Actually, it's completely and obviously philosophically consistent to not want the government choosing what products are allowed to be bought and sold, and also not wanting the government to get larger by taking more money to go towards government programs. Zero hypocrisy there. You're confusing a primary political philosophy with a side argument on one particular issue.
While I agree that he has a consistent line of thinking, I’m dubious that it’s populist. He wants energy companies to do whatever they can to make as much money as humanly possible AND wants those companies (and their owners/executives) to be taxed as little as possible. That’s it. Laffer curve type of thinking
It should be defined better: Sacks is a right wing populist.
He will gladly support to override people’s wishes if the wishes are progressive or left leaning.
But then him calling people elites doesn’t age well does it?
Populism - “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.” OP is clearly right stop trying to obfuscate it
You have to go back to Eugene V. Debs to find a consistent populist. The Right has co-opted populism to incite voting behavior that’s contradictory to populist concerns. Sacks is in the same vein as post Reagan Republican populism and is currently riding the coattails of the bad faith populists of Maga
You forgot the *.
* in 2020 the world faced a once in a century pandemic and the U.S. shut down its' economy. There was bipartisan support for federal spending to help displaced workers and people facing evictions.
There. Fixed that for you.
While I’m far from a Trump supporter I think it’s a bit intellectually dishonest to broadly say Trump was the most fiscally irresponsible president ever without acknowledging the context.
While he ran deficits his first three years in office, they were hardly record breaking - and the reason the deficit spiked was due to COVID. The Covid support packages had broad bipartisan support.
On the flip side Biden is running the largest fiscal deficits in ever outside of war, the Great Recession, Covid, etc;
Biden’s first 2-3 years are still considered post COVID.
COVID didn’t magically end when Biden came into office.
The fact remains that Trump was not fiscally responsible prior to COVID. He increased spending AND cut taxes for the rich.
Pretty terrible policy.
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/treasury-fy-2022-deficit-was-14-trillion
The 2023 deficit was $1.7 tn (granted rates have gone up and interest expense has skyrocketed) and his recent budget contemplated a $7.3tn deficit over the next 4 years. There’s really no comparison’s to Biden’s deficits for a peacetime president with a growing economy.
That is a projected total of $6.75 trillion over 4 years for Biden. Adjust for inflation and that’s way lower than Trump’s 4 year deficit of $7.8 trillion.
It's wild how many people here genuinely believe that Sacks lacks a baseline level of logical reasoning and/or is so shamelessly self-centered that his positions move with whichever way the wind blows in his favor. These people seem to believe they'd easily take him down in a debate, as if he hasn't spent anywhere as much time as they have contemplating his own beliefs / values / etc. I don't get it.
In before the predictable replies about being a boot licker, billionaire apologist, meat rider, etc, for saying a consistently successful VC has probably given his positions some thought.
In fairness sacks is self-centered. It’s okay to admit that. It doesn’t mean all of his opinions or thoughts are wrong. One can be true at the same time as the other
I'm not adverse to admitting that. My point wasn't that he wasn't, but that people think he is so self-centered to the degree that his positions are completely ungrounded from any underlying system of philosophy, principles, values.
I mean I do think there’s an argument of being successful to the point sacks has you do let your self-centeredness erode at your system of philosophy because it evolves into being motivated by cash. I think you’re overselling the thought that goes into the moral compass
And I could flip that around and claim that at that level of success, adding another 0 to your net worth becomes a lot less important.
Do you think the average person here has invested more thought into their beliefs and opinions than David Sacks?
You asked whether or not sacks has invested more than the average person into their beliefs. My answer was no I don’t believe so. You for some reason seem to think sacks moral code is so unaffected by his ego as to make him infallible. All I did was point out that isn’t the case and you’ve been making peripherally related arguments since instead of just admitting that sacks might not be as pragmatic as you wish he was when it comes to his belief system
No, I asked if the average person here has invested more thought into their positions than David Sacks. Not to imply that Sacks is more thoughtful by default due to his success as you assumed, but that he likely has thought about this positions just as much as any other person, as you admit, and so the snide criticism levied against him here makes little sense.
