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Comment by randycupertino | Hacker News Reader

I worked in wealth management and LIVED the hedonistic treadmill firsthand.

Everyone was jealous of the next level up. I was making 300k and my high school hometown friends were like "holy cow, you're so lucky this is amazing, you have your own apartment" meanwhile I was annoyed I couldn't keep up financially with my trust fund boyfriend who had $3 million a year to piss away with random trips to Bermuda. My CFO was jealous of the Principal who could take netjets and didn't have to fly first class everywhere. The NetJets guy was jealous of the billionaire principal who had his own jet. That billionaire was jealous of the main money dude who had family money inherited from the crusades. They all fought with their wives over private school tuition and horses. Everyone drank, did tons of drugs, had dramatic affairs and fought like cats and dogs with their families.

I left finance and went into healthcare and realized I'm pretty damn happy living a simple life. I kept a $1500 belt I bought from Henry Bendels that's incredibly ugly as a reminder of dumb decisions and having too much money to piss away on stupid crap!

Read Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones Book by Greg Campbell. Reading that made me realize how our planet has finite resources and I just I wanted to cleave the my own consumption habits so stopped needless shopping for "fun" and started being a stubborn bastard about driving my 12 year old Hyundai into the ground. It's not much but it's my own private rebellion against the gaping maw of endless consumerism.

Worship your family, friends, love ones, health, music, doing things that make you feel alive, shared experiences and nature over shiny toys and stuff that just sits around collecting dust and looking pretty.

At the end of the day, we're all the same food for worms anyways no matter our net worth. Enjoy your friendships, realize they probably have their own internal struggles and problems they're dealing with and try to be there for them in whatever way you can!

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>That billionaire was jealous of the main money dude who had family money inherited from the crusades.

Illuminati confirmed.

On a serious note, being born into wealth is a travesty of sorts. People who are tend to experience a reality that is far removed from that of the average person, and as such can't identify nor relate. They are robbed of a certain type of life. Yet, enormous wealth confers power that can be exercised over common people—despite such an upbringing rendering one ill-suited to exercise said power. It's a timeless problem, I suppose.

You’re exactly right- but it isn’t a timeless problem. Government has the ability to reform inheritance and taxation.

However, theres no political will, because those with money, can lobby better than those without.

Ironically America rejected the monarchy, and yet has replaced it with an oligarchy.

>You’re exactly right- but it isn’t a timeless problem.

It's a timeless problem insofar that it dates back to ancient times while remaining unsolved today.

No one has ever prevented intergenerational wealth, and it is so innate and natural to humans that you're bordering on Soviet territory when you decide to fight all that and try and end it.

(If you're just talking about reducing it that's fine, but we already do that massively with the tax and transfer system, and I think you guys have estate taxes too.)

Until 10000 years ago, there was no such thing as intergenerational wealth or surplus, everyone was a migratory hunter gatherer before that owning what they carried. Some people in the Amazon still live like this.

So the notion that massive intergenerational wealth is innate to humans and natural is absurd. Or if it is innate and natural, then the lack of that is innate and natural as well. Most of behavioral modernity had none of this at all, it is a relatively new phenomenon, not "innately human".

Pre-agricultural tribes could have had forms of wealth — an ornate spear or knife, a prized shawl, a special ceremonial bowl, etc — that they passed down.

It seems quite likely to me that as soon as we started crafting and carrying things around, we developed complex behaviors around who gets which things.

Frequently those things were buried with the people who made them.

It is not really possible to determine who made the grave goods found next to a skeleton (or urn). Some specialization of work is seen in hunters and gatherers already. Not everyone makes their own spearheads or cotton strings etc.

There is one thing that is innate. I can tell you.

I saw it from my nephews recently. One was building a castle, like five floors high with some stuff. The younger kid comes and destroys it. His brother gets deeply annoyed and started to cry. Why? Because he spent time building it.

They are three and one years old. Do you think anyone taught them to get annoyed when the castle is destroyed? No, it is innate: what takes effort has a value for humans.

We did not have the level of wealth of today before, but every single human that puts time somewhere wants to be the ruler of that effort. That is innate I think. I saw it clearly with my nephew's reaction. Noone taught him that.

Looks like a good experiment to me.

Your experiment speaks to how we interpret transgressions, and for that, it is true- taxes are seen as robbery.

Does your nephew now own the sand he used to build that castle? I would hope not, as I think we’d agree, many kids would suffer!

And likewise, many people believe so strongly in their ownership of money, that they don’t mind if others suffer.

> taxes are seen as robbery

Taxes are robbery. If you did the same to your neighbor under threat, you would end up in jail. If a mafia does that, they go to jail.

If the government does it, they do not. And they did not ask you to adhere to a contract. It works with reversed logic from what we do in real life with others.

There is no single logical justification to say it is not robbery. That is independent of whether what they do with that money is good or bad. A different discussion.

> And likewise, many people believe so strongly in their ownership of money.

Which represents just that you offered something worth that money to others, in the absense of threat or violence. So yes, now it belongs to them because of an exchange.

> that they don’t mind if others suffer.

Or even worse, some people subtract that money from us by providing no value, unlike the average of humans who at least sells something or provides a service and pretends that the people providing services or products are worse than the person subtracting in exchange of nothing under the threat of prison.

Also, it seems that to you the person being subtracted the money they earned and spent time to get it(could be money or anything else, I am talking about effort) do not suffer. I guess they do not have a soul or feelings or do not deserve the same respect as the others.

> There is no single logical justification to say it is not robbery

It is the cost to you living in society; a society which provides infrastructure such as roads, education, sanitation, and food. A society which provides customers and a marketplace to trade in.

The roller coaster of watching you add and edit this comment was truly an experience. Have a great day.

This would be true if they came and tell me which services I am willing to pay and use. That is not what they do. What they do is to pack all things together, to extract money from there for them also, to make systems with way too many people to manage stuff that can be managed more efficiently and to pass you the bill without asking.

