the next layer after that is that tax education is so poor that the population doesnt even know what laws they want to change
so its not worth talking about as that ensures another 100 years of “tax the rich” turning into “tax the income of wage workers making over $500k” by the time a bill makes it out of committee
(I don’t find that controversial, just different enough to be interesting)
what's more important to me isn't the single person vote itself, the campaign and cause contributions would be influential and the behavior is different than what people think those with money and some power in their domain are doing, how they're navigating and choosing candidates
You can tell this is happening from the fact that all elections seem to end up being a 49/51 result. There's some strange Nash Equilibrium thing going on.
that's just run of the mill polarization in the country, and that the party with more people hasn't been inspired to mass move them around the country for 5-8 months one year to register to vote and tip every election
That doesn't require anything nefarious. The parties can and do change their platforms and candidates to adapt to the electorate. If a party starts finding a way to win more votes, the other party will adjust to win them back.
It's like how prices at different gas stations tend to be within a few percent of each other. It's not conspiracy, just competition.
This is money flowing from rich people to (mostly) not-rich children. Although the mechanism is different, the money seems to flowing in the same direction you’re hoping for?
High income individuals already pay a majority of personal taxes in America. And American governments get about $10T(or $29k per citizen) to play with each year between federal, state, and local.
Exactly how much money is needed to create this society you're imagining? America has more than enough money (IMHO), we just suffer from cost issues, and if you just throw more money at a situation where you have cost issues, you are just burning the money.
To piggy back on this, as a thought experiment, if you took all the wealth of every American billionaire combined you would pay for the US government for about a year.
Top 10% wealth is $113T. Government is operating off of $5T revenue.
Seizing all of it and putting it into even a foreign owned asset basket (could pick an economy as shielded as possible from US in case it causes instability in US economy) should yield enough interest (at least 5% real) to operate the federal government and public entitlements indefinitely based on present real revenues.
It's not clear if this is meant to be a serious thought experiment, but nonetheless I would ask why you equate expenses ($6.8T) with revenue ($4.9T)? I suppose it might not make a big difference, but it's a strange decision (within an already very weird thought experiment.) Also not sure why you picked top 10% wealth, since the previous comment was about billionaires. The top 10% of net worth starts with low millionaires so... goodbye every single employer, I assume.
We suffer from billionaires hoarding money and companies creating an unfair market. Tell me what's the need for billionaires? Even having 100m is enough to feed a few generations of your family, isn't that enough?
This could teach a lot of kids at least some financial literacy, which is valuable in any situation or tax regime.
Personally, I would have loved to have some money on such an investment account as a kid, and I would nerd out on its development, discuss it with friends etc. Knowing that everyone around me has the same account would also make it less taboo to discuss money in general.
You would, but most kids would not care. I question the value because I've seen plenty of kids spend every penny they get on candy and other such things that are not valueable long term.
The OG claim wasn't a claim that they're more effective. It's that it could reduce inequality. By definition it's true. This is simple to prove. If I say, confiscate the wealth of anyone with more than a pot to piss in, and burn it in a fire. Then we would all be equal.
And even if that weren't the case, it's still not democratic to let people individually decide who gets what dollar. We build states so that we can direct their action through democratic means, using our votes. That's the best way
That's not a realistic position to take, no society works on that principle. The state always levies taxes (ok, Somalia may be excepted here) and the state always does the allocation of that money.
Use their wealth to accumulate more wealth through political connections. Use their wealth to disenfranchise others. Use it to harm others. How many forms of abuse are there and what would it take to enumerate them all?
" - $73.34 billion in tax revenue was lost to the public in 2022 due to personal and corporate charitable deductions.
- If we include just the little data we have about charitable bequests and the investments of charities themselves, the revenue loss is pushed up to roughly $111 billion.
- And if we also include the capital gains revenue lost from the donation of appreciated assets, the true revenue costs of charity likely add up to several hundreds of billions of dollars each year."
There is a political benefit for Trump and fellow Republicans. The accounts will become available in the midst of a midterm election, providing money to millions of voters — and a campaign talking point to GOP candidates — at a critical time politically. The $1,000 deposits are slated to end just after the 2028 presidential election.
They are obviously trying to buy the vote, so they can keep benefiting from the various tax breaks this admin is giving the wealthy...
I mean... This money isn't going into a matress. For 18 years, this is just a way for the government to give $3.6 billion to the owning class.
And as a bonus, it makes everyone defacto invested into the status quo of "line go up at all costs, devoid of relation to economy." Don't think about protest little ones, or you'll lose your nest egg and mommy and daddy lose their retirement.
I'm sure they're also salivating thinking about how to use this to justify the removal of Social Security payment in due time too.
Philanthropy at the personal level is good. People need to interact with their city and know their neighbors and their issues. Mega donations at the national level are really just end-runs around our democracy. We need to figure it out as a society, not have a rich person come in and say 'I have money and this is how I want society to work'. Even if I agree with you, I don't really want any individual to have that much power over that many people. We need to constantly find ways as a society of encouraging individual voices and reducing the power of money as a voice.
The government might spend the money on giant AI data centers instead, this donation is going directly to something helpful.
I've been thinking about a synthesis of communism and capitalism, where instead of levying dollar taxes, the corporations transfer 0.5% of control (stock, etc) to the government per year. Adjusted for how much the government already controls.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your "good enough" phrasing. It might actually not be good enough. It begs all sorts of questions about the state of things in the US that an extremely wealthy individual has the means to do this and at the same time that something like this doesn't already exist for the recipients via some other mechanism such as the entity that's responsible for a citizen's well being playing some role.
It is good, though. I think most folks who complain about it, though, wish it were better (better does not mean Dell spends even more of his own money on this, not directly anyway).
Many people view the existence of billionaires as a profound societal flaw. The accumulation of such obscene wealth by an individual is only possible because of systemic problems which prevented employees from capturing their fair share of their productivity, prevented competitors from entering the market to lower margins or prevented customers from being able to purchase at lower prices.
It's a good thing that he's giving away 4% of his wealth. He'll still have $140,000,000,000 left after this donation though, which is relevant context.
I read a book nearly a decade ago, that I think is worth highlighting.
> The book's central thesis is that members of the global elite are using philanthropic institutions to preserve a system that concentrates wealth and power at the top at the expense of societal progress. Giridharadas examines the narrow limits of modern philanthropy, claiming that rich donors avoid contributing to causes which could undermine their own lofty status. He argues that in some cases, the political lobbying efforts of wealthy donors may reduce the government's ability to address inequality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Take_All:_The_Elite_Ch...