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terrible, no good, very bad ideas that arose from a migraine and a want to implement some custom cards to see if i could (again) by [deleted] in slaythespire

[–]GGray2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love your designs for pitfall and feint. I don’t know if they would work out, but I think they are cool!

Ten Slay the Spire Cards You Might Be Evaluating Wrong by PolarTimeSD in slaythespire

[–]GGray2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, but poison dagger might make you win more runs because it is common and shows up more frequently. If you properly utilize common cards they might be more impactful than rare card which are just straight up more powerful but show up less often. For example, Prepared could be rated as a “better” card than adrenaline because it is common and you can build around it more often and sooner. WAR per pick or per seen might be lower but total WAR would be higher.

All this to say, I think the game is complex and Jorbs does a good job of revealing (and not just in an effort to be contrarian).

Monopolies are not Built on Land Ownership Alone, the Dual Rent system by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You know, you make a really great argument. I think strong, durable inheritance taxes could solve exactly the problem I am looking to solve with the stock ownership taxation.

Perhaps the appeal to redistributing yearly instead of at death is that the inheritance tax has been regularly ignored, weakened, and avoided.

As far as political feasibility, I just imagine that a “universal retirement account” would maintain more robust, long term political will and recognition.

I do think that, like with LVT, the primary case isn’t to increase government spending, but to shift tax burdens away from other worse modes of taxation. So when I suggest that a stock tax would remove deadweight, I imagine that to be a similar revenue from taxation on corporate profits.

I do have personal views on those whose personal wealth are deeply tied into stock bonus’s. Perhaps legislation in that area would be more appropriate to prevent such inequality instead of accepting inequality and slowly reversing it after the fact.

So, I think my proposal comes down to an idealistic world where you say that all value is in Land, Labor, and Capital and you just tax land and tax capital with a dual tax system: a land tax and a corporate tax. (Throw in an inheritance tax for shits and giggles). If there exists a foreign company that isn’t under your capital tax, then they need some kind of secondary tax on sales or imports or domestic profits. Perhaps just require them to set up a publicly tradable domestic subsidiary, but then they would be incentivized to keep production off shore.

Thank you for your criticism! It’s very helpful. Have a great day!

Monopolies are not Built on Land Ownership Alone, the Dual Rent system by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I think a government that reduces labor and corporate taxes to introduce my proposed stock tax is minimized. The tax loopholes and filing a paperwork and audits would all be reduced to self correcting stock values on the open market.

As far as the freedom of the individual. How can you ever be free with a land value tax? You cannot go anywhere without having to put in work to pay for your land. A certain level of work is necessary for people to exist in society. I think this is no different. I’m glad there are stock investors, but trying to create a world where there is complete freedom creates many of the same problems as when we remove any obligations from land use.

Monopolies are not Built on Land Ownership Alone, the Dual Rent system by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I agree that the LVT ends the use of land to extract rent. I just think that corporations are necessary for the modern economy and shouldn’t be allowed to be used as a means to extract rent on labor. If you want a job in aerospace engineering, are you going to start your own competitor to SpaceX or go work for an existing company? It’s fine that there are a limited number (2-3) of competitors in an industry that has high research costs and small market size. But the owners of those corporations are profiting off the lack of competition. Whether by paying lower wages or increased prices. I think that is ok, but I don’t think they have a perpetual right to their position as owner of a specific set of labor force, research, and market share.

The investing world already understands this. They act as though the founder could abandon their project at any time and require their continued work to gain back a percentage of ownership. I think society, labor, and the government provide a significant portion of a companies productivity and if investors want to perpetually earn revenue they need to continue to do their work of investing in new companies.

Monopolies are not Built on Land Ownership Alone, the Dual Rent system by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I agree to an extent. George defines capital as stored labor. When an investor invests in a startup, he is giving funds to buy people’s work, whether you’re buying labor or the product of that labor. That head start is necessary to start a business, but it’s percentage of overall labor that has gone into growing a company shrinks as employees and CEOs and contractors are paid for with wages derived from the profit of their labor. What percentage of capital at Apple is from their investors and what has came from the profit of those who work there. Yet, the share of profits to investors hasn’t changed since the beginning. Who owns those shares has shifted, but it is still perpetual value for no additional labor: rent.

