What you’re calling “fair share” has no clear definition. It’s a goal post that keeps changing with the political winds, as some politicians/voters ask for more and more redistribution. Not to mention it is fundamentally meaningless when a high income person pays far more in taxes than the average person. That does not strike me as “fair” at all.

I wasn't trying to take a position either way. I'm just asking, literally, what technical means do people imagine the government taking to tax under these circumstances beyond what they already do by taxing at sale time?

If Bezos had sold all his shares 6 months ago and bought Bitcoins, what would your argument be about him getting much richer this year? And what did he do wrong in not doing this and keeping his shares instead?

I think that would be better actually: if he had sold all his shares he would have paid a great deal of taxes on it. Instead he'll keep his shares forever, fund his lifestyle with low-interest loans, funnel some of it to offshore accounts, and find all kinds of ways to pass his inheritance to his children while paying as little taxes as possible.

Who cares? Say he pays 50% in taxes on his 200 Billion in amazon shares. That's a drop in the bucket. I mean the US spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on military/defense. How about instead of whining about people using their tenacity to achieve financial success we actually bitch about the government's horrible mis-management of funds. They don't need more money from taxes, they need to learn how to use the money they have effectively, otherwise no matter how many billionaires you tax it won't move the needle on improving quality of life for our country.

You've changed the argument. Both issues can be tackled at once, they're not mutually exclusive.

I can agree with you to some extent, but the conversation on taxing the wealthy seems like a red herring if it does nothing to solve any of the major problems we face, so let's talk about both things at once instead of just posting tweets about how so-and-so's wealth sky rockets during a pandemic. I think rather than saying I've changed the argument, I feel like the original argument omits half the story. Anyway, just my $0.02 - I do certainly believe that if we want to look at what's "fair", then the mega rich have an unfair tax advantage, but I think for the other 90% of us, we would see a greater benefit being taxed less than if the rich were taxed more, because the funds ultimately end up mis-managed. I guess I'm a little cynical.

The problem is we're currently in the worst of both worlds. When politicians promise to tax the wealthy they usually end up taxing the upper middle class: people rich enough that nobody feels bad for them but "poor" enough that most of their income gets reported on a W2.

In my opinion building the infrastructure to adequately tax the wealthy is part of the solution to building a more equitable tax base. That's a separate issue from spending our tax money wisely.

My argument wasn't to assign blame specifically, but rather question the implied premise that government are acting entitled when taxing wealth or cutting up companies, and that companies bravely create wealth with no outside help. Amazon could not have been successful without the wealthy environment it started in. In turn, that environment did not appear out of thin air and is the result of many efforts.

Please help me understand. What "negative externalities" (a euphemism generally reserved for environmental destruction) is the likes of Amazon causing here? You could say that they increase carbon footprint, but that's generally false because the amount of carbon they create is quite limited for the number of people they employ. If you're talking about worker health, that's already very regulated through the likes of OSHA and similar organizations.

I'm not the GP, but if I had to guess: the negative externalities are reflected in all of the small, traditional retail businesses that have shrunk or failed outright as Amazon has grown to capture their markets. All the people who either owned or worked for those small businesses are now out of work and have to find some other way to earn a living. If they are not able to do so, then society suffers as a result.

Similar situations have happened in the past, such as when big grocery store chains drove mom-and-pop general stores out of business. It's the price we pay for efficiency.

Efficiency is a relative term. Let's say a company is good at what it does, but then becomes a monopoly that can dictate unfavorable terms and capture the surplus, was it an efficiency gain on the whole? Let's say companies do very well, but deplete natural resources and lobby against infrastructure projects, did society gain as a result? These questions are naturally difficult to answer but there's at least more to the story than just the inductive reasoning of creative destruction fixing everything. Less efficient actors getting booted out is only a small part of the process as usually the consequences are on the second order range.

Are you calling a predictable result of vanilla capitalism, that is, some companies succeeding while others fail, a “negative externality”?

Yes. "An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially incurred or received by that producer." [0]

Dominating a market so thoroughly that your competitors go out of business and must find another line of work creates a cost for society that is not borne by the winner unless they pay for it through taxation. Namely those costs include retraining, possibly monetary assistance, etc, etc.

Beyond that, companies like Amazon[1] and Walmart[2] have well-established histories of paying their workers so little that they have to use SNAP to make ends meet.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-on-food-sta... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...

> Dominating a market so thoroughly that your competitors go out of business and must find another line of work creates a cost for society that is not borne by the winner unless they pay for it through taxation. Namely those costs include retraining, possibly monetary assistance, etc, etc.

I’m not an economist and I can’t give a formal account of externalities.

But, your reasoning, I think, leads to absurdity. For example, if I start a company to sell generic, mass produced pencils for $1000 a piece then no one will buy from my company and it will be forced out of the market and my principal will be lost. Then in your words, my company failed because of “externalities” from my competitors who are selling pencils at the market rate and who then owe me money.

> Beyond that, companies like Amazon[1] and Walmart[2] have well-established histories of paying their workers so little that they have to use SNAP to make ends meet.

So eliminate SNAP?

Maybe vanilla capitalism isn't the way to go then.

Your arguing for an economic system where no producers will fail?

I am not, no.

Ok, so what policy are you intimating?