Commenting a long while after the thread was active, but... there's no reason we couldn't rename other rounds too. The seed round could be the "traction round" and the Series A-Z rounds would be the "scale rounds". Before you have traction, you basically just have a concept, so you have a "concept round".
Well, if the government is going to drop money from helicopters, I would at least prefer they ATTEMPT to do so in a way that might lead to some scientific advancement. They could also just send everyone a check for $1000, but although that would create some demand, it wouldn't likely lead to investments in long-term payoff high-risk science. I understand and somewhat sympathize with the idea that we don't want the government telling us to do with our money, and maybe we should let people spend that $1000 however they want, but I'm proposing trying to kill two birds with one stone here and also at least ATTEMPT to put the money initially in the hands of people trying to create something rather than just consume some basic goods.
This is a really interesting observation. I've never heard someone mention a "buffer/holding effect" before, but that makes a lot of sense.
I wonder if it's something like... the average individual spends half of whatever cash they have available every year... but the average business that takes investment lets 6 to 12 months of it sit in accounts. I realize the bank would then loan against the money in those accounts, but is it "turtles all the way down"?
I'll have to refresh my understanding of fractional reserve banking, but I don't think a loan from Bank A being put into Bank B and so on can lead to infinite money supply. If I remember correctly it somehow leads to some multiple of the input money being generated. Here's a Wikipedia article about it:
At some point all the institutions sitting on their money eventually does result in that money being sat on, and not being circulated through the economy.
Right. For example, if we don't like the idea of someone with wealth but no income needing to sell off part of their land or stocks every year, we could attach a debt to them that would be paid later when they eventually do sell some of their assets, or upon their death, etc. This could be arranged like a government loan with a low fixed interest rate, so if they wait 10 years to pay their taxes they'd owe their taxes plus some reasonable interest rate.
Feasibility is a valid concern. Here's what I think.
Stocks are traded on public exchanges. Land and buildings stay in one place. Private jets need to land at airports and they each have a tail number. Most things to be sold efficiently are sold in public marketplaces. There are probably some assets that are hard to track, just like there is currently income that is hard to track. Some people are paid in cash and don't report it. A whole multi-billion-dollar black market of drugs, prostitution, etc. exists that is largely not income taxed. It happens. But in general income tax works, and a wealth tax would too.
I'm coming around to the opinion that taxes on income are a bad idea. Income flows to people as they're trying to accumulate wealth, trying to climb from lower to middle to upper class. Higher taxes on income, especially highly progressive taxes, make it harder for people to move between social classes.
The focus on income tax creates a situation where the person who makes $200k/yr but has a net worth of $0 gets taxed far more than the person whose investments bring them $100k/yr and they have a net worth of $2,500,000.
Oh, and their lifestyle might be about the same despite the disparity in income, because one of them needs to work for a living so they'll need to live somewhere close to jobs, pay more for transportation, etc.
Higher income tax is great, if you're already wealthy. If I was wealthy, I'd be very happy people if stay focused on that. But I think taxing accumulated wealth is a much better way of leveling the playing field over time and also making sure capital stays in productive use. France already has something like a 0.5-1% "solidarity tax" on wealth, and it's a progressive tax.
According to Piketty, the return on capital has historically been around 5% per year, and returns are better at scale. For multi-billion dollar funds, the rates are around 9-10%. The "Financial Independence/ Retire Early" people who plan for pessimistic scenarios say to expect 4% return. Let's say it's reliable to expect 2-3%.
At $10M a person can expect about $200-300k in income. If we have a wealth tax of 1% their investment income after taxes reduces to $100-200k. If they want to maintain their previous standard of living, they need to make about $100k per year.
At $100M let's say economies of scale start to happen and even in a pessimistic scenario you can expect a 4% return. If we have a 2% wealth tax at this point, the person can still expect an investment-only income of $2M per year.
You can see where this is going. At $1B with a 5% pessimistic return, 3% wealth tax, $20M investment income. At $10B with a 6% pessimistic return, 4% wealth tax, $200M investment income.
The nice side effect of this is that the mere scale of capital doesn't provide competitive advantage. The wealth tax should be designed to even out the advantage of scale so that larger accumulations of capital need to be put to best use.
Putting some numbers on the napkin... The US has an aggregate net worth of $85 trillion dollars. The federal budget is $4 trillion. Assuming a power law distribution of net worth, let's guesstimate an average 2% tax on that $85 trillion, which comes out to $1.7 trillion. We could roughly cut income taxes in half or eliminate them except at very high levels ($1M+) if we used a wealth tax instead.
The important thing to note here is that the wealth tax still leaves about 2% investment income, it doesn't reduce the total over time. I think it's great that people can accumulate wealth and then live on it, or pass it on to the next generation. But it would be great if we can keep the income at around 1-2% so that the nearly guaranteed increase in accumulated wealth is the same or less than the growth rate of the economy, meaning that people who build businesses today have the ability to reach the same heights as those who built businesses yesterday, without extraordinary luck or blunders by those with wealth.
And a major reason workers are spent out is because of high rents. If the US would build enough housing in the major employment centers that the highly skilled workers wouldn't spend 90% of their after-tax income on fixed expenses, they'd have more money to spend to drive other businesses.
All the disposable income is being sucked into rents, and eventually that will make the economy run slower and slower, fewer sales to be made, businesses to close, more people to be unemployed, in a feedback loop until all the capital is held on one side of the table and there are a bunch of unemployed people on the other side who are willing to work, able to work, and want to buy things, but have no capital.
Instead of injecting money top-down through the Federal Reserve and large banks, they could inject it bottom-up in selected industries. Invest $1 trillion in biotech. Some will succeed and produce amazing advances. Most will fail, but they'll still drive employment, education, services, etc. targeting that industry, driving down the cost of inputs to the biotech sector for decades.
Of course, this can be done not completely blindly, by investing 10 to 1 with existing investors, or providing a guarantee to return 50% of lost capital, or having milestones companies need to hit, or have experts in the field provide "votes" toward getting higher levels of funding after examining their progress so far.
For starters, have you visited every major city in Europe, including historically famous cities, sites of historical battles, capitals of smaller countries? Sampled the local cuisine in each? Tried the local hobbies? Danced in a local club? Walked the Via Appia in Rome, visited the site of the "300 Spartans" battle against the Persians?
For closer to home, assuming you don't want to travel the world or you've already done that, I personally don't think I'd ever get tired of just enjoying life. Going to my favorite places, watching the city below from the top of a large hill, alternating favorite restaurants, continuing to spend time with friends, reading new books, and continuing scientific and intellectual pursuits.
If you want to discuss this further feel free to email me at [email protected].
You could make a delete button which merely opens a popup to explain that they do not save it in the first place. That way if they're looking for a delete button, they'll find it, but it will give them the right information.
Someone please release a generic "generate event" button! (Or please tell me where I can get one... Googling for "wifi enabled button" provides irrelevant results).
Below someone mentioned this: https://flic.io/
But apparently it is only for pre-order right now.
Update: I searched for this on Amazon and noticed:
"Available for Pre-order. This item will be released on August 31, 2015."
So, it seems it will be released not that long from now...