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Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Universal Basic Income in His Harvard Commencement Speech (fortune.com)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest major tech figure to call for universal basic income as a solution for inequality, joining a growing chorus from Silicon Valley. From a report: "Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his commencement speech at Harvard University. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," he said. Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on.
Across Europe Socialist parties are collapsing because they have become largely irrelevant as all they are seeking to do now is create more bureaucracy. Governments need to learn to be lean and simple. UBI accomplishes this.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
UBI has been getting more press lately and it's a little hard for me to see how it makes sense. It seems like welfare for everybody, regardless of need. IMHO it tries to solve the problem from the wrong direction. One of the most important things for human mental health is to have something to do. UBI does nothing to address that, and without opportunity the money will just be used for drugs far too often. Programs like the New Deal make a lot more sense. Paying people's expenses while they are in training also make sense. Blank checks require more personal responsibility than you can expect out of the population at large.
I read the internet for the articles.
... to let people starve in the streets, why not?
We run these patchworks of programmes to try to approximate the effects of universal basic income. Lost your job? Unemployment insurance. Chronically unemployed? Food assistance, welfare, etc. Homeless? Housing assistance / public housing / shelters. Too old to work? Pensions / social security, and in the US, Medicare. Too poor for health insurance in the US? Medicaid. Physically can't work? Disability. Job wouldn't pay enough to afford basic expenses? Minimum wage. On and on.
Isn't it about time that we just simply accept what we're trying to approximate, and just do it directly? Then scrap the patchwork of programmes that try to approximate it, and all of their overhead (ex: all of them), market distortion (ex: minimum wage), and perverse incentives (ex: trying not to earn too much to avoid losing benefits). People can reasonably differ about the amount that defines "basic needs", how much if any to boost people who "permanently can't work" vs. those who simply don't have a job for whatever reason, how to deal with dependents, etc. But it certainly simplifies the debate versus having a whole complex and inefficient patchwork to argue over.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
Perhaps he can take $60 billion of that and fund 10 million people with a $6,000 UBI all by himself? He'd still have that massive $3 billion to live on and feel guilty about...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
He doesn't need unskilled workers he can make slave away for pennies, knowing that their option is to either work 20+ hours a day for you or starve to death!
The world is going to come to an end if we actually had to pay people to flip burgers, stock stores and bag your groceries enough money that any person with a sliver of self respect would do it! If we cannot press people to slave labour anymore, our way of life is going to come to an end. People will have to bag their own groceries, like those Euros where minimum wage exists and you can't afford baggers!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is such a thing as free money, rich people are proof of it. Nobody's job is worth millions every year.
#DeleteFacebook
He could pay off the debt of all of the students attending his speech and not even notice, but no... Voluntary help just will not do.
He wants other people's wealth to be "spread around" at gun-point...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Facebook are one of a number of companies that have a habit of using exotic international tax vehicles to move profits from countries where corporation taxes are reasonable to countries where they are super-low. As a result of this, personal taxation in the countries where Facebook export their profits have to be higher. Which pushes down the standard of living for citizens in those countries.
I get that this speech was more about marketing and PR than actually intending to do anything useful, but in the event that Mr Zuckerberg would like to make a positive start to inequality, can I respectfully suggest that he pays taxes where they are due, and makes a declaration that Facebook will no longer use "international tax vehicles" to move profits around and thereby avoid paying taxes.
If Mr Zuckerberg and/or Facebook aren't willing to do that, then can I respectfully suggest that he is full of ####.
Zuckerberg wants a universal income, he can hand over his own money to set the example.
What? He's not going to voluntarily give up his billions so others can have a basic income? How strange.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There are a lot of proposals, but the fully costed ones I've seen for the UK set the UBI rate at about the same as the current tax-free earning allowance. They then raise each of the tax brackets' rates by a few percent, and introduce one extra one for people earning more than £100K/year. The last one I looked at would leave me about £1000/year worse off, but people on minimum wage jobs better off. It would also be likely to bring a lot of people back into part-time work, as they wouldn't face losing unemployment benefits if they worked a little bit (and would be paying tax on that income for every pound that they actually earned, though at a low rate). It seemed like a pretty good deal for me.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Don't we have welfare in this country? Isn't that what Millionaire Mark wants? You have money sir, open a shelter or hand out food... You can afford it.