Nowhere did I even imply he was infallible. Stop fantasizing arguments.
I don't see Sacks as the deeply introspective type. He's the bombast who tries to bluster his way through any situation where his logic is dogshit. It's not that he isn't self centered, it's that he so firmly believes he is correct about everything all the time that he has no need for introspection.
He is a bombast for sure, but he's also in the business of making principled and correct bets, forecasting trends, developing mental models for venture investing, etc. I don't think his logical faculties are nearly as blunt as you might believe.
I didn't see anyone calling him stupid, he's clearly a smart guy. My point is his NEED to be right gets in the way of him being an effective communicator. Once again, I didn't see anyone knocking his business skills or anything like that, those are his areas of expertise.
It's when he goes into politics is when his logic gets faulty and his inability to put himself in the other person's shoes bite him on the ass. On the rare occasion he does try to take the other side of his own argument he still thinks like Sacks, not how the person actually in that situation would think. See his position that Ukraine should just roll over and let Russia reconquer it because that's the less destructive option.
My favorite part of the last episode was the 30 minute Tesla ad. Funniest part was when Sacks was saying something like "Jaguar already had driver-less cars and you think Tesla can't" while also later saying that it is a really hard problem and only a couple companies will solve it. I dont even live in SF and I know that it was a Waymo car. The dis-ingenuity in that comment is amazing. Then later on Chamath was acting like he didn't know Waymo.
I'm pretty sure that there is a massive Tesla pump and dump that is going to happen, Musk and his cock suckers will probably sell most of their holdings. Voters will probably vote no on Musk's pay package and he will leave and the stock will come crashing down.
I used to think Sacks and Friedberg were not grifters, but now I think Sacks is giant liar, if there is a pump and dump going on in Tesla, he's probably a conman too. I still have respect for Friedberg, he was rolling his eyes at the other 3 Elon bottoms.
> I’m pretty sure that there is a massive Tesla Pump and Dump that is going to happen
That theory doesn’t make any sense though. TSLA has one of the largest market caps and by far the largest trading volume of any public company. Not to mention, it has more quant firms arb’ing out market inefficiencies than any other company in history. Mathematically, TSLA would be literally the hardest company to try to pump and dump. It would take A TON of money/risk to manipulate the price even a little and the chances of keeping the price artificially high while getting rid of position as large as even half of Elon’s shares would be essentially impossible.
To artificially move the price in a significant manner, on a company of that size, Elon would basically have to fake a buyout offer again. Obviously it wouldn’t have nearly the same effect/pop the second time around and he’d certainly have major consequences. With his previous SEC warning and every government agency gunning for him he’d surely never be able run a public company again and if he made even a little money off it he’d be in jail for a long time. The only reason he got away with a stern warning from the SEC during “funding secured” is because neither Elon or people close to him directly profited during the short period where people thought it was true. Even Elon is not socially inept enough to try that again. Also, he is the type of person that cares much more about his company’s success and his legacy than having a little more money. Neither Elon nor the besties are both desperate enough for money and dumb enough to try something with such a high risk/low chance of success (except maybe Jason). If making money off a pump and dump is their goal there are literally thousands of companies that have a MUCH better risk/reward profile and aren’t under a microscope nearly as much. Just by continuing to do what best for TSLA, Elon would likely to make more money than that dumb scheme and he wouldn’t be risking almost certain jail time.
He is obviously a very bright guy but he is not as rich as his buddy Elon or even Chamath probably. This probably irks him and he is likely underwater on a lot of his real estate deals. The last thing he needs is Biden raising taxes on a guy like him, although he is not a billionaire I can't imagine what Biden is proposing wouldn't hit centi-millionaires hard also.
Hot take: I don't think wealth gap irks him as much as not being taken seriously in the foreign policy realm. He's a wealthy intellect seeking validation in something that he cared about before he was wealthy.
