I’m past the point of wanting to make the rich pay their fair share. The wealth gap is too wide for that to help. I think it’s time to start talking about clawing back the wealth they’ve accumulated.
How much is "their fair share" then? They already pay more taxes than someone who's not rich; how's it even fair for them to be punished for their success like that? Are you sure you're not just motivated by ego and envy; you can't possibly imagine that someone else legitimately produced a lot more value than you, so the only way to protect your ego is to view any gains of anyone significantly richer than you as unearned?
https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidanc...
I would say their fair share is as much as it takes until resources get allocated in a way that meets the basic needs of society. If there's $1 for lobbying that $1 should be allocated to building affordable housing, infrastructure, etc.. To be clear, I don't think their "fair share" of future profits is enough to make that happen. They've already accumulated so much of the wealth that I think the flow of money is going to slow down and taxing the profits won't be enough to reverse the effect.
> the only way to protect your ego is to view any gains of anyone significantly richer than you as unearned
I don't know anyone that would say people like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates "earned" their extreme wealth. I think they earned the right to be wealthy to the point where they can live on a nice estate or travel the world and never think about money again. Aspiring to that point is important in terms of incentive.
However, I think the "extreme", multi-billion dollar, impossible to spend portion of their wealth is not earned. It's accumulated through exploitation and unfair competition that's only possible once you hit a certain point of wealth. That part should be clawed back.
So I would say a "fair share" of the wealth for successful people to have is enough that they don't ever have to think about money again, but not so much that they're able to influence global economics to the point we stop building real things like houses and hospitals and only build intangible, high margin products that no one truly needs.
How many schools is Jeff Bezos worth? Do you think his "innovation" of having others work so hard they can't take a bathroom break is worth society allocating him the resources equal to 4000-5000 schools? I think the retail side of Amazon is a net negative for the environment, product safety, product quality, etc. and I think we should send him the bill for it.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/09/23/...
[0]https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/09/23/...