Page 7 of 11 FirstFirst ... 34567891011 LastLast
Results 151 to 175 of 266
  1. #151
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    "greatest bull market ever" seems to have left the upper-middle class behind:


  2. #152

  3. #153
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    As both an evolutionary and an ins utional economist (two fields he originated), Veblen contended that our habits of thought and our ins utions must necessarily “change with changing cir stances.” Unfortunately, they often seem anchored in place instead, bound by the social and psychological inertia of conservatism. But why should that be so?

    Veblen had a simple answer. The leisure class is so sheltered from inevitable changes going on in the rest of society that it will adapt its views, if at all, “ ily.” Comfortably clueless (or calculating), the wealthy leisure class drags its heels (or digs them in) to re economic and social forces that make for change. Hence the name “conservatives.” That (re) iness — that time lag imposed by conservative complacency — stalls and stifles the lives of everyone else and the timely economic development of the nation. (Think of our neglected infrastructure, education, housing, health care, public transport — you know the lengthening list today.)

    Accepting and adjusting to social or economic change, unfortunately, requires prolonged “mental effort,” from which the leisured conservative mind quite automatically recoils. But so, too, Veblen said, do the minds of the “abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance.” The lower classes were — and this seems a familiar reality in the age of Trump — as conservative as the upper class simply because the poor “cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow,” while “the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands.” It was, of course, a situation from which they, unlike the poor, made a bundle in an age (both Veblen’s and ours) in which money flows only uphill to the 1%.

    Veblen gave this analytic screw one more turn. Called a “savage” economist, in his meticulous and deceptively neutral prose, he described in the passage that follows a truly savage and deliberate process:

    “It follows that the ins ution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought. The ac ulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale.”

    And privation always stands as an obstacle to innovation and change. In this way, the industrial, technological, and social progress of the whole society is re ed or perhaps even thrown into reverse. Such are the self-perpetuating effects of the unequal distribution of wealth. And reader take note: the leisure class brings about these results on purpose.


    Free online pdf of "Theory of the Leisure Class" : http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/t...isureclass.pdf

  4. #154
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    They spelled "evasion" wrong

    Tax avoidance by the rich could top $5 trillion in next decade

    PUBLISHED TUE, NOV 19 20192:50 PM ESTUPDATED TUE, NOV 19 20195:50 PM EST


    Robert Frank@ROBTFRANK





    A research paper by Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, and finance professor Natasha Sarin found that lax enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service has led to hundreds of billions of dollars a year in uncollected taxes from the wealthy, which could reach trillions over the next decade.




    Summers — a vocal opponent of the wealth taxes being proposed by Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — contends that one way to start making the tax system more fair and progressive without raising rates would be to plug the holes in collection.


    The “tax gap” — the difference between the amount due to the IRS each year and the amount collected — grew to just under $400 billion in 2013, according to the IRS. Summers and Sarin estimate based on current income and IRS trends, the tax would total $7.5 trillion over a 10-year period from 2020 through 2029.


    “The sheer magnitude of the tax gap suggests that there is substantial revenue-raising potential from shrinking it through well-targeted enforcement measures,” they write in the paper.
    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/19/tax-...xt-decade.html

  5. #155
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    workers got squeezed:

    Squeezing employers and workers is the flipside of rentier capitalism as financialization hollows out the industrial base and shrinks government.

    The financial sector essentially is of the 1% or the 10% that holds the rest of the economy in debt. The financial sector makes its money by getting the rest of the economy indebted to itself and making money off asset price gains. In the past, the financial sector made its money by getting interest. But now, with almost zero interest what it’s after is capital gains because capital gains basically are either untaxed or taxed at very, very low rates.

    So, the financial sector essentially makes its money not by being part of the production and consumption economy but by siphoning off as much money from the production and consumption economy as it can for real estate, for insurance and for debt service and banking services. The insurance, of course, would include the health insurance.

    The result is that Americans have to spend so much of their money now on housing. Up to 40% to 43% of their income goes for housing as opposed to 25% back in the 1940s,’50s and ‘60s . They have to pay huge amounts for medical insurance.
    And the taxes have been shifted off real estate, off of finance onto labor and industry. So you have America really being unable to revive its industry today. Because how can you create an export industry or even compete with foreigners when you have to pay such high housing costs, such high medical insurance and healthcare costs instead of the government taking over, such high debt service. If you got all of your clothing and food and basic needs for nothing you still couldn’t compete with foreigners because of all of these FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate – costs.