It's *really* easy to spend other people's money you know, especially when you use the money to "help the poor" into the voting booth to vote for you. You sell it as "compassion" but it's really just a bribe to buy votes and build a dependency in your voting block. This country did just fine by the poor prior to FDR, even during the great depression when few had any money.
Now we have all kinds of welfare programs that give away billions and billions and are racking up Federal debt in the Trillions each year.... What more do you think we should do? You can only hand out so much money before it becomes meaningless and we all go bankrupt and EVRYBODY becomes poor...See Venezuela for an example of where this kind of thinking leads you.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yes, you make millions of dollars and spend your free time on slashdot to comment. Zuckerberg, Musk can you guys come in here and rebuttal this guy?
I think he knows it all too well.
First of all, please stop confusing economy and finance. At no point in history those two were further apart then today. Economy is about people doing and making things for each other. No money is needed for economy. If you need an example, look at any parent who raises a child.
Finance, on the other hand, is all about money. That money used to involve work, but the financial sector found out long ago that automatic gambling machines yielded more than actual work. The fiat money of today can be (and is) conjured out of thin air by banks and central banks. During the recent crises, central banks have made up more money than ever before, to stabilize their "hopes and dreams".
Alas they spent it on the wrong people. The European Central Bank, for example, buys "financial products" from internationals without ever caching them, they cant: it is their way of getting money into the virtual economy and caching would take it out again. In short, multinationals already DO have a Universal Basic Income. If you know that, why on earth would it be good to give it to multinationals and bad to give it to real people? Hint: real people might be lazy and greedy, but multinationals are guaranteed to be!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
And how do you do "millions of dollars worth of sales each year"? How can a single individual make so much money? There's a problem with that. Somebody in your supply chain is getting royally screwed so that you can get so much profit.
Your "hard earned" money is nothing of the sort. There's only 365 days in a year, 24 hours in each one. There's people out there working 60+ hours weeks and they'll never earn even a fraction of what you make.
That one person can earn that much is a problem. That you think it's "hard-earned" is another problem.
#DeleteFacebook
A medicore realtor could manage that.
HELL, in Silicon Valley a realtor could manage that with a single home sale.
Now home sales are a pretty trivial thing. But there are far more interesting (life saving) activities you would discourage with your communist nonsense.
You're probably sabotaging your own cubicle dweller corporate job with that kind of nonsense.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
He should have finished school. That way he might have taken a basic economics class, which would have taught him that economies of scale adjust out all imposed constants. You can, for example, add X to everyone's income, and the price of everything will simply rise to adjust out X, returning the system to peak efficiency. This will make what money low income earners do make even less valuable, increasing poverty and shrinking the middle class.
Isn't that why most proponents of UBI (beyond the proof of concept test cases) include taxes that reduce the eventual take-home of the UBI the more money you make? So that a person working in a job making minimum wage might get to keep most of their UBI, but someone making $75000 year effectively gets taxed so that they receive no net UBI. The idea behind UBI seems that instead of 1 person working 40 hours a week, 2 people can work 20 hours a week without seeing a drop in income, providing jobs for more people and contributing to a better quality of life. People that want to not work and scrape by on $15-20k a year can do that, people who want to work part time for $30k a year can do that, and the workaholics who want to work 100 hours a week for 6 figure salaries can still do that.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Before anyone replies with "bullshit", let's do some basic math:
Assuming UBI of ~$1000 per month (which would be a lot), 1 million dollars divided by $1000 per month equals 1000 months, divided by 12 months equals 83 years and 4 months.
#DeleteFacebook
A persons job is worth exactly what someone will pay for it.
I don't myself see athletes that make multi-millions a year being worth it, really, but then again, who am I to judge?
Who are you to judge?
Who shall we place in power to place judgement on a persons worth?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Confiscate Zuker's Wealth to kick start it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
And how do you do "millions of dollars worth of sales each year"? How can a single individual make so much money? There's a problem with that. Somebody in your supply chain is getting royally screwed so that you can get so much profit.
