How the Rich Avoid Paying Taxes

[Azure]

Originally Posted by monkeyman

Amazons biggest innovation was in supply chain management. How amazing is it that you can order almost anything and have it delivered the next day? I don’t recall that being the case prior to Amazon and some companies still can’t manage that. They were also pretty innovative with the echo. Who would have guessed Amazon was going to lead the charge in the personal smart assistant space? I know google has closed the gap and passed them in some areas, but Amazon was the first.

Bezos has also said some of the big reasons Amazon figured that all out has to do with who was available to hire, and then the right hires being made.

The ability to do that comes from a whole slew of other intangibles, and none of them are luck.

The whole idea around Amazon Prime was executed on not necessarily by Bezos, but by someone he hired at the time who made it happen (forgot the exact name).

They were also failing at it for many, many years before it actually worked out.

[VladtheImpaler]

Not sure if I actually want to read the thread, but before I do, are there any actual tips to avoid paying taxes or just a whole lot of bickering and pitchforks?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

Not sure if I actually want to read the thread, but before I do, are there any actual tips to avoid paying taxes or just a whole lot of bickering and pitchforks?

Its mostly bickering and pitchforks.

I fueled my torches, but thats just because I'm a contrarian.

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by Locke

Hmmm.....not really.

One of the things is that Wealthy people often are lucky insofar as they tend to get a head start.

Bezos' family could afford to help fund his business, thats fortunate, my parents couldnt. I'm not saying thats the difference between blowing up rockets for fun and asking me if I 'want fries with that' but fortune can still be a factor.

A fascinating experiment was once done where College Students played Monopoly. One of the players by pure chance, a flip of a coin, was selected to start the game with twice as much money as the other players.

That player typically won and more often than not attributed that victory to their sheer superior Monopoly-playing skillz (<- yes with a 'z') as opposed to their starting with a huge advantage.

I never said no one has a head start or unequal opportunities. In fact I've said the exact opposite in this thread and believe strongly in trying to level the playing field of opportunity for all people.

But the statement of the rich are lucky or the poor are lazy and both equally dismissive throw away statements that are used to justify an animosity towards those groups.
I'm sure many poor people are in fact lazy too, but I'd never be dismissive of the circumstances that contribute to someone being poor like abuse, mental health problems, addictions, discrimation, lack of access to education etc.

It's just easy to say take money away from lucky people and that's why people like the OP obsess about saying that. It allows for a Robin Hood type fiction about evil rich people just not accurate in most of the real world.

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

Bezos is literally 1 in a billion.
His accomplishments are remarkable. Scaling Everest before it was thought possible kinda stuff. That is not absolution from his faults and issues. Dude rides a giant dick rocket for fun and tracks employees by the minute. He brings it on himself.

Bigger issue is he’s an outlier on how to manage wealth distribution. The current rules are great for industrial economies looking to grow. Less so for digital. We’re not clearly one or the other right now. Dogma isn’t helpful.

How do you tax 2 income households earning 2-500k v single or dual income households above average but not at the lower end of that range? It didn’t matter 20 years ago but is everything today. How do you mediate expanded pharma, daycare, or even current services costs for that wealthy group relative to a lower income household?

We have to figure how to fund the same or better services with 1/10 of the people paying. That is fn hard. It will not get solved presuming ‘the rich’ avoid taxes or ‘the poor’ are lazy. The remarkable few will do their thing. The bills are paid and cashed by the mostly unremarkable who do the best they can.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

Not sure if I actually want to read the thread, but before I do, are there any actual tips to avoid paying taxes or just a whole lot of bickering and pitchforks?

You already know the answer.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

You already know the answer.

It actually became somewhat interesting once Slava, Enoch Root, Leondros, and DoubleF started discussing back and forth and things got somewhat educational. Before then, yeah, it was a pretty useless thread.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by kermitology

Just wondering.. did you watch the video? One of the loopholes is that guys like Musk and Bezos are able to borrow using their unrealized stocks as collateral, which gives them liquidity without taxation and allows them to further buy things, real estate, etc. and just continue to increase their wealth.

The plebes on this site will never be in a situation where we can do the same thing. The biggest issue I have is with wealth hoarding. There should be some limits on things like this. You get to a certain point and your actual wealth is meaningless to you.

Additionally, these billionaires should be investing in projects to do things like revolutionizing energy, transportation, fighting climate change, etc. instead of going to space. Space travel is meaningless while our planet burns.

Much if not all the technology that has gone into developing space flight is going to find it's way into everyday life eventually, and probably sooner than later. Without these billionaires pushing these project many of this technology would either be delayed or not developed.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Much if not all the technology that has gone into developing space flight is going to find it's way into everyday life eventually, and probably sooner than later. Without these billionaires pushing these project many of this technology would either be delayed or not developed.

