Watchhttp://finance.yahoo.com/news/drink-less-more-billionaire-tells-152654355.html
See, you guys have been doing it wrong all this time!! You should follow her suggestions.....
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snip:
...."There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she writes. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking, or smoking and socializing and more time working."
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Its hard for me to take advice from someone of such obviously poor health. Maybe had she not spent so much time inhaling carbohydrates, she'd have found a mate to drink, smoke, and socialize with!
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Ross, CA
I love how someone who inherited her wealth has no problem telling us how to make it.
I agree with errc - she looks like she's living on a diet of pork rinds and soda.
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46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Exactly. Most wealth in the US is inherited and not earned.
From http://www.republicansforobama.org/node/9596 which is partisan, and yet nonetheless factually correct.
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rooemoore says
Time out there cowboy. No need to throw pork rinds under the bus, they are actually perfectly healthy. Never leave home without your chiccarones!
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rooemoore says
I saw that picture too, but I figured one of you would pick up on her healthy condition......
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Pride goes before a fall.
She can say whatever she wants, but lord judges for arrogance.
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Maybe she should - Eat less and exercise more.
We need a death tax for billionaires. Conventional wisdom states that if you tax wealth you will erode the incentive to create wealth. However, if they are already dead they can't create more wealth anyway.
70% death tax for billionaires.
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She's so rich she pays people to run for her.
"You there drop down and give me twenty, I feel my spare tire getting bigger!"
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46 male
Menlo Park, CA
"Excess inheritance tax" would probably be easier to get passed than "death tax".
I don't have a problem with passing on a reasonable inheritance, say ten times the US median income.
But for inheritances beyond that, it creates a permanent hereditary aristocracy, which is something the US founders specifically tried to exclude in the Constitution.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1027695
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Don't stop there, kids in good communities especially kids of Ivy League grads, should have to swap paces in the public school system with a kid in the inner city.
Mom takes Jr. to MLK high school and picks up Leroy Smith and drives him to Primdale Charter School. But she needs to get there early, because Leroy is psyched to check out that new computer lab they installed over the summer.
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She's got more chins then a chinese phone book
Not only is she rich solely from inheritance, but the inherited fortune was from mining natural resources! Yea, what was I thinking, of course there's no monopoly on that
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Compare this disgusting billionaire to the likes of Warren Buffett. I have nothing but the highest of admiration for a guy like him. He lives a simple life, spending $10.00 on haircuts and a modest home, while giving away his wealth to benefit mankind. What a guy.
Its his birthday today. Happy Birthday Warren...you should be President.
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Raw says
Wait.... didn't Iwog call him a "hoarder" of wealth???
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Raw says
Yeah then he could pay all of our taxes.
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Call it Crazy says
All savers could be considered hoarders. His idea of spending is to give it away. I don't think he has a selfish gene anywhere in his body.
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FortWayne says
Donald Trump disproved that theory.
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Says someone who has never worked a day in her life. And siting on a comfy chair barking orders at others isn't working. Work is what the miners who dug up the ore did. The executives do no work and are at best overhead and more likely parasites.
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Raw says
I'd rather prevent the billionaires from unjustly acquiring such wealth at the expense of others through zero-sum games. The inheritance tax addresses the symptoms, not the cause, of the problem. People should only be able to get wealthy by creating wealth, not by siphoning it off of workers.
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Patrick says
Commie fucks! They didn't listen to Rush! That's what was wrong with them!
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Patrick says
100% true...
I know a lot of rich people, but only one that got there without starting there.
And is this despicable splob actually advising people to consume less???
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Liberals are always envious of others success, money, and wealth...and want to take it away and give it to people they consider "more deserving".
And we don't need a death tax. The "kids" will burn through their inheritance and all that new purchase activity will increase the velocity of money and "spread the wealth" via commerce! (Unless you're anti-business like you-know-who).
Honest Abe's self evident truths:
(1) Libs are not entitled to other peoples money.
(2) Government will only squander, waste and lose it anyway.
(3) With liberals everything is free - except us.
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Honest Abe says
As long as you prevent the siphoning of wealth, that is true. Exponential increase in the number of descendants per generation dilutes the wealth enough provided it isn't used to establish parasitic rent seeking like the billionaire in the article.
