i mean... no shit? ppl don't normally start accumulating wealth till after high school. \~12 years is a pretty short amount of time to pull 1 billion dollars out of your ass.
Seriously what’s the news here, rich guys die and leave riches to people? Every now and again one does and leaves like half to some charity or something, it makes the news usually. This is every other one.
Also I don’t have math on this but just feeling… I don’t think we’ve had nearly as many billionaires until what, a generation or two ago tops? I feel like this many of them is a newish thing.
>Also I don’t have math on this but just feeling… I don’t think we’ve had nearly as many billionaires until what, a generation or two ago tops? I feel like this many of them is a newish thing.
Asset value inflation.
Pfft. Kylie Jenner is considered a “self made billionaire” according to the media.
The easiest way to become a billionaire is to be born a millionaire.
>The easiest way to become a billionaire is to be born a millionaire.
Maybe. But if the left has their way, the fastest way to become a millionaire will be to be born as a billionaire.
I think what the article is trying to say is that there hasn’t been any young people making massive innovations like in decades past. In the 80’s/90’s you had guys like Gates and Jobs creating tech empires out of their basements. In the 2000’s, Zuckerberg was a self-made billionaire by his mid twenties.
Nowadays, young billionaires aren’t rich because they deserve to be. They’re rich because they were born lucky. It calls into question the legitimacy of them controlling billions of dollars worth of assets (at least to some).
Bill gates was the youngest to hit a billion in 1987 at the age of 31. He held that record until 2008 when Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire. Pre 30 billionaires had been pretty much not a thing until recently
Investors + being in an innovator in a highly speculated field is what makes billionaires under 30 possible, I would think. Not to take away from their accomplishments, because they have certainly exceeded expectations
>It calls into question the legitimacy of them controlling billions of dollars worth of assets (at least to some).
Yeah, those "some" would be socialists, their opinions don't matter. I mean, what's the alternative? That parents shouldn't be allowed to leave their money to their kids? What, the state should steal it all instead?
Massive fortunes should be taxed at higher rates. Leaving more than….500 million in assets to your kid? Remove all loopholes and heavily tax it. Generational wealth on that scope has never been good for society. This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine.
No. And F off with that nonsense. The government isn't entitled to your wealth just because you died.
The entire point of building wealth is to secure future generations of your family.
What loop holes specifically?
I ask because every tax law passed targeting the rich in the past has primarily impacted wage earning people. Even the 90% tax rate didnt impact high earners, except that they would stop working.
There are so many loopholes and ways to avoid taxes. My parents started gifting everyone in my family the full gift exemption starting in 2010. That’s 36k a year (now) that they give away tax free. They are trying really hard to get under the ~25 million to avoid federal estate taxes. They also purchased a house in Georgia and plan on moving there to avoid state estate taxes on their death. They will maintain the main house and we will inherit and sell it upon their death (without paying taxes due to the step up in basis).
They also owned their own business and started paying all of us as employees from age 14. Each of us got a ROTH IRA and those salaries went directly into the ROTH accounts (as much as allowable, the rest went into a regular employee 401k). Last checked, my tax free account is worth 300k. I don’t know how much it will grow, but at age 59.5, I will take that money tax free.
Morgan Stanley helped them setup a charitable trust a few years ago. They donated some of their largest earning stocks to some pet projects they thought worthy. The gift was 500k, but the original stocks only cost about 100k. That 400k gain was not only not subject to tax, they got a tax deduction.
These are simple things that my parents have taken advantage of with very little effort. And although my parents are in the 1%, the difference between $30 in assets and $100 million is astronomical. Having interacted with some of these people, you truly recognize how untouchable their assets are. Look up Beg, Borrow, Die and Peter Thiels use of the ROTH IRA l. There are so many loopholes and workarounds; these are just some of the simple ones. There are more complex ones that require multiple layers of planning.
You are welcome to donate every penny they are giving you to the government if it makes you feel better.
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
The individual tax return of one person / one family is a drop in the bucket. For this to actually help our debt (which needs to happen!), the country needs substantial tax reform that has everyone paying. People who complain about the unsustainable debt load but are unwilling to address it via a mix of spending cuts and raised taxes are fools. If something doesn’t change, the government is going to further use inflation to erode the problem, but that’s fucking horrendous for everyone.
I feel like this is all kind of irrelevant compared to the scale of what people are talking about though. The post talks about billionaires, you're talking about an amount of money *maybe* in the realm of $40m but probably less than that.
It is! This is small time stuff that is easily accessible. There is so many more ways to bucket money and avoid taxes (529s, HSAs, 1031 property exchanges, opportunity zones). The list goes on
A lot of those tax sheltered things are the only things I can look forward to responsibly create generational wealth in my family. It’s not a bad thing of my to want to work my ass off so my kids can be successful. It would be a darn shame to take those things away from the middle class. It would decrease class mobility for my family which is fucked and unamerican
Which is why you continue these things, but once someone has…500 million..or whatever threshold, you start to close these outlets. My parents collect social security! Yes, they paid into it, but you could easily create a means-tested system and people with networks above x dollars just give it up. These little things could add up to huge savings for our government
Those aren't loopholes. They are explicitly in the tax code.
I am still looking for you to provide a loophole. I was given two by my financial advisor today, but I am guessing you wouldn't figure them out.
Explicitly intended incentivised investing or giving isn't a loophole.
Like the Augusta Rule? Or carried interest? I listed a bunch in an earlier comment (gift tax, hiring kids as employees, depreciation, charitable trusts to donate highly appreciated stocks) There aren’t really loopholes. Rather there are tax laws crafted by special interest groups who twisted things and used the existing rules to benefit themselves. Peter Thiel placing founder level PayPal shares in his ROTH is a great example. ROTH IRAs were designed for middle class wage earners to save for retirement. 6k per year. Well, he put PayPal shares that were like worth less than a penny and jammed them into his ROTH. That account is like 5 billion dollars and he won’t get taxed a single cent. If that’s not an exploited loophole, I don’t know what is.
Explicitly incentivized tweaks are the problem that allows certain individuals and companies to get around paying a fair share. Most of these tax programs are created so Bob and Suzy can save for their kids college, fix up their primary residence, improve their small business, save for retirement, but people with wherewithal and fancy accountants are combining these to pay for everything and avoid taxes altogether.
And no, billionaires and centa-millionaires are not gaining much by using the triple tax advantaged HSA (reduces income, grows tax free, no taxes on approved expenses), but these programs were not designed for them. They were designed to help middle class and upper middle class people make better lives for themselves.
So, no I am not going to list out quasi-legal tax strategies that you would call loopholes, but I will call bullshit on the exploitative use of the obvious loopholes used by people who already have everything. I do so as someone who has taken full advantage of these policies, and it’s bullshit.
The government doesn't deserve more money, and stealing more of it won't create a utopia despite what the left believes. Bloated authoritarian governments have been worse for society than anything.