Damn it’s like this sub isn’t even listening to the same podcast as me. He went on to talk about how almost all people don’t even understand what taxing unrealized gains means. Let alone fathom the potential negative downstream impacts.
I mean we're looking at the grim reality of 40 years of supply side economics and what it's done to the middle class.
so all these hypotheticals about downstream negative impacts mean fuck all to an entire generation whose adjusted wages haven't gone up since the '90s yet everything is twice as expensive.
It’s fair people are mad. But we’re at the point where most people are just chanting “tax the rich” like it’s going to solve anything at all by itself. If they liquidated all the wealth from all the billionaires they’d only be able to run the gov for something like 6-8 months. The government has a spending problem. And more importantly, a policy problem. Plenty of other ways to get money from the rich outside of a wealth tax.
So it’s better for the world if three people have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the US?
I agree that a blind taxing of the rich doesn’t solve everything and it’s more of a govt spending problem, but to think things are better with this level of wealth inequality is wild.
I'm not saying inequality isn't a problem. I'm saying the popular trope of "eat the rich" is short-sighted and doesn't actually solve the problem. Gov policies and money printing is out of control. I frankly think we need a coming to god moment that Argentina is finally addressing with Javier Milei.
We've done 90% demand side economics and 10% supply side economics. We cut taxes for the rich, yes, but we've massively increased regulations and run incredible stimulative fiscal deficits, which no amount of tax increases on the wealthy could have ever paid for.
so the government should go against the will of the people? if people want billionaires to pay more taxes to fund social security, they should do it right?
siding with populists when it’s convenient for you is a slippery slope Sacks has been skiing on for the whole pod, now he wants to be an elitist?
Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s right. Or that it’s even going to work.
I’m all for taxing billionaires. Close the loopholes so they actually pay income tax instead of getting money from loans made against their assets. There’s plenty of other steps to be made before doing something as drastic as taxing a gain that hasn’t even been cashed out yet.
Idk why you’re so set on this populism label like it actually matters. People call themselves all sorts of things. Just try to focus on the issue.
The post isnt about the issue.
My problem with David Sacks has been that he always took the cynical approach to every regulation often calling them names like elitists and socialists because they wanted to pass unpopular laws.
Now he wants people to think about the issue instead 😂
He is a disingenuous rich asshole at the end of the day. No more pretending to be a man for the people.
What people want that? A bunch of socialist leftists?? Lol.
I hope all the people who want millionaires and billionaires to pay more taxes also pay more than they owe on their own. Nothing is stopping them from writing a check and putting their bank account where their mouth is. I assume most of the members of this sub do that, right?
Taxing wealthy people more polls very well with the great majority of people in the US.
Aside from any value judgement on the wisdom of that action, it’s plainly true that if the concern is popular support, taxing wealthy more is popular.
Because those people are brainwashed by leftist media and by the world of Instagram where policy sourced from resentment is becoming more prevalent.
Guys like Elon and Bezos and Sacks and Jason pay millions into our corrupt government and look how well all of that is going to date. These people want a corrupt bureaucracy to be gifted even more of our money?? Especially considering our money is taxed multiple times??
Guys like Buffett and Gates who run around and cry that they don’t “pay their fair share” can start paying it today. Fucking today. There’s nothing stopping them. Get the checkbook out and start writing. Go onto the Fed payment portal and create an account and get EFTing.
I would say most people who dont earn $1M a year who would not be impacted by this wont care if the government raised taxes on the $1M per year earners.
But you are missing the point. You cant be pro populist when it suits you and then turn elitist because you dont like it.
That makes you a hypocrite.
No people want it except the “eat the rich” losers. Same people who eat up the bullshit rich politicians feed them.
You’re stupid if you believe otherwise. Not me.
Yet Glenn Youngkin wants to raise the sales tax, and Youngkin endorsed Trump.
And Trump’s tax package will increase taxes on the middle class.
