3273

Yeah, he’s been taxed and continues to be taxed, $973 million over a five-year period last I checked.

3274

Sorry for the confused phrasing.

When I said, “maybe it’s not that easy,” I wasn’t suggesting that there was something more to it than what you are describing there.

I’m saying that actually doing it is perhaps harder than it sounds.

3275

I don’t know if Bezos had a destiny, or if we are all just floating around accidental like on a breeze…

Who cares? Tax him.

3276

I understand what you think is happening. I do. I just haven’t seen it. There are words that pop up that I certainly don’t use, and I just don’t think Timex is using the word feminizing all the time. Minimizing makes total sense in that sentence and from that person.

Thank you.

On topic, there is nothing we really need to do to try and invalidate years of voting for Republicans. Voting matters. Elections matter.

Someone else mentioned a solution earlier, or at least one of them… way up there. Let’s tax them when they use their stocks as colleterial for a loan. That seems to be a key tool they’re using to be rich but not pay on what they’re spending. Not only are they putting a value on the stocks at that point, so is a bank. Tax every time they use what they haven’t cashed out as some sort of security for any type of financial product.

Jeff Bezos isn’t rich today because you, me or anyone else thinks he is magical or better than us or anything so subjective. He’s rich because Amazon has been a pleasant buying experience for most their customers to the point we still want to use it over other options. That’s it. It’s not about him being super smart, or starting with money gained from wealth, or even Amazon being the best e-store from a period of time when a lot of stores just died. There are a lot of companies that fit that bill that are not at all like Amazon, if they’re still even around today. He and his company offered something people wanted and they created a lot of efficiencies along the way too, just like Wal-Mart did to retail before them. The fact that wasn’t taxed properly as it grew is the fault of the voters… not him. We can fix that by taxing it appropriately. It’s not personal nor a judgement of him or anyone who thinks they could’ve been him.

If anyone here, their children, their grandchildren, nieces or nephews wind up being the next Amazon. Great! I’ll probably use those services and ask my representatives to tax them appropriately too.

3278

Timex does. Ask him.

3279

Well, I also don’t think they would be that great for the world despite changing it. They would make a lot of money though, which is why I anticipate them coming to pass, but I don’t especially want to speed them up.

One idea I had back in the early 1990s during the beginning of the web, was home delivery of groceries that you could order online. I was living in dallas working as a programmer at the time, and the search engines did not show that anyone was doing such a thing yet. Within a year a company started in Dallas doing exactly that - they took it a little farther than was probably wise, actually coming into your house and putting your groceries away for you too. It was early days for the web and not enough people were interested at the price they were charging and they went under. 20 years later, there’s no lack of such services, but it’s not the same guys as it was in Dallas in the 90s.

So yeah, I fully expect easy ideas with mass appeal to be thought of by lots of people, to be tried by those with the time, money, and inclication, and for one of them to become the dominant player in that area. It might take 20 years, like in this example, but it’ll happen. It’s not through the force of will of one magical titan. It’s a bunch of things, likely including ruthlessness and the desire to be filthy rich, neither of which I have any interest in.

But back to the point. Tax them. I don’t care if it’s wealth tax or some other way to tax their use of their uncountable wealth. But it needs to be a freaking lot, just like during and after WW2.

3280

Yeah but I think that’s more of a narrow statement than it seems. Better in that he created a company and therefore changed the world whereas many other people didn’t… Well if that’s how he or someone else defines better, okay. That’s not what I mean by my context though.

He’s been exceedingly successful at what he did and left a notable mark on the world, good and bad, and taxing him fairly would not have likely changed that. That doesn’t make him superman and that doesn’t imply just anyone else would’ve done the same thing if he hadn’t either. It’s just what it is.

The rich are currently using various tax shelters and loops holes to be rich and not return to society their fair share. We can certainly address that by making them pay any time they utilize that wealth even when they don’t sell it. We don’t even have to force them to sell it to do it either.

3281

I don’t think that Bezos is more than you in some abstract, spiritual sense.

I believe that he’s DONE more than you. Or than me. Why pretend otherwise?

3282

I mean that’s certainly true. I guarantee that Banzai, Nesrie, and the rest of us have never stolen our flex drivers tips, then had to pay $60M+ in fines because we were complete and utter shits.

3283

I thought you believed that without bezos, we wouldn’t have an efficient home delivery system for goods. Nobody else could do it, it had to be him. That’s the argument you have been making, no?

Ditto for gates and zuck, right? Nobody would have come up with a better system than DOS, and myspace would still reign supreme?

Well, I disagree. For the reasons I have stated previously that have nothing to do with why you, me, or Nesrie haven’t created the next billionaire-making monopoly.

And to get back to the point yet again, tax him.

3284

I feel like this is a pointless exercise in speculation. You’re talking about an imaginary fantasy world. It’s immaterial to reality. The answer of “would someone else have done X” is, “maybe, at some indeterminant time.”

There’s literally no way to know what that alternate universe would be like. There’s no way to know what the repercussions of those guys not doing their things would be, beyond the notion that it would almost certainly have non trivial repercussions.

And it doesn’t matter, because it didn’t happen. Imagining some fantasy world where some imagined other person did some thing that you can’t even really describe, is an entirely useless exercise.

In the REAL world, those particular men were the ones who did those things. Not you, not me, not imaginary people in an alternate universe.

3285

This is normal though. At any given moment and any given time, someone is trying to think up a better mouse trap right. Whether it’s a business model, a new invention, a new delivery system, new drugs or peppers that make your life bleed. Bezos is not unique for his ability to enter a stable market and disrupt. In fact, Amazon entered a pretty populated market full of e-tailers that have long now been in the graveyard of business and emerged with the wherewithal to actually later enter and disrupt, read force their competitors to respond, in many areas, and they pushed smart home devices when it was the butt of jokes and anyone with an Echo that could barely even respond to your name was made fun of for getting one.