Of course that is robbery. Imagine they force you to eat in a certain restarant and you must eat there, because they decided so without asking. Now let us say the food should be 15 dollars and they charge you 45, without asking. This is what they do. It is totally, totally unfair.

Later they will come and tell you: hey, you can eat thanks to me! You owe me respect. When in fact, I could have gone find my own way and eat for 15. It is absurd. And robbery, of course. Noone asked me. That is illegal if you do it to someone.

It is as if a telco came and charge you a bill of 50 usd and you get mad and go and say: hey, I did not hire your services. And they reply: the contract is implicit. They would be in trouble.

> Taxes are robbery.

I'm fine with you not paying taxes, as long as you leave my country and renounce your citizenship. After that, make whatever you want on a boat in the ocean or in Somalia. But no one who thinks taxes are theft ever does that, because they want all the benefits of society my taxes pay for.

You seem to be saying that anything short of living your philosophical ideals is hypocrisy.

There are a lot of government policies I think should be criminal, but nobody suggests that my only options are accept the policy or completely denounce society.

I think that the large telecoms are built on theft from society and that copyright laws are too extensive. Should I leave society to go live on Sealand?

You're pretty unfair with your criticism. I wasn't claiming you must reject all of society if you disagree with any aspect. My point was that you can avoid taxes - they happen to be 100% optional. And yet no person who claims taxes are theft is willing to do so.

To use an analogy, you're saying "look, not every restaurant serves your favorite food, why do you call people hypocrites who go out to eat at those places" and I'm saying "the people I call hypocrites are the ones who claim it's a moral imperative to refuse to tip or even pay the check who insist on going out to eat"

In what way are taxes 100% optional? In the sense that using AT&T is optional because I can move of I don't like it?

I don't follow your restaurant analogy. Someone can recognize that tipping is harmful to the wait staff, but continue to tip knowing that to do otherwise would only hurt the wait staff and not the restaurant.

With a private service you always have alternatives.

With a government imposition you must pay, noone asks you, and, on top of that, you do not use those services most of the time. But if you use them, why they do not ask you if you want? That is exactly how real life works... except for government impositions.

You can leave the country and renounce your citizenship. Boom, taxes avoided. Otherwise, you're continuing to benefit from the government so you pay taxes. It's a voluntary arrangement to be a citizen of free societies.

so the usa isn’t a free society?

You can renounce your US citizenship

That's not the point, you're arguing some parts of the implicit contract package deal you get given when you are born are not perfect. They are arguing that they should be able to sign such an agreement and that it shouldn't be implicit when you're born so that you could renounce this contract - which only works for hermits or self entitled people that came into some money and haven't had the inclination to read how a society functions.

Why renounce citizenship? I have several citizenships, and only US asks for my money while I reside elsewhere and don't consume any of its "services".

You consume the services of a country regardless of where you reside when you are a citizen, even if you don't consume much. But, yeah, Trump really fucked dual US citizens on that one (before 2017 you "had to pay US taxes" but you deducted the taxes of whatever country you were living in, which given the US's lower tax rate meant it was meaningless.)

I'm fine with you having to renounce your citizenship if your point is "taxes are theft" and you want to avoid them. If you wanna go your own way, fine. But then go your own way.

All wrong. 1) I don't consume any "services". 2) Sure you can deduct your home country taxes, what are you talking about.

I would pay for my services, happily. Give me alternatives and tell me prices. And let me choose what I use. Do not tax me on the basis of "take this pack I chose" and I set the price and you must pay.

You have tons of alternatives. You can take the "Canadian citizenship" plan (subject to approval), you can take the "US citizenship" plan (subject to approval). If you're in the EU, you can actively swap what country you reside in with it's own bundles. Heck, within most countries you can change states/territories, counties and cities to get subplans.

Or do you think you personally should be given a line-item veto to a $5 trillion federal budget? Cause that's unworkable both practically and morally.

Why they manage so much budget from taxes in the first place is the real question. At least for me.

Morally the right thing to do is to ask EACH person what budget they want to spend on what and have a BINDING contract on that.

When you buya house or sign a contract witha telco company you pay for what you were offered and you can claim any deviation for that. I do not accept it has to be different with a government.

Of course, I would not ask for using a road or health care. I buy an insurance, pay a toll for roads or whatever. And we would save money, at least in Spain, where taxes are abusive by all measures.

I am not asking to be provided services I do not pay for.

I am not claiming I should have roads and health care and all and that taxes are theft at the same time. I am saying that taxes are theft on the basis that noone asked me what to pay or not.

The proof that things are terribly managed, at least in my country (Spain), is that we have a 120% GDP debt.

We are making new-born be born with a debt. Is that the right thing to do? For me that is immoral, unless you are that kind of person that thinks that we do a default and done, which would mean you are not a person that has a word to be believed. So what are the alternatives?

If you, or the newborn, leave Spain and renounce your citizenship they're not going to assign you a percentage of the national debt. Feel free to move to Somalia and pay no taxes and not be responsible for the national debt.

You can go to Somalia, it is not the place I want to be in but you seem to be obsessed about Somalia.

I will give you some clues: Taiwan, Singapore, Cyprus (Greek part, of course), Estonia, Georgia, South Korea, Switzerland: and probably also many of the places you call a tax haven.

You can go to Somalia if you feel like.

I don't care where you go. But here's a hint, your list has income tax rates of 40%, 22%, 35%, 20%, 45% and (depends on the canon and city) 30% (in Geneva) respectively. That's plus any property, sales, VAT etc. taxes. I say go to Somalia because it's the only country that, AFAIK, has anything close to 0% taxation.

Since you are talking about highest rate in Spain you have 54% Personal income + 21% VAT + anything you inherit or donate taxed + IBI (if you own a house). and do not get me started on business, or freelancing. Because they smash you badly.

In Spain if you earn 60,000 euros, which is not so much, in my area they tax you 47% from your salary + what your employer already paid to the social security. At the same rime they are raising the retirement age and do all kind of sh*t bc we have a Poncy system for retirement. Of course, politicians get max retirement after 8 years (for normal people it is 30 I recall). Some of them, like ex-presidents, have an income for the rest of their lives.