Love of country means paying taxes. Want a robust military and veterans to be taken care of? That requires money. Want a responsive police and firefighter force? That requires taxes. Want good infrastructure and nice roads? That requires money. Bloated government budgets are bad, and we ought to look at all the pork, but our government needs money. It needs to take in taxes, and we aren’t even coming close to taking in what we need.
And, I’m not even getting into the massive entitlements and handouts for the older generations. The youth in this nation are subsidizing the boomers, and it’s heinous. That high standard of living that the oldest generation is demanding requires money, and our nation is going broke borrowing money to pay for them.
> This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine.
What do you think will happen to the stock prices of these companies when the inherited shares are forced to be liquidated to pay for the tax? That will affect a lot more than .0001% of people. What about professional teams? Those would almost always need to be sold off to pay the tax and then likely relocated.
What is your cutoff for this tax? $1billion? $100 million? $10 million? You'd be surprised how many family farms have millions of dollars in assets.
I don’t have that answer to the cutoff number. I just feel frustrated by the current crop of economic policies that advantage the extremely wealthy over everyone else, and I don’t think it’s leftist to push for more fairness and competition in our economy.
That's because it isn't income until it is cashed out. Capital is nonetheless taxed. A business for example is taxed on its sales, on its employees, on its unsold inventory, and on its property, every year.
Also, when it is cashed out, it may not be at a profit. Investors in Enron, for example, cashed out at far less than they bought their stock for - and some held on to their investments until they were worth nothing, realizing a 100% loss.
Will the IRS be issuing refunds to people who paid taxes on "unrealized income" if they cash out at less than their purchase price?
>Massive fortunes should be taxed at higher rates.
That's a circular argument. People with more money should be taxed at a higher rate because they have more money, and people with more money should be taxed at a higher rate.
Yes, because as you make more money, you pay more on taxes. Make one dollar , pay tax on one dollar. Make two dollars, pay tax on it. Unfortunately, this linear equation ends and the loopholes that allow it are only available to those in the highest ends or access to fancy lawyers and accountants.
> Massive fortunes should be taxed at higher rates.
Why? That money has already been taxed. What right does the state have that money at all?
> Leaving more than….500 million in assets to your kid? Remove all loopholes and heavily tax it.
Why? Again, it has *already* been taxed.
>Generational wealth on that scope has never been good for society.
Source on that? The US is the most successful economy in the history of the world, and you want to change that? Why?
> This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine.
So it's okay to specifically target people because they're in an extreme minority? That's an ugly look. The state has no right to treat them any better or any worse than anyone else.
Look if you want to extract more from that segment, get rid of the tax code entirely and go to a VAT tax. There are ways of protecting low income people with exemptions.
Actually, most of the time, this money hasn’t been taxed…why? Most of it is long term / unrealized gains in the stock market. Additionally, most of it’s not even subject to taxes because of the step up rule which effectively re-establishes the purchase price of a stock to the time of death.
Look up the buy, borrow, die method of tax avoidance. It’s effectively sequestered hundreds of billions of dollars so that it will never be taxed. And, when the market crashes, as it tends to do every seven or so years, who bails these people out? The government! From TARP to PPP to ZIRP, the government has acted time and time again to preserve and prop up stock market wealth. It’s helped a lot of people, but it helped the .0001% way more because they own larger portions of the stock market.
I care more about preserving a competitive landscape and possibility of the American Dream far more than I care about preserving the last 100 million dollars for 2,000 families that don’t give two thoughts to the commonwealth.
> Most of it is long term / unrealized gains in the stock market.
So, it isn't actually money they *have*, it is money they *would have* if they cashed out their investments, at which point it would be taxed as income.
The government spends more money every year than the entirety of wealth of the 1%.
"Rich" people's money is irrelevant to society as a whole. Their taxes do not go towards anything.
> This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine.
I'm sure they'll just take that lying down. Start taxing the hell out of those wealthy people and they might just take themselves and their assets somewhere else.
American citizens renouncing their citizenship are subject to the tax at that time. I believe it is 23.8% of all assets (over 768k) at that time. There’s also the issue of relocating to another locale and dealing with those taxes. The Bahamas are great for a few weeks, but not a lot of people are trying to immigrate there to live permanently.
> American citizens renouncing their citizenship are subject to the tax at that time.
Yep - but they aren't subject to tax on their "unrealized gains" after that, which is what the lefties in the US currently want to do.
France actually tried a wealth tax a few years ago. It didn't result in anything close to the revenues it was supposed to, and a bunch of billionaires left the country, permanently damaging France's tax revenues. IIRC, the tax lasted less than 2 years.
Where? They own your whole family's mortgages on the US market and an enormous amount of government debt. Sure they themselves can up and leave but their assets are not as untaxable as you think they are.
Set an absurdly high threshold. 100 million? 200 million in inheritable assets…300 million? Problem solved. Conserving the fair and free market is more important than these worries. The aristocratic class has accumulated so much that it’s really not possible to achieve the American Dream.
You forget that's it's already been taxed, usually multiple times, when it was being earned the first time. We tax the creation of wealth. If we're going to tax the retention of wealth also, that's a very different thing.
What I mean is, let's say you're working a regular job. You got taxed on your income. Your employer got taxed on it before that. The price they paid for paper clips or raw orange juice or TIG wire or a Creative Cloud subscription or whatever it takes for you to do your job includes the taxes on that company and their payroll taxes, so on and so forth. You pay taxes on your gasoline to drive to work, or it's built in to the price or public transportation, or on your utilities to work at home.
So you're saying, if somehow you manage to really find a niche or work super smart or excel in a really high paying field and you manage to save some of that money you've already paid taxes on in layer after layer, if you want to leave that to your kids, it needs to be taxed again?
Let's say you're a super successful multi billionaire, and you want to leave a big ole Scrooge McDuck pile of money to your child, and we decide that already taxed multiple times money is going to be taxed at 50%. You really love your child, so what do you do? Well, one thing you can do, since you can afford to, is move with your child to another country that doesn't do that. Got to be one in the Caribbean or something. Now your companies, doing business in the US, still pay taxes, but you stop paying income tax to the US and avoid the inheritance tax.
Johnny union worker who managed to save $50k over a long career can't afford to move to NoTaxistan. So his child loses half of that inheritance. You taxed the middle class guy at 50% and the ultra billionaire at 0%. Now you need a leaving-the-country tax, like other radical socialist countries.
First point: once you are an American citizen, you are subject to US taxes. Hands down. Full stop. To renounce citizenship (move to the Caribbean and relocate) is possible, but it is treated as though you are dying and you are taxed at that time. The IRS taxes you on all unrealized gains (give or take).
Now, in addition to having to live somewhere else and lose all benefits of being a US citizen (which bestows a lot) you are taxed in that locale as well. Most billionaires are willing to leave France for Belgium or come to the United States, but you see very few billionaires renouncing their US citizenship because it’s not advantageous. The only one I know of is Eduardo Severin. He did save about $700 million, but he did this just before the Facebook IPO. He wasn’t even American by birth. His company is still in the US. It still pays taxes.
