Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

When zucks gigantic boat pulls up and drops anchor, how can I not look at that and see the equivalent of a tick engorged with my blood? There's a lot of money to be made in making people miserable to be sure, doesn't mean I want that sort of business operating in my country, taking advantage of its institutions and people to fatten some tick like zuck.

Be gone, bloodsuckers! I will seek employment at places of businesses that are not so foolish to waste so much money on a chief executive. And wouldn't you know, that is the vast bulk of them. The vast bulk of business owners and executives are not in fact billionaires. That represents a failing. Zuck took advantage of his legal rights to the company to enable that compensation. If the shareholders had better control of the shares with voting rights (zuck possesses super shares so that he cannot lose majority voting control) they would have never let that happen for zuck. He is as much a parasite to his own investors as he is to wider society. Greater even, as that is more directly their money that he is spending fueling up that boat.

> of a tick engorged with my blood?

Have you ever paid Meta anything? Has Meta ever taken any money from you?

> He is as much a parasite to his own investors

None of his investors were unwilling. They can also pull out any time they want.

Me directly, no. Someone in our economy does though. Money that would otherwise go to some other use, over gilding Zucks toilet bowl perhaps.

The irony of places like NYC and SF: so much need from education to sheltering and feeding homeless to building out transit or bettering healthcare outcomes. And yet, two hands raise in the air in a shrug, no money for it is the claim. But also yet, steps away from these problems in these two cities, mindbogglingly vast flows of money, the skim of which would solve all these problems occurring outside the doorways of these buildings.

A tough nut to crack I guess.

Name one billionaire who has enriched himself by taking money from you.

Easy. Jeff Bezos.

How did he take money from you?

Or did you freely give it to him in exchange for a product?

Jz because of one billionaire, you wanna punish the whole class of billionaires? Is it enough trade off for you that we must be made poorer cz some rich person bought a yacht? Where's your blood coming from lol? It's zuck's property so he can do whatever he wants.. just like how I can do whatever I want with my property.. it ain't like I'm not being subsided by their incredible jobs and taxes which govt takes and redistributes to people who behave like they're owed that money when it's the hardwork/ideas of his.. are you not aware of economic arguments for yacht and how many people are employed due to that alone which he bought out of his own wealth? Why are these economic illiterates infested the hacker news man? It used to be so good who reasoned amazingly well.. look at the state of it now.. it's like we regressed to primates with base impulses.. we're the richest we've ever been and people themselves are satisfied with their economic status but the envy seems to never go away..

> some rich person bought a yacht?

Fun story. Massachusetts decided they were going to go after wealthy people by taxing the sale of yachts built in the state. The wealthy simply bought yachts elsewhere, and many thousands of craftsmen were out of a job. The state rescinded the tax.

Yes, a major problem of taxing the billionaires is that they are much more mobile than the rest of us. That is one of many features which help the rich get richer. Once you get to the point where you can live on less than 1% of your wealth annually, you and your descendants won't ever need to work a day in your life, and can migrate around the world, forever consuming the fruit of others labour.

That being said, in the context of the California billionaire tax on the horizon, I mean most of them are clearly bluffing. If taxes were really such a dealbreaker for them, they wouldn't be in California to begin with. That is perhaps one of the absolute worst places in the US to live to minimize your tax burden. NYC is terrible for that too, and yet...

... and yet Florida is booming with rich people that migrated there to avoid taxes.

Like Jeff Bezos. And I personally know a couple wealthy people who moved there to avoid recent taxes. A real estate agent I talked to recently said that half her clients were selling their homes to move away from WA taxes.

Great, let them go. Florida is terrible to live in because of the wealthy nimbys. It will make Seattle even better.

The top 1% pay 40% of federal income taxes.

Who are you gonna tax when they leave?

That sounds like a confident and easily verifiable claim. Care to provide evidence?

Yup. Here's the google prompt:

"what percentage of federal taxes do the top 1% pay?"

and the response:

"38.4% of all federal individual income taxes."

This is obviously the top 1% wage earners, not the top 1% wealt-holders (aka the 1% richest).

1. wealth != income. The IRS does not measure one's wealth.

2. income comes from many sources, not just wages. Capital gains taxes, for example.

Exactly, so when asdff said good riddance to the wealthy, mentioning how much tax the top 1% wage earners brings in is irrelevant.

Top 1% wage earners is not the top 1% wealthiest.

Seattle has many vacant office buildings, and Amazon is shifting thousands of its workers to Bellevue due to the taxes. Starbucks moved its HQ to Nashville.

Punishment? Come on. Taxes are not punishment. Especially not when you are worth, once again because people seem to be missing this, a billion dollars.

By all means, let Zuck and Musk and their ilk become trillionaires. That's definitely going to make our lives better. It should trickle down after all. Waiting any day now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com