But hey, the money is to build roads and pay retirements and health care. Please someone explain to me this is not theft because I really do not get it.

The difference with a country like Singapore, with all its bad things (I lived there before, among other places) is that the level of corruption is lower, the taxing lower and the budget is managed seriously. Here... this is not even funny.

Why are you still in Spain then? You can move to Cyprus tomorrow, legally. Then you'll pay 20% less on your tax bill.

I am moving somewhere else. But I am.

That is what I am in the process of doing.

what makes you think I should be expelled from the place I live just because I think making people be born in debt is bad? I am a second-class person in my own natural place?

Somewhere can’t be robbery if you continue to permit it everyday… if you actually believed your words, you’d move to the middle of nowhere with no Internet and electricity or roads.

And it’s not robbery if you’re getting something from it everyday, which you clearly are because you’re posting on the Internet and drinking clean water.

I'm not sure what country you are from, but my taxes to the government certainly don't pay my internet provider or water supply company...

You shifted the topic. I do not mean to not drink clean water or to not use roads.

My point is to have control on what to pay or not. When not paying, of course, I have to pay it by myself. But noone is entitled to tell me how much and in which conditions unilaterally.

Governments and stated should NOT be an exception.

This Randian view of taxes is exhausting. If taxation is theft, then you're complicit every time you drive on a road. For the sake of your conscience, the only moral thing to do is to move into the woods and depend on nothing and nobody.

Good luck.

Why? I can imagine a toll on roads and being paid per use. Why they do not do that? Ah, yes, because that would mean there is not justification for these people to exist, like with many other things.

The duty of the governments is to kidnap and monopolize services on the basis that you owe them something because they provided you that, when, in fact, there are alternatives.

But even if they were useful on their own right, you could optionally pay or not in the taxes (that would not be taxes actually) and acquire or lose the right to use certain services.

Why they do not do that, and later accuse you of bad citizen wanting people to die, to not have education or that you cannot use roads? Because they are desperate to justify their own existence and by kidnapping these services they have their justification to exist.

If you're not satisfied with the service of your current provider, you are free to take your business to the premises of another service provider who had chosen to implement plans that are more suited to your needs.

I don't mean to be snarky, but putting it in more business terms. For some services the service provider offers several alternative plans, some have only a single one-size-fits-all plan

Not a provider but a forced provider.

>Taxes are robbery.

You're anti fire department?

No, I just try to be objective here. From Cambridge dictionary. Steal:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/steal

"to take something without the permission or knowledge of the owner and keep it"

As far as I know, they do not have my permission to get my wealth.

From RAE, in Spanish, robar:

"Quitar o tomar para sí con violencia o con fuerza lo ajeno." -> To extract or remove for oneself with violence or force other people's property (ajeno in this context refers to property in spanish)

So yes, it is an objective definition of what stealing is, because you pay under the threat of jail, not by mutual agreement, as you do when you purchase something.

https://dle.rae.es/robar

I suspect that whatever wealth they did have was carefully passed to the next generation and, further, that people who didn’t do that were less likely to have their DNA represented in the modern human pool.

I suppose if I were to suggest a 70% tax - you might think that too would bordering on a Soviet policy?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/high-income-earners-tax-ra...

Taxes are so nominal, that the haircut is almost non-existent. Beyond theory, I’m very well aware as my close friend inherited a property portfolio, and is now set for life.

Unfortunately, most are not as lucky, and therefore we should not rely on the inheritance lottery to act as our social security.

Reducing it should also be forbidden in my opinion.

We should not be entitled to steal the effort of others. Every person can do what they deem right with their things.

It is not a matter of how much. By that reasoning I could make legal hitting people, even if it is bad, as long as I do not kill anyone. Would that make hitting people better? I do not think so. The action is still hitting.

The same way, the action is still stealing wealth for whatever reasons. Not a right choice.

In a finite world of limited resources, how couldn’t it be a question of how much?

It is not the main question. Why? Because not all wealth is done by resource-intensive business. Developed countries rely a lot on services not only primary and secondary sector.

Also, by having more offer available, prices are dropped. That benefits everyone, making them automatically wealthier, since now services are at the reach of more people at a lower price.

I do not see the problem. At least, not so far.

Indiscriminate redistribution by force has a long history of failure and it makes places poorer, not wealthier.

> In a finite world of limited resources

Resources are indeed finite, but value is not. The wealth of new ideas, figurative and literal, is practically infinite. Your statement sounds very much like the zero sum fallacy.

It doesn’t matter what we think is right. The more the people who have, have more than the people who doesn’t have, the closer we are to a time when the don’t haves will say: “fuck that, I was born in the same world as you, why should you have all the nice things just because you were born to the right parents.

Só, the choice is simple: you can pay more taxes now, or just hope that the masses won’t do a revolution and send you to the guillotine all the while you scream about your god given constitutional rights to property.

Or alternatively a revolution can be done the other way around: effort is a holy thing. It cannot be stolen.

Or people who provide services go to the strike and stop producing. What would happen?

Yeah. Keep believing that. It worked so well to the Romanovs

Dreaming is free. Lol! I want a world where what a rich did or what a homeless received voluntarily from someone has the same value: it cannot be stolen on any basis. No matter the explanation, justification, good will they explain they have and what they will do with it. You earn something, you manage it. You want something, you deal.

Bolsheviks are not a great example of a success story to bring up in support of your argument...

I am not telling the Bolshevik are right or that they are a success story, what I am telling is that no matter the actual fairness of stuff, if you don’t help your society eventually they will take our things by force. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society

No. Taxes are the proof that there are mafias and people that are not civilized enough and want to spoil the rest.

A civilized person would try to contribute to the society without promoting violence to steal other people efforts.

Estate taxes apply to less than 2,000 estates. And, by the way, as soon as you enter that you don't pay capital gains taxes. Meanwhile, those taxes are avoided in a thousand ways.