At a concert, 30,000 people buy tickets to see a single entertainer. It's a good show and the fans leave happy. Who is "getting screwed" when the entertainer gets 6 figures for a few hours work?
Yes, I would rather people be campaigning for Universal Basic Employment. That is, a system where everyone would always have access to a job that paid basic living expenses, a job built around each person's particular skill set.
Is there enough work for each skill set? Can we mandate that work? What if someone wants to change careers later in life and doesn't *want* to keep that skill set? What about people with little technical skills in a computer-dominated world?
My fear is that mandating employment will reduce down to people being assigned to unnecessary jobs just to fulfill the requirement. Extra secretaries, building extra housing beyond our population needs, etc. Plus, this assumes that people are happy working these types of jobs -- many people will be miserable working some jobs and you will have still not addressed the psychological health issue OP brought up.
No I think Universal Basic Income is the win here. We all earn it from corporations buying our publicly owned property (forests, parks) and privatizing it. It's time we started collecting royalties on it. We're not talking a giant income here, but enough for very modest housing and food. But those are the big stresses in life, worrying about if you will have enough to eat or will go homeless. Without those in the equation, people can decide their own lives.
With UBI, you can always eat beans and rice. Nothing fancy, but you can survive. But surely you want more from life than that -- a rewarding career, to volunteer in the community, to become an artist or actor or scientist, or at the very least enough money to get that big screen plasma TV and sometimes go to a football game. You need more income for that stuff, UBI only covers the bases, so most people (unless you are happy to live a spartan monk-like lifestyle in a studio apartment with beans and rice all day, and if so, more power to you) will want more and seek more employment. That isn't a problem.
Except now you've opened up an ACTUALLY free market. Right now corporations hold all the cards, many are forced to take low paying jobs with low/no benefits precisely because they're concerned if they wait any longer they won't be able to afford food or a house. Now with UBI, workers can pass on terrible job offers. They can survive so they don't NEED to work a terrible job for super low pay. They can wait for a better offer. So now corporations have to compete on the best pay and benefits that makes their jobs worthwhile rather than a race to the bottom.
Furthermore, with the UBI safety net, even more people can open that business they always wanted to but were afraid to do so. Open a restaurant, retail store, handyman shop, whatever. Previously people worried about the business failing and how they would get money to survive. Now under UBI, sure ideally the business would excel and make lots of money, but if it goes under, the person feels confident that at least I have UBI to cover my house and food. If the business fails, might have to cut expenses a while, but it can be done. It takes the pressure off, allowing more workers to become confident business owners, which further increases market competition.
Plus UBI allows things not possible before. Look at the people willing to donate their time to open source projects for free right now. If we had UBI, no doubt some programmers would choose to live on UBI and maybe only part time work to dedicate more time to open source. Remember, it's not a job for money necessarily that's healthy, it's having any sort of community contribution. There's plenty of non-profit volunteer positions that currently don't get many applicants but would likely see surges under UBI as people have more options to take less crappy jobs that give them enough free time to volunteer more. These volunteer positions are not any less jobs than paid ones; in fact, some volunteer positions can be very important to the community! Again, with UBI, workers have some restored bargaining power with employ
THe problem is exactly what you described.
The economy of a country tied to just one or two primary exports will always collapse whether it is socialist, capitalist, or any other kind of government. When the mrket changes and that one export is less powerful that country will collapse whether it is Norway or Venezuela.
That is why the goverent shouldn't be in control of a given product but only get paid with tax dollars. I also find it funny that republiacans keep pushing to drill more oil and to sell the strategic oil reserve at a loss to raise short term cash. It is that short sighted thinking. Oil is low. Let other people do the work. Save yours for when the price goes up.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Who chooses to pay said CEO's million dollar salary? Certainly not the invisible hand of the market. No, his cronies make that choice.
If a few inventors innovate in the woods and no one sees them, did they ever really exist?
