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Tech Rich Get Richer
theodp writes "The economy is improving, at least for the super rich. After two years of declines, the aggregate net worth of the U.S.'s wealthiest 400 citizens leapt 10% in the past year to $995 billion, according to Forbes' annual ranking. The gains are part of a continuing shift in wealth from the East coast to the tech-centric West. Bill Gates capped off a decade in the top spot after his fortune increased by $3B to $46B. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen held onto 3rd place, his net worth rising $1B to $22B. Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who saw his fortune expand by more than $3B to $5.1B, was the top gainer on the list. And with a measly $1.4B, Jerry Yang of Yahoo! found himself in a 16-way tie for 162nd place."
I just hope when i finish my degree i'll be one of the richer!!
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I'd be willing to bet, though, that the slow decline in IT salaries (developers in particular, where I have experience) won't be affected at all by this news.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
A tax cut for the rich! That's a swell plan for redressing society's woes!
Newsflash: the rich have been getting richer, but so has everybody else. Even the poorest Americans today are living far better than years before.
Why is this news that the top dogs are getting even richer?
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Those EVIL rich people! How dare they be rich! It's not like they worked for their money or anything. No! They had it handed to them on a silver platter!
It disgusts me! We're all poor because they're a bunch of greedy, good-for-nothing bastards who horde all the money for themselves! They stuff it in their mattresses and roll naked in it! No, no, they don't spend it, they horde it just keep us poor!
Evil I tell you, EEEEEEVVVVVIIIIIIILLL!
My journal has hot
I don't think that the article really supports the headline (yeah, I know, this is /., I shouldn't be surprised about that).
First, choosing an unrepresentative sample of 400 people out of about 300 million can't possibly tell you anything useful about the broad trends of a society ("...Rich Get Richer").
Second, of the 400 richest people in the US, only a small fraction of them have their wealth based on a technical source (even broadly defined). So the "Tech" part of the headline is suspect as well.
But hey, I'm all for the mob, let's eat the rich!
I've sent out 1001 resumes and received but one job offer...in Indiana (UGH!)! Most positions were pulled or filled in house-mostly by people (still) expected to do their old job too. Some simply haven't hired anyone yet. The rich are getting richer by laying off employees in droves and expecting the ones left to pick up the slack. THEY call it: "improved productivity". What it really should be called is exploitation. What's that Bruce Cockburn song: "If I had a Rocket Launcher".........
Let's see. 10% is the "average" return that most people work with when dealing with things like mutual funds and most basic medium-risk investments. Yeah, I know you can't count on it, and the economy's been sucking lately. But you can still find decent investments. This doesn't really count real estate or anything like that. Additionally, people with a bit of money have access to investments that the rest of us who aren't millionaires don't. Such as hedge funds.
So you're telling me that in the last year, these billionaires only managed to get a 10% return? I mean, even if we're talking about someone owning a lot of real estate, that still appreciates in value over time (generally). Let's say that only half their value is actually invested in things that would appreciate (stock/fund/real estate/other investments, for example), which is really conservative. That's still only a 20% return. Sounds pretty poor to me.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
That's the saying... I took a lot of history classes. It dazzles me how Paul Allen's net worth went up 1 billion dollars. Does anyone know what he does, besides own Microsoft stock, that would increase his value that much?
stuff |
They didn't actually get "nailed" though, did they? They just finally fucked up and collapsed. Its not like Bush sent in the IRS and SEC one week on a whime and lo and behold! they've been swindling money!
Anyway, its all nonsense. Clinton was not responsible for Enron getting rich, Bush was not responsible for them collapsing. No one noticed what they were upto properly under either office; thats the really sad thing about it.
Tom Golisano (Founder of payroll company PayChex, worth over 10 Billion) borrowed 1,500$ of a relative's money to found his company. He had a good plan, worked hard, did the right thing and look what happened.
Bill Gates got lucky, he invested 80,000 in buying a hastily put together OS to resell for a higher price. Little did he know how much that initial 80,000 would grow. Right place, right time, and alittle bit of business smarts got him where he is.
Larry Ellison created Oracle because he believed in the relational database. He founded a company around it, ran it right, and now his biggest worry is why won't customs let his fighter jets in. Woe to be him, eh?