None of this matters when it comes to Income Inequality. There will always be disruptors, inventors and some of them will be good actors, some of them will be bad actors and some of them will excel over products and ideas that were actually better than what they managed to make dominant in the market. We’ll also debate about that sort of things for years like we always have.

When it comes to Income Inequality in these scenarios, we just need to make sure that every step of the way to success or ruin, that these individuals and companies are taxed appropriately, and they haven’t been. We can fix that without trying to demonize Bezos or anyone else. That kind of debate can be had in better venues for it. Hell if we finally start getting some of the money, maybe it will be easier to have those discussions and right any wrongs, but when it comes to taxes… He just needs to pay his fair share, and due to his wealth and the privilege of being in a country that allowed that pursuit and to be able enjoy that wealth relatively safely and securely. Since they’re using business and financial tools to avoid cashing in so they can avoid taxes, society can use existing or create new financial tools that says… nah-uh. And we can do that without coming up with complex societal diagrams and arguments that are needed to try and measure whether his contributions are good or bad. That’s a losing argument most people, read voters, won’t be able to follow. They’ll just see it as when I work hard and if I succeed, these people over here will just take everything I risked and got and hand it to some undefined loser who just sat around and watch cat videos on YouTube.

3286

I think that everyone here agrees with this.

3287

No one, even Andy (I think) is not arguing we shouldn’t be taxing rich people more. I’ve argue we should kill the capital gains tax period (which is further than Biden is going) and replace the estate tax with an inheritance tax. It is question of when and how.

Bezos, isn’t the only one who got rich from Amazon. the 20 angel investor their 1% state is worth $17 billion each, their VC, Kleiner Perkin if they still held on to Amazon stock would be worth hundreds of billions. Jeff has just over 10% and his ex-wife less than that. That leaves 80+% of the wealth owned by others. Including us if you own a S&P 500 index fund your 401(K) or IRA 4% of it is Amazon and ~20% is Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. The smart/lucky guy or gal, bought 300 share Amazon back in 2002 for $5000 and has kept it is probably using to fund their retirement and they are going to pay tax on the $1 million in gains.

Every day $12+ billion worth of Amazon trades hands nearly $5 trillion per year,the gain on most of those transactions are taxed. Uncle Sam probably gets a least $50 billion and probably over $100 billion worth of taxes from the collective wealth of Amazon stockholders selling their stock. Bezos alone sells $1-$2 billion of Amazon stock a year, to fund Blue Origin. This generates $500 million worth of tax and would go up to $800 million under Biden’s proposal to eliminate cap gains for those making more than $1 million.

It is seems to me with respect to the wealth tax. There are two options you can go small, like the most of the European countries that tried it ~1% wealth tax and generate a meaningless amount of revenue
see the chart at the bottom of the wiki article.

Or you can try the Warren/Sander approach of 5% at the top, and pray that it doesn’t change wealth creation in the US. Or kill the golden goose as I suggested

I think it will . Whatever, your beliefs about the benefits to society of dominate tech companies, it is undisputable they have generated vast amounts of wealth for their shareholders, and significant taxes for the country.

I guess some people think would be better off with a dozen companies competing for our dollars, Best Buy, Petco, Walmart, and maybe Zappos I suppose. But the stock market doesn’t highly value companies in this situation. If we compare Walmart to Amazon. Walmart has a lot more employee, 40% more revenue,and virtually identical profits $20 billion/year.

However, Walmart market capitalization is 390 billion vs Amazon 1.7 trillion. Only $1 billion worth Walmart stock changes hands every day vs $12 billion for Amazon, and because Walmart stock has only double over the last 5 years vs 400% gain for Amazon. The taxes collected by Walmart stock transaction are probably 1/50th of Amazons.

The economic value to the country of Amazon/Tesla/SpaceX being based in the US is huge. Now maybe Bezos would stay in the country with a big wealth tax, but their is no way a Elon Musk would have immigrated here in the first place, and I am sure that’s true of many other entrepreneurs.

3288

Once a US person for tax purposes, always a US person for tax purposes.

3289

Elon didn’t come to the US until he was in college. He could have stayed in Canada, or even South Africa.

3290

It’s funny how the same people who say “you can’t tax the rich or they’ll leave the U.S., and then they won’t create jobs here anymore, or give us any of the benefit of their genius, and they still won’t end up paying any U.S. taxes” are the same ones who say “we have to remove all worker protections in the U.S. and remove the minimum wage so we can compete with the labor markets in other countries”.

Race to the top for the rich, race to the bottom for the poor.

3291

I mean heck no. Fifteen dollar minimum wage job yesterday, and then tie it to inflation. If the business can’t pay their employees, help them get benefits like healthcare, pay to keep their employees from coming to work sick and getting all their customers, their co-workers and those families sick, they don’t need to be in business. Clearly the need is not there if they can’t drum up enough business that keeps their employees from being on governmental programs. Also, if they won’t give out full-time benefited positions, out with that too. This part-time, no benefits, demand all employees be on call full-time so they can’t get another job or go to school stuff needs to go too.

I’d still like to keep innovation in our borders though, even invite them here. I think it’s possible to get to that wealth fairly without doing anything extreme. Before the Republicans took over, we had a pretty good tax system, so it’s not as if we fell into the dark ages because taxes were reasonable and a societal good.

3292

I’ll remind everyone that the top marginal tax rate in the glorious 1950’s that all Republicans want to return to was 90%. Of course obviously there was no innovation in the U.S. in that period.

3293

I don’t care, because I don’t buy your argument. Tax him.