A Very Distant 2nd place: $100 million and a beautifully framed picture of my masterpiece, The Conjoined Triangles of Success
What's the smallest amount per year you'd say it is obvious that no one needs?
There will always be people who value intrinsic incentives and even more so when there is a lack or limitation of extrinsic ones. Society will do well to structure itself primarily around such people. Such people are also less likely to cause damage to others because it's very rare that damage to others fulfills one's intrinsic needs. Linus is arguably a net positive to human society than the top 20 billionaires combined. We need more of him and less of the others.
Perhaps the "billionaire sympathizers" are people who can manage to see that the bar for what is considered an unacceptable amount of wealth will keep being revised lower and lower until it affects them. Here you are already proposing that a person shouldn't be allowed to earn more than a total of a million dollars in income every year, which caps one's lifetime wealth accumulation at $40-60M[0]. Which would make anyone able to achieve anywhere close to that sum as wealthy as today's wealthiest persons. After which the next person will suggest that such a thing shouldn't be allowed for the betterment of society.
0: assuming you can start earning that much starting at age 20 and you intend on retiring between 60 to 80, so obviously the range can go up or down a bit.
Europe has developed no new big companies in the past two decades precisely because this isn't true. The vast majority of successful companies and products are developed by people motivated by money, and if you try to prevent them from being rewarded for their hard work then they just go somewhere where their effort is more welcome.
Europe has developed no new big companies in the past two decades precisely because this isn't true.
Spotify, Wise, Adyen, DeepMind just off the top of my head, but there are loads more.
The fact that you don’t know about them is because many tech bros in the USA are pretty parochial and haven’t been exposed to international businesses or indeed tech.
You are, of course, in a position to know what everybody on Earth needs.
What if someone wants to give $10 million away per year to worthy charities? Will you tell them they can't?
Or... what if someone wants to own something you consider wastefully expensive? Is it your job to tell them they shouldn't? Or is it wiser to adopt the position of humility and say "Well, it's their business, not mine, what they spend their money on"?
It's easy to be motivated by envy, even when we think we aren't. It's much better for your soul, and your peace of mind, to adopt the "let them" mentality, and not decide what other people, whose lives you know nothing about, need.
I'll defend the argument no one 'needs' more than 1.5 mill per year.
I agree with you greed is endless and lots of people want more and will rationalize their hoarding while others, often in their own communities, suffer.
Obviously being a slave is not the same as being a millionaire. If you make your argument this reductionist then you don't even sound human anymore, let alone well reasoned.
Since it was not my intention to engage in ideological battle (you'll notice I framed it as "good for your soul and peace of mind" rather than make any kind of political argument for it), I'll leave it there and not reply to any of the answers I got. But it was quite enlightening to see how people reacted to that comment.
In your argument case, those are all “nice to haves” (like much of the stuff in an upper middle class lifestyle), but it would be very difficult to argue they are necessary to live life, even at a relatively wealthy capacity.