    Now the job of the government under industrial capitalism was all spelled out in the late 19th century in the United States. For instance, by Simon Patten, who was the first Professor of Economics at the first business school, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And Patten said that public infrastructure was a fourth factor of production. And the role of the government was to provide basic needs like healthcare, education, transportation and other basic services at very low price so that you lower the cost of doing business. You lower the cost of living so that the private sector will be able to compete with foreign countries.

    Now, most countries now provide free healthcare. Because if they didn’t, then the employers and the laborers would have to pay healthcare. Their cost of production would be much higher. And America has not done that. America has the highest cost of production in the world. Not because it’s technologically inefficient. The technology is all available and there.

    The reason is all of these extra costs that are paid by labor and by employers that are borne by governments in other countries. So as long as essentially America’s dismantling the government, what you’re dismantling is the basic means of subsidizing industrial production and manufacturing. And that’s what’s left America in a high cost position and driven American industry abroad without any idea of how to create a national economy that makes it profitable to invest in industry here.

    So most of the American cost structure has nothing to do with the cost of production and therefore nothing to do with industry or industrial capitalism. It’s a fall back into a kind of post-medieval rentier economy.
    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020...r-economy.html

  6. #156
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    The trend since 1980 has been monopolization.

    Well, banks have always been called the mother of trusts. Back in the 19th century, you had the great fortunes on Wall Street being made by creating the steel trust, the copper trust. The function of banks is to lend money to companies to essentially create monopolies in the markets which can control the prices and extract super profits. Namely, economic rent over and above the actual cost of production and normal profits.

    And when you have a trust, a monopoly, you can get monopoly rent over and above the normal rate of profit. Banks said: well, look, we can work with companies to let a few companies like, Carnegie takeover the steel industry. You had agriculture, agribusiness in this country, really turned into a trust with two firms sort of monopolizing all of the distribution of agricultural products. It goes all the way up. You’ve had essentially, Amazon becoming a monopoly. You have the information technology sector turning into a monopoly.

    And the function of these monopolies… the reason their stock prices are going up so much is because they’re setting the price without any anti-monopoly legislation such as you had under the Sherman An rust Act of 1890 and then Teddy Roosevelt as a trust Buster. Essentially, since the 1980s you have not had any anti-monopoly prosecutions at all.

    So, the economy has been more and more concentrated in the hands of a few large companies that have been able to get the credit from the banks to buy potential rivals. Facebook has been buying its rivals. You have the cable companies buying rivals. So people’s cable rates continue to go up and up without any actual cost increase.

    You have a dissociation of price from the cost of production. Price is whatever the market will bear. There is no longer that reference to the cost of production. And hence as profit is understood under industrial capitalism as a rate of return on the cost of production and the capital investment. You have essentially prices being dictated by a financially organized trustification and monopolization of the economy most con uously in the United States of course.

  7. #157
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    This is the buying opportunity of a generation. You’re going to have in January, 5 million renters thrown out onto the streets. They’re not able to pay the rent. You’re going to have massive foreclosures. Venture capital companies are going to be able to come in and buy real estate just as cheaply as they were able to do when the junk mortgage crisis crashed in 2009.


    And Obama did not write down the junk mortgages to the realistic value but threw out 10 million families. Well, 10 million families are going to lose again; about 5 million renters and a lot of low income families who bought houses on mortgage but have lost their jobs or lost their income are going to be defaulting.


    So the Biden administration is going to begin just where the Obama administration left off with huge evictions. That’ll end as in the case of the Obama administration, most of the victims will be black and Hispanic lower income people. So you can say that Biden is going to continue the anti-black, anti-Hispanic policies that Obama pioneered so strongly.

  8. #158
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    Yellen and Biden "undecided" on a wealth tax.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday that the Biden administration hasn’t decided whether to pursue a wealth tax, but will likely issue proposals to address the swelling federal budget deficit.


    A group of progressive lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) proposed March 1 a so-called ultra-millionaire tax. The legislation would create a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion and an additional 1% surtax on those above $1 billion.


