'Heads we win, tails you lose': how America's rich turned pandemic into profit | Hacker News Reader

'Heads we win, tails you lose': how America's rich turned pandemic into profit

theguardian.com

17 pointspawanrawal6 comments

Wealth tax - any assets you hold over $2M is fair game.

Surely now people can see there is not much connect between how hard you work and how much wealth you have. It's a lottery, lets redistribute the proceeds.

Wow. Just, wow.

Let me read what you said another way: “let’s tax old people”

Young people don’t have money compared to older people because old people have generally spent their lives saving it. So if you put that wealth tax in place, why the heck should any of them save.

What you suggest will lead to disaster. Getting old is not a lottery.

$2M was roughly based on a decent house and a comfortable pension. For most this is a pipe dream anyway.

Young people don't have money because the balance between return on labour and return on capital have shifted in the favour of capital. Near zero interest rates with consequent asset inflation is one mechanism by which this has been achieved.

Eventually the people actually doing the work will say enough is enough (or hit the opiates), and society starts to crumble. Go have a look at the nearest bridge or highway (in the US), you will see what I mean.

> because old people have generally spent their lives saving it.

Hah

My old man and his wife have a couple of million in real estate and paper assets. For the most part they didn't 'save' any of it. It's theirs due to policies that promote asset inflation.

Seriously. They bought houses in the early seventies for probably around $80k total. Adjusted for wage/price inflation, $500k. Financed natch. Now worth about $4 million. Yeah their 'savings' amounts to about 12% of their real estate wealth. Likely even less percentage of their paper wealth.

Wealth tax, so once someone is done paying ~40%+ of their income in taxes, between federal, state income, sales, vehicle and property tax, and after years or decades, they manage to build up $2M (which is just barely enough to retire on), you propose to double-dip and tax what they have left after feeding the government for decades? In my opinion that’s straight up immoral.

2M is far above the median net worth for Americans. If 2M is barely enough to survive on, then maybe Americans ought to tax wealth harder to build up a social safety net capable of taking care of them in their old ages.

> In my opinion that’s straight up immoral.

In comparison to the bottom 75/90 percent (rough estimate) not being able to survive their retirement.

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