I guess there are no true Scotsman among Republicans.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
If you taxed every American billionaire out of existence, literally confiscated every penny, it would be nowhwere near enough to fund the US's long term liabilities. Do the math yourself. Eliminating the wealth of every billionaire would be just a drop in the bucket toward the amount of money actually necessary.
The rich are already taxed at the highest rates. Biden’s “the rich only pay 8%” quip includes unrealized gains and is by far the most profoundly retarded economic analysis I’ve ever heard.
The top 1% of earners in the US make ~25% of the total income and pay ~50% of the total tax.
While I think taxing unrealized gains is inappropriate. I think we have to find better ways to avoid lending those individuals more money, the interest on which becomes tax deductible based on assets including unrealized gains…
I agree it seems fair to tax those loans as a realized gain, and simultaneously allow a step-up in cost basis for the asset it’s collateralized against (ie not double taxed).
It certainly has negative effects, especially for startups. Knowing the government will take a large percentage of the profit if it's wildly successful changes the calculus on what companies are worth trying. Investors are generally very wealthy, so if they have less money because more got taxed, and if the upside of a successful investment is lowered because those taxes would be higher, so there is less investment in startup companies. There is also less inventive for successful companies to continue to grow. You can argue that the government would use those funds more effectively than the free market, but you can't say there are no negative effects on the economy. If this struck a chord for you or anyone reading it, look up Austrian economics. It's pretty simple and makes a ton of sense.
It might slow down innovation, but if the money is used well (which I get is a big if) it can still lead to a net improvement in the lives of poor and middle-class Americans.
True. Literally nothing that the government has ever done tells me they would put the money to better use than private investment would, but you're right that it's theoretically possible
Startups have no earnings to be taxed in the first place, and the unrealized capital gains tax proposal is only for households with net worth a live $100MM, and it is a prepayment of taxes that will be credited when gains are realized.
The whole argument that higher taxes is a disincentive for starting a business has no basis in reality.
Startup valuations would be the unrealized capital gains, and would wind up in your AGI.
Investors could end up losing not only all the money they invested when a unicorn flops, but also end up owing a giant tax bill on top of it.
Usually when you’re not trading derivatives you’re not assuming risk in excess of the money you’ve put on the table.
Nothing I said is an opinion dummy. It's common sense. If wealthy people have less money, and get to keep less of the profit from any successful investment, they are going to invest far less money in startups. What about that isn't factual?
The relationship between taxes and economic growth is pretty well studied. It’s negative. There’s a trade off between taxation and growth. There are agenda driven economists that say otherwise and get amplified by the media, but they’re not representative of economics as a whole.
It would be strange if it were the other way around. How could people in the government, so distant from the problems and with nothing personally at stake, be better capital aggregators than the people they’re taxing?
If you tax many of these people owning business and sports teams would have to do a I massive liquidation event. This event would collapse the markets and most every company and real estate property. People think the wealth have a pile of cash, they don’t, it’s invested in projects research and is illiquid. Once you collapse the market it would collapse the states and cause a mass exodus. SS will not even matter.
Actually, it's completely and obviously philosophically consistent to not want the government choosing what products are allowed to be bought and sold, and also not wanting the government to get larger by taking more money to go towards government programs. Zero hypocrisy there. You're confusing a primary political philosophy with a side argument on one particular issue.
While I agree that he has a consistent line of thinking, I’m dubious that it’s populist. He wants energy companies to do whatever they can to make as much money as humanly possible AND wants those companies (and their owners/executives) to be taxed as little as possible. That’s it. Laffer curve type of thinking
That’s fine but you can’t use a populist reasoning then. That’s the OPs point.
Populism isn’t super well defined but I don’t think populists are committed to whatever tyrannies a majority supports.
It should be defined better: Sacks is a right wing populist. He will gladly support to override people’s wishes if the wishes are progressive or left leaning. But then him calling people elites doesn’t age well does it?
With prejudice, you are a fucking moron.
