South Korea has a 50% heritage tax - and it applies, as far as I'm aware, to everything. Causes and absolute havoc when billionaires die and the companies need to be broken up, but ultimately it seems to work
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Won't anyone think of the havoc people still inheriting millions of dollars have to go through? ๐ป More people might have an opportunity to buy in on the society's corporate institutions? ๐ป
That sounds like the right thing to do for a society that values... Society.
Can't the heirs just adjust between themselves who gets what and in what form?
It would make more sense to just pay out some heirs and keep companies and other high value assets as undivided as possible.
When someone dies, something happens to the assets they own. It doesn't matter what happens or how it gets divided, but the South Korean government takes 50%.
I explain myself poorly.
The state getting a 50% cut over total value of assets and money is a no brainer. If one million is left in cash+stocks+bonds+property, 500k goes to the state, although I think it's a bit cloudy when it comes to paying tributation on property.
But a company has - usually - its own legal status. A company by itself is an entity that can not by cut up at will, unless dissolved and reformed under diferent parts.
Seems like there should be an easy way for any BIG company: a stock split. Any company that has shares, even private shares, can be forced to undergo a stock split of which the government gets half. Boom, government owns half the company. To get more surgical about it, only shares held by the deceased would be split.
Smaller companies don't have such an easy mechanism but it seems to me they would cause less chaos.
Of course, this seems like a colossal incentive to never incorporate in Korea.
Presuming there is such a structure. Non traded companies can have huge values without having a stock structure.
And what is the logic of a government owning a part of a company by default when what really matters is receiving the corresponding liquid monetary value?
There are specific sectors where state must hold objective interests and in some cases even hold complete control but most sectors are more of liability than an asset to a government.
The company isn't necessarily broken up, but the shares of the company are owned by individuals, and those shares go to the government. To your point, you could keep "the more valuable shares", but the shares are valued in currency by both you and the government, so it's kind of hard to say which are more valuable than others
We all seem to be thinking towards openly traded companies but how small(er) companies would go through such a process?
A traded company is not a head splitter to tax as an inheritance: shares are owned in a given number, there is a given number of heirs, each share has a given publicly tradeable value. Keeping with the Korean example, if there are 100.000 shares to split between two heirs, each heir receives 50.000 shares, which at a spot valuation of $2, implies each heir has to pay $50.000 in taxes, the 50% cut for the state.
I don't really see any logic in the state entering in true possession of company actives when what is due is its monetary value, which can be paid in cash by the heirs.
But a non-traded company will not be as easy to tax because it has no easily measurable value. A father leaving a company with a total social capital of $100.000 to two or three sons can in fact be leaving a company with a lot less true value, after considering loans, assets, values due to pay and receive, etc. And such an entity is not easy to split into equal parts.
"Capitalism is just human nature."
If it's just human nature, then why do we need a militarized police force to enforce order? Having workers go to a workplace, do labor, and then send the profits to some far away entity that probably isn't even there is actually very far from human nature. It's something that necessarily requires the implied threat of violence to maintain. Same with tenants and landlords. No one would pay rent if it wasn't for the police, who will use violence to throw you out otherwise.
It also frustrates me how that argument just waves away the incredibly complex and actually extremely arbitrary legal structure of capitalism. What about human nature contains limited liability for artificial legal entities controlled by shareholders? "Ah yes, here's the part of the human genome that expresses preferred and common stock; here's the part that contains the innate human desire for quarterly earnings calls."
edit: typo
Its so dumb. "Human nature" according to who? Ignoring that appeal to nature is a logical fallacy its also just...fake. humans are social obligate primates. We naturally form small communal groups. We've interacted cooperatively and altruistically since before we were anatomical humans. If capitalism is human nature why did it take 19,700 years for anatomically modern humans to invent it. Because for one thing, commerce is not the same as capitalism. And even commerce is somewhat recent. Most of human history we didnt barter, pre-money barter economies are a myth. We had "gift economies" where we simply helped and gave each other what we needed. Without explicitly demanding a return but understanding others will help you out the same when you need it.
From what I've learned it feels like we're just not supposed to be critical of it. It reminds me of being a kid and adults being upset when I ask too many questions or questions they might not want to face. I know you didn't ask but Mark Fisher has a compelling way of describing it as capitalist realism and I wanted to leave this quote:
Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action
Mark Fisher โค๏ธ
That's exactly it, liberals don't want us to question capitalism. In a discussion about socialism, some shitlib came by and asked what my job was. When I told them, they assumed I made a lot of money and said it was hypocritical for me to criticize capitalism. When I told them that I actually only earn $42k in a city with a living wage of $58k, suddenly I was just bitter and bitching about my low paying job, so I should get a good paying job.
It's the unwinnable created to make sure you are wrong.
If you're wealthy and a socialist you're just using the movement as a way to make money and manipulate. If you're poor and a socialist you're just greedy and want to take from others because you're lazy or something.
Reversely if a poor person argues for capitalism because they assume it is a meritocracy then aren't they saying they're undeserving or lazy? Or if a wealthy person argues for capitalism aren't they just saying "fuck everyone else but me" (true)
I prefer to argue with entrenched conservatives through things they agree with. "It's bullshit I can't carry a firearm just because my boss doesn't like it, it's my 2nd amendment right and no big suit should be able to keep me from it because they created a world I need their money to survive" This is something they now have to argue against guns for the evil "suit" (hopefully a liberal company like disney) to defend capitalists. You can then follow it up with how pizza delivery is more unsafe than being a police officer and how those poor drivers can't stay armed to defend themselves.
Putting yourself and whoever you consider your tribe above others is human nature, so capitalism plays pretty well into that by rewarding fucking others over.
Capitalism produces fragmentation and alienation that obstruct broader solidarity.
โOf course the CEO deserves 399 times your pay, they take 399 times the risk!โ
"and what is the penalty if they lose that risk?" "Why, they become a labourer like the rest of us!"
But the UnReALiZEd Gains
Honestly their Super Yachts, mansions, and luxury climate bunker compounds should be eligible for section 8 housing subsidy if you think about it.
They have so little liquidity, couldn't you just die?
In the Arms of the Angels plays to images of sad Warren Buffets, Elon Musks, etc...
"They make everything: The wine, the glasses, the chairs, the buildings. Without their investment, none of that could be made."
PU has already compiled the best ones.
The one mentioning the iPhone will long be a favorite.
Wow. Almost every single thing he listed at the beginning (before I turned this off because I was getting the urge to punch his face so strongly my work computer's screen was at actual risk) has taken enormous amounts of "big government" subsidy. And well over half of them (possibly much higher!) are actively damaging society.
Woohoo! Capitalism!
do you use an iphone
you can make a similar argument for slavery
you dont want the government...
triangle shirtwaist fire ._.
do the people who don't like government regulations know how working conditions were before government regulations
Advances were made and sustained principally through labor organization, not government regulations.
Much of the manipulation in the presentation from PU is based on constructing a false dichotomy between organization through either private business versus central government.
A common tactic is to bait an antagonist into attacking private business, but then shifting from a defense of business to a criticism of government. It is employed by proponents of marketism, and commonly involves insertion into the discussion, often as a straw man, the Democratic Party or the Soviet Union.
Such proponents often respond poorly to suggestions about cooperative organization, or to reminders over the natural tendency of business to seek increasing protection from the state.
Advances were made and sustained principally through labor organization, not government regulations.
It's both. It happens because of regulation (otherwise there'd be nothing stopping businesses from exploiting you even harder than they already do) but as has been said many times, regulations are written in blood. They weren't passed out of the goodness of anyone's hearts, but as a capitulation to labour organising.
regulations are written in blood
Well, they are ignored the moment labor loses the power to demand their enforcement.
I try not to emphasize regulations. Genuine power never comes from words.
Of course not. But what are we organising for, if not our rights? In our society, those rights are upheld by law. We organise to make those laws happen. And , when it comes to it, to behead them and make our own laws.
Laws are made by the powerful few.
