Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yes, I have done that myself.  You still don't get rich doing it.  You'd have more money paying the cap gains tax after selling.

I get that, but let's say you were someone like Musk, Gates, etc whose fortune came almost exclusively from starting a company that made it big. Now let's say you retired and walked away so you have no income. 

Ok, you have a $1B net worth all in stock in CincyCo. If you sell to finance your Billionaire lifestyle you'll pay capital gains tax on everything you sell (for purpose of discussion, assume that the basis is either zero or effectively zero because it probably is). 

If you donate $1M and sell $1M to finance your lifestyle, you pay zero tax because the donation offsets the gain.

You are right, you don't get rich that way, but if you already are rich and the annual appreciation covers 2x your spending you can effectively pay no income tax indefinitely. 

shhhhh....open border policy was long time considered a right wing policy backed by right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers in order to drive labor costs down to US corporations. Bernie Sanders used to rail against this in the past. haven't heard him talk about it anymore. talk about a complete cuck and fraud.

why do you think Illinois' "good billionaire" Governor favors unchecked illegal immigration? could it possibly be because he likes saving money on labor costs for his hotel empire by hiring someone who is here illegally that will work for less than an American?

He is not a good person.

I truly believe that wealth inequality is one of the most troubling issues in our Country.

We are heading down a road towards being like our Central and South American neighbors with a fantastically rich over-class and massive slums for everyone else.

Democrats talk about this some but most of their policies make it worse. Republicans don't generally talk about it and should.

I'm fine talking about it, just as long as we're removing the supremely ignorant idea of equity from the jump, and the idea that the goal is for everyone to have roughly the same amount of....anything.  

It's a noble goal, and I bet it works well in Utopia.  I hear the unicorns crap chocolate ice cream there.  

In my own case, which of course is enormously smaller, I had a double salary year my last year, and some highly appreciated stock in my "plan".  I hadn't understood this, but my advisor had me donate my appreciated stock to a charitable fund which I still operate (a Donor Advised Fund it's now called).  That did reduce my income tax liability a good bit because I had earned income from my salary x2 that year.

I've kept that charitable fund going with investments and all my donations come out of that now.

I would borrow, not sell, whatever I needed for my lifestyle, and pay zero tax on anything.

which is exactly what most of them do. borrow, refinance, borrow, refinance. And every major bank in the country kisses their asses trying to get their business- and give them low interest loans the average Joe could never sniff.

Btw, Googled it- if Gates had still held all his stock at his peak holdings (and hadn't gotten divorced)- even with no new options or stock compensation- his net worth on paper today would be over $1 trillion. 

That's an old picture. He's even bigger now.

Governor Big Boy, as he is commonly known.

yeah he really is a fat tard lub of shit. it honestly amazes me that people in Illinois actually voted for the guy....twice.

like I get Obama coming out of Illinois, he was a good looking, young, thin, slick talking, nimble on his feet, working class guy that put himself through law school. impressive guy. on the surface. this dude is however is just a fat fucking slob who sounds like he can barely breathe and needs another cheeseburger by the second and every time he opens his mouth he sounds incoherent.

Democrats are in a major crisis right now. They have absolutely no one even remotely impressive to be the figurehead on a national level.

I'm fine talking about it, just as long as we're removing the supremely ignorant idea of equity from the jump, and the idea that the goal is for everyone to have roughly the same amount of....anything. 

It's a noble goal, and I bet it works well in Utopia.  I hear the unicorns crap chocolate ice cream there. 

I agree.  

The problem, in my view, isn't at the top it is at the bottom.  Demonizing billionaires is always a neat way to score cheap political points but most of them have created a LOT more wealth than they hold.  They've also typically created a lot of "lower-order rich" people in the form of their employees and other stakeholders.  

The problem, as I see it, is more that the working poor have been getting poorer for generations now.  In the 1960's-1970's there were a lot of blue collar men who fully supported their families on ONLY their income and lived reasonably well.  They weren't jet-set rich, but they could afford homes and cars and child-rearing on ONE blue-collar income.  

That isn't even remotely possible today.  Even after doubling the workers for those families by sending the wives into the workforce they are STILL worse off financially today than their equivalents were ~50 years ago with only ONE income.  

Then, to make it MUCH worse, the reality today is that marriage is effectively a luxury.  College educated white women are married at their first childbirth today at rates nearly equal to what those rates were when Leave it to Beaver was on TV.  Ie, the reasonably well off get married and form families.  The change has been to the lower classes.  A female HS dropout is about as likely to be struck by lightning as she is to be married before she has kids (this is probably an exaggeration but not by nearly as much as you might think).  

Also, people generally marry (or hook-up at lower classes) within socio-economic class.  

Then this fuels the cycle.  Looking at the above groups you have:

• Kid #1 has two college educated parents.  
• Kid #2 has a HS dropout mom and may not even know who their father is.  

This is also multi-generational now so in many cases:

• Kid #1 also has four college educated grandparents and a few college educated aunts and uncles.  
• Kid #2 doesn't have any immediate family educated much beyond HS.  

Also, intelligence is at least somewhat heritable so Kid #1 is, on average, smarter than Kid #2 to begin with.  

To make this all worse, the "knowledge based economy" has dramatically increased the value of a strong mind relative to a strong back.  

Then, in case Kid #2 didn't already get dealt a bad enough hand, we have imported literally MILLIONS of unskilled laborers to compete for the few remaining unskilled and low-skill jobs.