DonkeyCigars

We have, what, five Trillion dollar companies now that Tesla is one as of Monday? We can't have Trillion dollar companies without creating billionaires. You disincentivize the ability to become a billionaire and you limit the business and GDP/growth/business will suffer. If the argument is "we don't actually need to be constantly innovating and creating and advancing through new products, services and experiences and there is a threshold where doing so actually is a net negative (i.e. creating billionaires, etc.)" then I can see the argument to cap people's potential and earnings with something like Longhorn_fans proposal. You will get a Soviet style society of bureaucrats with all the mediocre stylings that society affords. Brain drain will happen and everyone with the ability to do and make and create who want to earn will diaspora to whichever country is smart enough to cater to these folks. Then you are left with a bunch of people who look around at the stagnation and wonder "what happened to all that free stuff I was supposed to be getting solely by virtue of being born over the right geographic dirt?"

I've taken many insults from you, but this sir might be the last straw!

Season 2 writers were way ahead of them there.

This used to be. The answer? The Apple Watch. My wife wears the watch so she can't NOT get a phone call when I need her. In fact, I'd say 90% of her phone calls she takes are on her wrist these days.

How much is enough is a mix of personal opinion and moving target depending on a variety of macro and micro trends (inflation, market conditions, time value of money equations, etc. et al). If you are asking me my personal opinion; $1bn seems reasonable.

Exactly.

My first reaction to that is "Yuck", so I can't imagine what the reaction is to most people with either wealth or line of sight to wealth or those that have the abilities, skills and qualities to achieve life-changing wealth (aspirational voters).

That's true, though I'd argue property ownership/investment is a much more stable vehicle historically. I think a further argument is around the negative collateral damage and what would happen to investments and innovations that are moon/loonshots versus finding other ways to grow and keep your money, which would reduce the taxable base as well. Also I edited to add to late before you quoted, but taxing billionaires is a good idea and I agree with you, but I think this is a better route:

Taxing billionaires is fine, but you simply can't tax unrealized gains-- it's a dynamic nightmare (do you refund money when the investments tank during fluctuations?) and it's unconstitutional. The argument can be made the smartest thing the Dems did was let this idea get killed because if it went to a Supreme Court full of conservatives (which it 100% would have) then it would have been killed and the precedent would have been set in a way Dems wouldn't have liked. The "Super rate" idea I was reading about this AM seems like a much better idea:

Why are a couple of you folks jumping to "affordable housing" with this gambit versus the very obvious and publicly stated benefits of "cutting down build time, supply chain issues and labor bottlenecks while also cutting down on Co2/carbon footprint concerns at the same premium housing price"?

Now you've done it...

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/stop-shopping-global-supply-chain-shipping-delays/620465/ "Worried About the Supply Chain? Stop Shopping."

Gotcha. Mileage obviously varies, but I see way more soft value in a college experience for my kids at a place like TCU or SMU or Tulane than having them live at home and work the drive-thru while hammering out basics. Maybe it’s changed and I’m archaic but college is more than just what is learned in the auditorium lecture halls, to me. I have multiple degrees and still the most valuable connections come from the undergrad connections and fraternity brothers and others connected with; multiple jobs that got me in through the back door that way, multiple deals done and at least one start up was done through those relationships. In the grand scheme of things it is a better investment is my thesis, but I also have paid for private school K4-12th grade, so my POV may be skewed in that I’m used to education costs being budgeted and accounted as an overall investment in experience and social and culture and not just rote education.

In the same way that it's never been mandatory for the right person or persons with the right attributes (smart, creative, curious, innovative, resilient, etc.). For the average Joe Sixpack of below average to average intelligence like myself and most of America, it's a worthwhile investment as a heuristic to signal a virtue to the rest of society (e.g. employers, peers, etc.)

I absolutely was not talking about realtors (no offense to the california realtor gil who is the exception to the rule). I'm talking about RE knowledge workers as RE professionals extends to bankers and analysts who work for bulge brackets and boutique finance, too, right? You should know this; you are in NYC right? Unless midtown means Houston in which case, well, speaking of hilarious...

To troph's point and many others, it seems a lot of folks are thinking alike:

Gotcha, sorry. Been a busy week :)

This was my problem. I built a house in a desirable area and started the contract/build pre-Covid. During the amazing run up, from the time I contracted and the time closed, the equity gained (albeit the build time was a protracted and delayed due to Covid and early supply chain issues-- think 10-11 months vs. 4-6 average) was nearly $225k. Wife and I flirted with the idea to just close, take possession and then immediately sell and net $200k or whatever and chalk it up to, for once in our lives, being lucky and gaining good fortune blindly. But then upon further investigation, where do we live? Any another home we engage will just be the $225k higher and it's simply a reshuffling the cards in the deck, unless you move out of state or 2 hours away from a metro area. Ultimately didn't make sense to flip and moving in to a home we knew we would somewhat like (we chose all the variables in the new build, after all) and having the equity in our back pocket while watching the market develop was less risky to us. All that to say, I think these are interesting issues and complex problems and fascinating times and am enjoying the RE professionals perspectives here.

re: Billionaire tax: NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran wrote that the proposal is “perhaps the worst thought-through and most ineffective attempt ever at rewriting tax code.” Questions like, “What do you do when an investment goes down?” “How would they come up with the money without selling other assets?” and, “Is this even constitutional?” are not easily answered.

