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Comment by SecretDreams | Hacker News Reader

> The tax would apply only on the amount of income above the $1 million threshold, so a person making $1.5 million, for example, would be taxed on the final $500,000. It would apply to an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 households in the state, with collections beginning in 2029 on the previous year’s income.

It's a sliding scale tax. Someone making a million will barely feel it. Someone making 50 million will feel it a lot. Objectively, anyone making $50 million should feel it a lot and be taxed heavily. Nobody is making $50 million under their own power.

I know numbers are hard for the ultra rich. I've mostly only posted this for all the poor souls only making a mil a year. I want them to know this won't impact them.

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Nobody is making $50M a year in W2 income. Maybe a couple pro athletes? But if you're making $50M a year it's all stock and that doesn't fall under this, and once you have enough of it there are ways to actually realize it as income and never pay taxes on it.

This is not about the money at all, it's about getting an income tax on the books. In a year or two they'll lower the limit a few hundred grand. They're start removing exemptions, they'll add more brackets, and before you know it Washington will have California's tax structure and the people who live there will not be any better for it. But the government will be bigger, and the people will be poorer.

It's not about whether rich people should or should not feel it. It's not about whether they should or should not be taxed heavily. This isn't a normative question - it's about incentives and mobility.

It's about what their alternatives are, where they choose to be domiciled, what job-creating businesses they take with them, and what effect that has on the state's economy over the long term.

As it is, California and New York have the highest income tax rates in the nation, and are both experiencing large net domestic out-flows. Florida and Texas have no state income tax and have been the largest net recipients of domestic migrants for several years.

> Florida and Texas have no state income tax and have been the largest net recipients of domestic migrants for several years.

Rich people don't like taxes or paying back into the systems they abused to get rich. Water is also wet.

> Objectively, anyone making $50 million should feel it a lot and be taxed heavily. Nobody is making $50 million under their own power

You’ve got it backwards. The people making $50,000 are the ones who are dependent on someone else to provide all the infrastructure for their job.

The person earning $50m a year is profiting on the labor of hundreds of thousands of people. Rent seeking on their labor and skills, relying 100,000x more on the infrastructure that made them rich. No one makes $50m a year in a vacuum, they do so by utilizing the economy they live in and rely on.

If that's the way you see it, you are also free to do so. Labor is a market and the laws of supply and demand are at play just like any other market. Go start a company and hire some people. This is Y Combinator's Hacker News after all. The world needs more founders.

The comment you’re responding to claims that wage labor is exploitation on the part of the employer. That they can become exploiters themselves is usually not a convincing argument to them.

It’s also like telling someone with just eighty bucks to their name and debt up to their ears that they can try to win the lottery.

> The comment you’re responding to claims that wage labor is exploitation on the part of the employer.

That’s irrational.

And OP said “If that's the way you see it,” i.e. given the premise, “you are also free to do so.”

Imagine for a second if supply and demand were actually the only forces at play for these businesses run by billionaires… - forgetting oligopolies, blatant antitrust, lobbying, the revolving door between government and the c-suites, legal tax evasion, etc.

We don’t live in a fantasy world simulation on a frictionless plane where anyone can be a billionaire if they just pull up their bootstraps.

> Rent seeking on their labor and skills

Paying people for their work isn’t “rent seeking.” If I hire someone to replace my roof shingles, is that “rent seeking?”

You don’t clear $50m a year by paying people what they’re worth. The wages are unfair, by definition, if there is someone able to skim away that much at the top.

Your definition of “unfair” is quite peculiar. By your logic, the same salary for the same work can go from being “fair” to “unfair” depending on how many employees you have.

No, it's as simple as income ratios between the lowest and highest paid employee in a company. Above a threshold starts to be completely divorced from their respective work ethics and general intelligences. It's more just an abuse of systems that have been built up over time specifically to allow for that level of exploitation.

Quoting supply and demand in labour is just insulting and indicative of someone maybe getting a bit too high on their own supply.

> income ratios between the lowest and highest paid employee in a company

What is the mathematical or economic significance of this ratio?

Ah yes, all the 50k makers are dependent on the very altruistic nature of the 50mil earners who all got there under their own power and without any systematic abuse, grifting, or generational wealth to get them going. Won't anyone think of these poor folks? They'll now have 49x0.099 mil less yearly income to charitably pay their indebted employees bonuses.

All parties involved are dependent on society facilitating approximately everything.

The word you’re looking for is “subjectively”, or “in my opinion”.

> Someone making a million will barely feel it.

Easy for you to say.

> Objectively, anyone making $50 million should feel it a lot and be taxed heavily.

How is that objectively true? Why should they?

Well the tax is on income over $1M so yes someone making $1M will pay nothing. Technically that's easy for anyone to say, assuming they actually read the article at least.

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