Even the venerable Sam Walton (Who if alive would be worth over 100 billion) started out with one retail store. Difference was his stores were ran better than anyone elses. Look at how K-Mart fell from grace so quickly. Do the mega-store better than Wal-Mart and you'll be rich too.
The bottom line is some of this people came from money, others started with nothing.
But the fact is that they got where they are today. THAT is what the "American dream" is, and we are fortunate to live in a country where our names could be on that list one day.
Who knows, maybe tommorrow a lightbulb will go off in your head and you'll think of a way of doing something innovative or different.
Yes Virginia, you can be a billionaire too.
That's stupid. The money is wealth generated by the corporation. Most of these people are company founders (Gates, Allen, Bezos, Dell, etc) and own a large chunk of the stock. As the stock price goes up, their net worth increases. Pretty simple actually.
Stolen from the shareholders? What if they *are* the shareholders?
The only way I'd agree with you is if you were talking about the amounts of money CEOs are compensated. Like the $30 million salaires and $50 million bonuses and such... those are so far out of proportion that I would agree it's unjust. But that's not how they made their billions.
now tell me, how come that in the last years: "average" workers (at least in IT) either
a) lost their jobs because of the "recession"
b) have to work for free or similar because there are too many people that are willing to do the same
or
c) have to work for 70 hours a week to have a life?
am I the only one who thinks that there's something rotten in the "american way of life"
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
What bothers me is there is no conceivable way these individuals could have performed over a billion dollars worth of labor, ever. I'm not advocating communism or socialism, I'm just pointing out a basic truth. None of these people could have conceivably done more useful work than the entire lifetimes work of thousands of people.
Sure they can. They've provided work for a lifetime for thousands of people.
-- $G
Is it just me, or has Slashdot gotten disturbingly political (and specifically Leftsist)? I just want news for nerds, not news for Comrades.
Look, some corporate types got some of their money through devious and immoral means. Just look at the Delta executives who asked their employees to take big pay cuts while the executives themselves were ensuring that their pension plan could never run out of money. That was legal, but wrong. Some executives at other companies straight-out broke the law (take your pick).
This said, you can create wealth that exceeds the dollar value of all the work you could possibly perform in your lifetime and THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT STEALING. If you get rich by cleverly trading stocks, like #2 on the list Warren Buffett, you have used the money you previously earned (not stolen) to buy a thing of value (stock in a company). At some later date someone else OFFERED TO BUY IT FROM YOU FOR MORE MONEY. You did not force them to give you that money! You did not steal it! This is neither illegal nor immoral!
But wait, you say, the value of that stock was increased by the toil and labor of that company's workers, not by you. That means you stole that value from them! I quote from your post:
"In some cases, the money was stolen from fortunes made by the ideas and productive results of employees of the company. Does anyone truly believe Jobs invented the imac and made it's phenomenal success possible?"
That is bologna. Those employees signed an employment contract when they started working for Apple. They knew it was a publicly traded company. They knew what their salaries were and they decided to accept them. They could have bought company stock at any time. Many did, I'm sure. It's all about who accepts the risk of owning the business; if they wanted a bigger stake in the fruits of their labors they could have started their own private company.
These are all legal, voluntary agreements between adults of sound mind. None of it is theft!
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
What remains is the question of whether or not it is right that these people do so well out of founding a company and making it successful. You can look at it two ways. some would say the success of these companies was due not just to the founder, but also due to the hard work of the other employees. Others will point out that the risk and effort taken by the company founder is what enables all these employees to earn a living in the first place. Whatever the case; these company founders are not particularly productive, not to the tune of billions of dollars anyway. But they founded their respective companies and own them... that's where their fortune derives from. Should that ownership be taken away from them when the company takes off? I think not.
Just remember that one of the best ways to become rich yourself is to start your own business and make it successful. Even a moderately successful small-scale company can be worth a nice deal of money; not billions, but enough to keep you comfortable.