I'm sorry - but clearly people can and should earn millions of dollars each year. Everyone should want more and more people making millions a year - not less people. Most people work somewhere with a 'ladder' type layout, and at each step up you make a bit more. The misconception is that there is this guy making millions and below him are minimum wage workers; completely not the norm. If someone is making a million a year - directly below him/her are probably 10 people making 800k, and 20 people making 500k below them, etc...
Sports are the clearest place to look for what people can/should earn. Sports are the closest to 'fair' salaries because they prove day in and day out if they are worth it - and what they make is tied to how many people are willing to go watch them. If you're the best player in a sport you just might be worth 20 million a year - and sports are small compared to businesses. Picture if there were 500 professional sport teams in NY alone (pretend all business were as clear competitors as sports) - how much would Tom Brady be worth at that scale? Even Tim Tebow would be a starting QB (CEO) probably making close to 200 million per year. Business competes globally as well.
'Hard-earned' and worth are somewhat separate and you're thinking about it the wrong way. If you were on the board of a company making it big and competing against an IBM good luck trying to hire a CEO for less than a million a year and still existing in 5 years. In fact if you are already that big then there are already people there making far more than that; or you're paying a crap load of people good money to not do anything.
Now where does this money come from? More taxes on the average working man? Good to know that a sheer luck billionaire is shaping global finances.
Well I can't speak for Zuck's motives, but in general advocates say it comes from restoring taxes that used to exist on the wealthy. We've had decades of reduced taxes and tax loopholes for the rich that they pay hardly nothing anymore. During the most prosperous periods in modern US history, the tax rate was as high as 90% on the top tax bracket. Plus, there's plenty of infrastructure and environmental problems that have to be paid for by the people despite the fact that private interests caused it and profited off it. They must pay their fair share commensurate with the amount of money they make as well as the resources they take from the public (when you harvest things like oil now, it's gone for future generations; don't they owe something to our grandchildren and future generations who never get an opportunity to build that industry themselves?) and the infrastructure (trucks cause something like 10,000x the damage to roads than cars, do they pay for the roads?) and environment (many oil pipelines leaks over the years, not to mention all kinds of other runoff, a lot of it comes from agricultural pesticides too) that they damage in the process.
What would be fair then? 10x minimum wage? 100x? Should they be required to help promote the show? Should they be required to work for free at the singer's free shows in bars and coffee shops as she was building a fan base, before she got famous?
If the stadium show gets rained out and all the tickets have to be refunded, should the workers still get paid for the setup work they did? How much? 10x minimum wage? 100x?
Please answer: What would be fair?
Well, if it is your businesses..then sure, you decide...what's wrong with that?
And those 9 employees? They wouldn't have had jobs there to begin with, if the owner hadn't invested and started the company.
He might be more generous, but that's his choice...not yours, not mine, not the workers...not the government.
I see nothing wrong with this....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Ergo, my reference to the gun point, which is how all taxes are collected...
Let me ask a question. When you receive your electric bill or winter gas bill or water/sewerage bill, do you call it a forced bill "at gun point" from the utility company? Or do you just pay it because you're paying your fair share of bills for what you used?
Taxes are just our bill for our fair share of government and government services. It pays for military defense, a court system to allow you to file greviences against neighbors businesses or even the government itself, roads and bridges and other infrastructure, inspectors that ensure our buildings are constructed to code and food is safe to eat, and way more than I can list here. You use plenty of government services every day and don't even realize, so yes, you need to pay your bills for those services.
Now you could argue that our taxes are not always used wisely. I'd personally love to see our taxes go more to domestic programs rather than more middle eastern wars. And you might argue government is wasteful, and sometimes it is. But then I have a news flash for you, have you ever worked at corporate? Corporations are *at least* as wasteful as government services in many circumstances, so it's not particularly unique to government. If you'd like to see changes and waste cut, contact your representative and vote against them next election if they do nothing, that's why we're a democratic republic, we can vote and change things. At least you can do that, with private corporate control you have absolutely no say about what the CEO does.
So, of course, "UBI" and other attempts to forcibly "spread the wealth" to address the non-problem of "income inequality" are foolish and oppressive.