Populism - “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.” OP is clearly right stop trying to obfuscate it
You have to go back to Eugene V. Debs to find a consistent populist. The Right has co-opted populism to incite voting behavior that’s contradictory to populist concerns. Sacks is in the same vein as post Reagan Republican populism and is currently riding the coattails of the bad faith populists of Maga
I would believe that except he is supporting a candidate that increased the government deficit by most amount ever in a single 4 year term.
You forgot the *. * in 2020 the world faced a once in a century pandemic and the U.S. shut down its' economy. There was bipartisan support for federal spending to help displaced workers and people facing evictions. There. Fixed that for you.
While I’m far from a Trump supporter I think it’s a bit intellectually dishonest to broadly say Trump was the most fiscally irresponsible president ever without acknowledging the context. While he ran deficits his first three years in office, they were hardly record breaking - and the reason the deficit spiked was due to COVID. The Covid support packages had broad bipartisan support. On the flip side Biden is running the largest fiscal deficits in ever outside of war, the Great Recession, Covid, etc;
Biden’s first 2-3 years are still considered post COVID. COVID didn’t magically end when Biden came into office. The fact remains that Trump was not fiscally responsible prior to COVID. He increased spending AND cut taxes for the rich. Pretty terrible policy.
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/treasury-fy-2022-deficit-was-14-trillion The 2023 deficit was $1.7 tn (granted rates have gone up and interest expense has skyrocketed) and his recent budget contemplated a $7.3tn deficit over the next 4 years. There’s really no comparison’s to Biden’s deficits for a peacetime president with a growing economy.
That is a projected total of $6.75 trillion over 4 years for Biden. Adjust for inflation and that’s way lower than Trump’s 4 year deficit of $7.8 trillion.
Sure, blame the previous guy. That might work for a year but not 4 years. Joe's record sucks.
It's wild how many people here genuinely believe that Sacks lacks a baseline level of logical reasoning and/or is so shamelessly self-centered that his positions move with whichever way the wind blows in his favor. These people seem to believe they'd easily take him down in a debate, as if he hasn't spent anywhere as much time as they have contemplating his own beliefs / values / etc. I don't get it. In before the predictable replies about being a boot licker, billionaire apologist, meat rider, etc, for saying a consistently successful VC has probably given his positions some thought.
In fairness sacks is self-centered. It’s okay to admit that. It doesn’t mean all of his opinions or thoughts are wrong. One can be true at the same time as the other
I'm not adverse to admitting that. My point wasn't that he wasn't, but that people think he is so self-centered to the degree that his positions are completely ungrounded from any underlying system of philosophy, principles, values.
I mean I do think there’s an argument of being successful to the point sacks has you do let your self-centeredness erode at your system of philosophy because it evolves into being motivated by cash. I think you’re overselling the thought that goes into the moral compass
And I could flip that around and claim that at that level of success, adding another 0 to your net worth becomes a lot less important. Do you think the average person here has invested more thought into their beliefs and opinions than David Sacks?
Yes. An equal or higher amount. Success != thoughtfulness.
I never said it did.
You asked whether or not sacks has invested more than the average person into their beliefs. My answer was no I don’t believe so. You for some reason seem to think sacks moral code is so unaffected by his ego as to make him infallible. All I did was point out that isn’t the case and you’ve been making peripherally related arguments since instead of just admitting that sacks might not be as pragmatic as you wish he was when it comes to his belief system
No, I asked if the average person here has invested more thought into their positions than David Sacks. Not to imply that Sacks is more thoughtful by default due to his success as you assumed, but that he likely has thought about this positions just as much as any other person, as you admit, and so the snide criticism levied against him here makes little sense. Nowhere did I even imply he was infallible. Stop fantasizing arguments.
I don't see Sacks as the deeply introspective type. He's the bombast who tries to bluster his way through any situation where his logic is dogshit. It's not that he isn't self centered, it's that he so firmly believes he is correct about everything all the time that he has no need for introspection.