You don't even have to start the company yourself. I've been invited to help with a startup... and if I am going to pour my sweat and tears into the company (and with a startup, I can expect to have to), my efforts will be a large contribution to the success of the company. That means I want to have a stake in the potential success as well: not in the form of a large salary, but in a part ownership of the company.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
This is an example of a logical error. Yes, they lead the tiller on the ship...but simply because the decisions they make touch the wheel, does this mean they are 10,000 times as useful as anyone else? Is it somehow a rare trait for an individual to be able to understand and lead a corporate mechanism? Of course not. It's like saying the hand on the wheel is 100,000 times as important as the lookouts in the crow's nests or the actual tiller man in the engine room. Sure, the captain's hand perhaps is a litle more important than the less trained hands of the kitchen boy's....but not thousands or millions of times more as in corporations. Plenty of educated people exist who can provide these sorts of decisions, some no doubt better than the executives we have in place. The reason they are paid more is because the executive has name recognition in the minds of the company shareholders, not because his services are thousands, millions of times more valuble. A possible analogy might be Formula 1 racing cars. Every last part on those cars from the tiniest minutae in the engine firmware to suspension tuning has to be right for the car to win the race. Yet, the fans only remember the names of the driver, even though his labor is only a small portion of the work required to reach the finish line in time. Sure, driving a car is tough...but so is tuning the fuel system and making these machines even survive the race. Sure, leading the next level of workers as a corporate exec isn't easy...but neither is debugging code or designing candy colored computer cases.
This, of course is operating under the "your salary is your worth" model of richness, which I would argue isn't incredibly accurate. Wealth is typically recognized through one's net worth. Once you reach a high enough net worth to be of note, your annual income becomes somewhat trivial to your total net worth.
Somewhat related is how amusing it is to hear people talking about "tax cuts for the (rich | poor | etc)," when they're actually talking about "tax cuts for the (high income | low income | etc)," which is more accurate. Just because someone has a high salary or a low salary does not mean they have a high net worth or low net worth.
Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/
Now hold on a minute here, accusing these people of stealing is taking things a BIT far.
What you're failing to recognize is the difference between net worth and salary. Salary is generally recognized as a compensation for labor.
Gates and Jobs, for example, were founders of their companies. They took risks, they had good ideas, and they had the leadership to drive their companies to financial success (you can argue amonst yourselves about the technical success of their products, but the financial accomplishments of their companies is pretty evident).
Most of their net worth came about through equity that they have as the founders of these companies, NOT through their salaries. Yes, their salaries are high, but not $40 billion high. Most of this net worth was accumulated through the appreciation of their equity.
Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/
Let me give you a little illustration about your so-called tax cuts for the rich. The Democrats proposed a new solution to taxes to solve the "problem" of tax-cuts for the rich. This illustration is borrowed from someone on the radio (can't remember who). Also please keep in mind that these numbers are fictional and just for illustration purposes.
Ok, so 50,000 people buy tickets to a baseball game.
1,000 of those people bought box seats for $300.
9,000 of those people bought really good seats right near the dugout for $150.
15,000 people bought average tickets for $75.
25,000 people bought nosebleed tickets for $25.
Well, wouldn't ya know it, the game gets cancelled. The owners of the stadium are Democrats and pass out refunds the same way Democrats want to hand out tax cuts:
The 25,000 people get a refund of $50. $25 more than they actually payed for a ticket. Awesome eh?
The 15,000 people get a refund of $100. Hey, they get $25 more too...
The 9,000 people get a refund of only $125. What? They don't get all of their money back?
The 1,000 people? Well, they don't get a refund. Instead, they pay $475 apiece.
That folks, is the math of democrats.
Yes, its overexaggerating and silly, but its also a bit serious. Of course the rich are going to get more money back out of a tax cut. They paid more in the first place.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
The shareholders were duped into agreeing that the 'first' guy to start the company should keep a significant fraction of the shares even though the shareholders invest many thousands or millions of times more dollars than the founder ever did.
And yet the shareholders, who were "duped", make money in the end because their stock values rise. The employees make money from their jobs. The executives make money from guiding and directing the work of the other employees, thus making creations like the automobile, and large complicated operating systems, and department stores possible.
All of your posts reak of a deep-seated hatred for everyone you consider "rich". Someone who is "rich" took chances that nobody else took, and gets to reap the benefits. Per capita, no socialist or communist country has EVER been nearly as well-off as the capitalist societies. Every experiment in socialism and communism, as far as wealth goes, has failed miserably. Socialism and communism don't work. Capitalism does work. The problem you're seeing is jealousy of those people who were willing to take risks that you weren't, and now you have to watch them grow into examples people point out at parties.