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Dan8267 says
I agree. There should be zero income tax on income earned through your own personal work. Sales tax is also regressive, meaning the poor pay a much higher percent of their income as sales tax than the rich do.
To replace the revenue, we should tax land values and inheritances, which are never earned through personal work.
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Patrick, all costs, taxes, and the like get paid for by the consumer, in the end (pun intended).
Increased land taxes will get paid for by buyers and passed on to renters. That will increase the costs to everyone - since virtually everyone either owns or rents. Why punish homeowners and tenants?
But I do like your ZERO income tax idea!!
And the idea's of drinking, smoking and socializing less & working more have a lot of validity. Or should we be drinking, smoking and socializing more? If you had to pick one, what would it be?
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BayArea says
Honest Abe says
The guy I am referring to above actually drinks, smokes, and socializes more than anyone I know. He's a fairly smart guy but it's his outgoing personality that's got him to the top, lol.
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Honest Abe says
As a liberal, I can respond.
1. No one is entitled to the work of another. This includes employers. The problem is that the employers takes the lion's share of the worker's productivity. Executives and other "overhead" should get at most the median income of the wealth producers, the workers.
2. Government does squander and waste a lot. So do corporations. More importantly, corporations squander and waste public wealth like the environment in order to generate a much smaller amount of private wealth through short-term profits. Neither government nor corporations should be trusted or allowed to grow big and powerful.
3. Here are some of the freedoms that I believe in. How many of them do conservative believe in?
- Freedom to marry whomever you want regardless of their gender, race, etc.
- Freedom to run around nude in public. Why the hell should the state be allowed to ban this?
- Freedom to use any drugs you want provided you are not endangering others.
- Freedom to curse up the storm in public areas and in front of children.
- Freedom to walk up to a cop and say fuck you to his face without repercussions.
- Freedom to record government officials anywhere anytime.
- Freedom to release evidence of wrongdoing by the government regardless of the security classification of the evidence. See Bradley Manning.
- Freedom to obtain all information about government and its business short of military operations not involving civilian causalities or war crimes and military hardware specifications.
- Freedom to sue the IRS or any government agency for punitive damages.
- Freedom to vote regardless of felonies. After all, a right, by definition cannot be taken away.
- Freedom to peacefully assembly and protest without permission from federal, state, or local governments. Why do people need permits to assemble or protest?
- Immediate, complete, and continuous access to all data that any corporation or government has on you.
- Freedom from pollution created by anyone or any organization including corporations.
Basically, as a liberal, I'm for people having the right to do anything they want that doesn't harm another person or highly sentient animal. As such, there should be no morality laws, no cultural laws, and no victimless crimes.
Somehow, I suspect that liberals believe in more freedom than conservatives. After all, that's what liberal means, believing in "liberty".
By the way, liberal and fiscal conservative aren't mutually exclusive. I also believe in small government, balanced budgets, zero debt, zero inflation, and fiscal prudence.
Technically, liberal and conservative should be completely independent concepts. The only part of conservative that isn't is "social conservative" which is just code for bigotry and religious insanity. But if you remove that, then most liberals should be conservative and vice-versa.
Think about it.
1. All environmental issues are economic issues. Pollution is nothing more than theft. Climate change is about long-term management of a vital economic resource.
2. Small government is best because not only does it steal less of your money, but it also infringes upon you rights. Conservatives are found of saying, "I just want government to be small enough that I can drown it in the bathtub.". Well, you can't do that if the government has a big military. So no true conservative could possibly be for the giant, imperialist military and defense industry we have today. It goes completely against small government.
3. The police need to be recorded, controlled, and prosecuted when they do wrong. Again, isn't this a small government issue?
4. Felons should have the right to vote. If they don't, then voting isn't a right. A right, by definition, cannot be taken away from you. If a freedom can be taken away from you then it is a privileged, not a right. Should a conservative be concerned with protecting Constitutional rights, especially one as important and fundamental as voting?
5. The "voter ID" initiatives are transparent attempts to prevent legitimate voters from voting. Shouldn't a conservative be utterly horrified by this electoral fraud?
6. Since money promotes growth and conservatives don't want big government, shouldn't a conservative be against corporate funding of political campaigns? Corporate money makes government bigger. In order to limit government, you must limit its cash flow and that includes campaign cash flow.