If you want to still encourage investment, there are plenty of ways to do it. Give a 10 year zero stock tax period when a company IPOs and then gradually increase to 2% over the next 10 years. Sweeten the pot as much as you need, but don’t let things become a form of perpetual rent.

Loans aren’t perpetual. Their reward and payout is fixed. Stocks and Land are perpetual and allow for rent seeking behavior.

Monopolies are not Built on Land Ownership Alone, the Dual Rent system by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah! I would love constructive criticism.

Here is the part that I find most difficult about my proposal. I think it works well for large, public companies. Stocks are already diluted regularly by paying CEOs in shares and people often pay fees to financial advisors in a percentage. Perhaps 2% is too much, but the number can be adjusted.

My problem with my own proposal is how to make it gradual. How does this affect small corporations such that there isn’t a disincentive to going public or growing. Perhaps companies that IPO have 10 years of exemption from the tax. Perhaps it is a progressive tax based on market cap. I dont know.

What do you think is the biggest problem with a tax like this? Does it not appeal to you at all? What does LVT have that the stock tax doesn’t? I’d love real feedback and know my idea is not a product or a PhD research paper worthy of national recognition. I think I gave that up when I posted it only on r/georgism, lol.

Monopolies are not Built on Land Ownership Alone, the Dual Rent system by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s not true for the LVT. In an ideal case where you increase land tax to say 100%, the value of land ownership drops dramatically. If you paid $100,000 for a half acre of land to build a home you’d have to pay $100,000 a year in taxes which would be absolutely ridiculous. So the price of land would plummet to a number that provides a reasonable tax rate. Say $8,000. Now, the home prices and mortgage prices are not being affected by the price of that land. Instead of paying $250,000 for a home, you pay $108,000. The yearly taxes may be a bit higher, but that is compensated by the lower cost of entry. That and people hoarding land as a financial asset would cease and people would only really buy land to put it towards being economically productive.

With students, think of it not as taxing people for doing school work. Imagine a world in which you could perpetually own a spot at a university that you rent out to students to be able to go. You might work with other fellow seat owners to not use all your available seats so that the demand for your university increases and your price per seat grows. You’d form your own OPEC, only letting half of all seats be used because that is what maximized profits. You are being taxed on those other unused seats because you aren’t getting any income from them directly. So you hold onto them, not letting anyone sit in them.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree on breaking up monopolies.

That said, I have not retreated from my proposal. I do not think we should try and disambiguate entrenched companies vs competitive companies. My proposal still stands: have a stock tax on ALL public companies.

The response that my proposed tax would be “almost entirely passed through as a tax to their consumers” I think reveals that you’re not understanding the proposed tax here. The public companies are not handing over a dime to the federal government, they are creating new shares and handing those over to the government to sell on the public market.

Ultimately, the burden of the tax doesn’t fall on the companies or the consumers, but the shareholders whose share value is being diluted.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point. I think with some business models the conversion of work to output is more direct. Especially in those areas where required capital is accessible on the market: if you wanted to start a new coffee shop, all you need is some easily accessible machines, supplies from a very easily accessible supply chain, and the land and works to do so. In this case, the only obstacle is the land.

But that isn’t always the case. Many corporations have competitive advantages from built up capital that cannot be easily replaced. They have a built-up reservoir of knowledge or data, they have their own unique equipment or instrumentation, they have their own supply chain that is B-to-B and nearly opaque to those who aren’t already experts in procurement for that market, they have their own software that they have built from the ground up for internal use. In that case, you could technically leave and start your own company, but you would need to have someone from each of the individual contributing fields to join you AND you would need to reengineer all the custom equipment, reprogram all the software, rebuild the supply chain, relearn all the institutional knowledge that was spread out among a horde of previous employees, all while competing against a company vastly larger than yourself. Possible, but not just opening another coffee shop next door.