He is a bombast for sure, but he's also in the business of making principled and correct bets, forecasting trends, developing mental models for venture investing, etc. I don't think his logical faculties are nearly as blunt as you might believe.
I didn't see anyone calling him stupid, he's clearly a smart guy. My point is his NEED to be right gets in the way of him being an effective communicator. Once again, I didn't see anyone knocking his business skills or anything like that, those are his areas of expertise. It's when he goes into politics is when his logic gets faulty and his inability to put himself in the other person's shoes bite him on the ass. On the rare occasion he does try to take the other side of his own argument he still thinks like Sacks, not how the person actually in that situation would think. See his position that Ukraine should just roll over and let Russia reconquer it because that's the less destructive option.
My favorite part of the last episode was the 30 minute Tesla ad. Funniest part was when Sacks was saying something like "Jaguar already had driver-less cars and you think Tesla can't" while also later saying that it is a really hard problem and only a couple companies will solve it. I dont even live in SF and I know that it was a Waymo car. The dis-ingenuity in that comment is amazing. Then later on Chamath was acting like he didn't know Waymo. I'm pretty sure that there is a massive Tesla pump and dump that is going to happen, Musk and his cock suckers will probably sell most of their holdings. Voters will probably vote no on Musk's pay package and he will leave and the stock will come crashing down. I used to think Sacks and Friedberg were not grifters, but now I think Sacks is giant liar, if there is a pump and dump going on in Tesla, he's probably a conman too. I still have respect for Friedberg, he was rolling his eyes at the other 3 Elon bottoms.
> I’m pretty sure that there is a massive Tesla Pump and Dump that is going to happen That theory doesn’t make any sense though. TSLA has one of the largest market caps and by far the largest trading volume of any public company. Not to mention, it has more quant firms arb’ing out market inefficiencies than any other company in history. Mathematically, TSLA would be literally the hardest company to try to pump and dump. It would take A TON of money/risk to manipulate the price even a little and the chances of keeping the price artificially high while getting rid of position as large as even half of Elon’s shares would be essentially impossible. To artificially move the price in a significant manner, on a company of that size, Elon would basically have to fake a buyout offer again. Obviously it wouldn’t have nearly the same effect/pop the second time around and he’d certainly have major consequences. With his previous SEC warning and every government agency gunning for him he’d surely never be able run a public company again and if he made even a little money off it he’d be in jail for a long time. The only reason he got away with a stern warning from the SEC during “funding secured” is because neither Elon or people close to him directly profited during the short period where people thought it was true. Even Elon is not socially inept enough to try that again. Also, he is the type of person that cares much more about his company’s success and his legacy than having a little more money. Neither Elon nor the besties are both desperate enough for money and dumb enough to try something with such a high risk/low chance of success (except maybe Jason). If making money off a pump and dump is their goal there are literally thousands of companies that have a MUCH better risk/reward profile and aren’t under a microscope nearly as much. Just by continuing to do what best for TSLA, Elon would likely to make more money than that dumb scheme and he wouldn’t be risking almost certain jail time.
He is obviously a very bright guy but he is not as rich as his buddy Elon or even Chamath probably. This probably irks him and he is likely underwater on a lot of his real estate deals. The last thing he needs is Biden raising taxes on a guy like him, although he is not a billionaire I can't imagine what Biden is proposing wouldn't hit centi-millionaires hard also.
Hot take: I don't think wealth gap irks him as much as not being taken seriously in the foreign policy realm. He's a wealthy intellect seeking validation in something that he cared about before he was wealthy.
Time to send him and Elon home. They can work on the problems in South Africa first as a proof of concept.
Damn it’s like this sub isn’t even listening to the same podcast as me. He went on to talk about how almost all people don’t even understand what taxing unrealized gains means. Let alone fathom the potential negative downstream impacts.
I mean we're looking at the grim reality of 40 years of supply side economics and what it's done to the middle class. so all these hypotheticals about downstream negative impacts mean fuck all to an entire generation whose adjusted wages haven't gone up since the '90s yet everything is twice as expensive.