Is it? They aren’t inventing something really new. It’s neat any everything but right now they’re still re-inventing the wheel for the most part when it comes to space flight.

[Fuzz]

Starllink is something new. Landable, reusable rockets are new. Space-X is certainly doing unique things. Not really convinced Virgin Galactic has any value, and Blue Origin is way behind.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Starllink is something new. Landable, reusable rockets are new. Space-X is certainly doing unique things. Not really convinced Virgin Galactic has any value, and Blue Origin is way behind.

But of course the competition that they create forces SpaceX to be on top of their game.

Especially these days.

One has to be pretty ignorant to not understand how value the space industry has been for mankind the last 50+ years.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Starllink is something new. Landable, reusable rockets are new. Space-X is certainly doing unique things. Not really convinced Virgin Galactic has any value, and Blue Origin is way behind.

Starlink isn’t space travel, and satellites aren’t new. Reusable rockets, not really space travel either, mainly as means to launch satellites into orbit. Musk says it’s the Holy Grail. Is it?

What would you say has been advanced beyond what NASA and other space agencies did before the billionaires came along?

[Fuzz]

If you are expecting some massive step change in technology, that's probably pretty rare. It's the incremental gains. Reusable rockets make launches much more affordable. It's also a path to the larger rockets, like Starship. Ultimately it's a long road, but these companies need to first catch where NASA was, then surpass it. They've already done what NASA hasn't, make a new vehicle to get to the Space Station.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Starlink isn’t space travel, and satellites aren’t new. Reusable rockets, not really space travel either, mainly as means to launch satellites into orbit. Musk says it’s the Holy Grail. Is it?

What would you say has been advanced beyond what NASA and other space agencies did before the billionaires came along?

Starlink was made possible because of reusable rockets. Otherwise the high cost of startup would prohibit it from being available for $99 per month.

The launch, recovery, relaunch ability that SpaceX has created has significantly lowered the cost of anything space related.

Whether that is Starlink, sending people to the ISS, mining the moon, sending people to Mars, space travel, etc.

The biggest thing I see is the ability to find natural resources on other planets, moons, etc. Maybe then we wouldn't ravage our own planet as much.

But none of that happens unless the cost of launching & relaunching comes down significantly. That doesn't happen without small incremental steps.

Like I said, I think you have to have your head buried pretty far in the sand to not realize what we stand to gain from the ability to cheaply travel into space.

[Matata]

The only way for our species to meaningfully advance into space travel is through profitability. The next game changer is going to be when one of these companies wrangle an asteroid with trillions of dollars worth of minerals in it, then everyone's going to start throwing money at this new tech it like crazy and who knows how the world will react to rare minerals becoming commonplace (ie - platinum manhole covers).

[troutman]

https://markmanspivotalpoint.com/new...nity-in-space/

Bringing back several tons of platinum and gold would diminish the value of those metals here. Their value is a function of their rarity.

A better business model would be to find, stake and mine the valuable space metals, then leave the minerals there as reserves. Prices on Earth would not be negatively impacted, while reserves could be financed.

In space, water is even more valuable than precious metals.

[Wormius]

Those metals are useful beyond their value as investments. I think having all of that to be able to use would outweigh the problems associated with the value dropping.

[AltaGuy]

I think I've already said this recently, but I personally have no problem with billionaires, or multi-millionaires, or anything else attached to wealth.

What I'm concerned with is simply inequality - specifically, all of the measurements demonstrating that the share of wealth held by the richest has increased massively over the last forty years in Western societies.

And the gap will continue to grow: capital is far outstripping wages in growth, which is a feedback loop common under all capitalist systems, and requires mechanisms to prevent or reverse.

I don't think it should be shock-taxes, or completely upsetting the apple cart, but I do believe that there are signs (Trump, Brexit, anti-vaxxers) that destabilization and populism is already growing across most Western societies. There could be - and likely will be - worse to come, especially with the pressures climate change will present.

Populism, violence, unrest - these are ultimately inimical to stability and growth. Western societies, and especially Bezos et al, rely on stable markets for their products. That means the masses. The "Walmart" formula of sucking the public coffers dry to artificially increase profit margins is a recipe for disaster in the long term in my opinion.

There are not easy answers, but in my opinion the signs are there. And history has pretty clear lessons on what happens when inequality reaches a boiling point.

[Mathgod]

And the beat goes on...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/pandora-pape...ance-1.6197303
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

And the beat goes on...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/pandora-pape...ance-1.6197303
https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/

Yeah, I read about that this morning.

Well...thats what happens when you dont do anything about it.

I could go on and on, but if there is no enforcement this is just going to continue to happen. The wealthy can continue to do this kind of thing, thats why just 'increasing the tax rates on the wealthy' isnt going to do anything.