The Republican Party certainly isn't conservative by any of these standards. Nor are most self-identified conservatives. I would argue that I am far more conservative than the vast majority of self-identified conservatives, not despite being liberal, but because I'm a liberal.
Ayn Rand was right about parasites taking wealth from producers, but she got the characters wrong. The executives and the high ranking government officials are both parasites, and the employees are the wealth creators.
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Dan8267 says
As an environmentalist I would love this.
Freedom to walk around naked.....forget it. What about my freedom to not see you naked?
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Honest Abe says
As an independent that leans liberal I would strongly disagree. Bill Gates father in support of death/inheritance taxes stated that the reason his son made so much wealth was because of the "system" we have in place. He would not have made it in another country, and neither would other billionaires like Steve Jobs. It is only right we give back to this wonderful system to keep it intact.
The heirs could always spend it, but it would not be the most efficient use wealth.
70% tax for billionaires is just.
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Patrick, your article is false.
http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/most-wealthy-individuals-earned-not-inherited-their-wealth/
In addition, something like 95% of millionaires in the US are self made.
And the dudes proclaiming they don't know any self made wealthy people are FOS. That's right....outright lying and making stuff up.
In fact, I'd be very enthusiastic to email Patrick the names, business addresses, and residential addresses of three family members who are self made millionaires. My father, my brother, and another close relative.
My grandparents on my dads side were born to eastern European immigrants in 1905. My dad was born in the 1940's very poor. Worked his ass off and became a VERY talented man so me and my brother could have a better life than he did.
My brother and his wife do mid six figures I beleive. 100 hour workweeks for a decade to get there.
Me, I just want to enjoy life. So I'm not a millionaire.
Honestly most people have no clue what they are talking about. Money and financial wealth are not a finite resource. But most people out there don't really understand what hard work actually is. Is def not 40-50 hours a week in a cubicle village or 40 hours delivering miller lite or whatever. That's standard, not working hard.
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Patrick says
The personal income tax was originally intended as a tax on the wealthiest Americans to pay for social programs for the poor to sustain their health and end the cycle of poverty. In fact, it is exactly for that reason that Woodrow Wilson agreed to charter the Federal Reserve. The rich promised him funding for anti-poverty programs. Of course, the rich then perverted both the Federal Reserve and the federal income tax so that today the income tax is regressive.
The Federal Reserve cartoonified Woodrow Wilson, putting him on the x dollar bill, used by banks but not in circulation, to make it look like Wilson supported the Federal Reserve.
But in reality, this is what Wilson said of his decision to create the Federal Reserve in exchange for an income tax.
But as originally intended, a tax on the wealthy to pay for anti-poverty programs, the income tax was a decent idea. It was not intended to be a tax on the middle class, just the aristocracy. And it was not intended for general funding, just programs to end the cycle of poverty. It is precisely the removal of those two aspects of the income tax that has perverted it and turned it into a tool against social mobility.
The income tax system I proposed cannot distinguish earned income from rent-seeking. But I would argue that it is better to prevent rent-seeking than to tax it. In fact, all rent-seeking should be done by government to support the people as a whole as the people are the ones who own public resources like land and the spectrum.
However, in practice there are only a few really rich people who earn their wealth that would be taxed under the system I proposed above. Inventors and entertainers can produce substantial amounts of wealth. However, the vast majority of the uber-wealthy in our society are not inventors or entertainers but rather parasites that either siphon wealth directly from employees (producers of wealth) or legally steal wealth through rigged zero-sum games. One could make an argument that entertainers only produce a fraction of the wealth created by entertainment, with the majority of the wealth resulting from technology and thus inventors. But other than by advancing technology, there is no way any human being can produce millions nonetheless billions of dollars of wealth in a lifetime.
In summary, I wouldn't mind the income tax as I proposed above to be used to provide the social safety net and anti-poverty programs that were originally intended. I'm against general funding, however, as that turns the treasury into a pig's trough where every special interest tries to get as much as it can.
A better system is to have specific taxes for specific services. For example, the highway transportation system should be paid for by automotive and/or fuel taxes. Lighthouses should be paid for by boat taxes. If you don't have a boat, you don't pay for the lighthouse, at least not directly. You might pay though a small increase in the cost of goods shipped by boat, but you'll pay in proportion to your indirect use of the lighthouse.
Such direct taxation allows for the people to decide which services are worth paying for and which aren't. The only services that must be paid for by other means are mandatory services like police, fire, and military. And those services can easily be paid for by rent-seeking done by the government or rent-seeking taxes such as a land tax.
Patrick says
Absolutely, which is why it should be banned. It also is a drain on the economy by making transactions less efficient.
However, I would support luxury taxes on things like yachts, personal jets, high-end jewelry and automobiles, etc. Normal goods and services should not be taxed.
Honest Abe says
Just remember, the revenue does come from somewhere. As Patrick said…
Patrick says
How taxes are collected is every bit as important as how much taxes are collected. The capital gains tax formula I proposed eliminates parasitic micro-trading, discourages short-term zero sum games, and encourages long-term investment. It also addresses the heart of the problem by distinguishing between investment and speculation. No real investment doubles your money in a month. Only speculation through zero-sum games do.
Similarly, the income tax formula I proposed creates a negative feedback that strengthens as the rich-poor gap increases, making it doubly negating. Such negative feedbacks are absolutely necessary for the stability of any complex system. In fact, negative feedbacks are solely responsible for the stability of any complex system.
Of course, politicians will never think of these ideas or implement them if the ideas are handed to them on a silver platter. That's why we need engineers not politicians and executives making legislation. Government should be engineering, not an art.
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Yep, get off your lazy asses and work harder at inheriting millions.
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Raw says
Yep, environmentalism is economics. It's about efficient management of recourses and preventing the theft and vandalism of those resources. All pollution is a form of theft called "cost shifting" in which the producers of some good shifts the cost of that good from the purchasers to non-purchasers. For example, by dumping waste in a river, a company lowers the price of an automobile by $1000 and sells more and makes more profit. But the pollution is really a $5000/car cost paid for by people who aren't even buying cars from that company. They pay the price, but receive no benefit. Furthermore, the benefit gained by the selfish who do benefit is far less than the cost paid by everyone else.
Even ignoring all moral and ethical issues, from a strictly amoral dollar-and-cents perspective, this is a fiscally wasteful system. From a strictly property-rights perspective, this is theft. Any real fiscal conservative is against pollution simply because the cost of cleaning up the pollution far exceeds the benefit of polluting. It is only through theft via "cost shifting" that a corporation makes a profit from this obviously bad fiscal move. The corporation forces society to pay the cost that rightfully it should occur. If the corporation actually is made to pay the cost, the corporation wouldn't pollute in the first place because it would hurt the bottom line. And that is where American-style capitalism fails.
Another, more subtle example. Sarah Palin and her ilk cry "drill baby, drill!'. OK, we can allow offshore drilling, if there are guarantees that the public at large won't be stolen from by environmental disasters. And we can have a capitalistic, free market solution. Just what the Republicans and Tea Party jizz all over.
Since the Palins of the world are always saying that the risks of environmental disasters are so low, let them put their money where their mouths are. If they are right, they'll make money, which is what they like to do most. If they are wrong, then they'll lose money, but that's the invisible hand of the market bitch slapping you for not knowing science.
Here's how it works. BP wants to open a dozen deep water drills. Worst case scenario, an oil spill occurs that costs $10 trillion to clean up and compensate others for the temporary and permanent damage (environmental, economic, and genetic). Naturally, not even BP has that kind of cash, but that's exactly what insurance is for. Let the Sarah Palins of the world underwrite the insurance for BP with their own life savings. If enough insurance is gathers, BP can drill. No environmental catastrophes, win-win. Big oil spill, and the Sarah Palins of the world learn a valuable but costly lesson regarding "drill baby, drill". If not enough insurance can be gathered, then that's the free market telling you that the risks outweigh the benefits.
Best of all, politicians and corporations with vested interests don't decide what the risk is. The underwriters do, and if they get it wrong because they poo-poo scientists and environmentalists, then it's their asses on the line. I bet with Sarah Palin's money on the line, she'd have a much higher estimate of the risks, but if she still believes the things she says, it's her loss.
Raw says
Light isn't like sound. You can look away.
One could just as well argue that old people shouldn't be allowed to wear shorts because they are ugly. As someone who lives in Florida, I might want this, but who am I to infringe upon the rights of others? If we ban things simply because they are repugnant, I get to go first. I choose banning all religion. After all, what about my freedom to not see churches when I drive down the street?
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Gina Rinehart will be the first on the spit when cannibal anarchy reigns, all plumped up by those inherited billions.
Yum Yum.
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Raw says
That's just the veneer he puts out there for the credulous. He's a fraudster who trades on insider information, too.
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Fat Fucking Gina!
Yum! Yum! Eatem up!
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dodgerfanjohn says
Opportunity, however, is. For instance, unlike, say, in the early 40's, I cannot employ people at slave wages in order to build up my empire. That opportunity for exploitation is not available to me.
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Patrick says
The minimum to exist, Rent and Food, carries NO SALES tax. Therefore the poor pay far less in tax as compared to the rich. The poor dont run out and buy luxury goods. This was done by design to help those at the bottom.
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Honest Abe says
Not true. Rents do not depend in the slightest on what the landlord feels like charging. They are limited by the tenant's ability to pay.
Taxing the value of the unimproved land will not increase rents at all. Absolute zero increase.
Similarly, prices are limited by the buyer's ability to pay.
The land value tax is perfectly efficient that way, with no harm to productive commerce at all. Read about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
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Raw says
The inheritance tax is like medicine. You take medicine when you are sick, not when you are healthy. Our economic system is sick, which is why the inheritance tax is necessary. However, the tax only addresses the symptoms, not the cause. The systems I proposed above address the cause. If such systems were in place, there would be no need for an inheritance tax.
dodgerfanjohn says
It is a false assumption that wealth can be obtained only either through inheritance or through earning it. I would argue that most of the richest 0.1% did not earn their wealth, but rather siphoned it. In fact, I would argue that with the exception of inventing something astonishingly significant and maybe entertainment, it is impossible for an individual to generate billions of dollars of wealth. Therefore, those who have billions of dollars of wealth simply acquired it at the expense of others. This is nothing more than legal theft.
Now if Tim Berners-Lee was the richest man in the world, I could see the Republican conjecture that wealth is owned by wealth creators as being true. But he's not. The guy who invented the most fucking important thing in the history of the world did not get rich off of it. He made the World Wide Web. He invented web pages. He's the biggest mother-fucking job creator in all of human history. But he didn't become a billionaire. Instead, this asshole did, and this asshole, and this fucking asshole, and most of all, this mother-fucking asshole!
So the hypothesis that the wealthy who haven't inherited their wealth earned it has been proven empirically false. And the converse of that hypothesis, those who create wealth become wealthy, has also been proven empirically false. Put simply, the Republican mantra that capitalism rewards productivity, ingenuity, and innovation is utter bullshit. Capitalism rewards one and only one thing: bargaining power. And that is precisely its fundamental weakness and why eventually we'll have to invent new economic systems to replace capitalism whether or not we continue to use the word capitalism to describe our economy.
We need a system that actually does reward wealth creation, i.e., productivity and technological advancement. And in such a system, the Lloyd Blankfein's of the world would be penniless because they add no value to society. In fact, the people with the personalities that are attracted to management, executive positions, and the financial industry would all be paupers under such an economic system. The wealthy would be composed of a much larger set of engineers, scientists, inventors, and other builders. And the economic pie would also be far larger without the zero-sum games diminishing it. When 50% of your population is devoted entirely to zero-sum games, that halves the potential real output of your economy without even including the losses due to the running of such games. Including the games interference in productivity, 50% or more of the remaining productivity might also be lost.
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Call it Crazy says
God knows I seen plenty of entrepreneurs and everyday workers in SV back in the 80s and 90s working like dogs 10 hours a day 6-7 days a week. It wouldn't surprise anyone who has been back then to have seen people working on Saturdays and even Sundays. It takes alot of sacrifice and passion to go after your dream. And they loved it!
Today! everyone wants "balanced work-life" working in Silicon Valley and expect the same results we saw back in the 80s without the same sacrifice.
I have no clue what they are talking about ... they are way out from another world FWIW!