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sethbannon

Let's look at what a 1% US wealth tax would mean for Jeff Bezos.

He founded Amazon 26 years ago.

A 1% wealth tax means he keeps 99% of Amazon stock each year.

.99^26 = .77 = 77%

So he'd currently be worth $145B instead of $188B.

PG is saying Bezos would have left the US because of that?

Edit after twitter conversation with PG:

He doesn't believe Bezos would have not started Amazon in the US if there was a wealth tax. He thinks a US wealth tax might marginally reduce the number of founders that choose to come to the US to start a company.

I still disagree.

I think great founders will start companies in the place that maximizes the chance they create an Amazon-level success, not in the place with the lowest taxes.

At some point taxes may be too aggressive but a low single digit wealth tax isn't that.

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> He doesn't believe Bezos would have not started Amazon in the US if there was a wealth tax.

Did he elaborate? That seems like such a joke to me. Denying yourself access to the world's biggest market because, if you make it big, you'll only have $145 billion instead of $188 billion...

Although it is interesting of course that Amazon was founded/located right from the start in part on a tax optimisation. I can imagine say a French entrepreneur may choose to incorporate in Germany to launch his EU startup (though even here, extremely skeptical) based on a (hypothetically) better personal tax system. But skipping the US? Highly improbable.

I think a 1% wealth tax is enough to encourage billionaires to move out or CA, but probably not out or US. I doubt most startup founders would consider it when founding the company.

Evaluating policy proposals for a single person, specifically the single most outlier person, is disingenuous.

Policy proposals need to be designed and evaluated for the total population they might effect, not just the single person at the very top.

Does the point somehow change if you run that same math for the 100th, 1000th, or 10000th most wealthy individual?

> So he'd currently be worth $145B instead of $188B.

> PG is saying Bezos would have left the US because of that?

I think most human beings would do most things for $43,000,000,000. Whether they morally ought to or not is beside the point: almost anyone would do almost anything for 43 billion dollars.

The marginal value of that money, in terms of lifestyle changes, when you already have $145B is much less than $43 billion. Probably closer to 0.

When you already have another 145 billion? More than you could possibly spend in your lifetime?

> When you already have another 145 billion? More than you could possibly spend in your lifetime?

Allstate's market cap is currently $30 billion. Maybe Mr. Bezos would want to buy it, and still have the rest of the money he currently has. Maybe he wants to do something else with that money.

Regardless, the fact that you or I might not be able to imagine spending that much money has no bearing on whether or not he could. To be honest, I bet you & I could figure out how to spend that much, too.

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