    Asked about the idea on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Ms. Yellen said it isn’t something President Biden himself has proposed, but that the administration might consider it.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellen-...ax-11615737949

  9. #159
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    IRS to probe leaks embarrassing to the .01%


  10. #160
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421




    Jeff Bezos
    Amazon.com Inc.
    2014-2018 Wealth Growth:
    $99.0B
    Total Income Reported:
    $4.22B (4.26% of wealth)
    Total Taxes Paid:
    $973M (0.98% of wealth)

    Consider Bezos’ 2007, one of the years he paid zero in federal income taxes. Amazon’s stock more than doubled. Bezos’ fortune leapt $3.8 billion, according to Forbes, whose wealth estimates are widely cited. How did a person enjoying that sort of wealth explosion end up paying no income tax?

    In that year, Bezos, who filed his taxes jointly with his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, reported a paltry (for him) $46 million in income, largely from interest and dividend payments on outside investments. He was able to offset every penny he earned with losses from side investments and various deductions, like interest expenses on debts and the vague catchall category of “other expenses.”


    In 2011, a year in which his wealth held roughly steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return reporting he lost money — his income that year was more than offset by investment losses. What’s more, because, according to the tax law, he made so little, he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.
    https://www.propublica.org/article/t...oid-income-tax

  11. #161
    my unders, my frgn whites pgardn's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Post Count
    38,143
    How could Bezos move all of his material without federally funded roads and runways?

    problem is he does not see it like this:

    Taxes are a kind of collective sacrifice. No one loves giving their hard-earned money to the government. But the system works only as long as it’s perceived to be fair.

    he is using wage earner transportation for his business.

  12. #162
    my unders, my frgn whites pgardn's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Post Count
    38,143
    And now the red team will cry but.... but.... jobs!

  13. #163
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    And now the red team will cry but.... but.... jobs!
    The courtiers and the lickspittles of the wealthy, supposing there be any lurking around here, have been notably MIA in this thread so far.

  14. #164
    my unders, my frgn whites pgardn's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Post Count
    38,143
    Also, Warren Buffet was one of the guys who brought his example forward for the public to see.
    So its interesting now that we get no comment.

    Also this kind of wealth takes a hoarder mentality to start with imo. Then it blossoms in very creative ways.

  15. #165
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,421
    Also, Warren Buffet was one of the guys who brought his example forward for the public to see.
    So its interesting now that we get no comment.
    evaulation can blunt the impact of propaganda, but it has the native advantange/disadvantage of always having been preexisted by propaganda.

  16. #166
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    "Taxes are a kind of collective sacrifice. "

    taxes are collective contribution to the Commons

    Capitalist propaganda and lies for decades have been that taxes are simply bad "investment", with no return, paid to horrible govt that must be defunded and destroyed (so unchallenged, neoliberal Capitalism can rape, pillage, blood-suck, impoverish, steal with no govt restraint)
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 06-10-2021 at 04:37 PM.

  17. #167
    Veteran SpursforSix's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jul 2015
    Post Count
    21,158
    I'm certainly all for guys like Bezos paying more in taxes but using only net worth as a barometer isn't valid imo. I'm guessing his net worth is 90% tied to his stock ownership which a net gain isn't the same as a net cash gain. It's not like he can liquidate his position and realize the current value of his stock holdings. And I don't believe in taxing someone on unrealized gains. Taxing at the company level at least captures some revenue.

  18. #168
    Mr. John Wayne CosmicCowboy's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Post Count
    43,734
    I'm certainly all for guys like Bezos paying more in taxes but using only net worth as a barometer isn't valid imo. I'm guessing his net worth is 90% tied to his stock ownership which a net gain isn't the same as a net cash gain. It's not like he can liquidate his position and realize the current value of his stock holdings. And I don't believe in taxing someone on unrealized gains. Taxing at the company level at least captures some revenue.
    Plus, Bezos may have a lot of income but up to now has been dumping most of his personal income into Blue Origin which balances out as a loss.

  19. #169
    Savvy Veteran spurraider21's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Post Count
    96,013
    the propublica article spoke mostly of increases is wealth, which isnt necessarily the same as income, so i think it was missing the boat a bit. capital gains arent realized until they're sold, and it is that point which is the taxable event. just seeing the numbers go up (and accordingly, your net worth), isn't currently recognized as a taxable event, so its really weird to use that wealth increase as the basis to claim they're dodging taxes.

    i mean, if they want to advocate for a wealth tax, thats their prerogative, but thats not really what the article was implying

  20. #170
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Post Count
    50,672
    And now the red team will cry but.... but.... jobs!
    Eyup.