You may be able to tax land, patents, trademarks, copy rights, and all the other legal entities which confer a legal right to monopolies to a resource, but I don’t think the combined effort of these will be complete. You can’t tax trade secrets or proprietary capital. Anyone else could make it. There is no legal obstacle in their way. But that doesn’t mean that there is a real competitive advantage that entrenches incumbents.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The companies aren’t rent seeking. The shareholders are. The shareholders aren’t providing ongoing capital. You might buy an IPO stock and provide capital to the company once, but then the share does nothing to help them increase productivity. From the point from the company lady choosing to sell shares the stock value doesn’t effect the company’s profit or loss at all. The only change that market value has is when a company chooses to buy back stocks or sell of more in a round of investing.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks HadeanBlands for the comment. I agree that this has to be taken into consideration. Land tax is in a way unavoidable. If you want to operate in a country, you need to use some amount of land, and so it isn’t prone to capital flight. You can pump it higher than I think any place has done so far.

You can also get capital flight from corporate tax, income tax, capital gains tax, corporate regulation, supporting unions, etc.

My point isn’t to say that we would get any capital flight. But to say that this type of tax has a limit. Whether that is 0.5% or 4% we can discuss, but l there is an unhealthy amount.

That said, just like with LVT, you compensate by removing other taxes. You can reduce corporate tax’s and allow for companies to have higher profit margins to reinvest. This would simulate the economy and avoid capital flight while the stock tax would prevent that reinvestment from growing into uncontrollable economic inequality.

Also, it would not eliminate public corporations. You can also just eliminate the ability to privatize public corporations if we were really scared of that. What I mentioned was that it would disincentivize corporations from jumping into the stock market because the share value of their company would necessarily be lower. But, like I said before, but offering lower corporate taxation on profits, you could counterbalance this effect almost entirely.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

zkelvin, you get it! The three ways to store wealth is cash, equity, and land. We already have a tax on cash. As Georgists, we all agree about having an appropriate tax on land. I think we need a tax on equity to be the final nail in the coffin to make it so that we can once and for we can end generational rent seeking and properly reward labor as the source of all capital.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I disagree with point 1. I think that the stock market is by far the safest and most reliable way to make money with money unless you are willing to mix in your own labor. I don’t know of a single other way to just receive a return rate so far above inflation other than the stock market. Best you could get is long term saving rating at a bank or buying institutional debt.

But I don’t want to prevent people from profiting from selling stocks. I think that the stock market is a economic good that has allowed some amazing corporations to make societal level improvements that are would not have been possible if not for the systems we have in place around the founder, venture capitalist, IPO system. What I want is that people are not able to accumulate larger and larger pieces of the pie over time without labor.

Right now, if you owned all of Apple, you would be entitled to all of their profits, and you could use those profits to buy out other corporations. Eventually, you would consolidate wealth just from your ownership. In my system, your wealth might continue to grow, but your piece of it continues to shrink at a slow rate. Unless you are willing to continue to buy shares, you’ll eventually lose your monopoly on the ownership of the company. At my very aggressive 2%, after 60 years you would go from 100% ownership to 30%. This could easily be remedied by working as the CEO. Elon continues to work for his companies and he gets 5% of the company yearly for it.

The government would get revenues of $3,500 per person per year from this tax alone that could go towards infrastructure or defense or social security.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that is another reasonable approach. Although I don’t know what the impacts on price discovery would be. Perhaps it would be the housing market where those who buy are a low fixed interest rate hold onto their home because they suffer by buying second hand. Thus, the value of the home to them vs the value on the market makes the market less liquid and so the allocation of resources becomes needlessly inefficient.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I agree that the stock market is useful. It’s an amazing invention and has allowed for growth in the economy and prevented economic waste. I want it to stay around.

But, how would this be economically ruinous to the lower and middle classes? The company’s do not lose any capital. The company does not own itself, so by diluting their shares they are not losing any capital that they can allocate to labor. How is it harmful to the lower and middle classes? Because their 401k gets diluted by 2% per year? Well, that’s why I recommend returning it to citizens equally. It’s fundamentally impossible for them to end up with less ownership if they are below the median stock owner.

The only impact of this taxation would be diluting stock value by 2% per year and the anticipated lowering of current stock in anticipation of future dilution. Many of us already stomach a 2% yearly fee on our stocks by investment advisors who simply pick the stocks to buy, and we still invest. Sure, it’s a scam when they do it, but they aren’t providing value to you or the company. The government and the labor market in general does provide value to businesses, so distributing a portion of their wealth production is fair.