I really would like to debate with you the pros and cons of the capitalistic society, but until you give me specific examples of where wealth was "stolen" or who the victims were, your posts have little in common with reality.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Perhaps the CEOs are getting richer because nowadays they're paying offshore outsourcing companies such as Tata peanuts to do the work their fellow countrymen (and women) did only a year or two back? I'm sure it's not the sole reason but likely is a significant one.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
I think the point of giving the middle and lower-class a larger portion of the tax cuts is the fact that the money they get back could make the difference in sending their children to college, or improving their standard of living.
The money will most likely make no immediate difference in the lifestyle of the upper-class.
Most new businesses fail. It is a risky thing for your own personal livlihood to start your own business because if it fails, you don't have income to fall back on and you are likely deep in debt. The owners of the company absolutely deserve the right to reap the benefits of the risk they took if their business becomes valuable. Don't trivialize it by portraying it as a meer steering job - they built the boat and created jobs for the whole crew.
I think you really don't understand how the people at the top of the list got there. They did not get there because they are "paid more" as you said. Think about it for a second - the exhorbitant salaries that you hear about executives getting are in the $30M range. That's going to be somewhere under $15M after taxes. Even if an executive worked at such a job for 10 years (which is unlikely because such salaries are a very recent occurrence), that's only $150M he could have made. The people on the list are worth tens of billions of dollars. That's two orders of magnitude higher. They could not have gotten where they are because they are overpaid for name recognition. They got where they are because they built a very valuable company from the ground up. That is absolutely not something that just anybody can do, particularly not people who don't grasp that the toil and risk involved is incomparable to a regular job.
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The fake Gzip Christ isn't not user number ~0xA6CA7
The American Dream is about freedom to pursue your own life, it's not about getting rich. Any given newborn in America has probably a better chance of winning their state lottery (when they're of age to participate of course) than of getting rich and/or famous through any of the means you mentioned.
The "you could do it too" dream is a lie we sell ourselves so we don't get all upset about all the rich who actually control things, who take our money and don't have to run because we all love them. The master/servant relationship is alive today in America. The middle class are the servants.
Each day we get one step closer to returning to out-and-out feudalism as those in power work to concentrate more and more power.
We have to work against them to get back to the REAL American Dream - freedom, democracy, and equal opportunities for all. The Ayn Randian everyone-for-herself, you-too-could-be-a-billionaire world view is not equal opportunity for everyone. There is no equality when you start from an immensely unbalanced power structure. We can build a better world, we just have expend some effort to get there. Effort we can't be bothered to spend if we're all deluding ourselves about our chances of one day being a master over our own little band of slaves.
(I would start by imposing percentage-based salary caps on the richest citizens - there's no conceivable way that any human can be worth as much as the super-rich make. It's ridiculous. And no, just because they can dupe others into allowing them to have that much is not an excuse. Just because a thief can grab somebody's wallet does not give him the right to that person's wallet.)
$995 billion amongst 400 people in the US alone! To think what could be done with that money and the number of people in the world who are in DESPERATE need of perhaps as little as a dollar of it. Yes that's right, there are people who die in this world because they can't afford just one dollar! For a true example they might need to buy only five 20c pills to make them well.
I don't care how much money these people give to charity, no one needs that much money, but just the smallest amount would make a life changing difference to some.
Reading this sort of thing makes me disgusted at the pits of humanity and our greed and selfishness.
And no, this is not a troll!
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
You and a few thousand other investors come in, then. He tricks you and the other investors into agreeing to invest 10 million dollars into the stand, with Mr. G retaining a 30% stake in the company. You have been stolen from
I'm sure the investors who bought during Microsoft's IPO feel really shafted. I mean, they only saw a 500-fold return on their investments (assuming they bought at IPO and sold at the 1999 peak).
You still don't understand how this works: When the investors put in their $10 million, the lemonade stand had already grown to be worth $5 million, so it was entirely right and proper for Mr. G to retain 30%. Then, as the company became more and more successful, it's value increased. Massively.