> Government has the ability to reform inheritance and taxation. However, theres no political will

IMHO it is not right to try to make people that earn more than us the target to be sacked. I think it is a bad thing. It is not a matter of you have less or you have more . It is a matter of respecting people who make money legally or inherit it by the will of their own relatives or whatever. I do not think anyone should be entitled to put hands into that for any single reason whatsoever unless that money has been stolen or made in illicit ways. That is the only valid reason IMHO.

But the laws are written by the rich...

There is a sound argument that to create wealth you need a society. We all contribute to it and if we didn’t there wouldn’t be a society and even if you had a billion dollar or a few tons of gold you couldn’t get anything.

At the point where the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny fraction of members of society becomes detrimental to the functioning of our society it is necessary to redistribute before society stops functioning.

How you feel about isn’t very important.

Is there strong evidence that the concentration of wealth has reached the point where that is detrimental to a point where society is in danger of stopping functioning?

> society is in danger of stopping functioning

We shouldn't have to wait for society to nearly break down in some catastrophic way before we try to make things better.

Some sort of society will continue to "function", but it is likely to be a worse society for everyone, even the ones nearer the top of the wealth curve as they will constantly be worried about being robbed etc.

At the same time, we should not be taxing people who make societies work with their money on the basis of "just in case" when the "just in case" means deincentivating those people, which create the wealth in the first place, and, on top of that, stealing them in the name of redistribution without any evidence of doing something good.

In fact, I would say there is plenty of evidence that too much redistribution impoverishes societies and, on top of that intervention, there is always a layer of corruption, way more than in more free countries (free as in non-economic intervention to wealth).

What happens when the wealthy people decide that they don't like what you have planned for them and decide to set up somewhere else? Exit visas?

Wealthy people get to choose which jurisdiction they submit themselves to. That's just how the world is.

That's where global taxation comes in. See e.g: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/1/22756934/g20-oecd-15-perc...

Did you know that's only covering 19 countries + EU?

If I build a raft out of driftwood, risk my life in deep water, and bring back nurishment for my family while you starve on land; its to my advantage to help you but its by no means my obligation nor am I better off because of "society". Its not a zero sum game and individual effort is not dependent on an imaginary collective.

If you built that raft using plans, materials, and labor of society, then you risk your life to go out to the deep water to get food, then your contribution is just the last bit. To suggest it’s so important that the others involved deserve no spoils of your work (put another way - you say your effort deserves more spoils or sole control of the spoils) - then you’re selfish at the very least (although I’d say you’re among the worst kinds of humans to share society with) and exactly the reason why laws that extract aggressively from the wealthy are the only way to inch capitalism toward something resembling equity for most.

Would you support 99% of your income be extracted because you contributed only the last bit?

On top of that it is not true you contributed the last bit. Take a look at my reply. You contribute in all the chain, always.

There is no other way. You are not going to get anything for free in that chain. Every step in the chain, from employing to get products to work to deliver your stuff are paid in one way or another.

That would be true if you get plans, materials and labor for free. What you do is to pay for it under mutual agreement. So you do not contribute the last bit. You contribute in all the chain, because each of those people got what they wanted so that you can build what you wanted.

Your argumentation is incorrect.

By the way, what is equity? If you come spoil me because I make money, what kind of equity is that if you do it to me just because I make money? Equity would be to not spoil anyone. Trying to punish them on the basis that they make money (or that they make little, I do not care) is not equity. It is something else.

To create wealth you need a society. But it is not less true that the society makes you wealthy because they need YOU. It is an exchange.

When it is detrimental? Who decides that? I am against monopolies. Telling from offices all the others what to do or not when they are not harming anyone is also a monopoly. Governments are monopolies in many areas.

What makes you think that with fewer regulations there would be even more uneven wealth? I cannot reply to this, since it is just fiction, but fewer regulations means more services, which unfavors monopolies and drops prices for services. Making people more elligible for acces to those services as well.

I do not agree at all. Governments should try to make life fair for people. In my opinion, once a person reaches something like $10M net worth (I took a number purely based on the current 1% of wealth in the US, but I’m not married to it), taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds to provide free services to the population, like education, healthcare, affordable housing and infrastructure.

I am saying this very naively without reflecting on the effects it would have on the economy, the inflationary forces and the overall corporate productivity. So I realize my view is mostly a romantic utopia, but nobody should be allowed to hoard billions, especially by inheritance.

I cannot disagree more. There is a simple principle in life: we must cooperate to survive. The moment we subsidize people getting something for free it materially changes motivation to work, which is a slow but fatal death. Free doesn’t exist. Everyone must earn their keep.

Do schoolchildren need to earn their education?

After they receive their education and mature into fully functioning adults, of course.

That's the expectation built into all modern societies. That's what it means to pay tax when you grow up.

That's clearly not how it works. Kids who drop out of primary/secondary education don't get to pay lower taxes in adulthood. Taxes pay for current spending, and the taxes you pay are in return for living in a society.

This is too literal a view of the world that doesn't help progress the discussion. Obviously no child pays for exactly the chair they sat on in the classroom, or the piece of chalk they used to write on a blackboard, or whatever they use in classrooms these days.

When I say "you pay for your own schooling through taxes" I'm saying that most countries have tax systems where citizens contribute according to their earnings / net-worth, a share of the costs of running all of the parts of society that aren't privately owned - or some approximation of this idea.

This means that if you're paying your taxes, the implication is that you're paying "your share" of running education for society and someone did that for you when you were a kid. Maybe you're paying for iPads in 2022 for other people's kids where you only had chalk, but some other schmucks also paid the doctors salary (unless you're in the US I guess? not sure how that works there) that delivered your birth and nobody expected you to hand over a dollar bill as a newborn to pay for yourself.

But that's exactly the distinction that matters. Treating the services one has received as a debt implies that one must pay back that debt and is free of any other obligation. In reality, as you're pointing out, we're all contributing to the current and future wellbeing of each other, and we all benefited from others' contributions in the past.

Pay-it-back vs. invest/pay-it-forward have quite different political implications, and the fact that society does and always has been in pay-it-forward mode gives lie to the earlier commenter's claim that subsidies are slow but fatal.