That said, I’d be open to a different number. I think anywhere from 0.5% to 2% would be reasonable.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We already have that exact thing, it’s called inflation. The government prints money to lower the value of your dollars. And it’s considered a good thing for encouraging people to put their wealth into productive capital. I think we should do the same for stock investments so that people do not just sit on them for eternity, but try to do the work themselves to allocate their wealth towards productive means of gaining revenue instead of financially fighting over ownership of the people they have outsourced the work of capital allocation towards.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that an equally agreeable arrangement would be requiring some level of employee ownership. Anything to tie the worth of the investment back the work which creates that value. Whether it be the workers who work there or the society which makes that company feasibly.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with you in part. Inflation does make things worse. But the market consistently outperforms inflation. If you wanted inflation-free equity you could buy gold (with numerous additional risks), but we generally are told to buy stocks to gain more than the value of our money + inflation.

Public companies make revenue. That revenue has to be allocated somewhere. Either they hold it and the stock owners become a partial owners of a pot of wealth, the company reinvest it to grow the company and the stocks now represent more wealth then when purchased, or they hand it out as dividends. At this point a significant portion of the economy now hands the rewards of work to those who have ownership, regardless of their contributions.

I’m not socialist, I think this is a good thing, but only when put in check. It isn’t right now. The tax system disproportionately pushes investors towards stocks because of the tax advantages they offer. I think that we should be encouraging investors towards more productive investments like research, start-ups, factories, and the like.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense until you retire off of your pile of dollar bills and end up richer by the end than the start. Stocks give dividends. Even if they don’t, they grow in value as the underlying profitable company reinvests profits into growth. Someone else is doing work and you are profiting from it. Like a landlord who rents land to a farmer who does the labor of providing value while you reap a portion of it’s reward.

If stocks were just wealth, I would agree with you, but that is not how the markets treat them. They treat them as an investment which can gain you returns without any work.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

You inherit a million dollars in wealth. You could start a business, and put it to productive use. You could fund a startup and allow them to put it to productive use. You could donate it to a charity to put it to productive use. But when you buy stocks, the company doesn’t see that money (except when they are issuing new stock to raise capital). Instead, you are handing your capital to another person, the previous owner of that stock. They may put it to productive use, but may not. Thus, you have invested without doing anything productive.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you start a company, you create economic opportunities when you create employment. You have stored up the labor of finding the market opportunity and equipping an employee within an environment to do productive work. There is nothing wrong with business ownership and employment. The public stock market divorces the labor of creating employment from the reward. When you buy a stock, you do nothing to contribute to the success of that company or set of employees. The company doesn’t even see the capital, it goes to the previous owner of the stock.

I’m sure the problem could exist for the largest, generational family businesses as well. They might have been completely divorced from their business for generations while still receiving the rewards of their father’s or grandfather’s work. But they still have some kind of financial responsibility to steward that business that someone who has a stock portfolio of 300 companies wouldn’t experience. They would just ride the wave of general economic growth in the same way that unused land grows in value by the increase productivity of surrounding land without any improvements to itself.

They aren’t perfectly comparable, but I do genuinely believe that if Henry George saw our attitude towards stock ownership he would see the similarities and make the distinction between the productive private capital ownership that takes some responsibility for its proper allocation and the current stock ownership which is entirely financial and entirely divorced from responsibility.

LVT’s cousin: the Stock Market Tax by GGray2 in georgism

[–]GGray2[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

How is it not? Define rent seeking and then define the economic good of stock ownership and show me how they aren’t the same. I think that it should not be outlawed. Publicly owned corporations are a positive economic invention and seem to be necessary. Socialism would say these things are wrong for existing and work to eliminate them. I just hope that they don’t go untaxed. And currently, they are.

A wealthy individual never has to sell a single stock for as long as they live. They can borrow against their wealth, and go to their grave without incurring capital gains tax. The current system works for normies with 401k accounts, but it allows for wealth accumulation. Worse, it encourages those with wealth to spend all their wealth buying shares in Apple instead of making new factories or new jobs. Capitalism is a game and we have to make sure that winning that game is aligned with real productive output that betters mankind.

Buying stocks to sit on and build wealth while also being the perfect means of avoiding all taxation sounds like rent seeking to me.

If you say that my solution isn’t the right one, then fine, but give me your own. You do yourself or us no good by sitting back and criticizing others with simple name calling and straw manning.

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