Musk offers to buy Twitter

Cmaier said:
By the way, that’s why my tax proposal is that anyone who gets loans over a certain amount using unrealized income as collateral would have to pay taxes on the loans as if they are income. As they pay the loan back they can deduct the principle. That way, when they sell the actual assets (which they seldom do now) it would be taxed as capital gains (or losses) as it is now. I’d not allow the interest to be deducted, in order to discourage multi-generational hoarding; this way you are discouraged from taking a loan and keeping the assets, because it costs you the interest.
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I say a wealth tax for anybody that has over a certain amount. Tax them a certain percentage just for having it. If they don’t like it, they can give money away. They earn way more in interest and capital gains each year for it to slow them down much anyway.

Your proposal sounds good too.

Either one would be better than the immoral system now of wealthy people paying nothing and average workers paying a quarter or more of their income. Heck, even when billionaires sell assets, they only pay 20% (long-term capital gains rate) vs the 37% they would normally pay on such large sums.
 
SuperMatt said:
I say a wealth tax for anybody that has over a certain amount. Tax them a certain percentage just for having it. If they don’t like it, they can give money away. They earn way more in interest and capital gains each year for it to slow them down much anyway.

Your proposal sounds good too.

Either one would be better than the immoral system now of wealthy people paying nothing and average workers paying a quarter or more of their income. Heck, even when billionaires sell assets, they only pay 20% (long-term capital gains rate) vs the 37% they would normally pay on such large sums.
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The problem with a wealth tax is that it is almost certainly unconstitutional. My proposal would essentially acknowledge that borrowing against wealth creates income, and tax that income.
 
Cmaier said:
The problem with a wealth tax is that it is almost certainly unconstitutional. My proposal would essentially acknowledge that borrowing against wealth creates income, and tax that income.
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Do you have any information on why that is? The government taxes people annually simply for owning real estate. Why would this be different?
 
SuperMatt said:
Do you have any information on why that is? The government taxes people annually simply for owning real estate. Why would this be different?
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the federal government doesn’t tax real estate (unless gains are realized as income). States can tax whatever they want.

The federal government is different because the constitution doesn’t allow unapportioned direct taxes by the federal government. Direct taxes have to be apportioned - that is, the taxes collected directly would have to be proportional to population of each state. (Constituion: “Capitation, or other direct, Tax[es] shall be…in Proportion to the Census.””).

Land and property taxes were expressly defined as direct taxes by Madison at the constitutional convention, by the way. Hamilton said that taxes “on the whole property of individuals” are also direct taxes.

That brings us to the sixteenth amendment. This made a carveout for income taxes - it essentially conceded that income taxes are direct taxes, but allowed them to be unapportioned. But it only allows taxes on income, not any other kind of direct taxation.
 
Cmaier said:
the federal government doesn’t tax real estate (unless gains are realized as income). States can tax whatever they want.

The federal government is different because the constitution doesn’t allow unapportioned direct taxes by the federal government. Direct taxes have to be apportioned - that is, the taxes collected directly would have to be proportional to population of each state. (Constituion: “Capitation, or other direct, Tax[es] shall be…in Proportion to the Census.””).

Land and property taxes were expressly defined as direct taxes by Madison at the constitutional convention, by the way. Hamilton said that taxes “on the whole property of individuals” are also direct taxes.

That brings us to the sixteenth amendment. This made a carveout for income taxes - it essentially conceded that income taxes are direct taxes, but allowed them to be unapportioned. But it only allows taxes on income, not any other kind of direct taxation.
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The way this system protects wealthy property owners while allowing income tax on wages... It might make one believe that the Constitution was written by a group of wealthy land owners!
 
SuperMatt said:
The way this system protects wealthy property owners while allowing income tax on wages... It might make one believe that the Constitution was written by a group of wealthy land owners!
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To be fair to the framers, at the time the kind of things we see now weren’t happening. Rich people got rich from income back then. They didn’t just accumulate assets and then live off lines of credit.
 
I'm agreeing with cmaier in that this is a politics thread not a Tech thread. Twitter is tech itself but the ownership dispute is not. Can we close it or move it?
 
Cmaier said:
The problem with a wealth tax is that it is almost certainly unconstitutional. My proposal would essentially acknowledge that borrowing against wealth creates income, and tax that income.
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I guess my issue is valuation. For those like Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg, it is easy. How much stock they own times its trading price.