What a harsh world that would be.

Isn’t it the world we currently live in?

Not where I live fortunately. We have social systems that care about people that cannot "earn their keep".

taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds

What proceeds?

>taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds to provide free services to the population, like education, healthcare, affordable housing and infrastructure

There won't be too many proceeds because people would simply stop working at that point. I'm far from being taxed at 100% (~50% marginal all in) and my motivation to increase my pay is already very low. I optimize for fewer hours worked at the same pay now.

Great! Let’s put a wealth tax of 10% a year in addition to the 100% marginal tax rate, that will move some asses!

Move to another country?

America taxes its citizens globally, so they can't escape just by moving.

they can, they would just have to give up their citizenship

Easily solved investing most of their money into buying a European or Chinese company and putting a trusting non US citizen at charge. Convenience flags are used since decades.

> I'm far from being taxed at 100% (~50% marginal all in) and my motivation to increase my pay is already very low.

Do you think that's because you're already making enough money to put you at or near the top tax bracket? Sounds like your lack of motivation is because you're already making enough and don't need more, not that the government might get an extra 8% out of you.

I would definitely work (a bit but not infinitely) more if taxes were significantly lower.

The math is pretty simple. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. I get paid X to work Y hours. My free time Z is 24-Y hours. It's not worth it to trade any more of my remaining Z hours just to have >50% immediately taken away. I don't get any more hours in a day by working more. Instead, I increase my hourly income (the accurate value of my labor) by cutting Y to 1/2 or 1/3 while still making X. I work less, have more free time, and government doesn't make more from my labor than I do. Easy. (Note: If I were to magically find a job that paid twice as much with the same crazy good work-life balance, I would of course take it regardless of marginal taxes. But such magic is hard to come by and not worth the risk at this point.)

Advanced version: on top of the marginal rate being 50%, I live in an expensive place where not only does it get taxed higher as if I'm uber rich, but I get to pay more for all of my expenses. It's like a double fuck you. Even less motivation. This stuff is real and anyone who's in my position has given it some thought even if it's not so formulaic, hence the outflow of people from CA to cheaper, less tax-y places.

People aren’t moving out of CA to less tax-y places. They’re moving to cheaper places (with less to offer).

There’s a net migration of rich people into CA (and there always has been). It’s the lower income that move out because they simply can’t afford CA. Rich people can afford CA and so they move here.

Many wealthy SWEs are moving to Texas and Florida for reasons that boil down to “no state tax” and “cheaper”, both points I’ve explained the math behind.

This isn’t really a political point. I like living in California (for now) and wouldn’t move to either of the other states just for the savings. Not worth it.

10m+ is not the money you earn by working. It's money you earn by owning something.

If you work in tech, you might make 10 million in 30 years or so. What are you owning at that point, stocks? And what's wrong with making money by owning something?

1) After having worked in tech for 30years, value of your stocks/real estate will far exceed the sum of all your salaries received.

2) Nothing wrong, just stating the facts.

> once a person reaches something like $10M net worth

I'll re-write your proposal:

"Once a person reaches something like $10M net worth they start donating huge sums of money to the charities they have created and who has their family members on board. One of them fully restored and is doing the maintenance on an authentic Gulfstream aircraft from the beginning of the century! An other one has created a school for the (still minor so he can’t claim his $10M yet) heir and a fund to send one student (chosen by the family) to Harvard on a full ride should he be accepted".

The problem with this is that wealth often means ownership of capital, capital often means ownership of a private company, and so you have a peculiar situation where the government takes gradual ownership of your business once it starts to do well.

There's probably a way to work around this by making it non-voting stock or something, but it's still an inherent dampener on growth, because there's no incentive to grow, and on RnD, because there's no concentration of capital. A silicon fab is worth billions; does your system imply that the only way to build one is to either arrange a consortium of 10,000 people or government funding? HN exists because of PayPal; should the PayPal money have been spent entirely on free services? How are you going to stop the black market[0]? What are the alternate routes to power in your society, and are they better than acquiring money?

You can envisage worlds where this does function, but there's a lot of work to put in regarding the specifics, and doing the work makes you realise their might be a lot of downsides.

[0] Around 80% of North Koreans' income was once acquired through the black market: https://web.archive.org/web/20110924095232/http://www.atimes...

> A silicon fab is worth billions; the only way to build one is to either arrange a consortium of 10,000 people or government funding

That's how most large stuff gets built now. "a consortium of 10,000 people" is a corporation. There are lots of them on the NYSE etc.. Government funding also happens a lot.

Federal Tax rates in the USA when Intel was founded were 70%.

the consortiums on the NYSE are investing to be richer in the future. If you've already hit the $10M cap, what's the point? If your semi fab investment does well, you have to sell something else to stay within the law.

You don't just have to sell your assets, you have to spend the money from the sale too. If you still want to improve your future, that means you spend it on things that don't show up as wealth. Some of those are going to be great (education, prestige from endowments, charitable donations), but others are less so (bribery, lobbying, attaining political power, money laundering, self-interested "charities" like building a park next to your own house).

“…peculiar situation where the government takes gradual ownership of your business once it starts to do well.”

I get the gist od the argument, but to call it ownership is perverse. It’s like insurance companies and their ~$300 salvage fee they charge if you have an accident and the repair cost is greater than the ‘value’ of the vehicle. They argue if they pay you for the full value of your vehicle, they are in effect buying the vehicle from you. If you decide to keep the vehicle, they will attempt to claw ‘salvage value’ or the amount they get from a junk yard. So far I’m 1 for 1, arguing the vehicle has to be for sale for ownership to pass to another.

Another thing I find perverse is the expectation of continual year to year growth—-to infinity.

It isn't even a romantic utopia, it is more like a living hell. Rich people create businesses and jobs, that is usually how they are wealthy. If the marginal tax rate guess up to 100% sorry 10 million, there is very little incentive for people to earn more than 10 million. And either they will stop trying to earn, out they will move. On top of that, these people don't earn as much as you think they do. In addition, these people don't burn money, they spend it. Which allows others to earn money.