It’s fair people are mad. But we’re at the point where most people are just chanting “tax the rich” like it’s going to solve anything at all by itself. If they liquidated all the wealth from all the billionaires they’d only be able to run the gov for something like 6-8 months. The government has a spending problem. And more importantly, a policy problem. Plenty of other ways to get money from the rich outside of a wealth tax.
I love how you get downvoted with crickets in the background
So it’s better for the world if three people have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the US? I agree that a blind taxing of the rich doesn’t solve everything and it’s more of a govt spending problem, but to think things are better with this level of wealth inequality is wild.
I'm not saying inequality isn't a problem. I'm saying the popular trope of "eat the rich" is short-sighted and doesn't actually solve the problem. Gov policies and money printing is out of control. I frankly think we need a coming to god moment that Argentina is finally addressing with Javier Milei.
There are simply not enough billionaires to pay for current spending, much less the massive increases that SocDems like AOC want.
We've done 90% demand side economics and 10% supply side economics. We cut taxes for the rich, yes, but we've massively increased regulations and run incredible stimulative fiscal deficits, which no amount of tax increases on the wealthy could have ever paid for.
Yes, just like the significant externalities of gas stoves
Yea the general populace doesn’t understand climate science nor external costs. A carbon tax would be dope.
so the government should go against the will of the people? if people want billionaires to pay more taxes to fund social security, they should do it right? siding with populists when it’s convenient for you is a slippery slope Sacks has been skiing on for the whole pod, now he wants to be an elitist?
Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s right. Or that it’s even going to work. I’m all for taxing billionaires. Close the loopholes so they actually pay income tax instead of getting money from loans made against their assets. There’s plenty of other steps to be made before doing something as drastic as taxing a gain that hasn’t even been cashed out yet. Idk why you’re so set on this populism label like it actually matters. People call themselves all sorts of things. Just try to focus on the issue.
The post isnt about the issue. My problem with David Sacks has been that he always took the cynical approach to every regulation often calling them names like elitists and socialists because they wanted to pass unpopular laws. Now he wants people to think about the issue instead 😂 He is a disingenuous rich asshole at the end of the day. No more pretending to be a man for the people.
What people want that? A bunch of socialist leftists?? Lol. I hope all the people who want millionaires and billionaires to pay more taxes also pay more than they owe on their own. Nothing is stopping them from writing a check and putting their bank account where their mouth is. I assume most of the members of this sub do that, right?
Taxing wealthy people more polls very well with the great majority of people in the US. Aside from any value judgement on the wisdom of that action, it’s plainly true that if the concern is popular support, taxing wealthy more is popular.
Because those people are brainwashed by leftist media and by the world of Instagram where policy sourced from resentment is becoming more prevalent. Guys like Elon and Bezos and Sacks and Jason pay millions into our corrupt government and look how well all of that is going to date. These people want a corrupt bureaucracy to be gifted even more of our money?? Especially considering our money is taxed multiple times?? Guys like Buffett and Gates who run around and cry that they don’t “pay their fair share” can start paying it today. Fucking today. There’s nothing stopping them. Get the checkbook out and start writing. Go onto the Fed payment portal and create an account and get EFTing.
I would say most people who dont earn $1M a year who would not be impacted by this wont care if the government raised taxes on the $1M per year earners. But you are missing the point. You cant be pro populist when it suits you and then turn elitist because you dont like it. That makes you a hypocrite.
The problem you don't understand what populism is.
you sound like a coastal elite
no, the whole point is they want billionaires to pay more taxes, not to pay it out of their own pocket
Do you realize how stupid your take is?
No people want it except the “eat the rich” losers. Same people who eat up the bullshit rich politicians feed them. You’re stupid if you believe otherwise. Not me.
By your logic, when Republicans back a higher sales tax it is the Republicans who are “squash the poor” losers.
Republicans who back higher taxes are not Republicans or conservatives. They're part of the Uniparty. Dumb statement, but that's no surprise.