But what about someone who owns property. Find any piece of property and you can find appraisers that will value it differently.
 
Joelist said:
I'm agreeing with cmaier in that this is a politics thread not a Tech thread. Twitter is tech itself but the ownership dispute is not. Can we close it or move it?
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Looks like we already have so I think we're okay. The reality is the attempted buyout is political in nature but I think we can remain it civil and keep the politics out of it.
 
Herdfan said:
I guess my issue is valuation. For those like Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg, it is easy. How much stock they own times its trading price.

But what about someone who owns property. Find any piece of property and you can find appraisers that will value it differently.
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States and localities officially appraise property every year for property taxes.
 
SuperMatt said:
States and localities officially appraise property every year for property taxes.
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Yes they do. States are allowed to tax however they want. So a state could do a wealth or property tax (if it comports with their own constitution). But the federal government is bound by the US Constitution. The way it worked out that way is that the states that signed onto the constitution were worried that the federal government would extract taxes in a manner that was disproportionate, so that the people of some states bore a higher individual burden than others. They wouldn’t have been thrilled by the income tax, either, but the constitution was specifically amended later on to allow it; the problem is that the taxation scheme envisioned by the original text of the constitution isn’t very practical. As far as direct taxes go, at least, the idea was the federal government would send a bill to each state and say ”you owe $X because you have Y population,” and then the state would have to figure out how to get that money. But the wealth of a state is not necessarily proportional to its population, so actually collecting taxes that way would cause problems. On the other hand, collecting based on wealth would not have been acceptable to the wealthier states, and the founders wanted the wealthier states to sign up.

In any event, we’ve ended up in a system that if you generate money to support your spending using technique 1 (wages) you are screwed, but if you generate money to support your spending using another technique (lines of credit using accumulated wealth as collateral) you get off without paying. It seems to me that when someone gives you money that you can spend however you want, especially with no real expectation that it will ever get paid back (these loans just get refinanced and form a continuing stream of income to the banks in perpetuity, because the assets keep being worth more and more), that’s income other than in name,

So bringing it back to the topic - Musk would almost certainly put up shares of his companies as collateral to support the twitter purpose, and he’d probably need other money, too, since he’s already done that to pay for other things and there may not be enough unencumbered stock left to support this bid.
 
Cmaier said:
Musk would almost certainly put up shares of his companies as collateral
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Bloomberg
But even for the wealthiest person in the world, there are limits: The Bloomberg index estimates that he’s already borrowed about $20 billion against his shares, leaving about $35 billion remaining that he could theoretically take out against the two holdings.
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Elon Musk takes out five monster mortgage

He appears to have quite a bit of debt. I don't expect banks to deny him, however, this turning into a hostile takeover means that it is no longer a 3.5 billion dollar purchase and will be much more expensive.
 
SuperMatt said:
If the Twitter thing doesn’t work out, Musk has a backup plan.

futurism.com

Elon Musk Says He Could Make "Catgirl" Sex Robots If He Wanted To

During a lengthy and freewheeling conversation with TED's Chris Anderson last week, Musk said that 'catgirls" are "probably inevitable."
futurism.com futurism.com

🤦‍♀️
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Can I get my own Lucy Liu model?

"My loins ache for you {ERIC} take me now"
144123.jpg
 
Meeting on a Sunday to discuss? Sounds like they're taking it seriously.
Sources close to the matter told The Journal that Twitter officials are meeting on Sunday to re-examine Musk's offer, and may be more receptive to negotiating with the billionaire after initially trying to thwart his purchase. Twitter last week fought back against the Tesla CEO using a shareholder rights plan, or "poison pill," designed to avoid a hostile takeover.
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The day that maniac takes over I'll be removing my account. It's not just Musk, I'm tired of eccentric billionaire narcissistic assholes taking over everything while screwing all the normal people. We may not have many options but at least we can drop.
 
It's not that surprising really. It is a fiduciary board, so it has to act on the best interests of the share holders. If share holders feel it's a good offer they will press, some won't care about Twitter itself, just in their money.

Granted it may seem short sighted as it becomes a troll haven, but an abandoned wasteland by everyone else. All because the new guy in charge will be more concerned with himself, than the majority using the service.

I think it's funny how 'r's have to remind you who they are even in this case. As they have the hypocrisy to demand the preservation of records, when they aren't ( understandably ) if it isn't anything to do with Hilary Clinton.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1517492009790889986/
 

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