Also, as I hope I've satiated your curiosity with my response, I'd be curious to get your feedback after reading that article on both the point being made, the dotted line I drew from the article to Trump/this thread, and any other takeaways you might have had. Especially since I feel you are unfairly skeptical, at times, about my sources because I thought it was obvious I only read reputable and learned literature and quarterlies. 😛

My point is, if in the grand scheme of things $200k isn't a lot of money and it's all relative, then an investment to a recognizable school if for no other reason than the experience and check-box degree, is a fine time and worth it. YMMV

The source was BBC, here is the link: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210922-would-plato-tweet-the-ancient-greek-guide-to-social-media Here are some quotes: When philosophy began, the written word in the Greek-speaking world was still very young – and so ideas were often disseminated as oral-performative acts in public spaces, not unlike the epic poems of the previous age. Long before philosophers were writing books and papers, their thoughts had to be transmitted in a way that could grab their audience's attention – there was an element of public display. Early philosophers developed highly elaborate public personas The influential pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes presented his ideas in the context of rhapsodic contests, where poets vied for prizes and renown – philosophical rap competitions, of a sort. Early philosophers also developed highly elaborate public personas. Empedocles, who's credited with inventing the idea of the four Classical elements, made his public appearances with extravagant flair – a purple robe, a golden belt, sandals of bronze – and referred to himself as an incarnate god. Empedocles made public appearances with extravagant flair, and referred to himself as a god (Credit: Alamy) If these modes of self-presentation had included the ability to take video, you would have had some potentially very viral philosophers. They were, in their manner, akin to content creators and influencers, in that their intellectual authority consisted not only in their ideas, but their performative eloquence, and the cult of personality with which they surrounded themselves. Perhaps the most famous ancient Greek philosopher managed to disseminate his ideas without ever writing anything at all. Socrates, as we're told, conducted in-the-moment philosophical conversations, usually in public places, in which he challenged conventional wisdom on various topics – provoking his fellow citizens, and, fatally for himself, the government. His art was verbal, but his expressions were as transient as a tweet or a post, a virtuous troll in the comments sections of Athenian intellectual life. We may be returning to a state in which a thinker's claim to wisdom relies on their ability to effectively perform it His exploits are recreated for us in the writings of his students, most famously Plato. In many ways these Socratic dialogues, which are the fountainhead of the whole philosophical tradition that follows, can be read as a fictionalised biography of a career influencer – the Collected Twitter Threads of Socrates, liberally reinvented, yet perhaps faithful in spirit. In the age of social media, we may be returning to a state in which a thinker's claim to wisdom relies on their ability to effectively perform it – with the additional requirement that they're able to transmute that performance into content.

Faced with the fastest-rising real estate prices in U.S. history, Zillow Group Inc. tweaked the algorithms that power its home-flipping operation to make higher offers. It ended up with so many winning bids that it had to stop making new offers on properties. Now, after buying more homes in the third quarter than it ever has before, the company is working through a backlog of houses that need to be fixed up and sold while facing an unpleasant reality: Slowing price appreciation means it will sell many homes at a loss. … The shift has been on display in places such as Atlanta and Phoenix, two markets where home prices have been surging. Zillow’s roughly 250 active listings in Phoenix are currently priced at 6% less, on average, than what the company paid for the homes. That amounts to a $29,000 discount on the typical property, according to data compiled by Mike DelPrete, a real estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Every key metric I’ve seen from Zillow over the past few months just doesn’t make sense,” DelPrete said. “It’s like it’s making decisions two to three months too late relative to the market.” I for one am excited for housing market structure to replicate equity market structure. Eventually people will list 100 houses for sale to spoof Zillow’s algorithm into lowering its price, and then buy one house from Zillow cheap.

Is the pivot that $200k is too much to make? That’s barely getting by where I live.

Ivy League and Little Ivies are no brainer good ideas. If $200k, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t a big deal, it’s a no brainer (IMO) to send the kid to UT or A&M or TCU or wherever you live near and are culturally aligned for a) the network/social b) the experience and c) the lifelong check mark of having gone to a culturally or regionally recognized school for any professional formalities as we aren’t at a place in society where not having a 4 year mouth breathing degree is a mere luxury or seen as superlative yet (if ever?). This is how I’m thinking about it at least as my kids barrel towards college age.