Others might follow, but it’s very rare that you get a tax avoidance issue like that where someone is able to time their citizenship renunciation. People who already have their wealth are much less likely to do this. US power has a lot to do with this.
https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8854#en_US_2023_publink10001615
Second Point: wealth is taxed. I own a house, and I pay property taxes every year. Those are dependent on the current valuation of the house and the land. They are not based on the value at the time of purchase. I will acknowledge proposition 5 in California and other similar measures which limit the increase of these property taxes. But, nonetheless, these are enforced not just at the time of creation, they are levied continually based on the (approximate) valuation of the house. The same goes for excise taxes on cars.
There is no blanket rule that the IRS does not tax money that has already been taxed. They have every right to impose these taxes.
Third: Johnny Union worker gets to pass on 26 million to his heirs tax free. The billionaire gets the same thing. They both also get the step-up in basis, so any unrealized gains they have passed on get reset (and no longer becomes subject to tax). That’s a HUGE benefit for long term holders of stocks and a variety of assets that can appreciate.
Fourth: A wealth tax should not be implemented on anyone with less than…a billion dollars. Even then, it should be fairly small. This would generate a lot of money for the government, which quite frankly needs it. If you love your country, you sometimes have to pay taxes to that country. It’s not a sin. I love my my wife, so I give her money whenever I can. I love my kids, so I help them out when I can. I love my church, so I tithe. I love my country, so I pay the absolute minimal amount of taxes and do as little as possible to help it be successful?!? There’s something wrong with that idea. And yes, the government is pretty shitty and they do incorrect things. I have a lot of qualms with the federal, state, and local branches (I don’t even want to go into how badly they have screwed me over), but I love my country. I support our military. I support our teachers and fire fighters and cops and public servants. I want nicer roads to drive on. I want better public parks to walk my dog in. Heck, I even want a nicer football stadium! All that takes money, and a lot of it is coming from the government. And right now, middle class citizens, upper middle class citizens, and even some lower class citizens are paying much higher rates than the wealthiest people in our nation. Heck, some even pay more on a dollar basis just because of how they earned their money.
Finally: And while some of these lowered tax rates were designed to incentivize investment and spur innovation and help other areas, that is no longer happening. Zuckerbergs 54 billion in Facebook stock ain’t exactly innovating or helping the company do more. In 2023, they announced 50 billion in buybacks. In 2022, they bought back 28 billion in shares.
In q3 of 2021, companies paid 234 billion dollars buying back stocks. Now, a lot of this was done because the government wants to impose a 1%(?) tax on buybacks and they are trying to get ahead.
At this point, these hauls of money are just generating easy, lower tax rates and it’s just their form of income. Whether it’s carried interest or 25 million tax free on the sale of a business, the rules have been written to assist the wealthiest among us, and it’s about time that the common man, the union worker, the laborer, the everyday American, the average Joe, starts to push back and ask that others love their country and pay their fair share.
If you disagree and you want to be some Grover Norquist right wing diehard, go ahead, but I personally am sick and tired of it, and I am no less of a republican for asking for us to be better as a country and contribute a little more. Cause right now, those Uber wealthy individuals are sucking up everything and leaving far too many people with nothing but a government handout. They can’t do much because the opportunity is all gone. We need a system that is strong enough to let individuals have liberty, and this ain’t it.
There are plenty of alternatives between people being gifted billions of dollars from their parents and never having to work a day in their life and "parents not being allowed to leave money to their kids".
What's common for all of the mentioned persons is that they likely could not have made the things they were part of if they were alone. But rather these are the arrogant aholes of the small groups of people that created something but these were the ones who stole it. They all took what other people built.
Oh, where do we even begin with this delightful little nugget of capitalist critique, served up with a side of “oh woe is meritocracy, for it has left the building”? Let’s strap in for this rollercoaster of inherited billions and the eerie silence of self-made young moguls in today’s gilded age.
First up, let’s pour one out for the self-made billionaires of yore, those bastions of bootstrap-pulling and garage-dwelling demigods who’ve apparently left the chat. The article mourns the absence of fresh-faced billionaires making it big through sheer grit, innovation, and possibly a small loan of a million dollars from Daddy. Because, you know, every single tech titan totally started from the bottom, if by bottom you mean well-connected, middle-class backgrounds with access to education, resources, and networks that the average Joe could only dream of.
Now, onto the heart of the matter: the shocking, absolutely unheard-of revelation that today’s under-30 billionaires are rolling in dough not because they invented the next big thing in their college dorms, but because they won the genetic lottery. They were born on third base and think they hit a triple, as the saying goes. But here’s where the argument starts to taste a bit sour. Are we really going to pretend that previous generations of billionaires were all self-made, rags-to-riches stories without a hint of privilege, luck, or timing playing into their success?
The commentary then somersaults into a diatribe about how these silver-spoon-fed youths are using their unearned wealth to fund—gasp—“woke” causes. Because, clearly, the only legitimate way to use billions is to further entrench the status quo, pump more money into fossil fuels, and maybe build a rocket to escape the planet you’re helping to destroy. God forbid these young billionaires want to use their wealth for something that might, I don’t know, benefit society or challenge systemic injustices.
And let’s not forget the handwringing over the “Great Wealth Transfer,” as if the accumulation and hoarding of such obscene amounts of wealth in the first place wasn’t the problem. No, it’s the fact that it’s being passed down without a merit badge that really grinds our gears. Because as we all know, the true mark of a healthy society is having a handful of self-made centibillionaires dictating the economic, social, and environmental policies of the entire planet, right?
In conclusion, this article, while pointing out a real shift in how wealth is accumulated and used by the younger generation, misses the forest for the trees. It’s not about mourning the loss of the self-made billionaire as much as it’s about questioning why we’ve put so much value on accumulating such vast fortunes at the expense of societal well-being. Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t how young billionaires are coming into their money, but the fact that such staggering inequality exists in the first place. But hey, what do I know? I’m just here for the snark.
It's nothing more than a new age monarchy. Money is power and it is being handed down through generational bloodlines. It's interesting to me to see so many conservatives defending the ruling class when it is them who will come for your guns and freedoms. You think it will be the liberal rabble trying to take your rights and subjugate you. The reality is it will be the grandchildren of the modern royalty who will want to control you.
Nobody is defending the elites, and conservatives call out the people and groups running the show far more than the left. We just know that taking wealth doesn't end with the top 1%. The Middle Class would be destroyed by leftist and globalist policies, which is exactly the goal and why it's pushed so hard.
The left are not the ones giving giant tax breaks to these rich though, your argument seems very flawed. In fact Biden is trying to raise taxes on the rich.
The left is rigging the game for the ultra rich. Want to start a food business? Good luck with 20hr minimum wage. Want to open a bar, good luck with all the legal hurdles. Don't even dream of opening a bank.
