Comment by CaptWorld | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CaptWorld | Hacker News Reader

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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 The state rescinded the tax.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.

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