Later, when the company is worth, say $100 million, all of the stockholders vote to raise some more cash by issuing some more stock. Issuing more stock dilutes the ownership of the current shareholders but also brings in more cash; in an ideal world, the inflowing cash would be precisely enough so that the value of the original stock remains unchanged, even though it represents a smaller piece of the (more valuable) company. In one jump, the company goes from a $100 million company to a $500 million company, with Mr. G's ownership declining to 6% (but staying at $30 million).
With the influx of cash, the company then hires more employees produces more products and sells them more effectively. Stock market speculation plus more retained earnings eventually drives the stock price up to the point that Mr. G's stake is worth $55 billion.
Now, at what point, exactly, did someone get screwed? And who? The *only* candidates, really, are the employees. With respect to Microsoft in particular that's a bad angle to attack, because hundreds if not thousands of Microsoft employees became multi-millionaires off of their own stock options and stock purchases. The same is true of most high-tech firms.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The other side of the coin.
Those of us that are just middle class 'IT people' lost more ground, in general.
Perhaps we need a union, to start taking back some of our share of the loot those over paid useless bastards in that list are getting from OUR hard work.
Bitter? Yes..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I still don't get why rich people would invest their money in expanding businesses if no one can afford to buy anything. Which is better, giving the money to the rich for them to invest in products they think people will buy; or giving the money to people to spend, and thereby directly showing what products they are interested in buying? The dot com bubble was all about people investing in businesses that had no customers; did the Bush administration think this was a good thing?
So why would rich people stop hiring just because they have to pay taxes? So far, given the millions of jobs that have disappeared over the last few years, I'd say cutting taxes for the rich does not create jobs.
I find it very interesting that we're told we must all sacrifice and work extra hard in this tough economic environment. We don't need extra money, we're just happy to have a job. Yet this sort of thing doesn't work with the rich; they need cash for motivation.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
Wow! Who is on a roll here? Obviously you haven't done your research because the VAST majority of Tax payers and revenue is from the Middle class and NOT the tiny minority of rich folks. (Do you really think Bill Gates pays $387 Million in taxes, which is the tax on income he should pay assuming that he earns 3% on 43 Billion net worth) The reason for this is that investments provide tax shelters and its easier to focus your time and money to look for tax loop holes or keep your money in a foreign bank account when your rich then when your not.
There's a few odd things those "rich" folks do with money that "poor" folks generally don't. Those silly rich tend to invest in a variety of things. They'll start new businesses, or help fund others. Quite often this invested capital actually creates JOBS.
See, here is the problem with investing by the poor, they can't invest as easily because they ARE poor. This does not mean that they should be punished by high taxes, or that rich folks are better then they are. Of course one of the problems with being poor is the fact that you become less willing to accept risk for the obvious reason that you don't want to end up on the street, but it is that willingness and ability to take risk that can make you rich. If you don't take the risk there is very little chance that you will become rich, much in the same way that you can't win the lottery unless you play the game.
Taking your sarcasm into account, let's just go and raise them taxes on all those evil "rich" folks and hand it out to who all them really smart politicians feel are more worthy to have that cash. Business and corporations are evil anyway, so if you close down a few or just bring them to their knees all the better.
I'm a firm believer in capitalism, but not without checks and balances. There is a reason why the spread between the rich and the poor is much smaller in Europe then in the US. It is because when you get too rich in Europe you get taxed up your ass, which might not be such a bad thing after all. We should remember that alot of conflict in our history has resulted because either a rich nation wanted to exploit its underdeveloped neighbor or because the poor got sick and tired of being exploited and revolted against their rich exploiters.
Of course in the US the situation will never change for the simple reason that almost all top politicians are also rich and they would be really dumb to undermine their own positions by taxing themselves and those who pay for their campaigns.
Funny little factoid: Bill Gates' wealth equals the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans, or 45 percent of our population.But those tax cuts come out of the pockets of those who are better off. Since when is that fair? This is America. We aren't (or shouldn't be at least) a communistic society. That's the whole point of capitalism.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Mostly, wealthy people give their money away. Heard of Carnegie Hall?
> > "The last I heard, the median for income earners in America was $27,000 per year... doesn't sound so poor to me."
>
> True enough, until you account for the cost of living in America.
This all started when someone posted that Marxian meme that "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer".
BULLSHIT.
