If you have 1 billion dollars and you choose to waste it in ways that do not contribute to society some people are going to dislike or even hate you for that.
1 billion dollars is enough to make a huge and lasting difference to the lifes of lots of people and it is enough to even build sustainable systems that make this aid sustainable and moderately efficient – at least in countries that are not extremely politically unstable and in or constantly at the verge of war. There are many such countries with significant poverty.
Extreme income inequality is an economic problem in itself. Combating it has positive second order effects because it creates demand in the economy. When everyone is extremely poor there is no one to sell to.
Money alone cannot solve all the problems in the world. There are many systemic political issues that hinder economic development in parts of the world.
No billionaire has enough money to fix all the problems in the world.
These two things do not make the ability of ultra rich people to meaningfully and sustainably improve the life on many people any less true or relevant. If you choose to spend a billion dollar on your mansion rather than charity people are gonna have a problem with it and there is absolutely nothing fallacious about that. Claiming this to be a fallacy because the rich cannot fix the whole world however ironically is a fallacy in itself.
There is no excuse for wasting a billion dollars like that. It's evil. No one should make any excuses for that.
The wealthy should be punitively taxed beyond a net worth in the low tens of millions, using a hysteresis-style curve that starts this wealth tax at $10M at 0%, and rises to 100% at $100M.
Not because this taxation can be properly redistributed - it can, especially with no-overhead UBI - but because the only way to reach those levels of wealth is to steal from the labour of others.
We need to make that theft impossible to achieve, from both directions. And the easiest to implement is from the top down, with a combination income & net worth tax, including treating loans on the backs of shares as income.
2 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 11.0 ms ] thread1 billion dollars is enough to make a huge and lasting difference to the lifes of lots of people and it is enough to even build sustainable systems that make this aid sustainable and moderately efficient – at least in countries that are not extremely politically unstable and in or constantly at the verge of war. There are many such countries with significant poverty.
Extreme income inequality is an economic problem in itself. Combating it has positive second order effects because it creates demand in the economy. When everyone is extremely poor there is no one to sell to.
Money alone cannot solve all the problems in the world. There are many systemic political issues that hinder economic development in parts of the world.
No billionaire has enough money to fix all the problems in the world.
These two things do not make the ability of ultra rich people to meaningfully and sustainably improve the life on many people any less true or relevant. If you choose to spend a billion dollar on your mansion rather than charity people are gonna have a problem with it and there is absolutely nothing fallacious about that. Claiming this to be a fallacy because the rich cannot fix the whole world however ironically is a fallacy in itself.
There is no excuse for wasting a billion dollars like that. It's evil. No one should make any excuses for that.
Not because this taxation can be properly redistributed - it can, especially with no-overhead UBI - but because the only way to reach those levels of wealth is to steal from the labour of others.
We need to make that theft impossible to achieve, from both directions. And the easiest to implement is from the top down, with a combination income & net worth tax, including treating loans on the backs of shares as income.