Stealing partly from someone else I can't find a reference for:
Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure.
Not entirely serious but extreme wealth should be considered a bug. Perhaps it's true that the best system overall always results in this but it's worth considering that it might not be.
More importantly though, it's not a precise tax plan it's intended to show the absurdity of the outcome we currently have rather than show a particular way out. That the answers are often "but there would be loopholes" rather than "having people amass much more wealth is inherently good for us all" is telling.
Edit - though, they do. They already do. Not at the same level but they do let the government take their money.
And also, how else would they increase their score on the next level?
But that would be a lie since most of that money/value was created by other people, most likely their employees.
Second, the only way you can argue they created more value than the founder of the company is in aggregate. But they also likely made more money than the founder in aggregate. A company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring. If a CEO makes 10,000,000/year, it's probably because the company thinks that CEO is worth it (adds more value than that). So it's silly to point out that the 1000 engineers below him add more value in aggregate. Why, yes.. they also get paid way more than 10,000,000/year in aggregate.
And if the CEO/founder flat out owns the company then all this talk is irrelevant. It's theirs. They can do what they want. If they hired people to build the company for them and the people agreed, good for them. Sounds like a beneficial negotiation for both parties.
Edit: I'm not necessarily arguing for or against the existence of billionaires. That's a tough problem that I don't think I know the answer to. I'm just saying that pointing out that "employees add the real value to the company" is a dumb argument.
Secondly, it’s just laughably wrong to suggest that a “company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring”. Employees are paid what they need to be paid in order to get them to work there. No more, no less. A sweatshop worker might bring much more value than the cents they are paid, and a programmer might bring much more value than their 100K salary would suggest (see e.g. no-poach agreements between Google and other big companies).
(Seriously. Cite on economist that claims that “company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring”.)
And risk is irrelevant to the question of value. If someone wins a billion dollars, should we thank them for their hard work if they donate it to charity? Maybe for the money, but it would be misleading to conflate speculation/gambling with work.
You are so fundamentally misguided that it’s just laughable.
Since Forbes is the default scoreboard perhaps when it makes its Billionaires List, instead of a basic sort ranked by on net worth, Forbes should incorporate Environmental, Social and Governance like factors similar to those starting to be used for Equity investing [1] and do a final ranking based on ESG*net worth.
Consider for a moment what privileges would have to attach to this sticker, in order for the billionaires to let this through Congress. Definitely they would still want to have control of dominant cultural narratives, and they'd still want to write all the laws, and those of them who appreciate fabulous personal possessions would still appreciate those. The administration of this sticker would be quite complicated...
People who created enormous value in the past were rich but not filthy rich and that was not their goal in the first place. Most of them were happy enough to be paid back in respect, recognition, credit, fanfare, veneration etc..
What people are you referring to? I've read a fair amount about the gilded age robber barons and such. They were definitely not content to be paid back in "respect, recognition, fanfare". In fact that is more of a distraction and nuisance, and occasionally a liability or danger. The sorts of business practices used in the past to amass and keep wealth make anything today look like kiddie stuff.
What is your definition of filthy rich?
Rockefeller's net worth was about 2% of US GDP. IIRC, that's still a record.
If Bezos sold all of his stock in Amazon, well, for one he'd certainly be worth a lot less fairly rapidly as the stock collapsed based on his massive sale of it.
He's taxed on the sale of his stock as far as I understand it, although the capital gains tax should presumably be higher than the tax on earned wages.
It seems sensible that when you're putting hours in, you'd get taxed at a lower rate than someone whose money made them more money.
But... if Bezos has 10 million shares and they're worth 100 billion dollars, do you... take his shares away even if he's not selling them just because his assets are worth more than a billion dollars?
I think it's fair to say the current state of affairs where his employees are working at barely livable wages and getting carted away in ambulances from his warehouses is certainly untenable.
At that point the federal government needs to step in and say that these places aren't paying these workers enough to live a comfortable lifestyle and support a family.
It's too bad the extremely wealthy are also so able to pervert our systems of governance through lobbying efforts which they can afford.
You can't use the stock based wealth without asking it, unless you take out a loan with the stock as collateral.
Even a crappy government, which is widely known to be one of the least efficient ways to manage anything.
What's the percentage of multi millionaires or billionaires that are involved in effective, life changing philanthropy for large swaths of people?
I chalk up China's governmental competence to the number of scientists and engineers involved in their government. It may be authoritarian and a bit of a nightmare, but unlike the majority of other governments in the world you have a few decision makers in there who have some clue how the world actually works. Most other government are run by lawyers, career bureaucrats, delusional ideologues, or leaders who inherited their position either officially via some line of succession or de-facto via institutional nepotism.
There are some of all those categories in China's government, but there are also apparently enough people who actually know how to do things in the real world.
Only a small percentage of billionaires do incredibly valuable things, but those who do are doing things that I can't imagine the US government of today ever doing. The US government would be having meetings to schedule the meeting to discuss the meeting schedule, or fighting over culture war issues.
I think that the government has been sabotaged. Intentionally impairing it's functions to justify the critiques of functionally.
"I want to make the government small enough to drown in a tub"
"Government doesn't work, elect me and I'll prove it"(that one's a joke but conveys the point)
This might be a relevant story I read today on China.
a lot of people would disagree here, see the (correct, based) coup of the aus govt over the judiciary allowing them to at will deport migrants, or the controls on going outside in australia
0: https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
IMO it's not reasonable at all past a certain point to continue to amass this kind of wealth that is a by-product of a broken system driven by exploitation, a system in this stage clearly set up for the rich to get richer while those struggling remain stagnant at best.
It's also not a stretch to suggest that Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates have created over 100 times more value than Rowling. Their roles are more nebulous, but they certainly did something better than their competitors. Microsoft Excel alone possibly has possibly saved trillions of hours productivity.
Or at least I'd consider it to have more priority, than J.K Rowling amassing few more millions herself.
I wouldn't have such big issue with Billionaires, if there weren't so much suffering from the exploited population.
Under the original US Constitution, Harry Potter would be public domain by now.
- Edited by other people - Printed by other people - (Films were) directed by other people - Characters in the films were played by other people - Distributed by other people
If there was no J.K. Rowling, we (admittedly) wouldn't have the stories. But the same is true of all of the other moving parts in the media business.
No-one is self-made.
How long before we just have a permanent ruling class, and how does that move humanity forward?
It means the rich capture a growing portion of productivity, and in modern days it is on the strength of the financialization of productivity, not necessarily people actually doing work.
How is this an optimal system? How is it even a functioning system? What we are doing as a species, today, right now, is not working and our ability to live on this planet is increasingly in danger.
What I firmly oppose is someone who has a birth lottery of being born to such wealth creators - they don't deserve to inherit a vast fortune and all the power and privilege that come with it.
Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. If they want to give it all to their kids, to a charitable cause, or just destroy it, that should be their right as owners of that property, it is not just for the state to steal that property because some people don't like it when the parent decides to give that wealth to the child. Focus taxation on things that harm an unwilling third party, not things that involve only two consenting parties where nobody is made worse off.
Hard disagree. We won't see eye to eye on this point, and it really invalidates the rest of w hat you are saying.
I find it hard to believe that anyone could disagree with the above, which means you must disagree that the fruits of this exchange should be my property. Well let me ask you this: the customer made $20 in utility by engaging in this transaction with me. Why should they be able to keep the $20 utility but I must give up part of the $60? And what right do you have to reach into my pocket? If my customers instead traded groceries for my hour of training, should I not be able to keep these groceries?Is it only money that makes the difference for you?
As far as pushing back against crony capitalism and corporatism goes, we are in total agreement.
Consider point 13.6 of Scott Alexander's (Slate Star Codex) Non-Libertarian FAQ:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta...
If you assume that "individual property earned through voluntary exchange" is the ultimate value to be upheld, you may end up having to defend a hellscape world. You need at least to temper it with something along the lines of the Lockean proviso.
But I do consider it an important value since a lot of the motivation behind redistribution is self interest and jealousy (this is a finding in social science research), benelovant compassion only explains a small proportion of the variation.
1. Who do you think decides what rights an individual has in a society, and on what grounds do they hold that right? 2. Why grant property rights
On what grounds do they hold that right? I'm not religious so I can't appeal to an ultimate moral authority. See (2).
2. If you grant and enforce property rights you stake the individual, and the overall outcome is a more prosperous world. Removing property rights is a good way to collective starvation, it's been tried before. So it's moral in the sense that enforcing property rights minimises human suffering through the above mechanism.
If so, what kind of distribution do you think makes sense?
It's not like alternatives to billionaires owning the planet doesn't exist. Just America seems to be fairly resistant to the idea of public good.