Then people started talking about median and/or average incomes in dollars. Nice, but you're missing the point. You're thinking about dollars, but dollars are useless without wealth.
If you want to know how "the poor" are doing, you've gotta be talking "wealth".
My grandparents were working class. Their idea of a "fridge" was a block of ice. Their idea of "luxury" was cranking ice cream by hand in a steel container surrounded by rock salt and ice chunks. And it took days to cross the Atlantic, a trip that was only for the Filthy Rich.
My parents were working class. Their idea of "comfort" was when they got air conditioning. Their idea of "luxury" was when they went from black and white to a color TV. And took hours to cross the Atlantic, and that was only for the Pretty Well Off.
I'm working class. When I was a kid, my idea of "cool" was the 3D graphics in "Tron", and my idea of "luxury" was a Cray Supercomputer I could call my own. And from my 2.0 GHz laptop with 3D card with T&L capabilities, I can alt-Tab out of Max Payne, and with a few mouse clicks, cross the Atlantic (alas, it still takes a few hours) for half the price of the laptop.
And I can show my grandparents that laptop.
I don't mind if Bill Gates has enough money to fly to the moon for his vacation. Because if someone builds commercial space tourism for the Bill Gateses of the world, I can rest easy knowing that by the time I'm in my hip-fracture years, I'll be living them in 1/6 gravity.
The rich are getting richer, but only linearly. One can eat only so much caviar per hour. Wherever capitalism has flourished, however, the poor, on the other hand, have done fantastic.
What utter crap. What utter, relativistic, crap.
First, who are you to decide what is within the bounds of reason? How did what you earn per year become the measuring stick? If it's not you, who decided? Does the average or the mean income determine what is "in bounds"? How about the lowest income? What's the rule I should follow here?
Second, to apply your thinking, I bet there is some guy in Bangladesh, Liberia or the Sudan who makes less than $100 a year. ShooterNeo, if you have an entry level IT job you make 300 times what this guy does. Mid level IT job at 60K is 600 times more. That sounds WAY out of the bounds of reason to me. There is no way your labor is worth 300 to 600 times that of a farmer in the Sudan. The bounds of reason seem to be a mere 50 times ($5000 a year) his earnings. Tens of thousands is an entirely different matter.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Why don't we have a "-1, blithering idiot"?
We do. It's a "+5 Insightfull" from other blithering idiots.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Technically you can live very comfortably on $25k/year. It all depends on how you want to live. Are you happy making dinner every night, renting a house (or buying a small house), and driving a Honda Civic. Or do you need to eat at fancy restaurants, have a couple of sports cars (and an SUV of course) and need a large house in an upscale neighborhood?
What we WANT drives what we consider comfortable, and some people will never be happy because there is always more stuff to buy. Unfortunatly many people find they are not happy in life and think if they could just buy a better car, or a bigger house, or a few more computer parts then they would be happy. Of course that never works. It really is no different with the middle class or the super rich.
Finkployd
This is an important point that has been stated in several posts. Being rich means having a high net worth, usually in equity, savings and real estate. Although there is an overlap with high income earners, the two categories are not identical. For example "taxing high income earners" is not the same as "taxing the rich".
I think the point of giving the middle and lower-class a larger portion of the tax cuts is the fact that the money they get back could make the difference in sending their children to college, or improving their standard of living.
But doing the hand-outs so arbitrarily does nothing to guarantee their success. Do people in government really think they have mastered economics so well that they can change the face of society with a poiticially-motivated tax system? The current tax system is insane and is so politically-trashed that it cannot possibly reflect ecnomic reality. Its almost as bad as subsidizing housing for people who would be much better off moving to a different city with a lower cost of living.
Why prop up something that is simply unsustainable? Why should I pay for someone's $900 two-bedroom apartment in LA when they get $6.75/hour at a grocery store? Propping up the status quo with legislation will only cause our nation to collapse with money flowing nowhere it should leaving millions of people stranded in places they have no hope of surviving. What then?!?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
First of all, I don't know how everybody involved in these kinds of debates manages to ignore *payroll* taxes, which are just as surely taxes as any other kind of tax, and which fall disproportionately (meaning, a larger fraction of income) on people with the lowest earned incomes. Those taxes have not gone down, although they are in many cases the *majority* of the taxes paid by people with lower incomes. And that's really just the federal taxes. State income taxes, in the states that have them, often have a top bracket at some pathetically low amount; those taxes have not been going down, either.
