View original postYeah, but I kind of think that's what happens anyway, you just have to be in a higher stratosphere. The rules seem to do more to stop the little guy who reaches the mountaintop than the guys who live there. Buchanan vs Gatsby. Romney vs Trump. The elite superrich are not really hurt by devastating income taxes, but the person who GOT rich is. It was a line from Claire Huxtable I come back to, "We aren't rich. Rich is when your money works for you. (My husband and I) work hard for our money." And yeah, there is a lot of sneering at the sort of families where the parents are a doctor and a lawyer as if they are the same sort folks who came over on the Mayflower and whose wealth's foundation was being hindered by the Stamp Act. Or like those Hollywood moms the whole world hated for a moment for deploying their wealth to get their kids into good colleges. Like, how DARE these women from middle class backgrounds who earned their money by being good at a lucrative profession give money to get an advantage for their children! Who do they think they are, an established old money family who donated a building to the school using fewer of their resources than Lori Loughlin did bribing an admissions official? Also, the ire falls on the gambit where the working class origins person gives money to a working class employee, rather than the elitist giving a plaything to an elite institution. Harvard's endowment is enough to pay the tuition for every one of their students without affecting the principal, yet somehow giving money to increase that fortune is an act of philanthropy.
I'm not sure who is supposed to be who in the case of Romney vs Trump... both grew up in a very wealthy, privileged family but were then also successful in business and further built their wealth themselves, sometimes in ways that most of us might find pretty morally dubious. Though at least Romney didn't repeatedly go bankrupt despite all that wealth and then forced the big banks to bail him out of it.
But yes, you're right, high income taxes hit the people who are becoming rich, not so much the ones who already are. To try and level that playing field, you'd need to look at inheritance tax or even actual wealth taxes, as the Left is certainly also doing, but those are perhaps even more controversial and harder to realize.
View original postAlmost from its outset, the IRS was seen as a weapon against the elite billionaires, but it's the working people who bitterly hate and resent the agency and its employees and bureaucracy. Donald Trump's peers don't lose a moment's sleep worrying about the IRS. The SEC fined Steve Cohen $1,900,000,000 and made him quit the job that got him his money and he STILL had enough left to buy the New York Mets, one of the most valuable and expensive teams in baseball. After he was one of the final three contenders to acquire the LA Dodgers ten years ago when they sold for $2.15 billion. Oh, yeah. The SEC really nailed his ass to the wall. But it's a nightmare to guys trying to make the climb INTO Steve Cohen/Bobby Axelrod territory.
What's your solution to that, though, just letting the 0.01 percent be but loosen the rules for the rest of the 1 percent so it becomes easier for them to extend their lead over the other 99 percent?
View original postSo whatever the intentions, I just see most of this financial regulation and regulatory agencies as bullshit. As GK Chesterton pointed out, the poor man must stay where he is and be misgoverned. The rich man has a yacht. They can and will always have their outs and their special access. The rules just hurt people trying to compete with them by unorthodox means (which is exactly the point and why Warren Buffet bemoans his secretary paying more taxes than he does, as if the US Treasury doesn't accept donations; billionaires and elitists don't want to worry about checking their six and watching their flanks, so they have the government do it for them).
Yeah, I obviously don't agree. Just because the regulation may not work well enough and the 0.01 percent find loopholes or political connections to help them get around it, doesn't mean you should just get rid of it entirely, it means you should try to make it work better and to do more against cronyism and corruption in politics.
The show "Billions" has me thinking that our society's divisions are irreparable.
- 21/10/2021 10:58:29 PM
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I am sick to death of movies and TV shows that are allegories on the evils of capitalism.
- 22/10/2021 04:49:05 AM
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I think your society's divisions are irreparable, too, and it's pretty freaking scary.
- 22/10/2021 09:55:47 AM
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Yep (public) Corporation vs Sole Proprietorship have different rules for a reason.
- 22/10/2021 05:09:33 PM
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