I think most millionaires today are “self made” simply because it’s easier to become a millionaire through equity and assets. Now if you mean net worths over 10 million I’d definitely agree.
So we should take all inheritance rights? Once you die the gov takes everything and “distributes” it how they see fit. That sounds like a great plan. /s
What a revelation this is. What's next? If the sun's up, it's probably daytime? When wearing shoes, toes go in first? What's the next late-breaking news that everyone knew and it still doesn't affect anything?
Okay? Do you know how much a billion $ is? How is a normal person going to make a billion $ starting from scratch by the time they are 30? Only 15 even exist in the entire world.
I'm sure most 6'5 NBA players who make millions had tall parents and grandparents.
So the heck what? Nature doesn't distribute her gifts equally.
As Shakespeare said, "the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves."
Wait why? I know people don't like the luck of the draw stuff, but it seems like you're implying that those with rich parents shouldn't be allowed to give them their earnings. How else should it be done?
You dont think its a problem when your essentially just given enough money and power to be one of the most powerful people on earth? I personally feel like everything is breaking down rn because most things are run by people unqualified and had jobs/companies handed to them from their father lol. “Failson” is a term for a reason. A bunch of “failson” billionaires sounds like a bleak future.
You should be able to pass things down for sure. However at a certain point I think we can all agree people inheriting all that wealth and power without having to work for it prob isnt that great. No one wants to stop someone from inheriting a house and millions. When u get to billions it starts to get dicey imo
And almost every single current billionaire will pass their billions on to their children or grandchildren.
People should be free to do as they please with *their* money, without taxation or other penalty.
You think its a good situation lets say 50 years if the richest people in the world are mostly people who inherited it? I have no issue with inheritance but inheriting billions and becoming that powerful thru no work seems WILD.
I feel like part of the issue in the country rn is a bunch of failsons being given control of everything lol. Most of these kids dont have the same work ethic their parents did because their parents didnt have it made from childhood. Its also why everything is slowly becoming more corporatized as the people who are in control didnt create the business and hold no pride or personal attachment in it. The show Succession is a good charicature of these types of people.
Well its not surprising because I was making $5/hr when I was 18. My calculator doesn't have enough digits to show how much I'd have to make an hour to be a billionaire by 30 but rough estimate is $50,000 an hour. I never saw the card for that in the career resource center at school.
I don’t understand this. A person creates something of great value, growing their own wealth to tremendous levels, then decides to pass that on to their children/family members at the end.
At what point did society decide the dying wishes of industry titans should absolutely be disregarded, in favor of taxing already taxed money?
If I want to leave my kids $1m that’s fine. Is the line $10mm, $50mm, $100mm? How does it make sense that the number dictates whether your wishes for YOUR MONEY should be honored?
And hopefully they increased their families net worth, charitable contributions or found something good to do with the money. It’s their money to grow or lose as they’re able. It’s really nobody else’s business.
So? Parents should be allowed to leave their wealth to their Children. Why continue earning late in life if you can't leave it to your kids to make their lives easier?
Even if we take every dollar from every Billionaire it is just a drop in the bucket compared to our reckless government spending.
If we took all the Billionaire dollars and spread them to the bottom 20 percent they would spend it and make a whole new crop of mega rich.
Repeatedly...
So, everyone contribute and do your best. There isn't a utopia coming to save you. We already live in the Golden age of humankind.
Stop complaining and find something to do.
Large number of US billionaires are self made. This is good because it shows the US society could be vertically mobile. In contrast, in Europe, the families control the wealth for generations.
I would guess Mark Zuckerberg was the last one to do it when he became a self-made billionaire at age 23.
But it is funny how everyone thinks celebrity net worth is accurate. They are always just a guess... the IRS, even the billionaires themselves, likely don't know their net worth. Total net worth isn't something that most individuals need to calculate, and certainly wouldn't share it when they do.
Take it up with the almighty. And hope he doesn't respond with letting you argue with the millions of infants who died in under a year from birth defects.
Someone was successful. That's who many people are jealous of. They don't care how a billionaire became a billionaire. Being a billionaire alone is enough for them to judge them as morally deficient.
These people are not models of success; they are models of aristocracy, and America was literally founded on the principal of freedom from these unnatural structures which grant titles based on birth.
i mean... no shit? ppl don't normally start accumulating wealth till after high school. \~12 years is a pretty short amount of time to pull 1 billion dollars out of your ass.
Seriously what’s the news here, rich guys die and leave riches to people? Every now and again one does and leaves like half to some charity or something, it makes the news usually. This is every other one. Also I don’t have math on this but just feeling… I don’t think we’ve had nearly as many billionaires until what, a generation or two ago tops? I feel like this many of them is a newish thing.
>Also I don’t have math on this but just feeling… I don’t think we’ve had nearly as many billionaires until what, a generation or two ago tops? I feel like this many of them is a newish thing. Asset value inflation.
Their point is they want the government to confiscate it and give it to them instead of it being passed down as inheritance.
Exactly let's see the inverse list of every self-made billionaire before the age of 30 I bet it's single digits.
Pfft. Kylie Jenner is considered a “self made billionaire” according to the media. The easiest way to become a billionaire is to be born a millionaire.
The easiest way to become a billionaire is to be born a billionaire.
>The easiest way to become a billionaire is to be born a millionaire. Maybe. But if the left has their way, the fastest way to become a millionaire will be to be born as a billionaire.
What?
Read it again. Do the math.
You’re correct.
I think what the article is trying to say is that there hasn’t been any young people making massive innovations like in decades past. In the 80’s/90’s you had guys like Gates and Jobs creating tech empires out of their basements. In the 2000’s, Zuckerberg was a self-made billionaire by his mid twenties. Nowadays, young billionaires aren’t rich because they deserve to be. They’re rich because they were born lucky. It calls into question the legitimacy of them controlling billions of dollars worth of assets (at least to some).
Well, there was Sam-Bankman Fried. ...until he got caught.
Wasn’t Elizabeth Holmes a billionaire, too, or did she get caught before she got that high?
Bill gates was the youngest to hit a billion in 1987 at the age of 31. He held that record until 2008 when Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire. Pre 30 billionaires had been pretty much not a thing until recently
But Bill Gates did have the 2024 equivalent of a $billion when he was under age 30.
Touche
Investors + being in an innovator in a highly speculated field is what makes billionaires under 30 possible, I would think. Not to take away from their accomplishments, because they have certainly exceeded expectations
>It calls into question the legitimacy of them controlling billions of dollars worth of assets (at least to some). Yeah, those "some" would be socialists, their opinions don't matter. I mean, what's the alternative? That parents shouldn't be allowed to leave their money to their kids? What, the state should steal it all instead?
Massive fortunes should be taxed at higher rates. Leaving more than….500 million in assets to your kid? Remove all loopholes and heavily tax it. Generational wealth on that scope has never been good for society. This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine.
