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Global wealth inequality widened last year as billionaires increased their fortunes by $2.5 billion per day, anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam said in a new report.
While the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth dwindle by 11%, billionaires' riches increased by 12%. The mega-wealthy have also become a more concentrated bunch. Last year, the top 26 wealthiest people owned $1.4 trillion, or as much as the 3.8 billion poorest people. The year before, it was the top 43 people.
[...] To address many of these ills, Oxfam advocated raising taxes. It estimated that a 1% wealth tax would be enough to educate 262 million out of school children and to save 3.3 million lives. As of 2015 returns, Oxfam says that only four cents in every tax dollar collected globally came from tariffs on wealth, such as inheritance or property. The report also claims that the rich are hiding $7.6 trillion in offshore accounts
Previously: Only 1% of World's Population Grabbed 82% of all 2017 Wealth
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 22 2019, @02:20PM (28 children)
I'd be happy with a hard ceiling for gross income of 5 to 10 million a year, adjusted for inflation, since we can't seem to get rid of inflation.
Put that money towards the important stuff: infrastructure, medical care, education, that sort of thing.
If you can't live extremely well on a gross income of 5m/year, even after taxes, you're too much of a douchebag to be handling money anyway.
...but I know it'll never happen. Or if it did, the rich, in control of the legislators, would find some way to hide money or exempt it.
But I can dream.
--
Life's a beach...
and then you dry.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @02:57PM (2 children)
I'd be happy with you fucking-off with your "imagination."
"More important", according to you. I don't think healthcare for obese is "more important" than a rich man's yacht. I don't think free "Gender Studies" dactorate for everyone is more important than a celebrity sea-side villa. And unless the "infrastructure" cannot make the money back on its own, it probably should not have been built (think bridge to no-where).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 22 2019, @04:23PM (1 child)
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the wall will pay for itself by curbing the importation of crime, drugs and illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal Dole. bit.ly/2p8DuHY [t.co]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:40PM
I'll just leave this [wikipedia.org] right here for anyone that wants some background info.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:02PM (5 children)
The problem isn't income, and income tax is never going to solve it. Anybody in the billionaire class can adjust the books to give themselves whatever income they feel like, while their actual wealth keeps accumulating.
You need to tax existing wealth. A flat 1% per year tax on wealth and you could probably dump the income tax.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:49PM (4 children)
In a general sense, perhaps. During a high inflation high growth rate era, eating 1% off returns is no biggie. Well the implementation would be a nightmare but I'm talking strictly about economic effects.
However at this moment for some decades we've been pushing lower and lower interest and inflation and investment return creating a giant capital bubble because of supply and demand, dollars searching for return and willing to pay crazy multiples. Graham and Dodd was a "cool book" a little less than a century ago, but in our bubble era its meaningless. As such we need a complete economic reboot BEFORE we can knock 1% off total returns as a tax.
I am kinda mystified how it could be implemented anyway... this would mostly result in the price of gold and other untrackable assets (bitcoin?) going thru the roof, I suppose. Everythings inter-related and nothing moves slower than the government, so rather than policy providing a revenue stream for awhile, policy promotes redistribution of assets resulting in middleman profits, economic chaos, and no revenue stream. We could implement a 1% wealth tax but if anything the economic damage would mean to continue to provide services at a constant expense in a declining economy, we'd need to INCREASE income tax rates not lower them.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:41PM (1 child)
France had a wealth tax until very recently.
The point was that you have to invest your millions in something productive, so that you make at least the inflation plus the 1% tax, and having to sell/leverage enough assets to pay that tax prevents that money from freezing in place.
More importantly, it's not actually enough to drive the rich to poverty, it's not even that much money, but it's psychologically important, to keep the poor from reaching for their guillotines. The suppression of that tax (technically, it changed to only apply to real estate) is one of the things France's Gilets Jaunes keep protesting (middle-class asked to pay more taxes, while the rich got rid of the Rich Tax).
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @06:42PM
So concern about the envionment plus encouraging wasteful spending?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 23 2019, @04:36AM (1 child)
Is it harder to track wealth than to try and track every private transaction so that you can take a percentage of that?
You front up with a form once a year listing assets and values and pay your tax.
Anything you 'forget' to put on the form is subject to confiscation if caught. After all, if you didn't remember it, you won't miss it.
I would support a moderate threshold and limited primary residence exclusions, something like 2 years of national average annual income worth of possessions, and the first $500000 of residence value. At those limits assets are more likely to be personal possessions rather than income generating wealth.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @05:25AM
And just like originally only 1%ers paid income tax, in a decade or so a trailer will cost $500k.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1913 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:34PM (17 children)
An interesting calculation, just for fun:
Making a wildly optimistic assumption that those making $10 million per year work every day of the year for 18 hours per day, that salary works out to $10 miilion/yr / 365 days/yr / 18 hours/day = $1522/hour!!!
