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Comment by codefreeordie | Hacker News Reader

They do say this -- often. But, efforts to tax them always end up mostly targeting the rank of people below them on the hierarchy. The Davos set have enough wealth and power to be able to avoid all the taxes -- but the up-and-comers who would replace them generally don't.

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Davos should have an award celebration for the attendee that paid the most taxes to their own government. It can be opt-in if privacy is a concern.

Kind of like a Forbes 500 Richest list but instead of celebrating an often ficticious net worth metric - it should celebrate patriotic contributions made via just paying taxes.

That would be a reasonable thing to do if the Davos set actually wanted to pay more taxes.

But, then, the U.S. Treasury accepts donations to the general fund, if you feel your taxes are too low. Your contribution is even tax-deductible.

The drumbeat of "raise millionaire taxes" from the Davos set is mostly about maintaining themselves as the mostly-hereditary global elite and minimizing the rise of newcomers by taxing them enough that they can't rise to the lofty heights.

I agree with your skepticism about Davos and it being about "thought leadership" and a vanity virtue signaling game.

I think the case for making an award for patriotically contributing the highest taxes is that for the most part paying taxes is done privately and is therefore rewardless for the contributor. And then you (as the contributor) see on the flip side - politicians rewarded for boosting taxes and praised for legally taking from you.

Celebrating tax contributions and rewarding the contributor (on an opt in basis) could be hugely beneficial for certain types of wealthy individuals. Often times wealthy people enjoy being on these lists as it helps their business, PR, etc. - not to mention just plain vanity.

Since its for the most part audit-able, it isn't as easily gamed (unlike net worth) and can't just be empty virtue signalling.

I think it would lead to healthier discourse as the tax contributor would be in a public position to effectively be saying - of all the philanthropic causes I could support, I am purposely choosing to give up that right and instead contribute it via taxes to my country because I believe in its people to vote intelligently and the elected politicians to act in the best interests of those people.

I somewhat support this idea. I think it will not work -- none of the right people will join the list, because I think they actually don't care at all, but it probably won't make anything worse, and might help shine a light on their hypocrisy maybe.

My hunch is you could probably get a critical mass of folks in the Forbes 490 to 1000 Richest range that'd love to be on some sort of list since they didn't make the Forbes 500 cut. Particularly if it was published in conjunction with a major publication that loves rankings (i.e. US News, Fortune, etc.).

And maybe these are the right people that society should laud?

A bit about the group - Patriotic Millionaires - discussed in the article [1] - and interesting interview with one of founders[2].

[1] https://patrioticmillionaires.org/who-we-are/ - George Zimmer of Men's Wearhouse fame is an advisor.

[2] Millionaire argues for Higher Taxes, Fox Host Throws Temper Tantrum! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agHkrhws5Lo

[3] https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/ The group is chaired by Morris Pearl, a former Blackrock executive... members include investors and business owners filmmaker Abigail Disney; technologist Steve Silberstein; lawyer Roberta Kaplan; investor Lawrence Benenson of Benenson Capital Partners; textile entrepreneur Great Neck Richman; philanthropist Molly Munger; corrugated cardboard magnate Dennis Mehiel...

This point about donations comes up on literally every single one of these posts. Them throwing their wealth into the treasury maw would be a meaningless blip. They are arguing for the real systematic change that would bring in substantially more revenue than a few one time donations. Supposedly.

If that is true, though, then they're not actually talking about taxing them -- they're talking about taxing others more heavily too -- otherwise all of them donating would have the same effect as increasing their taxes.

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