Hacker News Reader

Comment by sbacic | Hacker News Reader

> Because at least old money understands the concept of noblesse oblige.

Source please.

> it's that this mentality of earned wealth completely rids the owner of any sort of responsibility.

Allow me to offer a different view. If you're one of the lucky few who went from nothing to millions (or even billions) you'd be pissed if society came and started talking about responsibility and equality _now_. Where was society _before_?

And that, I think, is the crux of the issue - society feels responsible for your successes but not for your failures. If you went from nothing to riches - society feels like you owe it some. But if you went from squarely middle class to being a drug addict on the streets then the fault is yours alone. Society will of course try to help you, but it will never consider the idea that maybe, just maybe, it is responsible for what happened to you.

View on HN

Reading the other comments here, I think the argument is that when most people say they came from nothing, they are ignoring roads, electrical grids, sewer systems, fire departments, police to enfore property rights etc. "Society" provided those - before the person was rich. Of course, there are some people who got rich without any of those things, but probably a lot fewer.

If one’s taxes only went to pay for this small subset of items, I think your argument would be stronger. A 40% marginal tax rate is not earmarked for these essential services, as evidenced by our decaying infrastructure despite the US government bringing in $3.5 trillion in tax receipts in 2019.

The political left has been pretty clear that the aim isn’t solely a focus on essential (and shared) resources, but on increasing the social safety net (either through UBI, single payer, or other mechanisms).

Separate conversation if those are good policies or not, but the argument isn’t that the rich don’t want to pay for police. That’s an incredible straw man.

The wealthy capitalists are paying much less than 40% tax rates. Tax rates for capital are cheaper than tax rates for labor.

In Silicon Valley, the long-term capital gains tax rate is >37% (Federal + State + NIIT). That rate starts at well under a million dollars. And in the US, you aren't allowed to deduct inflation losses and have a limited ability to deduct capital losses, unlike some other developed countries. These losses don't affect labor.

Silicon Valley has one of the highest tax rates on long-term capital gains in the world, even more than almost all "social democracies". When Europe starts to look like a tax haven, the taxes on capital are not too low.

Now do labor in SV.

Do we suddenly care about the labor incomes of wealthy people in SV? Because the comparison was with the middle class labor taxes, which are considerably less. And as was previously noted, capital has risks and costs that labor does not.

Social safety nets contribute to earned wealth too, just less directly.

Citation?

Last time I checked, incomes are far higher in US, than in more socialized countries like in Western Europe.

Noblesse Oblige came less from the old wealthy being kind and more from them being physically close to poor people. They were under constant threat of physical violence by sheer proximity, so they had to care - because they likely realized how tenuous their positions were.

The ultra-rich nowadays physically isolate themselves from the working class and generally have security forces and bodyguards to further ensure their separation.

This doesn't really track with my knowledge of history. Aristocrats wouldn't socialize with or marry anyone from the low classes, it would be shameful and scandalous. Aristocratic leaders like royalty were sequestered to enormous palaces. It was difficult to blend in either, your class & wealth was very obvious in the clothes that you wore and how you spoke.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com