    Useful idiots.

  21. #171
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Post Count
    152,607
    the propublica article spoke mostly of increases is wealth, which isnt necessarily the same as income, so i think it was missing the boat a bit. capital gains arent realized until they're sold, and it is that point which is the taxable event. just seeing the numbers go up (and accordingly, your net worth), isn't currently recognized as a taxable event, so its really weird to use that wealth increase as the basis to claim they're dodging taxes.

    i mean, if they want to advocate for a wealth tax, thats their prerogative, but thats not really what the article was implying
    What the article points out, which is correct, is that it does allow you to leverage that wealth in, say, loans. Which they also are able to obtain at preferred rates, due to that wealth, and they're largely much smaller than the taxation rate.

    So in effect, that wealth can be turned into money, and it's done in a way where it pays less in rates than what the tax rate would've been if they cashed out those shares and had to pay taxes on them.

  22. #172
    Savvy Veteran spurraider21's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Post Count
    96,013
    What the article points out, which is correct, is that it does allow you to leverage that wealth in, say, loans. Which they also are able to obtain at preferred rates, due to that wealth, and they're largely much smaller than the taxation rate.

    So in effect, that wealth can be turned into money, and it's done in a way where it pays less in rates than what the tax rate would've been if they cashed out those shares and had to pay taxes on them.
    well then where do they get the money to pay off those loans? taxable income? taxable capital gains?

  23. #173
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Post Count
    152,607
    well then where do they get the money to pay off those loans? taxable income? taxable capital gains?
    It's money they already have and have paid taxes on. Or money they made based on those loans at a higher rate than the loan rate. If structured as a business loan, it can be deducted as well.

    The point is that if they used their own money to do it, it would've cost them more due to taxation.

  24. #174
    Savvy Veteran spurraider21's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Post Count
    96,013
    It's money they already have and have paid taxes on. Or money they made based on those loans at a higher rate than the loan rate. If structured as a business loan, it can be deducted as well.

    The point is that if they used their own money to do it, it would've cost them more due to taxation.
    then there's no problem...

    so consider a hypothetical fat cat with a net worth of 100 billion... 20 billion of which has already been realized and taxed, 80 billion of which is tied up in assets which would eventually be taxed as capital gains when there is a taxable event

    if this guy leveraged his wealth to get a 50 million dollar loan, which he then paid off with a portion the 20 billion he already had... then how is getting the loan a tax advantage? any more than just spending his own money?

    i thought the idea is that this guy is getting access to money via loan instead of selling off assets (and paying capital gains tax). but if he's just paying it back with money he already had, i get how he'd get favorable loans, but i dont see how thats skirting tax obligations

  25. #175
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Post Count
    152,607
    then there's no problem...

    so consider a hypothetical fat cat with a net worth of 100 billion... 20 billion of which has already been realized and taxed, 80 billion of which is tied up in assets which would eventually be taxed as capital gains when there is a taxable event

    if this guy leveraged his wealth to get a 50 million dollar loan, which he then paid off with a portion the 20 billion he already had... then how is getting the loan a tax advantage? any more than just spending his own money?

    i thought the idea is that this guy is getting access to money via loan instead of selling off assets (and paying capital gains tax). but if he's just paying it back with money he already had, i get how he'd get favorable loans, but i dont see how thats skirting tax obligations
    It's a tax advantage because if he had to pull the 50 million from his 80 billion, he would be taxed at 20% capital gains (based on his tax bracket). So, in essence, to get the 50 million in liquidity, he would have to hand over an additional 10 million.

    But, because he has the wealth to backstop the loan (even from non-realized assets) and can get a preferred rate (also largely because of wealth), this person can get the 50 million in liquidity for 5%-10% rate, meaning the sunk in cost for him is 2.5-5 million. On top of that, if the loan is structured as a business loan, this person can also deduct the interest payments.

    I'm not saying this is illegal. I'm saying that having that kind of wealth does allow these people to have much more tools at their disposal to deal with sunk in costs like taxes, which is something a person without that exorbitant amount of wealth would not have.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •