not_IOdoomer billionairs
ObjectivityIncarnateThere will always be people who are the smartest and/or shrewdest and/or most ambitious and/or luckiest, in a population. “Just get rid of the people who currently have the most wealth” is extraordinarily naive.
There’s kind of a difference between “whoever happens to be wealthiest at the moment” and “The 0.001% of the population that is three times wealthier than the bottom 50% of humanity combined.”
Over the long term, there really isn’t. Outside of a government imposing tyranny-tier control over everyone’s wealth, wealth inequality happens naturally, and inevitably, and the gap widens similarly.
What’s more important is making sure that even the poorest among us can have a decent standard of living. After all, if you waved a magic wand and now everyone in the US, for example, was earning $75,000 a year minimum, no one would be in poverty, right? And yet the size of the ‘wealth gap’ between the wealthiest and the $75k ‘minimum earners’ would effectively be identical; the gap between $0 and billions is basically the same as the gap between $75k and billions.
Toppling the wealthiest just because they’re the wealthiest isn’t going to solve any of the actual problems (especially when politicians get bribed for relatively-measly five figure sums, etc.).
OBJECTION!Outside of a government imposing tyranny-tier control over everyone’s wealth, wealth inequality happens naturally, and inevitably, and the gap widens similarly.
Hmm, this tyranny idea sounds pretty interesting then.
MousePotatoDoesStuffHow about changing taxes so that it’s impossible for individuals to have more wealth than entire nations?
What’s the tax that prevents people from valuing your stuff highly? Because that’s what net worth ultimately is: other people’s valuation of what you own.
Don’t hold your breath for any sort of ‘maximum wealth’ legislation to ever be a thing. It’s an absurd idea on its face, and even if you could accomplish something like that, it wouldn’t solve any of the problems you think it’d solve.