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For Dell's Billionaire CEO, Taxing the Ultra-Rich is a Joke

posted by takyon on Friday February 15 2019, @04:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the marginal-opinion dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a panel moderator asked Michael Dell, America's 17th-richest man, what he thought about the idea of raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent.

This idea has been in the headlines since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated it in a 60 Minutes interview on January 6 as a way to pay for a Green New Deal.

The Davos panel found the question hilarious. When the laughing died down, Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, dismissed the idea out of hand, claiming it would harm U.S. economic growth.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 16 2019, @12:26AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 16 2019, @12:26AM (#801859) Journal

    Taking money out circulation is theft.

    I have to agree that this is stupid, if only because taking money out of circulation is near nonexistent in the first place and wouldn't be a problem even if taking money out of circulation were a common thing.

    It's like damning up a river and fucking over the people downstream.

    Except, of course, it's not like that. Water isn't scale independent. You can't use a million liters or 1 microliter to flush a toilet. With money, it doesn't matter how many zeros are present. Money spends the same whether you have to use a dollar or a million dollars to buy the item.

    I guess you're thinking that rich people somehow hoard money. That is a remarkable ignorance since the vast majority of such wealth is in investments, which aren't hoarded but put into some activity with positive return on the investment (which by definition makes it not money hoarding since the wealth has gone back inot the economy).

    I think the final kicker is that high income taxes don't touch money hoarding even in the least. If I put a thousand dollars in a sofa - a genuine example of money hoarding, it's not income nor will it accrue capital gains. It's completely untouched by the proposed taxation scheme. Meanwhile, that money would steadily lose value due to inflation, which let's face it is a very effective tax on money hoarding.

    So to summarize: you claim that money hoarding is a big problem, even though it's almost nonexistent, and wouldn't be a problem even if it were common. Further, you're probably just spouting profound ignorance about investments and such, which aren't even remotely close to money hoarding.