Other than butler or yacht captain, what jobs do rich people create?

Over half of the jobs held by HN posters, for starters.

Well, that's a non-answer. What types of jobs are those?

Google SWE, Amazon SWE, Meta SWE, Netflix SWE, Microsoft SWE, AirBnB SWE, Dropbox SWE, Hooli SWE,…

How are any of those jobs "created by rich people"?

Google SWE: billionaire Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page

Amazon SWE: "richest man in the world" Jeff Bezos

Meta SWE: billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg

Netflix SWE: billionaire Reed Hastings

Microsoft SWE: "richest man in the world" Bill Gates

Then we get into the "mere" hundreds of millions.

They created those jobs, and obviously they're very, very wealthy.

You will still have silly pretentious people that use Windows and Amazon every day and will tell you that these guys are bad.

Start with your vote, kids: use something else, do not buy from them. It is what I would do, in fact, if I had that thinking.

Wow, way to prove my point. Bezos and Gates cannot create a single job in Amazon or Microsoft (Gates isn't even on MS's board anymore). Brin and Page can probably create whatever job they want, but most engineers don't report up to them and cannot be fired by them. So only 1/3 of the people you posted about (Hastings; Zuckerberg) even are in a position to fire someone working at the company, and probably don't know who those people are. Meanwhile, if all six of them dropped dead tomorrow, the only people whose job would be in peril would be their personal assistants, helicopter pilots, etc. Those are the jobs "created" by the founders you listed.

literally every company that is funded by YC is funded by rich people hoping to get richer.

Are you suggesting you should qualify the jobs people create? The important thing is if someone wants to do it or not.

> Are you suggesting you should qualify the jobs people create?

Well, I started by saying that the only jobs were yacht captains and butlers (slight exaggeration) and was told that many of the jobs were things people on this message board had. So, yeah, that's what the topic is.

> taxes should go to 100% and the government should use the proceeds to provide free services

I think you are pretty cruel to people that produce useful things for others. You are saying that people who offer something valuable for others should be mercilessly punished.

What you are saying is that people that contribute less than these people to society should be gifted with the effort of people that are useful to the society, making the wealthy (I mean licit wealth, of course, not criminal one) a means for others to live in better conditions.

Also, you are proposing to violate the principle of people being equal under the law. If I earn xyz, they spoil me, if I earn "too much". If I earn nothing and do not contribute in any meaningful way (even to sustain myself), then I am a blessed person that can get things for free.

Not a good arrangement to create wealth for others, if you ask me. Besides being terribly unfair.

> The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread-the rich as well as the poor.

-Anatole France

Turn it up to $100 million instead of $10. What you call unfair, is obscene, that outsized level of influence that one person should be able to have on society. The problem is the sheer amount of wealth so far beyond what a single person could use up in one life, while others languish and go hungry. Capitalism is merely a way of organizing society. The cruelty doesn't have to be the point. In order to incentivize the rich, we give them money. To incentivize the poor, we take more away. Who then go hungry. Is that the American dream? That I should be able to afford $1,500 bottles of champagne while my countrymen starve for not working hard enough?

You are missing something here: if I earn little, I can build a business to earn more.

If you are a worker you are exchanging comfortability for risk. You will make less, for sure. I am myself employed. But every month I get the bill. If you do not want that, risk your capital.

I wonder if it is so bad to work so hard for others, why don't more people build a business? There must be something we are not being honest about here, otherwise everyone would build one.

By the way, noone that makes their own wealth are to be blamed of the bad luck of others. I think we should help those people you mention. Those people starving. But voluntarily or offering them the chance to cooperate with the society. Unless they have some handicap, if they do not want to cooperate it is not me who is to be blamed. In that case, it would be them who are the person to look at for trying to live from others. And for that, it does not matter I can afford that champagne or not.

Besides that, the fact that people like that exist does not mean other people are poorer. I could open a website now and get rich and I would not be making anyone poorer, just making myself richer. And probably others, to operate the website itself.

The concept of "government should.." is fundamentally flawed. As soon as "government ... " starts taxing all the money from the right, then the GOVERNMENT simply BECOMES the rich, and that same power will corrupt those in power, be they democrat, republican, socialist.. it does not matter.

Once government "takes" all of the capital "for the presumed good of society", government will very rapidly become the enemy. Corruption will grow and grow, and society will be in the position of a corrupt, all powerful government.

It does not work folks. Read history, don't relive it like a bunch of idiotic sheep

100% agree. It's the moral thing.

You aren't ever going to fix that via regulation. In fact, it makes it worse as it always under a long enough timeline gets captured by the powerful and in turn it becomes a barrier to entry and we get Monopoly, Oligarchs, etc.

If you want equality of opportunity, you need to fight furiously for complete free speech and complete freedom of trade. The change has to come from the individual bottom up.

Revenue and earnings made via a government provided and recognized privilege of limited liability are fair game for the government to regulate (edit: and tax).

If individuals wish to operate outside of limited liability, un-shielding all their assets to the consequences of their actions, then they can keep all their revenue/earnings.

I think it's BS that limited liability orgs commit acts that damage the environment and others, pay dividends to share holders, salaries (and bonuses) to officers and employees, and then go bankrupt when they are then being held to account for their actions and leaving little to nothing to their victims because there is no ability to claw back the money they paid out.

Quid pro quo. They get limited liability for being regulated. Don't like being regulated? Then forego limited liability.

For the most part limited liability is a private agreement between you and your creditors, not a get-out-of-jail-free pass to avoid any and all consequences when you cause deliberate or negligent harm to someone who never agreed to those terms. To be sure, there have been instances where the government shielded someone from liability unjustly or failed to "pierce the corporate veil" when doing so was arguably warranted. However, such cases are very much in the minority compared to instances where limited liability is used purely to protect personal assets from being seized to pay the corporation's debts in the event of a business failure or contractual dispute.

They renamed 'aristocracy' to 'meritocracy' and we fell for it.

