Why don't we force wealthy people to give us more of their money?

[bloodyminded]

I'd like to get to the place you're going but I think you've got it backwards, the redistribution of power is far more important and necessary than the redistribution of money.

If the elites had less power the income gap would be nowhere near the issue it is. It seems fairly obvious that in those systems where power is concentrated into fewer hands that income gaps grow bigger and faster than in systems where power is distributed more evenly. It stands to reason the more that power is distributed amongst the people the less extreme that income gaps will be.

Somehow I get this sneaking suspicion the usual suspects that rail against the redistribution of wealth will be just as uncomfortable at the prospect of spreading the power around too. They're kinda funny that way.

Oh yes. It's usually more about power than greed, anyway. Donald Trump is not greedy for more money; he's greedy for more power and status.

That's the reason for such cringing worship of wealthy people; it's not about defense of capitalism per se, but about servility to (and maybe lust for) power.

[Shady]

it's not about defense of capitalism per se, but about servility to (and maybe lust for) power.

Actually, it's about freedom and liberty. Donald Trump's reasons for wanting to build homes, condos, apartment buildings, etc is none of your business.

[Smallc]

It's also about a debt to society though. It can certainly be argued that Donald Trump owes something to the society that allowed and helped him to become so wealthy.

[bush_cheney2004]

It's also about a debt to society though. It can certainly be argued that Donald Trump owes something to the society that allowed and helped him to become so wealthy.

Not much of an argument....convicted felons have a debt to society....Trump has already paid far more and owes society nothing.

[maple_leafs182]

Well said. Not only would it discourage present ideas, technology, and business. But it would also depress the creation and implementation of new ideas, technology, and business in the future. You'd actually cause more economic hardship with this silly wealth confiscation proposal.

That isn't completely true, Tesla, Galileo, Goddard, Einstein, and Edison were more concerned with solving problems and improving processes then mere financial gain.

It is this monetary based economy that is the true problem. The thing is most people not only think that it is fair and necessary but they will fight to defend. This monetary based economy concentrates wealth and power into few hands while enslaving and eliminating the liberties of the rest.

[bloodyminded]

Actually, it's about freedom and liberty. Donald Trump's reasons for wanting to build homes, condos, apartment buildings, etc is none of your business.

By this standard, my reasons for posting what I wish about Donald Trump are none of your business.

By your standard, Shady.

(And if you're going to pretend that the complexities involved in the human relationship to power can all be reduced to "freedom and liberty," then you are insisting, demanding, that we don't take you seriously.)

Edited August 2, 2010 by bloodyminded

[August1991]

That isn't completely true, Tesla, Galileo, Goddard, Einstein, and Edison were more concerned with solving problems and improving processes then mere financial gain.

Gimme a break.

Tesla and Edison were motivated by money.

[WIP]

IMV, Remiel has the right point here.

If we tried to raise taxes on rich people, they would merely move their wealth (or at least their accounting books) elsewhere so the tax authorities could not examine them.

Well, at some point we are going to have to call their bluff! Many of these moves have already been made; how many banks and major corporations moved their official HQ to the Cayman Islands for example?

It needs to be stressed that lower tax rates on corporations and investment income was sold to us on the claim that it would increase prosperity for all by creating an increase in investment that would provide jobs for all. Supply-siders claimed that wealth would trickle down to the rest of us and we would not increase the gaps in wealth and income....history over the last 30 years has proved otherwise!

Take Bill Gates. He has put most of his wealth into a tax-free foundation. He can then control how the income generated by this investment is spent. This idea sort of answers eyeball's point:

Gates understands that he could never spend the money for himself but rather than let politicians in Washington spend it, he has created a foundation so he has the power to spend it.

As long as the money is really being used for actual charitable purposes, there's nothing wrong with diverting some of his billions to the foundation.

----

To return to the OP, there's another reason we don't impose, say, a 98% tax on the very rich that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread.

Consider Bill Gates again. Or Steve Jobs. Or even James Cameron. Why would anyone bother going to the trouble of trying to create something if the government was going to take 98% of any winnings? Would you buy a lottery ticket if you knew in advance that a 98% tax applied to all winnings?

IOW, our taxes affect incentives and if we set incentives right, creative people will create far more wealth, and more tax revenues, than if governments were to impose high taxes now. With luck, and correct incentives, the future will be a richer place than the present.

