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Comment by zenhack | Hacker News Reader

> You realize the top 1% already pay for a disproportionate amount of the taxes?

In absolute terms maybe (though there are some glaring exceptions -- Amazon famous literally pays $0 in taxes), but not relative to how much they make.

> To tax people's wealth on top of the standard tax is plain evil,

I don't see any reason why taxing net worth is at all less sensible than income. If anything I think it makes more sense; why should someone who's had a lucky break but is still not rich have to pay taxes like they are?

> will end up driving all the wealthiest people out of the country...

I don't take seriously the idea that any of them are going to give up living in the US over a couple percent of their income (which is what the wealth taxes folks have been talking about would take, at most).

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> Amazon famous literally pays $0 in taxes), but not relative to how much they make.

because they took every penny and reinvested it and lost money for a long time because of such heavy investment.

just a few months ago everybody was complaining about companies not investing enough and returning money to shareholders - there was even legislation floated to force more investment.

companies cant win with people like you - invest and get assulted for tax reasons, don't invest and get yelled at for that.

you have this Utopian view of how you want everything to work, and don't even realize it isn't even possible most of the time.

> because they took every penny and reinvested it and lost money for a long time because of such heavy investment.

No, my understanding from press reporting is that the heavy reinvestment was to avoid taxes in the first place

that's the same thing. we set up tax structures to encourage long term investment precisely because we hope companies will try to invest to avoid taxes.

I'm not really interested in judging Amazon; they're a for profit company, they're going to do what's best for their bottom line. And I'm sure they don't care what I think. This is more about the systemic issues with the tax code itself.

It worked exactly as it is supposed to: it incentivized long tern investment where amazon lost a lot of money because they invested so much.

if you want to tax them on those losses that they rolled forward, you would basically have far less investment.

make up your mind - do you want them to invest and take losses or not invest and pay taxes - you can't do both.

The devil is in the details; a lot of the things they're getting tax breaks for don't benefit the public. Why are they getting tax breaks for building warehouses and data centers for themselves? Stock based compensation for executives?

Also, regardless of what breaks are available for what activities, their baseline tax burden ought to be much higher. We should be drawing funding from people who can afford it and use it to lift the burden on people who can't.

> Why are they getting tax breaks for building warehouses and data centers for themselves?

Are you fucking kidding me? They get capital construction break like every other company gets. If you don't see that as the literal definition of investment you don't deserve to have an opinion on this.

I don't think we should be giving them tax breaks for investments that are only for themselves. They're going to do that anyway because it expands their business. If they were doing something that had a genuine public benefit, that they otherwise wouldn't do, that would be a different story.

Bill Gates once talked about money no longer having a utility for him. The utility of money goes away at a certain point when you accumulate too much and there is no longer something you cannot buy. The utility would be most efficient when applied to a better use such applied as the needy, perhaps in a UBI, or some other strategy, which would free up their time to do something more productive for society.

Unfortunately people don't like to help each other in many capitalist countries, and laws are designed to not be easily changed, resulting in a great majority of the population either not heard or reluctant to voice their opinions.

It took Bill a long time to get there too. But it's the same for any billionaire. They can't possibly spend their money, neither can their children or grandchildren so the only thing you can do with it is give it away. Be that to charity, good works, monuments to yourself (art museums, university buildings) or politicians and think-tanks in an attempt to bend the world to your will.

The money is just one scoreboard among billionaires and not great one. Murdoch would be far more self-impressed with his power he weilds through media than someone with an additionall couple of hundred million.

Gates is more interested in being the great philanthropist. It seems his scoreboard is how much positive effect on the world he can have. It sounds ideal and I don't like to be cynical about it.

Koch Brother(s), Soros also can't spend their money on more houses, cars and private jets. More money is only useful to get more power. Do you like the way either or both weild it? Do you think they should have a bigger say than you purely by virtue of cash rather than making a convincing case?

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