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Comment by markdown | Hacker News Reader

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markdown·

> Also, every member of the royal family should be stripped of their wealth and exiled.

What about billionaires?

You know, millionaires don't need all their money either.

How about we take all their money and exile millionaires, billionaires, and the monarchy?

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For billionaires, I agree with that.

For high-end millionaires (say $100 million or more), I can still get behind that.

For low-level millionaires who legitimately worked for their money and built their business, absolutely not. A million dollars is not a lot in 2021.

I say this as a not-millionaire.

If you're suggesting a purge of the wealthy upper classes whose income is mostly derived from unproductive rent-seeking, then yes, I agree. Good idea!

Yes, all kinds of heritable wealth are problematic. But when it comes with heritable political power, doubly so.

Considering the loose political funding and lobbying regulations in the US (etc.), both de jure and certainly de facto, the wealthy seem to purchase political power on key issues that benefit them. This isn't the same as the power in a constitutional monarch, but in aggregate it may actually be worse than one.

Yeah, who would want to live in a society where obscene wealth is redistributed?

Can you even make a case that monarchs earned their wealth?

They "earned" it the same way billionaires earned it. By getting wealthy competitors to fight each other and consolidating their monopoly position whenever possible.

Exclude first-generation millionaires and we have a deal.

And that’s how country X ended up having every successful entrepreneur emigrate or set up their business affairs so as to have assets held offshore.

Those can still be taxed.

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