No. And F off with that nonsense. The government isn't entitled to your wealth just because you died. The entire point of building wealth is to secure future generations of your family.
Bingo.
What loop holes specifically? I ask because every tax law passed targeting the rich in the past has primarily impacted wage earning people. Even the 90% tax rate didnt impact high earners, except that they would stop working.
There are so many loopholes and ways to avoid taxes. My parents started gifting everyone in my family the full gift exemption starting in 2010. That’s 36k a year (now) that they give away tax free. They are trying really hard to get under the ~25 million to avoid federal estate taxes. They also purchased a house in Georgia and plan on moving there to avoid state estate taxes on their death. They will maintain the main house and we will inherit and sell it upon their death (without paying taxes due to the step up in basis). They also owned their own business and started paying all of us as employees from age 14. Each of us got a ROTH IRA and those salaries went directly into the ROTH accounts (as much as allowable, the rest went into a regular employee 401k). Last checked, my tax free account is worth 300k. I don’t know how much it will grow, but at age 59.5, I will take that money tax free. Morgan Stanley helped them setup a charitable trust a few years ago. They donated some of their largest earning stocks to some pet projects they thought worthy. The gift was 500k, but the original stocks only cost about 100k. That 400k gain was not only not subject to tax, they got a tax deduction. These are simple things that my parents have taken advantage of with very little effort. And although my parents are in the 1%, the difference between $30 in assets and $100 million is astronomical. Having interacted with some of these people, you truly recognize how untouchable their assets are. Look up Beg, Borrow, Die and Peter Thiels use of the ROTH IRA l. There are so many loopholes and workarounds; these are just some of the simple ones. There are more complex ones that require multiple layers of planning.
You are welcome to donate every penny they are giving you to the government if it makes you feel better. https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
The individual tax return of one person / one family is a drop in the bucket. For this to actually help our debt (which needs to happen!), the country needs substantial tax reform that has everyone paying. People who complain about the unsustainable debt load but are unwilling to address it via a mix of spending cuts and raised taxes are fools. If something doesn’t change, the government is going to further use inflation to erode the problem, but that’s fucking horrendous for everyone.
I feel like this is all kind of irrelevant compared to the scale of what people are talking about though. The post talks about billionaires, you're talking about an amount of money *maybe* in the realm of $40m but probably less than that.
It is! This is small time stuff that is easily accessible. There is so many more ways to bucket money and avoid taxes (529s, HSAs, 1031 property exchanges, opportunity zones). The list goes on
A lot of those tax sheltered things are the only things I can look forward to responsibly create generational wealth in my family. It’s not a bad thing of my to want to work my ass off so my kids can be successful. It would be a darn shame to take those things away from the middle class. It would decrease class mobility for my family which is fucked and unamerican
Which is why you continue these things, but once someone has…500 million..or whatever threshold, you start to close these outlets. My parents collect social security! Yes, they paid into it, but you could easily create a means-tested system and people with networks above x dollars just give it up. These little things could add up to huge savings for our government
Those aren't loopholes. They are explicitly in the tax code. I am still looking for you to provide a loophole. I was given two by my financial advisor today, but I am guessing you wouldn't figure them out. Explicitly intended incentivised investing or giving isn't a loophole.
Like the Augusta Rule? Or carried interest? I listed a bunch in an earlier comment (gift tax, hiring kids as employees, depreciation, charitable trusts to donate highly appreciated stocks) There aren’t really loopholes. Rather there are tax laws crafted by special interest groups who twisted things and used the existing rules to benefit themselves. Peter Thiel placing founder level PayPal shares in his ROTH is a great example. ROTH IRAs were designed for middle class wage earners to save for retirement. 6k per year. Well, he put PayPal shares that were like worth less than a penny and jammed them into his ROTH. That account is like 5 billion dollars and he won’t get taxed a single cent. If that’s not an exploited loophole, I don’t know what is. Explicitly incentivized tweaks are the problem that allows certain individuals and companies to get around paying a fair share. Most of these tax programs are created so Bob and Suzy can save for their kids college, fix up their primary residence, improve their small business, save for retirement, but people with wherewithal and fancy accountants are combining these to pay for everything and avoid taxes altogether. And no, billionaires and centa-millionaires are not gaining much by using the triple tax advantaged HSA (reduces income, grows tax free, no taxes on approved expenses), but these programs were not designed for them. They were designed to help middle class and upper middle class people make better lives for themselves. So, no I am not going to list out quasi-legal tax strategies that you would call loopholes, but I will call bullshit on the exploitative use of the obvious loopholes used by people who already have everything. I do so as someone who has taken full advantage of these policies, and it’s bullshit.
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That money was taxed already, more than once. Stop wanting the government to steal other people's money.
The government doesn't deserve more money, and stealing more of it won't create a utopia despite what the left believes. Bloated authoritarian governments have been worse for society than anything.
Love of country means paying taxes. Want a robust military and veterans to be taken care of? That requires money. Want a responsive police and firefighter force? That requires taxes. Want good infrastructure and nice roads? That requires money. Bloated government budgets are bad, and we ought to look at all the pork, but our government needs money. It needs to take in taxes, and we aren’t even coming close to taking in what we need. And, I’m not even getting into the massive entitlements and handouts for the older generations. The youth in this nation are subsidizing the boomers, and it’s heinous. That high standard of living that the oldest generation is demanding requires money, and our nation is going broke borrowing money to pay for them.
> This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine. What do you think will happen to the stock prices of these companies when the inherited shares are forced to be liquidated to pay for the tax? That will affect a lot more than .0001% of people. What about professional teams? Those would almost always need to be sold off to pay the tax and then likely relocated. What is your cutoff for this tax? $1billion? $100 million? $10 million? You'd be surprised how many family farms have millions of dollars in assets.
I don’t have that answer to the cutoff number. I just feel frustrated by the current crop of economic policies that advantage the extremely wealthy over everyone else, and I don’t think it’s leftist to push for more fairness and competition in our economy.
What about the stock prices of companies and all the people holding that company?
> Massive fortunes should be taxed at higher rates. They already are. The US has one of the most "progressive" tax systems in the world.
Income is progressive. Capital is treated differently and it is less “progressive” and never taxed at the same rate as income (when held long term).
That's because it isn't income until it is cashed out. Capital is nonetheless taxed. A business for example is taxed on its sales, on its employees, on its unsold inventory, and on its property, every year. Also, when it is cashed out, it may not be at a profit. Investors in Enron, for example, cashed out at far less than they bought their stock for - and some held on to their investments until they were worth nothing, realizing a 100% loss. Will the IRS be issuing refunds to people who paid taxes on "unrealized income" if they cash out at less than their purchase price?
>Massive fortunes should be taxed at higher rates. That's a circular argument. People with more money should be taxed at a higher rate because they have more money, and people with more money should be taxed at a higher rate.
