Work Reform

The tl;dr is:

1. That dementia riddled shithead Reagan changed the law to allow companies to buy back stock. This is classic stock manipulation and was illegal before that piece of shit was elected by the same degenerate demographics that are fucking up shit today.
2. Billionaires will "borrow" say, $100 million dollars, using their stock as collateral. Now they only have to pay the interest, low single digits, instead of actual income tax.

And a key quote from the article:

As a result, loopholes abound that allow the wealthy to shelter their money from taxation. These mechanisms are so effective that even though the wealthiest 1% of Americans own $50 trillion, the entire amount collected by the estate tax in 2024 was about $30 billion, an amount that Musk has gained and lost in a day.

"Normal" Americans can do this too if they have enough capital. The amount needed may be less than you think.

These outcomes are features of modern finance and there aren't a lot of secrets about how it works. A lot of people could benefit by learning and using the same rules for their own benefit. These so called rich people know it because they talk about it with each other. Normies can look to forums like coastfire, expatfire, leanfire and similar for tips about how to similarly exploit the finance regulation in place today.

If you get a W2, and you spend most or all of the salary for living expenses - with no gap for significant savings, you're trading a month of labor for a month of living expenses. It might feel ok because you sit on a leather seat or stay in the Hilton sometimes. But if there is nothing left over you're perpetually running on fumes.

The only way out of this is by cutting expenses and creating as wide a gap as possible and pouring it into assets that grow, not shrink, in value. With the power of compounding returns nobody is more than a decade, decade and a half or so away from freedom. But yeah, you do have to live like a miser during that time.

I've been thinking about employee stock options lately. The original idea was that options would vest as a result of executives increasing the stock price through good business practices. Now though, so much of the market is occupied by index funds that major companies' stock prices will rise just for treading water as everyone keeps pumping money into retirement accounts comprised largely of index funds. So instead of a reward, they just become a way to skirt income taxes as long as you hold the stock long enough. The article mentions buybacks as well, which can also inflate the stock price guaranteeing options vest.