Comment by actionfromafar

18 hours ago

Ouch. Two billion dollars. That could have been put into much better use, imagine being able to fund the Iran war for one more day.

33 comments

actionfromafar

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arjie  15 hours ago

It's funny how this kind of pricing works. A bag of weed captured is estimated at a thousand dollars. Ten movies pirated at twice that. We fire a JASSM in combat and it costs a lot of money. We fire it in training and it costs nothing. There is no financial impact estimated to require all elevators be big enough to turn a full length gurney around. A wealth tax will yield revenue for the next thirty years at 30 times what it will yield this year. $6.6 billion will end world hunger but $100 billion is better spent on a train between Bakersfield and Fresno.

I bought my car for $32k. To replace it would be $50k. I crash it, am I out $32k or $50k? Or some other number? Numerically, it could be anything.

  • Veelox  4 hours ago

    > $6.6 billion will end world hunger

    My understanding is that the only places that are starving is places like Gaza and South Sudan which are poor and actively under attack. Do you have a source for how we can spend <$10b and solve world hunger?

    • shermantanktop  3 hours ago

      I read the comment as a set of examples to make a point. Sounds like you read it as a laundry list of facts that should each have cited sources.

      Both could be true, but OPs point is clear and valid even without sourcing a (perhaps hyperbolic) statement.

    • throwaway27448  1 hour ago

      Where did you get that understanding?? People are starving all over the world, even in places that generally have access to food markets. Food insecurity exists outside of famine, sanctions, etc.

  • AnthonyMouse  14 hours ago

    > A wealth tax will yield revenue for the next thirty years at 30 times what it will yield this year.

    Isn't this the opposite of how a wealth tax works? The annual turnover for e.g. Apple stock is ~0.4%, so a 0.8%/year wealth tax would triple the number of sellers without adding any new buyers. The negative effect on the price is outsized because most people hold long-term rather than buying or selling in any given year, but now people have to liquidate some every year in order to pay the government because you're taxing unrealized gains. And then because "wealth" is calculated as share price times number of shares, when the share price goes down, everyone's "wealth" goes down and with it next year's revenue from a wealth tax.

    There would be some limits on that in terms of the compounding negative effect on the share price because (among other things) if the price went down then foreign investors would find it more attractive to buy in and then they're not subject to the tax and don't have to sell every year to pay it, but causing more of the market to be owned by foreign rather than domestic taxpayers over time is also not a thing which leads to stable domestic tax revenue.

    > $6.6 billion will end world hunger but $100 billion is better spent on a train between Bakersfield and Fresno.

    The current UN estimate is more like $100 billion a year to end world hunger, whereas the initial build of a rail line is a one-time cost.

    • scottlamb  8 hours ago

      > The annual turnover for e.g. Apple stock is ~0.4%, so a 0.8%/year wealth tax would triple the number of sellers without adding any new buyers.

      Is that assuming the tax money is going into the void? I agree it might force roughly 0.8% of shares to be sold in a given year. But as to not adding any new buyers: no one's being forced to buy stock in the same way, but shouldn't someone be getting the money and potentially using it to buy Apple stock?

      Let's imagine for a second the wealth tax money is simply given to people who are below the threshold. Most of them may waste it on silly things like food and rent, but some might end up with a surplus and become investors. Same effect if say the income tax is lowered to make the wealth tax revenue-neutral. Or if say it's used to expand Medicare. It's hard to for me to imagine a way to spend taxes that doesn't help someone. Even if the money is used on war—a net destruction of value and lives—there are some people selling missiles better off a result.

      5 replies →

    • datsci_est_2015  11 hours ago

      Some disjointed thoughts of mine on this topic:

      Some people have to adjust their mortgage in order to pay property taxes. Most people pay property taxes out of their income.

      What percentage of Americans, especially home-owning Americans, have more wealth in the stock market than in their home?

      Property tax has the positive effect of encouraging efficient land usage and discouraging speculation and rent seeking. Is there a parallel case to be made for stock holdings, or is such an argument dead in the water because land is more tangible than company shares?

      6 replies →

    • triceratops  4 hours ago

      > Apple stock is ~0.4%, a 0.8%/year wealth tax would triple the number of sellers without adding any new buyers

      Only if the tax had to be paid in US dollars. But it could just as easily be paid in Apple stock. The government doesn't have to sell the stock. It could keep it (disallow voting shares by law) and spend the dividends.

      2 replies →

  • dnnehgf  13 hours ago

    good list.

    if you were to send me an article containing a new one of these each day, with citations, i would pay you $1 per day.

    but if you were to send me an article containing a new one of these each day, with citations, plus a bunch of econ theory rationalizing it, i would pay you $0.

  • Hendrikto  7 hours ago

    > $6.6 billion will end world hunger

    And then you ask how, and you just get hand waving. Elon Musk offered the money if somebody would provide a coherent plan of how to solve world hunger with it. Nobody could.