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Comment by bitdivision | Hacker News Reader

Because if your asset is growing at 5% and the wealth tax is taking 1%, your asset is still growing overall

But asset isn't guaranteed to grow at 5%, it only grows that much on average.

What you say makes sense if the wealth tax is applied on ETF/index fund holdings, but for most founders, the wealth is concentrated in holdings in their own company. On average, across all founders, the asset growth might be 5%, but for each individual there is significant variance. For nearly half of founders, wealth tax would take 1% on either a flat or a depreciating asset..

I agree there will be huge variance. I'm only suggesting that if you model growth of assets as well as a wealth tax then your numbers will look different.

If your company, or your ownership value in said company, is valued at over the wealth tax floor ($50M?), and is "flat or depreciating" every year over the (according to PG) 60 years you control the asset, then you have much bigger worries than a 0.5% wealth tax.

Yes, you do. So why add yet another worry (a 0.5% wealth tax).

Keep in mind that "flat or depreciating" companies are way more common than you think. Not every company enjoys the annualized returns of the S&P500. Almost any non-tech or non-tech-adjacent company has remained either flat or depreciated, in the last 10 years.

That's the entire reason why lay people invest in the index, because it's relatively safe from depreciation. Most of the super-wealthy don't achieve that wealth on the back of the S&P500, they achieve that on the back of owning a single zero-to-one stock. It's one thing for the company to grow from 0 to {insert equilibrium valuation}, and another thing entirely for the company to continue to grow at a rate that outpaces inflation.

The argument you'll get back though is that that 0.5% wealth tax will no longer impact you _at all_ if your asset value drops below $50M.

A 0.5% wealth tax is not going to make you poor. It could, _at absolute worst_, make you worth "only $50M". If you still manage to go from $50M -> $20M, a wealth tax had absolutely nothing to do with that.

As well, although it's not explicitly mentioned, I would expect any floor-value (such as $50M) to be set to keep pace with inflation.

Okay, $50M was just the number for the sake of the argument, but the core argument still applies for those individuals worth $100M in the same circumstance, or $500M, etc etc etc.

Your argument doesn't refute my central argument, it refutes an unimportant implementation detail.

> Most of the super-wealthy don't achieve that wealth on the back of the S&P500

Are you saying that most of the super-wealthy do not (at least to a certain point) diversify their investements? Or is your point that most super-wealthy individuals acquired their wealth themselves by investing (or founding) a single corporation themselves?

Most of the super-wealthy derive their wealth from owning significant ownership in extremely valuable corporations. Outside of hedge fund managers and Warren Buffett, most of the super-wealthy do not have sufficiently diverse investments whose annualized returns may cover the annual wealth tax bill.

By the same reasoning income tax doesn't exist because people sometimes get raises. Come on.

I don't think that's a fair comparison.

The article does not model asset growth in any way, and if you do model asset growth you would get significantly different numbers.

Yet somehow people keep working and the entire world of "labour investment" dosen't collapse

Most assets do not 'grow in value'. Take a building any building. Sell it today. Sit on the cash for 50 years. How much building can you buy in 50 years? Not nearly as much.

The only reason we are even talking about wealth tax is because of the crazy unable to be funded programs some people are proposing. These programs sound nice on paper until you do the math on them. Then they realize they can not pay for it at all.

Remember wealth != cash value.

Cash, specifically, doesn’t grow in value — but most ultra-millionaires aren’t sitting on tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. If you’d held onto the building for 50 years, it’d probably be a very different story.

My parents have owned their home for about 50 years now. If they sold it today and turned around and bought another house they pretty much could get about the same sized house. The about 20k they paid for it 50 years ago in some places would not even get you a down payment.

Wealth is not the same as cash value. It is easy to miss the distinction. We may be agreeing? We also already have a 'wealth tax' on many items already. We call it property tax.

Not the only reason at all. So many people are concerned with inequality beyond its connection the USA’s inability to fund public goods.

>Not the only reason at all. So many people are concerned with inequality beyond its connection the USA’s inability to fund public goods.

"Being concerned with inequality" doesn't give people the right to go and arbitrarily expropriate other people's assets.

> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

We absolutely do have that right in the US.

No, the federal government does not have that power; Art. I, Sec. 2, Cl. 3: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers”. A wealth tax (or other real or personal property tax) is a direct taxes not apportioned as Constitutionally required.

State governments may or may not have that power, according to their own Constitutions (most, I would imagine, do.)

This is a ridiculous comparison - of course pure cash depreciates, but we're talking about the literal opposite of that - an asset.

Take a building, any building. Sit on the building for 50 years. How much is building worth? Probably way more.

I would posit that most assets are in relation to other real assets worth about the same. If I sell that building and buy the one that is say about the same right next to it am I going to 'pay more'? Cash wise most certainly. Utility wise not so much. Do not confuse cash with value. It is easy to get them mixed up.

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