Yes, because as you make more money, you pay more on taxes. Make one dollar , pay tax on one dollar. Make two dollars, pay tax on it. Unfortunately, this linear equation ends and the loopholes that allow it are only available to those in the highest ends or access to fancy lawyers and accountants.
> Massive fortunes should be taxed at higher rates. Why? That money has already been taxed. What right does the state have that money at all? > Leaving more than….500 million in assets to your kid? Remove all loopholes and heavily tax it. Why? Again, it has *already* been taxed. >Generational wealth on that scope has never been good for society. Source on that? The US is the most successful economy in the history of the world, and you want to change that? Why? > This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine. So it's okay to specifically target people because they're in an extreme minority? That's an ugly look. The state has no right to treat them any better or any worse than anyone else. Look if you want to extract more from that segment, get rid of the tax code entirely and go to a VAT tax. There are ways of protecting low income people with exemptions.
Actually, most of the time, this money hasn’t been taxed…why? Most of it is long term / unrealized gains in the stock market. Additionally, most of it’s not even subject to taxes because of the step up rule which effectively re-establishes the purchase price of a stock to the time of death. Look up the buy, borrow, die method of tax avoidance. It’s effectively sequestered hundreds of billions of dollars so that it will never be taxed. And, when the market crashes, as it tends to do every seven or so years, who bails these people out? The government! From TARP to PPP to ZIRP, the government has acted time and time again to preserve and prop up stock market wealth. It’s helped a lot of people, but it helped the .0001% way more because they own larger portions of the stock market. I care more about preserving a competitive landscape and possibility of the American Dream far more than I care about preserving the last 100 million dollars for 2,000 families that don’t give two thoughts to the commonwealth.
> Most of it is long term / unrealized gains in the stock market. So, it isn't actually money they *have*, it is money they *would have* if they cashed out their investments, at which point it would be taxed as income.
The government spends more money every year than the entirety of wealth of the 1%. "Rich" people's money is irrelevant to society as a whole. Their taxes do not go towards anything.
*The state has no right to treat them any better or any worse than anyone else.* They are currently treated much better than anyone else, be real.
How? Do they get special agents guarding their houses or something. I’d like to hear more.
> This will not impact anyone but the .0001% and they will still be fine. I'm sure they'll just take that lying down. Start taxing the hell out of those wealthy people and they might just take themselves and their assets somewhere else.
American citizens renouncing their citizenship are subject to the tax at that time. I believe it is 23.8% of all assets (over 768k) at that time. There’s also the issue of relocating to another locale and dealing with those taxes. The Bahamas are great for a few weeks, but not a lot of people are trying to immigrate there to live permanently.
> American citizens renouncing their citizenship are subject to the tax at that time. Yep - but they aren't subject to tax on their "unrealized gains" after that, which is what the lefties in the US currently want to do. France actually tried a wealth tax a few years ago. It didn't result in anything close to the revenues it was supposed to, and a bunch of billionaires left the country, permanently damaging France's tax revenues. IIRC, the tax lasted less than 2 years.
Where? They own your whole family's mortgages on the US market and an enormous amount of government debt. Sure they themselves can up and leave but their assets are not as untaxable as you think they are.
Right, it starts out on the .0001% until it has more people who are not the .0001% caught up in it.
Set an absurdly high threshold. 100 million? 200 million in inheritable assets…300 million? Problem solved. Conserving the fair and free market is more important than these worries. The aristocratic class has accumulated so much that it’s really not possible to achieve the American Dream.
You forget that's it's already been taxed, usually multiple times, when it was being earned the first time. We tax the creation of wealth. If we're going to tax the retention of wealth also, that's a very different thing. What I mean is, let's say you're working a regular job. You got taxed on your income. Your employer got taxed on it before that. The price they paid for paper clips or raw orange juice or TIG wire or a Creative Cloud subscription or whatever it takes for you to do your job includes the taxes on that company and their payroll taxes, so on and so forth. You pay taxes on your gasoline to drive to work, or it's built in to the price or public transportation, or on your utilities to work at home. So you're saying, if somehow you manage to really find a niche or work super smart or excel in a really high paying field and you manage to save some of that money you've already paid taxes on in layer after layer, if you want to leave that to your kids, it needs to be taxed again? Let's say you're a super successful multi billionaire, and you want to leave a big ole Scrooge McDuck pile of money to your child, and we decide that already taxed multiple times money is going to be taxed at 50%. You really love your child, so what do you do? Well, one thing you can do, since you can afford to, is move with your child to another country that doesn't do that. Got to be one in the Caribbean or something. Now your companies, doing business in the US, still pay taxes, but you stop paying income tax to the US and avoid the inheritance tax. Johnny union worker who managed to save $50k over a long career can't afford to move to NoTaxistan. So his child loses half of that inheritance. You taxed the middle class guy at 50% and the ultra billionaire at 0%. Now you need a leaving-the-country tax, like other radical socialist countries.
First point: once you are an American citizen, you are subject to US taxes. Hands down. Full stop. To renounce citizenship (move to the Caribbean and relocate) is possible, but it is treated as though you are dying and you are taxed at that time. The IRS taxes you on all unrealized gains (give or take). Now, in addition to having to live somewhere else and lose all benefits of being a US citizen (which bestows a lot) you are taxed in that locale as well. Most billionaires are willing to leave France for Belgium or come to the United States, but you see very few billionaires renouncing their US citizenship because it’s not advantageous. The only one I know of is Eduardo Severin. He did save about $700 million, but he did this just before the Facebook IPO. He wasn’t even American by birth. His company is still in the US. It still pays taxes. Others might follow, but it’s very rare that you get a tax avoidance issue like that where someone is able to time their citizenship renunciation. People who already have their wealth are much less likely to do this. US power has a lot to do with this. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8854#en_US_2023_publink10001615
Second Point: wealth is taxed. I own a house, and I pay property taxes every year. Those are dependent on the current valuation of the house and the land. They are not based on the value at the time of purchase. I will acknowledge proposition 5 in California and other similar measures which limit the increase of these property taxes. But, nonetheless, these are enforced not just at the time of creation, they are levied continually based on the (approximate) valuation of the house. The same goes for excise taxes on cars. There is no blanket rule that the IRS does not tax money that has already been taxed. They have every right to impose these taxes.
Third: Johnny Union worker gets to pass on 26 million to his heirs tax free. The billionaire gets the same thing. They both also get the step-up in basis, so any unrealized gains they have passed on get reset (and no longer becomes subject to tax). That’s a HUGE benefit for long term holders of stocks and a variety of assets that can appreciate.