If you've never been poor I suppose you don't understand inequality, so let me give you a brief overview. Income is a huge part of it, but not all. Neighborhoods gentrify and rent increases meaning you must leave your long time neighborhood since you can't find a better job, because you don't have free time between 60+ hours a week job at several stores or money to attend college to get new skills. You might ask why they don't just buy a house. Good question! When your income is that low, you don't have the credit necessary to buy. Except landlords need to make money off of you, so their rent is almost by definition *more* than a typical mortgage (it has to be more than the mortgage to make a profit, right?). So you have to pay a lot and need more jobs. Many jobs are not on bus routes in my area, so you need a car. You get a cheap one at a used car lot, but since your credit is low, you don't get the typical 2 or 3% interest middle class gets, you get 8 or 10% interest, again having to pay *more* than middle class. But it's used car so you can make small payments over time so you try to make it work out. Then you get to work and your boss tells you to go home. They found someone new, or just plain don't like you, and they fire you on the spot. They can do that in many states because "right to work" really means employers have the right to fire you at any moment. Or even if you're not fired, it's a slow day, so he sends you home. Now you're short a day of pay, and your bills are stretched thin, so you can't make the car payment until the next paycheck. Now you're late and have penalty interest, and they possibly come to repo your car if you wait too long and they don't want to work with you. Or, you decide to take a payday loan on your next paycheck so you can have the money now rather than waiting two more weeks, so you pay your bills, but your payday loan was at obnoxious 25%+ and has to be paid back immediately at the next paycheck, which of course you don't have, so you sink into more debt. Which means your credit score dips lower, you have to pay even higher interest rates, now you don't even qualify for car loans and even rental units star
It is a completely different game once you bridge a serious gap in the market. there are 3 kinds of houses in the US:
1) Homes people buy because they need to live somewhere and they can afford to buy this house here.
2) Homes in which nobody who could afford them would live there (rental only, think slumlord to casual investor to real-estate get-rich sucker)
and
3) Ultra premium. Houses so far above the cost of living for an area that you cannot buy it if you work for a living.
These all have wildly different real-estate agent behavior, and most people will only ever deal with #1, and maybe #2 #1 are 6% commissions with realtors who will be a realtor for an average of 5 years, any "staging" they do will be cheap or free, and mostly your commission is paying for their time. #2 are square-foot checklists, repair lists, inspections, and flat broker fees. An agent might list on MLS and coordinate with inspectors... nothing really outside of that. #3 People have no imagination, and they simply won't buy a premium/high-end house if it isn't staged. They aren't buying a house because they have to live somewhere. a 10 million dollar+ house will be staged with a half-million dollars in furniture, art, dishes, towels, etc most rented, some owned by the realtor or their group. Any drawer, closet, or cabinet that might be opened, will have items in it that convey a luxury lifestyle. Leather-bound books on the book cases, electronics, toiletries, everything.
They might even hire a chef to put freshly made food in the refrigerator to be thrown away after a showing. I am dead serious.
They might learn that a buyer likes purple and replace all the flowers in the landscaping with purple pansies.
They will definitely put fresh cut flowers, fresh fruit, etc out before every showing. Spending hundreds of dollars on disposable goods every time they unlock the front door.
I worked in risk assessment for in the real-estate industry for years. Once for a listing in Malibu I had a 6 million dollar insurance policy go through my system... covering JUST THE ITEMS USED FOR STAGING. It included a Ferrari... Used for staging a garage.
The senior management of a company set their own wages and benefits, usually with little to no oversight by the shareholders. I look forward to senior management being automated, so this massive diversion of assets will end.
Otherwise STFU...
Doing a little math...
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate to cover total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. In the US, this is presented as an income level based on household size (number of dependents). For a single person household, the poverty line is $12,060 (2017).