Colbert said famously that the art of taxation involves plucking the goose, but not too much.

Isn't it strange how the middle class started shrinking after free trade and generous reductions on corporate and investment income started taking effect! Back in the 60's, there seemed to be enough incentives for building factories, but for some reason the top 1% of income earners don't feel they have enough incentives anymore, in spite of the fact that they are the only ones who's incomes have risen significantly.

[Wild Bill]

Back in the 60's, there seemed to be enough incentives for building factories, but for some reason the top 1% of income earners don't feel they have enough incentives anymore, in spite of the fact that they are the only ones who's incomes have risen significantly.

Well, there are corporations that have the money of course but they also have to answer to their shareholders. Not all shareholders are Conrad Blacks. Most of them are ordinary people, like little old ladies trying to build their pensions or even teachers with their pension funds!

The problem is that building in Canada means high taxes and tons of paperwork that you have to pay people to do to give the reports to the various government departments! My career was spent selling electronic parts to printed circuit board manufacturers and that industry has virtually collapsed since 9/1/01. It has hardly recovered at all. Many of the larger accounts I used to service have moved to China for cheaper taxes or Ireland, both for the lower taxes and also a FAR lower paperwork load! Surprisingly, in that industry labour costs were not that big a factor. There is so much automation in the assembly processes that human labour is not that great a percentage of the costs.

Rest assured that any CEO who builds a big plant in Canada will hear it from those little old ladies and teachers when they find out they could have had bigger dividends if the plant was build in Ireland! CEO's can be fired too, you know.

[Shady]

It can certainly be argued that Donald Trump owes something to the society that allowed and helped him to become so wealthy.

Donald Trump's business provides thousands of jobs in the economy. Also, the buildings he constructs need to be furnished. So add business for furniture, appliances, etc. Not to mention that he pays, and his employees pay income taxes. He pays more income tax in one year than most people pay in their lifetime.

[Smallc]

Yes, and all of that is fine. I'm simply justifying the tax they have to pay and any more that they may have to pay in the future.

[Sir Bandelot]

Genocide for those with wealth?

Being rich is not a genetic disorder, but it is a mental illness.

[Bonam]

Being rich is a mental illness.

Seriously? Where the hell is all this rabid hatred for the successful members of society coming from? Jealousy? Ineptitude?

[maple_leafs182]

Seriously? Where the hell is all this rabid hatred for the successful members of society coming from? Jealousy? Ineptitude?

lol, successful. In my race there is no first or last. Having a lot of Money does not mean you are a success in life.

[Sir Bandelot]

lol, successful. In my race there is no first or last. Having a lot of Money does not mean you are a success in life.

Yes indeed, the definition of "success" being tied to how much money a person has. That's part of the mental illness.

I do not hold a rabid hatred for the rich, any more than I hold it for any type of person but I see them as having a disease. Most of the ills of the world can be directly connected to human greed, wouldn't you say?

It would be more accurate to say, I pity the rich. I also pity the people who are manipulated to live by their rules, the incorporated whores who sold their souls for a bowl of rice and a bit of bread, and the dream of being like the rich, some day. In other words, all of us.

Edited August 3, 2010 by Sir Bandelot

[Bonam]

Yes indeed, the definition of "success" being tied to how much money a person has. That's part of the mental illness.

Success is a combination of many things in life, and a certain extent of wealth is certainly one of them. A middle class professional is more successful than a homeless beggar, and you aren't gonna convince me otherwise.

I do not hold a rabid hatred for the rich, any more than I hold it for any type of person but I see them as having a disease. Most of the ills of the world can be directly connected to human greed, wouldn't you say?

No, I wouldn't say that. "Greed", that is, the desire for the betterment of one's life through the acquisition of that which one wants (whether material or otherwise), is what drives progress and creates prosperity. It is one of the underlying forces of capitalism, the system that has brought us the unparalleled quality of life of the 20th and 21st centuries in the Western world.

It would be more accurate to say, I pity the rich. I also pity the people who are manipulated to live by their rules, the incorporated whores who sold their souls for a bowl of rice and a bit of bread, and the dream of being like the rich, some day. In other words, all of us.

Man I dunno what world you guys live in. There are plenty of opportunities to work hard and to become rich, or just to be moderately well off and enjoy life. There are many people who try to acquire wealth, and many that don't bother and have other priorities.

Perhaps you're time would be better spent doing something productive rather than, as you put it, pitying "all of us".