And the other consideration is how the money of billionaires is actively used to make everyone else's lives worse, either through manipulating markets and commodities, raising our rent, or literally polluting and destroying the planet.
Or buying media and brain washing the population with their crazy ideologies. These are all highly negative events that come from a small group of people having control of too many resources.
No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario.
K, here's one, whether or not you accept it. I don't think the world would have SpaceX or Tesla were it not for the existence of billionaires.
Elon Musk already had a billion before founding/buying these companies. If he had "maxed out" and couldn't make any more money, I think there is a good chance he wouldn't have taken risks on these companies. I think we are better off with the existence of companies like these.
Even if you don't like Tesla or SpaceX, these are just examples. There are a lot of other companies that would not exist as well, especially if you consider the potential scarcity of funding in this scenario. And without their existence we would all be worse off.
There are downsides to having billionaires too, but it's pretty disingenuous to pretend there aren't upsides as well.
Someone else would have taken Musk's place. There is no inherent quality to billionaires that make them valuable outside of their wealth.
> especially if you consider the potential scarcity of funding in this scenario.
how is this an argument? I assume banks still exist in this world without billionaires?
As mentioned, there are other vehicles to obtain financing. Secondly, when billionaires disappear, their wealth doesn't disappear with them. Not sure what you are asking.
And even if you could gather the funding, you now have to keep a few dozen investors happy versus just pursuing your idea however you want.
And sure the money doesn't disappear, but would you really expect an Amazon warehouse worker who now makes $70k instead of $35k to be investing in highly risky ventures? I mean, they wouldn't even qualify to invest.
That seems unlikely, considering the USSR produced the space launches, and electric cars existed before Tesla. Without billionaires, you'd also lose the Koch's making it hard to move away from fossil fuels, which I think would make electric cars significantly easier, rather than harder
If you just mean that we won't have those brand names, should I care? It's just a name
Even if you assume that power correlates perfectly with wealth, there's not really evidence that billionaires control anywhere near enough money to become a "permanent ruling class".
[1]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth
By far the biggest source of wealth inequality is the division between the top and bottom 50th percentile, who have essentially zero wealth. The uber-wealthy may be rich on an individual basis, but in aggregate they still hold constitute significantly less than run-in-the-mill retirees, dentists, and actuaries.
[1]https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
It's much easier for a billionaire to hire lobbyists to protect his latest exploitative venture than it is for some dentist to do so. That's why the 1% held 30% of the total thirty years ago and they hold 40% now. That is a dark trend.
Your focus is too narrow. Broaden the timeline -- the meritocratic spoils cascade across the generations, as they ever have. It's part of the motivation to achieve.
Edit: because i can't reply right now:
I'm curious if a direct application of your question to something you need to survive would get a different answer.
We think of money as something we can accumulate without limit but if you replace it with other things in a similar context it seems different. Why is it okay for billionaires to exist, but not for someone to stockpile too much food?
I'm curious if anyone has an answer to both.
Literally nobody is suggesting that the children of the wealthy should be penniless.
Just looking at history of presidents...George Bush Jr and George Bush Sr. Do you think George Bush Jr would have been president if his father wasn't? I'm not saying that GWB isn't competent or anything like that...but is your assertion that if he didn't have the name (and inherited wealth and connections), he would have been a viable candidate?
Same could be said about the Clinton's, so I don't think this is partisan.
In the United States, the titular head of state is chosen through a weird gameshow, and any given head of state can play that game twice. On two occasions, the son of a successful game show contestant has leveraged name recognition to also win a round in the hot seat.
I believe no individual has ever _earned_ a billion USD. If it were up to me, people like Jeff Bezos would have everything to their name seized by the state. It should be used for the benefit of the many -- and not a selected few. He'll be compensated with a trophy, though: "Congratulations, you won capitalism. Continue for New Game+."
...everything? Also what does "people like Jeff Bezos" mean? Bald ones?
History teaches us that extreme inequality and class resentment leads to societal collapse. First there is civil unrest, then revolution. We have seen the beginning of some serious civil unrest this year.
From a purely self-interested point of view, if you value living in a peaceful and stable society, you ought to be concerned about wealth inequality. Generational wealth is one of the major factors here.
This way, a billionaire giving his fortune away won't be taxed. If that fortune goes to charity, still not taxed. If that fortune goes to his kids or to their trust fund, it should be heavily taxed.