The vast majority of billionaires and millionaires are self made.

Define 'self made'. How many truly started out with no significant advantages conferred by the wealth of their progenitors?

Self made means they didn't inherit their millions/billions

Being born in the late 20th century and in a developed, wealthy country is are both massive advantages, even if your parents are middle-class school teachers (as mine were).

If those two facts constitute "significant advantages", then the obvious answer is "none of them", but that doesn't seem a productive place to draw the line.

How many billionaires come from a family of middle class school teachers or the like though?

I thought we were discussing "millionaires and billionaires", not just billionaires.

I didn't introduce those terms here. I'm speaking of the 'wealthy elite', not some arbitrary dollar figure cut off. The point is that 'person born to wealthy parents continues to be wealthy' is still a common story and 'person born in rags becomes a billionaire' is non-existent. We are fed a narrative about hard work and earning, but the people at the top largely only got there by being born from the right womb.

Not a self made millionaire, but I have seen plenty of people starting with significant advantages to crash and burn. The amount of money that can be spent on dodgy business projects, or, worse, various harmful substances, is insane.

IMHO by far the best "significant advantage" you can have is a shrewd, practical brain combined with low levels of blind arrogance and some kind of "people talent". In normal peacetime conditions, people like that tend to rise fast.

It's timeless because it's present in all economic systems even those that espouse equality above all or communism, etc. Kim, jeung-un, Xi, Jin-ping and their circles, the Politburo and its circle. They all had whatever they wanted even if on the books it belonged to the people.

Not all social systems. A deep exploration of anthropology should give you a few examples of societies that allocate resources via complex patterns of reciprocal gifting.

Fair enough. I think small isolated societies may to some degree be able to be like that, but not any current large society.

I hear this argument a lot from socialists, but I have not seen one example of such a practice working in sufficiently large societies. It seems, historically, that societies of sufficient size have used some form of hierarchical control, and to lack that does not seem rooted in what we have seen already.

Part of the problem is that hierarchical neighboring societies tend to absorb their neighbors.

But, I agree that one would likely need some technology to scale up the reciprocity system. Money and the free market is a reciprocity system of you squint at it.

Pretty much all the societies of today are the ones that could survive millennia of endless wars and come out of them alive. Current societal systems are selected for military prowess.

(This has various exceptions, e.g. isolated places like Iceland. But there isn't any big and pacifist state out there.)

> Worship your family, friends, love ones, health, music, doing things that make you feel alive, shared experiences and nature over shiny toys and stuff that just sits around collecting dust and looking pretty.

Agree but let’s not forget that money can give you wonderful experiences even if you are not materialistic, including the ability to not work anymore. Those are the people I am jealous of.

> including the ability to not work anymore

I have two takes on this.

The first is: I've met people who don't work. They're some of the most boring and wasteful people I've ever met.

Lying down on a beach, or watching tv 12 hours a day (random cliches), get boring after some time.

So one's going to look for something more meaningful and committed (in best case...), which brings to the second point: anything that's going to take a consistent share of one's like, inevitably becomes "work".

Morale of the story: there is no freedom from work. But there's the option to pursue the work one likes :)

I keep saying that I can't wait to retire so that I'll have the time to work on some games I've been wanting to create.

I haven't done them now because I don't want to spend my limited leisure time working, even if it's on something I want to create.

If you are not doing it now, or making an effort to do it now, don't be surprised when the time comes and you discover that you are not spending your days as you expected.

I retired for most of my twenties and early-thirties. It was all planned, and it ended up being one of the best decisions I have ever made, but it only created opportunity. Retirement doesn't change a person's interests or their motivation. When people receive a windfall of time, they tend to spend that time doing whatever it was they did prior, only more of it. If they watched TV in their free time, now they watch more TV. You get the idea.

My unsolicited advice: do it now.

I disagree with this. I used to have passion hobbies until I became so time-poor that keeping them would mean cut the little amount of time that I spent with my family, or not being able going out of my apartment for a walk.

I am not sure what you are disagreeing with.

> there is no freedom from work. But there's the option to pursue the work one likes :)

True, "Freedom to pursue ones interests" is more accurate. Many on HN are blessed with some degree of interesting work, but 99% of the world is not and for them "Freedom to not work" is almost synonymous.

It's true people go in one of two directions though. I think this is easily revealed with a long enough holiday without plans, initially everyone does lazy mindless things (recovery), then people get bored and either go in search of ever more entertainment, or seek out ever more creative, explorative or intellectually stimulating activities. i.e making your own "work".

> The first is: I've met people who don't work. They're some of the most boring and wasteful people I've ever met.

I don't want to 'work'...doesn't mean I don't want to have the freedom to maybe 'work' if I want 60 hours per week on a side project..without worrying about paying clients.

I'm not lazy, per se. Easily distracted yes, (ADHD), but I want to build things that are important to me, and maybe others...not build things for other people anymore. If I had 500k, I'd buy land, build cheap homes, rent them out dirt cheap and work on building a worker co-op that builds software tools for unions, co-ops, etc and shared marketplaces (think like amazon/ebay) that gives money back to those who shop, sell, and work to build the platform.

Def. wouldn't go sit on a beach, have no desire to do that sort of thing. Might take the kids to Disneyland though.

Being a slum lord and writing software for unions sounds like a weird definition of an ideal life.

I’ve heard this before now. If you can find “flow” in whatever you’re doing then you’ll never actually feel like you’re working all that much. Flow can be achieved in any area so long as you meet the psychological requirements for it. Work absolutely is not a “sentence” for committing the sin of existence.

I'd like not to work as much as the next person who doesn't, but I must say, anecdotally, that I've never met someone who retired early, be it from FIRE, investing, or inheritance, who is living what I'd consider a good life. I'm not saying their experience isn't enjoyable for them (which may very well be all that matters), just that the appearance and impression they give off is one of sloth, indolence, and hedonism. They're not writing that great novel or learning to master the dulcimer; they're simply vacillating between loafing and indulging.