Perhaps worth noting is that a single person household working a full-time minimum-wage job exceeds the poverty line (50 weeks time 40 hours times $7.25 is $14,500), so by definition a full-time minimum wage worker is not living in poverty. But if that same person has a child, then both are living in poverty, as the poverty line for a two-person household is $16,240. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
An assumption of a UBI is that it provides sufficient income to survive on, so let's use the poverty line as the basis for the UBI. That is, a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the amount of money we currently spend on all social welfare benefits programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, etc. A reasonable idea--indeed, this was put forward in a WSJ essay by Charles Murray--would be to eliminate all those programs in favor of the UBI. Of course, this ignores the howls that would arise from a populace deprived of their SS checks and foodstamps.
Exploring the notion of replacing the most basic welfare programs, e.g. foodstamps, section 8 housing, while not disrupting the SS and Medicare that the elderly view as an earned right. After all, the UBI based on poverty level should by definition cover those sorts of expenses. There will still be screams from people concerned about drug addicts not buying food for their kids and that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that the overhead of those programs, let alone the programs, would be completely done away with.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this cost a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the existing programs, for a total cost of about $5T. Or perhaps the UBI in lieu of all other programs can actually be rammed through so that the cost remains a minimum of $2.303T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues. And the math here assumes that no one receive UBI drops out of the workforce or reduces their taxable income at all--i.e., that revenues stay constant.
I like Mark's comments and ideas. We just have to separate the means, the ends, and the values.
Mark is describing the ends. It's a vision for a new social structure of the future. It has a lot going for it - if we ignore for a moment how we pay for it, everyone here (I hope) will agree that it would be a Great Thing if everyone had food, clothing, shelter, quality education, and good health care. That's a good basis for a great society. If we had the choice, why would we choose to have hunger and starvation, homelessness, under-education and people dying of preventable and curable problems?
But we have to pay for it. UBI was one idea to investigate (and that's pretty close to his wording). The global worth of mankind's output is growing - mathematically, the average standard of living of the world should continue to rise over time (I see no limit in sight).
Much, much more importantly - we also have to figure out a value system around it. Mark's ideal here is a safety net to let people climb higher. That's a great thing. It can also be viewed as a motivation to not climb at all. That's a terrible thing. All social programs struggle with this fundamental issue. It doesn't mean the goals are bad. It means that when society gives, some people give back, and some people take. The ideal society happens when everyone gives and everyone gives back. Society collapses when everyone takes and nobody gives back.
Giving to the poor and needy is risky. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a higher society than one that invests in the poor and needy.
Side note: I see no better way to handle the moral issues here than in our own lives and our own homes. Do we give back when we take? Do we teach our children the value of work, progress, ambition, and selflessness? Are setting the right example ourselves and teaching others?
We can't have that utopian society unless we have utopian people to put in it.
Other side note: I'm a wealthy, small-government conservative who hates paying interest, taxes, and poorly managed, poorly used social programs. I also believe I have a responsibility to meaningfully help those who have a tougher hand to play than I do. And I struggle (a lot) to find good ways to meaningfully help.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
Most rich people earned their money. A lot of those are first-generation rich.
Forbes says that 30 percent of the Forbes 400 members inherited their wealth and the remaining 70 percent are entirely “self-made.”
United for a Fair Economy breaks down the Forbes list using a baseball analogy. It says 35 percent of the list was born in the “batter’s box,” with a lower-middle class or middle-class background.
That includes people like Larry Ellison of Oracle , who was born in a lower-middle class part of Chicago. It also includes Harold Hamm, a one-time gas-station attendant who built an oil and gas empire.
The report says 22 percent of the list were born on first base: they came from a comfortable but not rich background and might have received some start-up capital from a family member. This group includes Mark Zuckerberg and hedge funder Louis Bacon, who started Moore Capital Management with help from a small inheritence.
Only 11.5 percent were born on second base, the report says. Second base is defined as people who inherited a medium sized company or more than $1 million or got “substantial” start-up capital from a business or family member.
The report says 7 percent were born on third base, inheriting more than $50 million in wealth or a big company. The report includes Charles Koch and Charles Butt on third base.
The report says 21 percent were born on home plate, inheriting enough money to make the list.
If you are posting to slashdot, you are probably one of the wealthiest people on earth.
Then take Elon Musks and Warren Buffetts. We can work our way down the billionaires list and take it all until there are no billionaires left.
