If you flip it around, it I think it's also entirely reasonable that many of these people only feel like they can criticize things after they've made their money. Or they know we wouldn't listen to them beforehand.

I'm not sure what you're criticizing but Dalio's post is explicitly about economic mobility, i.e. reducing barriers preventing more people from getting rich in the future.

Then Dalio should put his money where his mouth is and support political candidates who champion public policy that mitigate the inequality issues he draws attention to.

Talk is cheap.

So freedom of speech is bad and political bribery is good?

Campaign contributions are speech. Saying one thing while doing the opposite is fraud.

Nobody positioned this as a 'freedom of speech' issue, except you. He's entitled to his words. The public is entitled to see said words as the hypocritical doublespeak they are.

And many don't want these changes because they also want to make money before things change. This is one reason such change is not going to happen any sooner unless money stops mattering anymore.

What do you mean people who have already made their money love to call for this thing? The author is a billionaire who is is proposing for the wealthy to be taxed more, how is he insulated by paying more taxes? Those who want to get rich in the future might be helped by measures to create more income equality thus creating more social mobility. Equality doesn't mean everybody makes a same amount of money, but more like the ability for everyone to make more. When the mega rich own everything this is not possible.

Or perhaps, you dream of being mega rich yourself and want things to stay the way they are now so you can make it?

There's an important nuance between income and wealth here. Income tax takes money from the people who are still going to work to build their fortunes (and those who are just getting by). The ones who have already made a fortune are only worried about the capital gains rate.

Billionaires who advocate for higher income tax, but not a higher capital gains rate, are just pulling up the ladder behind them. The article isn't explicit with what Dalio is advocating for here.

You’re adding an incredibly relevant layer of nuance. Dallio’s plan is vague so his true intentions are illegible. People ascribing positive AND negative sentiments to him need to actually understand the policy changes he’s proposing (I.e. higher income rate vs capital gains rate) before passing judgement — and since he specifically has left it vague, I don’t see how anyone can judge his plan either positively or negatively: he has not even presented a specific plan!

>The author is a billionaire who is is proposing for the wealthy to be taxed more, how is he insulated by paying more taxes?

Maybe it’s in his proposal but I didn’t see any mention of bringing back the estate (death) tax on the rich or increasing capital gains.

Raising the highest tax bracket has historically resulted in less tax being paid by the rich. This is because it increases the demand for services and banking instruments that lower tax liability. Because higher taxes mean more rich people are seeking to shelter their assets, businesses can start to offer these services which are typically not very profitable because there are larged fixed costs and not enough market demand. However, increasing demand for tsx shelters by raising the rates make these businesses profitable. Thus, a rational billionaire seeking to shelter their assets via companies catering to the rich has it in his or her best interests to call for higher rates.

It is clear that these people are uninterested in paying higher taxes as it is completely legal to pay more taxes without any legislation. Thr website pay.gov accepts money for those who would like to contribute to the operations and debt costs of the united states government.

Until buffett and others make actual extra tax contributions to the government (as opposed to their own private charity), I'll continue to ignore them

>The author is a billionaire who is is proposing for the wealthy to be taxed more, how is he insulated by paying more taxes?

Is this a serious question?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers

Ray Dalio has taken his chunk, is retiring, but senses the social and political winds are changing. Being a billionaire is no longer something people "respect", and is very rarely "earned". I'm sure he doesn't want the Proletariat knocking on his door in his old age.

Indeed. Many of the reforms he suggests would work too cement the existing economic classes. Obviously, this benefits those who have the most.

Does anyone know if there is a term for this? It's a bit reminiscent of 'regulatory capture' but that doesn't seem quite right.

Pulling the ladder up behind you.

> They're rich enough to be insulated from it

This is solved by taxing very high wealth, not just very high income.

> it hits those who might actually try to get rich in the future.

Not those who try, just those who actually get very rich. None of the current tax increase proposals target the wealth or income of even slightly rich people (low millions of net worth or low 100ks of income), just the very rich (> 50mil net worth).

That still leaves a ton of room for incentivizing getting rich below that number.

Or they realize the problem isn’t fixed if they give away their money. It’s structural — why give up what you’ve gotten if it won’t fix anything?

IMO, calling for higher taxes is the same thing to do, rather than performing some sort of empty virtue signaling.

> it hits those who might actually try to get rich in the future.

How does it do that? These are just words. Dalio and his hand-wringing clique have no issue speaking platitudes about economic justice, and turning right around and lobbying politicians for more tax cuts, less regulation and fewer consumer protections.

How are you going to get rich in the future when real wages for consumers haven't budged in 4 decades? Do you plan on delivering a product people can actually afford, or simply engage in the financial chicanery that made the 2008 recession possible?

If we're going to err, we should err on the side of taking the guy at his word. He wants to raise taxes on himself to provide for better distribution of income and educational opportunity. Where's the problem with that?

> He wants to raise taxes on himself

Where did you read that? Tax policy is ludicrously complex by design. Simply saying "we should pay higher taxes" is broad enough to be meaningless. Increasing income tax for example would barely make a dent in their take-home, because the majority of their wealth comes through capital gains tax.

Not to mention the numerous documented loopholes in the tax system that allow people in Dalio/Buffet's position to move money around the world at a moment's notice and pay nothing in federal tax.

The loopholes are there, but they never get fixed, thanks to lobbying from the big 4 audit firms that depend on blue chip clients like him to fatten their paycheques.

Just because Dalio has an arms-length connection to the dysfunctional tax system doesn't mean he;s ignorant as to why the system is the way it is.

This is pure ad hominem and says nothing about the substance of his argument.

Who was it that said no one in America is poor, they're just "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"? This comment is a pretty good representation of that sentiment.

People who are very rich usually want to be clubby with other people who are very rich. The super rich who talk in concrete ways about how to tackle the failures of capitalism are relatively rare.

They realize that if the whole house of cards collapses they're loosing the most. If the house of cards (the system) is stable they're better off as well.

Are you sure about that? Well... for Dalio, he's an investor that is always looking both forward and backwards. He's looking backwards to see what's happend in the past and how economy/society has reacted. He's looking in the future to see how he could best take advantage of signals he sees.

This seems to be the deeper reason why many wealthy people begin leaning left publicly after amassing their fortune. The very same people can often be seen years earlier making statements that could come out of an Ayn Rand book, but when they’ve beaten the game, the risk-mitigating option is to become “the people’s billionaire.” Im afraid it’s not a change of heart, it’s simply the most logical decision for someone whose wealth is locked up in institutions governed by a democracy.

So, if you're poor and criticise capitalism (or some particular implementation of it), you're just a sore loser, and if you're rich and criticise it, you're a hypocrite?

One would expect greedy people to be acquisitive in regards to moral high grounds as well. They have to have it all.

This doesn't make sense. If capitalism were to end tomorrow he'd lose everything.

By this same sense can we also conclude that due to capitalism approximately 99.99999% will never find anything?