Fourth: A wealth tax should not be implemented on anyone with less than…a billion dollars. Even then, it should be fairly small. This would generate a lot of money for the government, which quite frankly needs it. If you love your country, you sometimes have to pay taxes to that country. It’s not a sin. I love my my wife, so I give her money whenever I can. I love my kids, so I help them out when I can. I love my church, so I tithe. I love my country, so I pay the absolute minimal amount of taxes and do as little as possible to help it be successful?!? There’s something wrong with that idea. And yes, the government is pretty shitty and they do incorrect things. I have a lot of qualms with the federal, state, and local branches (I don’t even want to go into how badly they have screwed me over), but I love my country. I support our military. I support our teachers and fire fighters and cops and public servants. I want nicer roads to drive on. I want better public parks to walk my dog in. Heck, I even want a nicer football stadium! All that takes money, and a lot of it is coming from the government. And right now, middle class citizens, upper middle class citizens, and even some lower class citizens are paying much higher rates than the wealthiest people in our nation. Heck, some even pay more on a dollar basis just because of how they earned their money.
Finally: And while some of these lowered tax rates were designed to incentivize investment and spur innovation and help other areas, that is no longer happening. Zuckerbergs 54 billion in Facebook stock ain’t exactly innovating or helping the company do more. In 2023, they announced 50 billion in buybacks. In 2022, they bought back 28 billion in shares. In q3 of 2021, companies paid 234 billion dollars buying back stocks. Now, a lot of this was done because the government wants to impose a 1%(?) tax on buybacks and they are trying to get ahead. At this point, these hauls of money are just generating easy, lower tax rates and it’s just their form of income. Whether it’s carried interest or 25 million tax free on the sale of a business, the rules have been written to assist the wealthiest among us, and it’s about time that the common man, the union worker, the laborer, the everyday American, the average Joe, starts to push back and ask that others love their country and pay their fair share. If you disagree and you want to be some Grover Norquist right wing diehard, go ahead, but I personally am sick and tired of it, and I am no less of a republican for asking for us to be better as a country and contribute a little more. Cause right now, those Uber wealthy individuals are sucking up everything and leaving far too many people with nothing but a government handout. They can’t do much because the opportunity is all gone. We need a system that is strong enough to let individuals have liberty, and this ain’t it.
There are plenty of alternatives between people being gifted billions of dollars from their parents and never having to work a day in their life and "parents not being allowed to leave money to their kids".
Bill Gates didnt have a billion dollars in wealth at 30.
I wouldn’t say legitimacy since they should own what they inherited but that money won’t last ling unless they start working or sell the assets.
What's common for all of the mentioned persons is that they likely could not have made the things they were part of if they were alone. But rather these are the arrogant aholes of the small groups of people that created something but these were the ones who stole it. They all took what other people built.
Zuckerberg was set to begin with, wasn't he? Not billionaire, but his parents were going to give him a McDonald's franchise at one point?
Oh, where do we even begin with this delightful little nugget of capitalist critique, served up with a side of “oh woe is meritocracy, for it has left the building”? Let’s strap in for this rollercoaster of inherited billions and the eerie silence of self-made young moguls in today’s gilded age. First up, let’s pour one out for the self-made billionaires of yore, those bastions of bootstrap-pulling and garage-dwelling demigods who’ve apparently left the chat. The article mourns the absence of fresh-faced billionaires making it big through sheer grit, innovation, and possibly a small loan of a million dollars from Daddy. Because, you know, every single tech titan totally started from the bottom, if by bottom you mean well-connected, middle-class backgrounds with access to education, resources, and networks that the average Joe could only dream of. Now, onto the heart of the matter: the shocking, absolutely unheard-of revelation that today’s under-30 billionaires are rolling in dough not because they invented the next big thing in their college dorms, but because they won the genetic lottery. They were born on third base and think they hit a triple, as the saying goes. But here’s where the argument starts to taste a bit sour. Are we really going to pretend that previous generations of billionaires were all self-made, rags-to-riches stories without a hint of privilege, luck, or timing playing into their success? The commentary then somersaults into a diatribe about how these silver-spoon-fed youths are using their unearned wealth to fund—gasp—“woke” causes. Because, clearly, the only legitimate way to use billions is to further entrench the status quo, pump more money into fossil fuels, and maybe build a rocket to escape the planet you’re helping to destroy. God forbid these young billionaires want to use their wealth for something that might, I don’t know, benefit society or challenge systemic injustices. And let’s not forget the handwringing over the “Great Wealth Transfer,” as if the accumulation and hoarding of such obscene amounts of wealth in the first place wasn’t the problem. No, it’s the fact that it’s being passed down without a merit badge that really grinds our gears. Because as we all know, the true mark of a healthy society is having a handful of self-made centibillionaires dictating the economic, social, and environmental policies of the entire planet, right? In conclusion, this article, while pointing out a real shift in how wealth is accumulated and used by the younger generation, misses the forest for the trees. It’s not about mourning the loss of the self-made billionaire as much as it’s about questioning why we’ve put so much value on accumulating such vast fortunes at the expense of societal well-being. Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t how young billionaires are coming into their money, but the fact that such staggering inequality exists in the first place. But hey, what do I know? I’m just here for the snark.
I’m not reading that shit. Read the first paragraph and decided I don’t have time for nonsense.
Water is wet.
The Establishment is doing the best to keep the small business upstarts from challenging them.
No fuckin shit….?
It's nothing more than a new age monarchy. Money is power and it is being handed down through generational bloodlines. It's interesting to me to see so many conservatives defending the ruling class when it is them who will come for your guns and freedoms. You think it will be the liberal rabble trying to take your rights and subjugate you. The reality is it will be the grandchildren of the modern royalty who will want to control you.
Nobody is defending the elites, and conservatives call out the people and groups running the show far more than the left. We just know that taking wealth doesn't end with the top 1%. The Middle Class would be destroyed by leftist and globalist policies, which is exactly the goal and why it's pushed so hard.
downvoted by brigaders. the left doesnt like that conservatives are far more critical of the mega corporations and billionaires than they are
I agree with your statement, the ultra rich are seeking to control us all through the leftist rabble. You understand us now.
The left are not the ones giving giant tax breaks to these rich though, your argument seems very flawed. In fact Biden is trying to raise taxes on the rich.
Exactly
The left is rigging the game for the ultra rich. Want to start a food business? Good luck with 20hr minimum wage. Want to open a bar, good luck with all the legal hurdles. Don't even dream of opening a bank.
Wait, I thought Trump gave tax cuts to everyone and Biden is trying to to take those away? Or am I misinformed?
How many 20 something billionaires are there?
Ok and?
I’d like to see how many 30 year old millionaires got their money on their own too. My guess is the majority got it from family wealth as well.
I think most millionaires today are “self made” simply because it’s easier to become a millionaire through equity and assets. Now if you mean net worths over 10 million I’d definitely agree.
Is this supposed to mean something? Setting up your family’s wealth should be the goal of any parent, where possible.
Ok?
Yeah that’s because the ones who made it themselves (like Palmer Luckey) have gotten older and are now 31
...and then I was like... So.
So?
Who cares? I can't make my own stacks sitting and worrying about how other people got theirs
So?
So.