America boasts 540 billionaires, more than any other country on the planet and more than all of Europe combined. In 2016, 221 former billionaires fell off the list, though 198 newcomers joined.
If we take all their money--on average they are each worth $4.44 billion--we would be able to come up with $2.376T, which could pay off about 11% of the national debt leaving us about $18T in the hole.
That's of course a one-time deal, because after that there aren't any billionaires and probably won't be any new ones one the policy of confiscation billionaires money becomes a thing.
At one of our dinners, Milton [Friedman] recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
The person who ran the electrical for the stage for $15/hour. All of the supporting performers. The person at the ticket booth.
I don't know? Everyone else who contributed to the performance, but isn't famous?
Ah, the Warren Buffet canard. First of all, Mr Buffet isn't making billions. He holds assets that represent unrealized capital gains in the several tens of billions (primarily shares of Berkshire-Hathaway; if BH were to go belly up tomorrow, his holdings there become worthless). His company pays him a salary of about $100,000 each year, and he "earns" a few million dollars every year in interest and dividends. This income, plus his salary, and whatever CGs he may realize, is what he pays taxes on, much of which is taxed at the lower capital gains rate rather than income tax rate. Quoting his tax rate, based on CG rates compared to his secretaries, based on income tax rates (and not at his or her *effective* income tax rate, at that) is apples and oranges.
Mr Buffet takes full advantage of the tax system to minimize his taxes. He has accountants and tax lawyers. He has clearly structured his affairs to minimize his taxes, as, for example, when he established trusts for his children.
It is further worth noting that when Mr. Buffet and his friends Bill & Melinda Gates set out to figure out how to improve the world, they created the tax-exempt foundation and donated billions of dollars to the foundation, rather than simply letting the government have that money. We have to ask why? Didn't they trust to government to do the "right thing" with that money?
Finally, note that both Gates and Buffet, when they donated to the foundation, did so by giving away appreciated shares of their respective companies, thus garnering for themselves the largest tax break possible--not only did they not have to pay GC taxes on the gains (substantial they were, too), but they get to claim the *appreciated* value as a deductible charitable contribution. So, if WB had been granted one share of BH when it sold for $1000, he would owe income taxes on on the $1000. But if he held that share until BH sold for $200,000 per share, he would owe income taxes on the $1000, and CG taxes on the $199,000 difference. But by donating the share to the foundation, he still owes income taxes on the $1000, pays no CG taxes, and gets to claim $200,000 charitable donation (which can go a long way to offsetting any other income he has).
Buffett told [interviewer Charlie] Rose his 2010 adjusted gross income was $62 million. He implied that most income came from long-term capital gains and qualifying dividends currently taxed up to 15%. Only a small portion of his gross income – a few million dollars for Buffett – is ordinary income, like wages and interest income, taxed at higher ordinary income tax rates currently up to 35%.
Buffett [said] that he uses the maximum 30% charitable contribution deduction each year – for appreciated property – and he has a $10 billion carryover of charitable contributions for subsequent use too.
Buffett’s 30% charity tax deduction offsets his entire ordinary income, and next it offsets his lower long-term capital gains income. Hence, he pays approximately 15% long term capital gains tax rates only, and – as he likes to say – it’s a lower tax rate than others in his office pay.
Buffett also avoids nasty alternative minimum taxes (AMT) of 28%. Charity is a powerful tax savings tool to avoid income, AMT and estate taxes.
Erm, seriously?
The entertainer is. Or do you really believe he gets those 6 digit figures?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
A medicore realtor could manage that.
HELL, in Silicon Valley a realtor could manage that with a single home sale.
Now home sales are a pretty trivial thing. But there are far more interesting (life saving) activities you would discourage with your communist nonsense.
You're probably sabotaging your own cubicle dweller corporate job with that kind of nonsense.
Do you know the difference between socialist and communist? When the wealthy install robots to do your job, you will be the one that is unemployed. And when your savings run out, paying for your College/university and healthcare, I wish you the best of luck. My advice to you is to look at the cost of your toys and ask if they are worth having.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada