Bezos's new super-mega-yacht

Perhaps you can start with $100 million Nancy Pelosi - she has a whole long history of doing nothing in San Francisco and hording her millions - but that isn't quite as fun is it. 

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I responded to you your post that wa had no state income tax despite bezos and gates as if they were respindit - wa taxpayers made that decision well before either and have not chosen to change it.

“SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In an effort to address economic disparity laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved several tax measures targeting property owners and big businesses with CEOs paid far higher than their average workers.

Under the new law, any company whose top executive earns 100 times more than their average worker will pay an extra 0.1% surcharge on its annual business tax payment. If a CEO makes 200 times more than the average employee, the surcharge increases to 0.2%; 300 times gets a 0.3% surcharge and so on.

Voters also agreed to sweeping business tax changes that will lead to a higher tax rate for many tech companies, and a higher transfer tax on property sales valued between $10 million and $25 million”

San Francisco passed a series of tax bills this last election.  The CEO of SalesForce supported it and the CEO of twitter did not.  Both men have donated millions, especially during the pandemic.  

So what if Jack Dorsey decides that San Francisco has too many taxes and decides to move twitter and Square’s corporate offices out of San Francisco to a tax friendly area.   And other corporations follow.   PG&E is moving their headquarters out of San Francisco I think to Oakland.  I just read where they sold their building in San Francisco.

What this means for San Francisco is the loss of the taxes on the tech companies and potentially other corporations and their CEO’s salaries, loss of payroll tax revenue, and a higher rate of vacancies in office buildings.  Businesses that support office workers will suffer because there will be less folks to support.

In fact some of this may already be happening because of the pandemic and people wanting to work remotely.

Then what?

This scenario could happen in any city that looks to big businesses and CEO’s salaries as their personal cash cows.    Tax them too much and they pick up their marbles and move to a tax friendly play yard.  

Do I think corporations and the rich should pay taxes?  Yes.  And I think all corporations should pay taxes which means closing the loopholes.  I think they should pay their fair share.  

Problem with that is deciding what is “their fair share”.  I don’t believe 60-70% progressive tax or a wealth tax is the way to go.  I think closing all loopholes and getting rid of trump’s tax cuts is a good starting point for “paying their fair share”.

I do think just “throwing money” at the problem and hoping it will go away is just dumb as it very rarely works.  Perfect example of that is the homeless.  I first became aware of the homeless when I started working in San Francisco in the late 1960’s.  Over the years I watched states, counties and cities throw millions of dollars at the homeless problems and here we are all these years later and the problem still exists.  

Maybe instead of wasting time and energy railing at the rich and corporations,  that time would be better spent coming up with solutions that actually work and ways to removing roadblocks that often stand in the way of solving the problems that face this country. 

We may just find that by making sure everyone and every corporation pay a fair amount of taxes that there is enough money to solve the problems that face this country if we have a solution that will work.  And if not, then we can address what is “their fair share”.  

IMO

 
Nevermind...it's me who's got the Bezos threads confused!

www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/03/16/fact-check-house-speaker-nancy-pelosis-net-worth-inflated-meme/4707087001/

You can take your best guess between $40 and 250 million

I read a book about 20 years ago which divided people into 7 socio-economic classes. And this is exactly what they said. The biggest spenders in terms of total dollars are the upper middle class. The biggest spenders in terms of total wealth are the poor. And I think that's what @zingermack is getting at here. It's not that she begrudges spending on a yacht. Because surely that benefits a whole lot of people in terms of the manufacturing of that yacht. What she is upset about is the fact that the uber wealthy have more money than they can reasonably spend. And that money could benefit a lot of people who would spend it. Those poor people spending the vast majority of their income are as a class, bigger than the uber wealthy. They are doing the same part to keep the economy going and funding things that keep others making money.

I don't begrudge anyone success. Surely if you are, I am glad for you. I also don't begrudge Bezos his yacht. That yacht is feeding a lot of people. What I do find deplorable is the amount of money he's sitting on in his bank account is more than he can ever spend. Some of that money should be used for the common good. Again, it sits in his bank. Poor people would spend it. If we are going to argue that he's employing all these people to make his yacht, we have to look at relatively speaking, how much are the poor people who could benefit from some of his money (taxes) and they are also injecting money into the economy. The argument works both ways.

This is my position. I don't begrudge the uber wealthy of their using their money to inject into the economy. Spending, though, keeps the economy going. Spending is what keeps businesses in business, people working, and the economy going. If you can't spend it, then you need to funnel it to people who will. That's where my position lands. Sure, people need a reasonable amount of savings, but spending is where it's at as far as driving the economy. Poor people spend a greater percentage of their income than the rest of the socio-economic classes. We can see this just in how stimulus checks work. Consumer spending was impacted very little by the pandemic, yet unemployment was high. Watching the economy work during this pandemic should have taught us some lessons on economics.

But it's not sitting in a bank account - his wealth is in Amazon stock. His salary is $86,000 and he also earned about $1.5 million in bonus - which has been pretty consistent over the last few years. When he sells his stock he'll pay taxes. I have zero appetite to force people to liquidate the stock in the company they built. If he never sells his estate will pay taxes.  

I don't care how he spends his money, but I do believe he should have a higher tax rate.