Question: what the hell can a person do that would actually deserve $10 million/yr in compensation? I can't think of anything that is not highly dangerous to life and limb that would be even remotely deserving of that kind of compensation. Hell, I'm quite sure that even the local bomb squad doesn't make even a tiny fraction of that kind of salary! And don't give me any bullshit about how these uber wealthy are taking extraordinary risks that deserve extraordinary compensation: they do no such thing. Most of these guys, when they make a bad decision that bankrupts the company get a golden parachute which they use to leap to safety to safely glide on to the next company that they can leach off of.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday January 22 2019, @07:04PM (16 children)
Run a business that employs hundreds of thousands of people a year.
Well, someone has already remarked on the lack of imagination in this thread.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @07:20PM (9 children)
Seriously? You think that is deserving of more than $1500/hr compensation? Discuss.
Yes, please do share some more of your imaginative thoughts on the matter. This should be amusing.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by khallow on Tuesday January 22 2019, @07:39PM (8 children)
Well, how valuable is a job?
The Obama administration, for example, valued short term jobs around several hundred thousand per job (generally $200k to $400k per). Thus, a business that provides 100k jobs displaces federal funding for around $20-40 billion a year. The CEO's $10 million salary to manage that is quite reasonable and probably a smaller share than a prime contractor would get.
Then of course, there's the people actually paying the CEO's salary. They clearly believe the CEO is worth that or they wouldn't pay that much.
And of course, there's the downsides to having a bad CEO. Losing all those jobs, losing the business, losing investor's stakes, etc. A lot of parties get screwed by a bad CEO. Better pay means one can attract better talent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:20PM (7 children)
Well, I don't know. But I can't personally think of anything I do in my day-to-day work that should be compensated at the rate of $1500/hr. Can you?
You do realize that the board of directors is frequently stacked with friends of the CEO, no? The whole thing is kind of an incestuous relationship with members sitting on the various boards of each other's companies. Little wonder that everyone of them agree that they are each worth their exorbitant pay scale.
Ummm, yeah. About that. Some are beginning to question that bit of sacred dogma. [washingtonpost.com] You were saying?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 23 2019, @12:13AM (6 children)
So your job is probably worth less than $1500/hr - unlike the CEO's. I have no problem at all with the concept that jobs aren't all worth the same amount.
They don't magically appear in boards of directors. Someone puts them there. The common factor missed is that the investors are the same for these groups of companies. You have institutional investors (pension funds, mutual funds, etc) that are installing people they know in these positions. And it doesn't matter what the members of the boards think, it's what the stakeholder that installed them thinks.
Of course, they are. Everybody thinks they can skimp and still get top talent. Let me know how it works out for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @02:27AM (5 children)
Okaaaay? So, you don't think my job is worth $1500/hr. Fair enough. But the point which you seem to be avoiding is that I can't think of anything that a CEO might do that would be worth $1500/hr. Can you? The only thing I can come up with is something that would require extreme risk to life and/or limb. Hell, there are people who actually do risk their lives for us who don't make more than a tiny fraction what these uber CEOs make! Why do you think that might be?
What you don't seem to get is that "the stakeholders" and the members of the board are intimately connected to each other. This is fundamentally a problem of conflict of interest.
You didn't bother to read the article, did you? If top dollar produced top results then my argument would be substantially weakened, of course. What the authors of that article are saying, though, is that "top dollar" appears to be producing remarkably less than top results.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 23 2019, @03:35AM (4 children)
And I already answered the question - running a business that employs hundreds of thousands of people. The remark about how the Obama administration (and some other government projects where job creation figures heavily) has priced job creation or saving. You then followed up with the non sequitur about how you didn't think of anything that would make your job worth $1500 per hour. I take it that you don't run a company that employs hundreds of thousands of people? But even if you did, it's a rare skill set with a lot of risks and downsides when done badly.
So yes, I can and I did think of a reason why a CEO would be worth such money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @06:06AM (3 children)
"Rare skill set"? Much of that can be acquired from a business degree. Also, what risks are you talking about? Most times when the CEO screws up big time it is everyone else in the company that face layoffs and pay cuts. The CEO screwup just takes a leap with his golden parachute to the next company he can leach off of.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 23 2019, @07:35AM (2 children)
So have you actually done that and been vindicated? In the business world, there was this theory that the MBA could just hop behind the desk of any CEO and run things. It hasn't worked well in practice. Turns out you need more than a business degree - like a clue what the business is that you're running and knowledge of the people who are in it, plus maybe a few decades of experience in the industry. Who woulda thought it, amirite?
Thus, a total valid reason to get a shitty CEO. Because if there aren't shockwaves, pressure rings, and fifty million years of mantle plume-generated volcanic activity coming off the collapse of your company then you didn't fail hard enough.
Amirite?
Or we could just not be idiots here. CEO failure is real bad, ok? Grabbing a random set of degrees, pay it peanuts, and then expecting your company to not self-destruct, is insane. I find it particularly bizarre how you have all these cases of CEO failure in mind, yet can't connect the dots that maybe that sort of failure is exactly why there is a huge business reason to get something other than bad CEOs and pay them enough to care about what they're doing? Just because some businesses don't do due diligence - and end up in a train wreck - is not an indication that the CEO is just another job that one can throw a little money at.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @05:55PM (1 child)
No one is arguing to "get a shitty CEO". The point, which you seem to be steadfastly avoiding, is that CEO compensation seems to negatively correlate with performance on the job.
