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Comment by paulryanrogers | Hacker News Reader

> The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

But only within their minds. They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped.

Plenty of people make the choice to stop acquiring, stop increasing their wealth, and stop having more everything (kids, houses, cars, pets, hobbies, etc).

It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires.

These people also have much more leverage to change the world in substantial, albeit often short lived ways. My family has been hurt by the DOGE cuts. Hopefully it's not a permanent injury. Yet it's very real.

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Isn't it like that old story about catching monkeys. You hollow out a gourd with a small hole, tack it to the ground and put a nut in it. The monkey can get its hand in but not out with the nut in their fist. The human can walk over and leisurely whack the monkey because the monkey can't let go.

They act just like drug addicts. More's the pity. They can change but they don't seem to understand that rock bottom is a tough place to be.

The Monkey trap is a very powerful analogy.

It is looking like we are venturing into harder times these new few years for various reasons, as such one has to wonder what things you are still clinging to that can be let go and what is still worth handing on to. Hopefully we don't have to make those choices but it is always handy to keep in mind.

> They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped.

They pay giant amounts of tax. The people not paying tax, or costing negative tax, are who you mean.

Do they?

The 2021 ProPublica tax leak showed the 25 richest Americans paid a "true tax rate" of roughly 3.4% on their $401 billion in wealth growth between 2014 and 2018, because their wealth grew without triggering realization events.

Try seeing how much net tax a government employee pays. It's in the negatives. Or a benefits recipient.

Sure, undoubtedly. But, also... you don't have to make a ton of money to pay more than 3% of your income.

To be clear, I don't pretend to have preferences. I'm idealistically libertarian, but I think that nukes have ruined the right to bear arms, propaganda has ruined free speech, and central banks have ruined currency. I'm a demoralist, I guess, to coin a term.

“Net” is not relevant, nominal tax rate matters, and billionaires are the biggest tax dodgers by far, stop trying to blame poor people and civil servants for your weird hangups.

> “Net” is not relevant

If it's not relevant then just give every government employee a million dollars a year raise, but on the condition that it's taxed at 100%. Then you've raised all the taxes you need and the private sector doesn't need taxing.

> billionaires are the biggest tax dodgers by far

Even if this is true (no evidence cited, of course) they still pay the most tax in terms of dollars, and their businesses generate far, far more tax downstream as well.

> stop trying to blame poor people and civil servants for your weird hangups

I'm not blaming them. I'm just judging them by your standard. Get a better standard, and don't call it my "weird hangup".

A parent of your comment cited a ProPublica study that references real tax return data that showed billionaires paying an effective tax rate in the single digits. If their accumulated wealth were regarded as regular income, they should be paying 37% on most of the gains. Look it up yourself.

If you look at “net” like you want to, sure, they pay far more in tax dollars than pretty much anybody, but they are able to legally dodge paying tax on most of their wealth accumulation because if the way the IRS treats unrealized capital gains.

Imagine doing away with income tax and replace it with a wealth tax payable in whatever wealth you have. % of your house, % of your investments etc

The government employee at least earns their salary by actual labor.

Whereas anyone on the "top N richest" list is a parasite on all the people who produce wealth.

> The government employee at least earns their salary by actual labor.

They may or may not do much useful - government tends to grow regardless of output, because it doesn't need to earn its money. All you know for sure is a government employee pays no taxes, and so contributes nothing to anything like roads, public services, etc etc, and takes taxes away from the people who are net contributors.

I didn't even see the actual problem with this originally: wealth is not what is or should be taxed. If shares I own go up and I don't sell them, I don't have anything to tax. It's only when I sell them that I should be taxed.

> wealth is not what is or should be taxed

But why not?

> It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires.

If we talk about US, your statement is outrageous hypocrisy.

Median income world-wide is less than 50 cents per hour. Average American person "who have no choice" could start working for like 30+ times more at any moment they want and choose any US government they want.

And how much money from this 30+ times more they have "donated or paid enough taxes" that their several dollars per hour "would be distributed far and wide"? Zero. So we are talking about insatiable appetite of Americans, not Billionaires. Because average American person has literally the same choice you are talking about, and literally choosing "having more everything" instead of "distribute far and wide".

The average American struggles to pay rent, utilities, and food, actually. They can’t just go donate 99.999% of their wealth and still survive like billionaires could.

> The average American struggles to pay rent, utilities, and food, actually.

Do you think your average Billionaire do not struggles to pay for their 500m yacht or flock of supermodels and Hollywood stars?

> They can’t just go donate 99.999% of their wealth and still survive like billionaires could.

They totally can. An average American worker with 12 dollars salary in terms of excess cash is way closer to Elon Musk than to a tantalum mine worker in the Congo who earns 22 cents per hour.

Not 99.999% obviously, but they can easily pay 80%, 90%, 95%, or even 98% of their incomes as fair share to people, who really need it. But they choose not to. They choose to get more rent, more utilities, more food (even if they will literally die from that amount). Or even new iPhone, that has been created by those highly underpaid tantalum mine workers. From the point of view of the average human on planet Earth, average American just as much exploiter as any billionaire.

> but they can easily pay 80%, 90%, 95%, or even 98% of their incomes

Not american but I'd presume food, protection from the elements and healthcare costs arefor the vast majority higher than what's left over even if they only afford themselves the minimum no?

Where I live the absolute bottom segment of housing is proportionally more expensive and the price inflexible because smaller or shitier quite frankly doens't exist or is illegal.

> I'd presume food, protection from the elements and healthcare costs arefor the vast majority higher than what's left over even if they only afford themselves the minimum no?

Obviously no. What a hypocrisy and shifting of blame. "The minimum" you'd get if you are working for less than 20 cents per hour. When you are working for several dollars per hour, you are drowning in luxury comparing to the rest of the world and refusing to pay your fair share to other people, whose work you are appropriating.

> Where I live the absolute bottom segment of housing

That is the same as talking about "absolute bottom segment of housing in which billionaires are living". I mean, duh. Your bottom segment of housing (food, protection from the elements, healthcare) is literally a function of your bottom segment of income, it is not the "minimum".

>Obviously no. What a hypocrisy and shifting of blame.

Obviously yes. Your effort to equate the ability to scale down of billionaires to people who struggle to afford a shoebox appartment and lifesaving procedures if they were to fall ill is ghoulish. "

A lot of those a bit above the minimum do indeed spend more on what were historically luxuries because those luxuries now cost a fraction of their historical price whilst housing and such has typically gotten more expensive.

>That is the same as talking about "absolute bottom segment of housing in which billionaires are living".

It is not in any way shape or form the same because billionaires can go lower.

> it is not the "minimum".

The alternative is no housing (or often moving in with parents) so i'd argue it is. i'll remind you that a tent on the sidewalk isn't exactly legal everywhere.

If you’re going to go after Americans then I guess anyone around the world not living in a run down shack in the middle of nowhere without water and electricity is also taking advantage. Americans are well off compared to a lot of places but not the whole rest of the world, not even close. Get some perspective.

Where did you get that 50 cent statistic from? The closest I could find was a dataset from 2006-12 where the median per-capita income was $4k. Even if you extrapolate to working 40h a week and 52 weeks/year (which you can’t, because there’s some correlation between having lower income in this dataset and working part-time), that is still around $2/hr.

In https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-hourly-earnings I could not find a single country even close to what you have said, except for Burundi at $0.6/hr. The rest are all $2 and up.

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