And then there are sales taxes and gasoline taxes, which end up being a higher marginal rate on lower incomes for reasons that I'm sure should be pretty obvious.
You can agree or disagree with the reasoning behind the Bush tax cuts, but because they were cuts in income taxes primarily for the very highest brackets, there is very little way in which they could not have been tax cuts for the wealthiest.
In a similar vein, the plan to eliminate the estate tax by definition only affects states that are quite a bit larger than the vast majority of estates. By your reasoning, it would be unfair to say that this is a tax cut for the rich because it's a tax cut for the only people paying any estate tax. But those are the rich people. Hence, the point stands.
Babar
I have an important question about this statistic. Tally the incomes of all the taxpayers in the country. What percent of this total income do the '1% top of taxpayers' make.
Without that knowledge spouting off "the top X% pay Y% of the taxes" is meaningless. If the top X% make 80 % of the money, but pay 39 % of the taxes then they're hideously undertaxed... if the top X% make 10 % of the money, but pay 39 % then they're getting shafted.
The fact that these studies always seem to ignore the issue of what percentage of money this top 1-5% make certainly makes me suspicious of the findings... but there's no hard evidence either way that I know of, and without those other figures the statistics you're quoting are meaningless.
So-called "risk" is a privilege of capital, not a real risk. Incorporation shields the investors from personal liability in the even of a failed venture (barring criminal conduct, and even that's iffy. How many Enron muckymucks are in jail? How many have even disgorged their ill-gotten gains?)
If one fails at running a business, one "loses" relative to what one would have made had one been successful. Even if an executive has mortgaged their house for startup capital and are forced into personal bankruptcy, they won't lose their home. Of course, the peons at the company they ran into the ground probably don't own their own homes, and therefore bankruptcy won't keep them from being turned out on the street when they can't make their rent. (see Donald Trump)
I'm not saying someone who starts or runs a successful business doesn't deserve rewards for it, but I hate the bullshit argument that exorbitant executive compensation is justified by risk.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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> There are still (billions of) people living like our grandparents in the world. There are still people who think of a block of ice as a fridge, [
Aren't you contradicting yourself here? If it was about scientific progress and not capitalism, wouldn't those people have fridges by now?
I don't have a fridge because someone discovered the Ideal Gas Law. I don't have a fridge because someone discovered that the Ideal Gas Law could be applied in such a way as to create a heat exchanger, and stick one side of that heat exchanger in a box, and the other side of the heat exchanger outside the box.
I have a fridge because some capitalist decided he could build heat exchangers and boxes for less than what I'm willing to pay to own a heat exchanger and a box.
You're correct that capitalism is about capital, not progress, but progress is a necessary outgrowth of capitalism. And it's a Damn Nice outgrowth. It's sufficiently Damn Nice that it's why I think capitalism makes the world a better place, wherever it takes root.
> Frankly, though, even if you are sincerely interested in the welfare of other people,
(For the record, I'm not. I just think it's a neat side effect. The only time I'm interested in their welfare is seeing it get high enough that people like me can start selling stuff to them, (or buying shares in the companies that will sell stuff to them. Same thing, really.) I'm in the software business, not the grass hut business. So I'd like to see everybody on the planet decide they Really Really Want a cell phone, gaming console, and a few computers. :)
> you should try to expand your consideration of who benefits to the "invisible" people who make your shirts, assemble your electronics, and still live like your grandparents did.
The anonymous people who build my computers don't live like my grandparents did. If for no other reason than that someone living without running water wouldn't be allowed within two airlocks of a fab's clean room.
The anonymous people who make my shirts are flocking to the cities and the "sweatshops" and living like my grandparents, yes. Because living on $5/day is a damn sight better than living like my grandparents' grandparents, who were subsistence farmers with a life expectancy of 40.
> As you pointed out, a person can only eat so much caviar -- even so, it seems like there are people who will continue to buy new warehouses to store the caviar in for themselves, rather than recognizing this fact.
Which is fine by me; I'll make a pretty penny by buying 1000 shares of Beluga Farms Inc, and another 1000 shares of Sturgeons 'R' Us.