Yes, I agree; you should stop being an idiot.
Again, we agree.
On the flip side, merely throwing a bunch of money at the problem and hoping for the best has not produced good results.
So, finally, you agree with me? It was hard to bring you to this point, but it looks like we may have made it!
OK, this article has now slipped off the front page so I am dropping out of this conversation. I've noticed that you seem to have an almost compulsive urge to have the last word, so I will now turn it back over to you for your final thoughts (such as they may be).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 24 2019, @07:42AM
So what is it to you? I have some stamina and I believe in good idea hygiene. Maybe a little OCD as shit. If someone finishes strong, instead of with a whiny parting shot, I just might let them have the last word. But this particular thread kept recycling the same dull nonsense over and over again. When some AC wrote:
after numerous back and forth posts where the answer was in my very first reply [soylentnews.org]:
I didn't "avoid" the point. I answered it instantly in my very first reply. Yet here we are a half dozen posts later playing games with someone berating me for "avoiding".
I find it remarkable just how dumb you and who knows who else have been in this thread. I don't care anymore why you can't figure out why running a business that employs hundreds of thousands of people and generates lots of profit for various shareholders (the latter who control the hiring of the CEO) might be worth a lot of money. You're obviously not listening or thinking about the subject.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @07:25PM (1 child)
You do realize that the actual work of running a large business is done by other people yes? Greedy fuckers and their jealous guarding of the ownership model.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 22 2019, @07:47PM
And? Their actual work would be pretty useless without the collective infrastructure and organization of the business that employs them.
It's a poorly kept secret. One should be wondering why the ownership model has so few owners despite a few centuries of demonstration that it works really well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @07:06AM (1 child)
The more people you employ, the more people you can steal wages from! It's called "surplus value" in Marxist economic theory! Of course, idiots like khallow think that it is just that this employer is producing so much more production! Ignoring the plain and simple fact that it is his employees who are producing the value. You ought to be ashamed to endorse such blatant robbery, khallow.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:52AM
Write off that entire post.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday January 23 2019, @10:44AM (1 child)
Once, in the space of three weeks, I did some work that saved my company spending about $50 million. They were about shut down a power station for structural repairs and I did calcs that showed that the repairs were not necessary. Should I have been paid more than my relatively modest professional engineer's salary? No. I regard that as all in a day's work.
A banker however would demand a 5% "handling fee" for passing on a money transaction that was actually done by his computer. Where does this stop? Should the programmer of that computer get 5% or even 0.05% of every transaction his software ever handles? Should a bus driver be awarded $1 million every time he applies the brakes because he is saving his company the $10 million in damages that would arise from the collision if he did not? Of course not. Some jobs should be paid more than others, but some incomes are insanely high. No one person is worth tens of millions of $ per year.
One thing I have noticed with senior staff is that none of them are irreplacable even though they tend to create an aura that they are. I saw several power station managers retire and someone else step quietly into their shoes and carry on without a blip.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 23 2019, @03:42PM
Unless you're money laundering that 50 million USD (where I understand, the fees tend to be higher), the fees don't get that high merely for money transactions.
I already explained why that viewpoint was wrong. The CEO of a major company has far greater responsibilities than that exercised every day. I'll note as additional support, that back in the 1980s, there was this interesting hysteria in the US concerning Japan. We had just come off of the worst decade since the Great Depression, the 1970s, with two major energy crises, and the start of the long decline in the US industry with competition from Japan devastating large portions of US industry and the US Midwest. A fair number of books were written on how the US was going to be taken over by Japan.
What might have looked a sure thing in 1985, looked very different ten years later in 1995. Suddenly, Japan reeling from a bad recession (which incidentally the US suffered from as well) was no longer a threat, and the US was holding its own against the other newcomers, like China, in the global market. This was even more obvious by the next decade, despite the dotcom recession. By having de facto huge incentives to create and grow valuable businesses, the US retained its huge economy and standard of living despite losing large amounts of industry to other countries. Sorry, but this supposed outsized pay to CEOs is part of a thing that has worked well for the US.
And I can't help but notice the anti-pay camp always falls down to the same single argument. This theoretical argument that a good CEO could be had for less pay. That somehow the board of directors and the investors would make better choices, if they were forced to offer less money for the position? I just don't see that. Incompetent boards stay incompetent, no matter how little they pay their CEO.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday January 23 2019, @11:06PM
Or something like a like a lifetime asset cap. You reach a certain point, you cannot accumulate more. Not from interest, not from investments, nothing. You are booted out the door to begin attempting life enriching experiences. Maybe put a term limit on this, if such an individual spends or donates a certain percentage of their assets after a set number of years they can again accumulate up to the cap.