Power for the masses comes from the groundul up.
We organize to build our own power, toward our own interests, to challenge the systems that support the interests of elites.
Laws are made by the powerful few.
Yep, in our current neoliberal capitalist system. This is what we live in, which is why it's what I'm describing.
Power for the masses comes from the groundul up.
I know, but we don't have that yet. That's the goal.
We organize to build our own power, toward our own interests, to challenge the systems that support the interests of elites.
Indeed. No need to repeat my own beliefs at me ;)
It has always been the same under representative democracy. Elite bodies serve elite interests.
The postwar period took its form due to strong labor, and the Bretton Woods system, arising in the aftermath of the Depression and amidst the Second World War. The period was the exception, not the rule, for capitalism under liberal democracy.
Laws are at best one tool of many, not the final objective, for labor.
The period was the exception, not the rule, for capitalism under liberal democracy.
Laws are at best one tool of many, not the final objective, for labor.
I'm literally an anarcho-communist, you don't need to tell me this. I have already said this. I'm only defending regulation because they're our best tool for immediate results under liberal democracy, and I have already said before that it can only be achieved through violent demonstration, and I've also said that to achieve our real goals we need to get even more violent and get the guillotines out for full on revolution.
Stop preaching my own opinions at me like you're trying to convert me lol. We're on the same side.
I may have misunderstood your view. Mine is that legislation is mostly symbolic. The real work is on the ground.
I'm sorry if it seemed I was picking fights.
I am in complete agreement with you. I only differ in that legislation can be used in our present liberal democracy to help us, but I definitely don't think they'll be convinced easily.
Sorry that I wasn't clearer earlier. Tbh I don't say commie shit upfront most of the time because I never know if I'm dealing with a lib.
I think the point of disagreement is the actual meaning of legislation.
Laws create no magic force on anyone. They are rather merely occurrences within the same overall system in which we all interact. The resistance by the powerful for some law to be created derives from the same source that informs their behavior once its creation is completed.
Power from the masses is required to make a law meaningful, which to my mind, is good enough reason to consider laws almost meaningless.
So, are you arguing that workers shouldn't push for regulation and legislation that secures their rights? Like, I never suggested they were magic. Or that they were perfect and made everyone behave perfectly. Don't put words in my mouth. But they can secure a level of safety for workers that is necessary for us to survive if we're gonna continue to live in a capitalist hellhole. Legislation is how we got 40 hour work weeks and safety measures.
I am arguing that the security and value of the legislation is only assured by the power on the ground, by the organization of workers, to press for their enforcement and their preservation, in the same interests by which such legislation originally was demanded.
I specifically object to your earlier language, that the laws, or regulations, are "written in blood". I think the metaphor is misleading.
If the masses begin resting easy the moment legislation is enacted, then no real victory has been achieved.
The same power from the ground must be maintained, and if possible, expanded, in order for the working class to have meaningfully advanced
For example, I would rather have strong unions and no legal rights for workers, compared to the inverse scenario, because unions can assert power in an absence of legal rights for workers, but legal rights simply may be retracted or ignored the moment the working class loses real power.
I am not arguing necessarily that no one should push for legal rights, only to avoid making them the locus of emphasis, and to avoid ascribing to them some special status.
if the masses begin resting easy the moment legislation is enacted, then no real victory has been achieved.
Then don't rest easy. I never said that, you just decided to add it on for something to complain about.
It's a matter of perspective. It doesn't look so bad when you're not the one doing the working.
There's something disconcerting about the structure of that person's face and the ways it does and does not move how it should when the person it belongs to speaks.
Not many would do well reading that script.
Argh, I watched two seconds of it. Now YouTube will recommend that stuff to me forever.
Holy shit those comments are as cringey as the video somehow.
It's a wonder the commenters don't drown staring up at the rain with their mouths agape.
You can see the Wilks's oily paw prints all over.
I watched about 7 seconds and turned it off. What a punchable video
Most content from PU is rough to watch, but the one I gave can be used for comic relief.
lol it's literally the argument they use
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