TBH, I think the "go from yuppie to hippie and it all becomes rainbows" is generally a false narrative. Money does often buy happiness. That "$75,000 a year is peak happiness" thesis does not replicate, like much of the social sciences. [1]

I'm sure your new lifestyle is suitable for you and makes you happy. But I don't believe that's generalizable.

[1]: https://archive.ph/20210127035328/https://www.vice.com/en/ar...

> Worship your family, friends, love ones, health, music, doing things that make you feel alive

Precisely this. Perhaps these friends continue to spend time with OP because they bring something enriching to their lives? I have some money and I don't look down on my friends who have less, but I also don't value it beyond being a tool. To me, money is a necessary evil and I'd rather do without. I value the richness of spirit in my friends.

There is a difference between the hedonistic treadmill and having wealth. I knew people who made hundreds of thousands a year, and just banked it so they never have to work after they turn 29.

Meanwhile, there's something condescending about talking to someone who is looking at being unable to accumulate enough wealth to do the things they want about how those things are meaningless.

Yeah, and it also really goes to show how she just isn't in touch with reality for people who are _poor_.

"Spend time with your friends", she says.

OK, and then not be able to go out for drinks with your friends because you can't afford to eat out? Or because you're working a 12 hour shift because you need the overtime? Or studying trying to get marketable job skills?

This discussion is full of rich, self-righteous assholes lecturing about how being wealthy isn't that great for this or that reason...

Rich people don't have to worry about losing their job because their shitty 10 year old car is breaking down. They even can afford to buy cars that actually appreciate in value.

Rich people can afford accountants to help them dodge the hell out of taxes, while poor people make mistakes on their tax forms and get slammed with extra taxes and fees.

If someone rich loses their job, they likely have multiple kinds of savings, at least an emergency fund. What a novel concept- money you have just in case there's an emergency. They have plenty of people to network with and can find another job easily.

Rich people don't have to worry about getting bent over if they need a loan.

Rich people can buy durable housing, clothing, etc instead of shit that falls apart constantly.

Rich people can afford healthy food, and have the time and energy to cook for themselves or at least get nutritious take-out, etc.

I have slowly made a bunch of friends via an activity I'm able to do because of a family member. I was invited to an activity. That activity is going to cost $100+, not including the gas to get to/from the event. That is a sixth of my monthly budget. The guy organizing the event owns a "summer car" that costs $150,000.

What kind of car appreciates in value?

I assume some limited edition cars appreciate in value. If you bought a 1967 Ferrari it probably appreciates in value if you avoid crashing it.

But yeah, most expensive luxury cars rich people drive decrease in value, often by quite a lot.

In the current US market? Pickups...

Thanks for the story. I was in the hospital yesterday for unfortunate reasons and it stuck in my mind that working in healthcare is one of the few sectors that feels worth spending one's productive years in (to me).

Well, one time I had a patient masturbate underneath his blanket and throw his semen in my eyes so it's not all sunshine and roses. After that I started wearing my glasses every day to work. We found back wayyyyy back in his chart like 250 pages deep "DO NOT LET PATIENT BE ATTENDED TO BY ANY FEMALE STAFF" that the other facility had deliberately obfuscated so that our place accept him!

There's a lot of burnt out healthcare workers for sure, it's a hard job but I would say it's always interesting, you're always learning, there's lots of diversity and ways to specialize your career path (I went into oncology research) and it truly is rewarding. Just keep your head up for flying projectiles at your face :P

Hope you're feeling better!

Thanks for sticking to it!

My mum is a nurse and so I’ve heard a lot of stories of this being common - as if being physically abused is a part of the job.

It's gotten really bad lately, with antivax covid patients and their family members assaulting doctors and nurses in hospitals. In some areas, health care workers are quitting in droves.

That is insane.

What happened next? Does a patient get tossed for that? Are criminal charges brought? Did you test for any STI?

Your perspective on life is fantastic. Cheers.

> What happened next?

I pounded on the ambulance partition to my partner up front, hollered, "STOP THE GODDAMN RIG!!!!" while I grabbed a bottle of normal saline from the back, jumped out on the side of the highway and rinsed off my face like a crazy woman. The patient was like, "teehee, I'm a bad boy" and I took over driving and my male partner sat with him in the back.

We filled out an incident report form, I had some more thorough rinsing at the ER by submerging my face in cups and talked with the docs to find out you can't really fortunately get many STDs from that other than like... a stye. So I was all good although I think I got tested to be sure.

Patient got a big note in the FRONT of his chart and wasn't ever again attended by female staff.

I don't think charges were worth it to be filed for serial assaulters like that, a lot of people who live in long term care facilities are demented and have no assets so not sure exactly what they would do other than just transfer them around in the system or keep them drugged up/snowed so they don't assault people, I'm not sure. At that time I was only prehospital so we didn't get a lot of case followup on patients!

I do not mean to shit on your post, because I liked it. But:

> I left finance and went into healthcare and realized I'm pretty damn happy living a simple life

If you made 300k per year before, how is that compatible with "living a simple life"? At that rate, with just a few years of working you can have saved up 1M in your bank account, which imho is nothing like 'living a simple life', even if you dont spend it.

* That billionaire was jealous of the main money dude who had family money inherited from the crusades. *

I wonder how you maintain wealth across centuries.

There’s research on this. Check Florence Italian study rich bla bla bla on google . But to answer: gold, land, art

> fought like cats and dogs with their families.

I married into a wealthy family and I was not prepared for this. Its not easy keeping your head down.

I've seen this myself as well and really can echo that it's all relative...funnily enough i think a lot of the OPs friends probably talk about material things because they're in just as much of a "keeping up with the joneses" mindset as well

Love it!

If I could 'buy'(how ironic lol) your experience noted here I would, it seems like hard-engrained 'learned' knowledge that is hard to get through just reading.

re your second paragraph. something almost all jewish children are taught (though not all really remember, keeping up with joneses exists even within religious communities

https://www.sefaria.org.il/Pirkei_Avot.4.1?lang=bi

"who is rich? one who is happy with their lot"

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