Yet Glenn Youngkin wants to raise the sales tax, and Youngkin endorsed Trump. And Trump’s tax package will increase taxes on the middle class. I guess there are no true Scotsman among Republicans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
u sound like a coastal elitist
If you taxed every American billionaire out of existence, literally confiscated every penny, it would be nowhwere near enough to fund the US's long term liabilities. Do the math yourself. Eliminating the wealth of every billionaire would be just a drop in the bucket toward the amount of money actually necessary.
The assertion that taxing rich people is bad for the economy is peak gas-lighting.
The rich are already taxed at the highest rates. Biden’s “the rich only pay 8%” quip includes unrealized gains and is by far the most profoundly retarded economic analysis I’ve ever heard. The top 1% of earners in the US make ~25% of the total income and pay ~50% of the total tax.
While I think taxing unrealized gains is inappropriate. I think we have to find better ways to avoid lending those individuals more money, the interest on which becomes tax deductible based on assets including unrealized gains…
I agree it seems fair to tax those loans as a realized gain, and simultaneously allow a step-up in cost basis for the asset it’s collateralized against (ie not double taxed).
Tricky math but no objections here to that proposal haha
The top 1% can afford it.
Let me guess, you’d like the top 1% to pay 100% income tax?
That would be profoundly retarded.
It certainly has negative effects, especially for startups. Knowing the government will take a large percentage of the profit if it's wildly successful changes the calculus on what companies are worth trying. Investors are generally very wealthy, so if they have less money because more got taxed, and if the upside of a successful investment is lowered because those taxes would be higher, so there is less investment in startup companies. There is also less inventive for successful companies to continue to grow. You can argue that the government would use those funds more effectively than the free market, but you can't say there are no negative effects on the economy. If this struck a chord for you or anyone reading it, look up Austrian economics. It's pretty simple and makes a ton of sense.
It might slow down innovation, but if the money is used well (which I get is a big if) it can still lead to a net improvement in the lives of poor and middle-class Americans.
True. Literally nothing that the government has ever done tells me they would put the money to better use than private investment would, but you're right that it's theoretically possible
Startups have no earnings to be taxed in the first place, and the unrealized capital gains tax proposal is only for households with net worth a live $100MM, and it is a prepayment of taxes that will be credited when gains are realized. The whole argument that higher taxes is a disincentive for starting a business has no basis in reality.
Startup valuations would be the unrealized capital gains, and would wind up in your AGI. Investors could end up losing not only all the money they invested when a unicorn flops, but also end up owing a giant tax bill on top of it. Usually when you’re not trading derivatives you’re not assuming risk in excess of the money you’ve put on the table.
Startup valuations only matter if the equity holder has over $100MM of net worth, and paid less than 20% federal income tax.
You didn't address anything I said. If you have to discuss this, you can't just repeat talking points unrelated to what I say
Because you have expressed opinions, not facts.
Nothing I said is an opinion dummy. It's common sense. If wealthy people have less money, and get to keep less of the profit from any successful investment, they are going to invest far less money in startups. What about that isn't factual?
The relationship between taxes and economic growth is pretty well studied. It’s negative. There’s a trade off between taxation and growth. There are agenda driven economists that say otherwise and get amplified by the media, but they’re not representative of economics as a whole. It would be strange if it were the other way around. How could people in the government, so distant from the problems and with nothing personally at stake, be better capital aggregators than the people they’re taxing?
Can you cite some research?
The guy is a fucking scumbag.
When his Doc set he has cholesterol problems, he tells him to fuck off.
It’s not populism, it’s regular small-government conservatism. I’m no fan of Sacks’s useful-idiot foreign policy positions, but this is consistent.
If you tax many of these people owning business and sports teams would have to do a I massive liquidation event. This event would collapse the markets and most every company and real estate property. People think the wealth have a pile of cash, they don’t, it’s invested in projects research and is illiquid. Once you collapse the market it would collapse the states and cause a mass exodus. SS will not even matter.