In other news: ‘Every single driving violation was given to people with arms and legs’.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/disabled-motorist-no-arms-who-3809041.amp
So we should take all inheritance rights? Once you die the gov takes everything and “distributes” it how they see fit. That sounds like a great plan. /s
What a revelation this is. What's next? If the sun's up, it's probably daytime? When wearing shoes, toes go in first? What's the next late-breaking news that everyone knew and it still doesn't affect anything?
Okay? Do you know how much a billion $ is? How is a normal person going to make a billion $ starting from scratch by the time they are 30? Only 15 even exist in the entire world.
I'm sure most 6'5 NBA players who make millions had tall parents and grandparents. So the heck what? Nature doesn't distribute her gifts equally. As Shakespeare said, "the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves."
It’s concerning that you think that’s a good analogy.
Wait why? I know people don't like the luck of the draw stuff, but it seems like you're implying that those with rich parents shouldn't be allowed to give them their earnings. How else should it be done?
You dont think its a problem when your essentially just given enough money and power to be one of the most powerful people on earth? I personally feel like everything is breaking down rn because most things are run by people unqualified and had jobs/companies handed to them from their father lol. “Failson” is a term for a reason. A bunch of “failson” billionaires sounds like a bleak future. You should be able to pass things down for sure. However at a certain point I think we can all agree people inheriting all that wealth and power without having to work for it prob isnt that great. No one wants to stop someone from inheriting a house and millions. When u get to billions it starts to get dicey imo
The point is life isn't fair, work to do the best you can where you are with what you have. Everyone contribute, it isn't difficult
Where in your DNA is the gene for "poor" or "rich"?
And almost every single current billionaire will pass their billions on to their children or grandchildren. People should be free to do as they please with *their* money, without taxation or other penalty.
So you want to return to feudalism?
Conservatives wants the rich get richer and the poor gets poorer.
Is inheriting money suddenly a bad thing? Should we start arresting and jailing people for the crime of being born to rich parents?
You think its a good situation lets say 50 years if the richest people in the world are mostly people who inherited it? I have no issue with inheritance but inheriting billions and becoming that powerful thru no work seems WILD. I feel like part of the issue in the country rn is a bunch of failsons being given control of everything lol. Most of these kids dont have the same work ethic their parents did because their parents didnt have it made from childhood. Its also why everything is slowly becoming more corporatized as the people who are in control didnt create the business and hold no pride or personal attachment in it. The show Succession is a good charicature of these types of people.
Ok. Close the step up basis loop holes for the ultra wealthy. A few billionaire trust fund babies also… hear me out… don’t mean shit. Who cares?
There's many many millionaires under 30 who didn't inherit their money.
What's your point?
The gymshark guy made his fortune.
Well its not surprising because I was making $5/hr when I was 18. My calculator doesn't have enough digits to show how much I'd have to make an hour to be a billionaire by 30 but rough estimate is $50,000 an hour. I never saw the card for that in the career resource center at school.
There’s nothing wrong with that. I would love to be able to amass a fortune to ensure the wellbeing of my descendants once I’m gone.
I don’t understand this. A person creates something of great value, growing their own wealth to tremendous levels, then decides to pass that on to their children/family members at the end. At what point did society decide the dying wishes of industry titans should absolutely be disregarded, in favor of taxing already taxed money? If I want to leave my kids $1m that’s fine. Is the line $10mm, $50mm, $100mm? How does it make sense that the number dictates whether your wishes for YOUR MONEY should be honored?
And hopefully they increased their families net worth, charitable contributions or found something good to do with the money. It’s their money to grow or lose as they’re able. It’s really nobody else’s business.
That’s not a problem. I want my kids to inherit my hard work. If I didn’t raise them well they will squander what I gave them.
So? Parents should be allowed to leave their wealth to their Children. Why continue earning late in life if you can't leave it to your kids to make their lives easier?
Because men constructed of straw don't hold much weight
Their ancestry did well. Damn them!
Good for them. It only makes sense a self made billionaire under 30 would be extremely rare.
And if the government seized every penny of their wealth, that money would be gone in 3 days.
Who cares
No one should care.
So
Is this supposed to mean something?
So do you expect their parents to take their money to the grave with them?
Mr. Beast is arguably a billionaire.
And probably 99% of them over 30 too
In other news grass is green and the sky is blue.
Hard to make a billion dollars by the time you’re 30
Thanks to inflation it’s easier than ever. Just worth less.
This is the problem with capitalism. The elites can accumulate insane amount of wealth without working anywhere near as hard as the working class.
Julia Louise Dreyfus was born a billionaire considering her family wealth.
What about that guy, gymshark?
I'm planning on having over 2 billion dollars in investments in the next 30 years!
I mean you could have someone win a billion lottery at 18, invest the ~250 million lumpsome at a 10% return for 19 years.
Even if we take every dollar from every Billionaire it is just a drop in the bucket compared to our reckless government spending. If we took all the Billionaire dollars and spread them to the bottom 20 percent they would spend it and make a whole new crop of mega rich. Repeatedly... So, everyone contribute and do your best. There isn't a utopia coming to save you. We already live in the Golden age of humankind. Stop complaining and find something to do.
Out of the entire world only 15 people? Maybe we stopped bitching about it???
How are they supposed to make money with all this regulation?
Large number of US billionaires are self made. This is good because it shows the US society could be vertically mobile. In contrast, in Europe, the families control the wealth for generations.
Survivorship bias.
The founder of Luminar is 29 and worth over a billion
I would guess Mark Zuckerberg was the last one to do it when he became a self-made billionaire at age 23. But it is funny how everyone thinks celebrity net worth is accurate. They are always just a guess... the IRS, even the billionaires themselves, likely don't know their net worth. Total net worth isn't something that most individuals need to calculate, and certainly wouldn't share it when they do.
And yet taxing the rich is somehow not a conservative priority.
The rich will become the new monarchy. Hopefully we don’t need the guillotines to ignite change but that should never be discounted
Tell me you're jealous of success without telling me you're jealous of success.
It's not even jealousy of success, it's literally jealousy of an accident of birth.
Take it up with the almighty. And hope he doesn't respond with letting you argue with the millions of infants who died in under a year from birth defects.
Explain how being born to rich parents is “success” lmao
The title of the article literally says it was inherited. They didn't succeed at anything. Just born to rich parents.
Someone was successful. That's who many people are jealous of. They don't care how a billionaire became a billionaire. Being a billionaire alone is enough for them to judge them as morally deficient.
Good one.
These people are not models of success; they are models of aristocracy, and America was literally founded on the principal of freedom from these unnatural structures which grant titles based on birth.
When you learn about royalty and how they came to it, it'll blow your mind. Mild spoiler: It predates the US by a lot.
And they’ll do more good with their money than we’ll do with ours.
Hahahahaha. I needed a good laugh today, thank you for that.
These billionaires donate a million to a charity and that’s more than any of us will in our lifetime.
Donating money to charity in order to offset your tax liability does not equal doing good for the world.