[bush_cheney2004]

...Perhaps you're time would be better spent doing something productive rather than, as you put it, pitying "all of us".

Indeed...as these sorry souls can't define success for themselves but are more than willing to define and limit success for others. How do they make it through even a single day without tears and lament?

[Sir Bandelot]

Perhaps you're time would be better spent doing something productive

Because your value system is based on "production".

"Greed", that is, the desire for the betterment of one's life through the acquisition of that which one wants (whether material or otherwise), is what drives progress and creates prosperity. It is one of the underlying forces of capitalism,

All elements of society which I generally oppose. But a good speech nonetheless, one which I would imagine Lucifer giving to his followers, in hell.

Man I dunno what world you guys live in.

I admit, the fact that we are from completely different "worlds" on this matter comforts me...

[dre]

Our society is built on a social contract where people who play by the rules are entitled to the wealth they earn. We do expect these super-rich to contribute back to society but via taxes but a punative level of taxation would violate this contract.

You also should to remember that the majority of the super rich in North America are people who built successful companies that delievered something that benefited everyone (Gates, Jobs, Waltons (Walmart), the Google guys etc.)

I dont have any problem with someone becoming wealthy. But a society with extreme wealth concentration wont last. The problem is that wealth and political power end up being the same thing, and the wealthy use their political power to make themselves even more wealthy.

So you end up with the kind of situation where Warren Buffet has lower tax rates than his secretary. Youre always going to have rich people, and youre always going to have poor people... but the trick is to tweak things so that you dont get extreme concentration of wealth and thats what we have to be careful of.

Louis Brandeis said...

We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

[Bonam]

All elements of society which I generally oppose. But a good speech nonetheless, one which I would imagine Lucifer giving to his followers, in hell.

Seriously? Lucifer? You are getting more ridiculous with each subsequent post.

I admit, the fact that we are from completely different "worlds" on this matter comforts me...

Same...

[WIP]

Well, there are corporations that have the money of course but they also have to answer to their shareholders. Not all shareholders are Conrad Blacks. Most of them are ordinary people, like little old ladies trying to build their pensions or even teachers with their pension funds!

How well is the average, small shareholder represented by the board of directors of the average corporation? Not too well judging by the exponential growth in CEO salaries. They look out for their own, not the average shareholder.

The problem is that building in Canada means high taxes and tons of paperwork that you have to pay people to do to give the reports to the various government departments! My career was spent selling electronic parts to printed circuit board manufacturers and that industry has virtually collapsed since 9/1/01. It has hardly recovered at all. Many of the larger accounts I used to service have moved to China for cheaper taxes or Ireland, both for the lower taxes and also a FAR lower paperwork load! Surprisingly, in that industry labour costs were not that big a factor. There is so much automation in the assembly processes that human labour is not that great a percentage of the costs.

They don't move to places like China and Indonesia because of taxes; they go there to take advantage of rockbottom wages that are driving down manufacturing wages all over the world. They have to pay bribes and kickbacks to Communist Party officials in China; how does that stack up against paperwork? And what happened to Ireland? The fickle finger of globalization seems to have left them the most indebted nation in Europe with the highest unemployment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/26/ireland-economic-collapse

Rest assured that any CEO who builds a big plant in Canada will hear it from those little old ladies and teachers when they find out they could have had bigger dividends if the plant was build in Ireland! CEO's can be fired too, you know.

According to Business Week, the average CEO of a major corporation made 42 times the average hourly worker's pay in 1980. By 1990 that had almost doubled to 85 times. In 2000, the average CEO salary reached an unbelievable 531 times that of the average hourly worker. http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/a/CEOsOverpaid.htm

So what did chief executives do that increased their value 12 fold? They got richer even in cases where their companies stagnated and went into decline.

[WIP]

No, I wouldn't say that. "Greed", that is, the desire for the betterment of one's life through the acquisition of that which one wants (whether material or otherwise), is what drives progress and creates prosperity. It is one of the underlying forces of capitalism, the system that has brought us the unparalleled quality of life of the 20th and 21st centuries in the Western world.

Thank you Gordon Gekko! Well, I might have been inclined to cut this sort of disaster capitalism some slack, if lived in a world with abundant resources for the next few centuries....but we don't! A new way of thinking, and a new way of economics has to come about before we doom future generations to extinction. We are like the voracious bacteria colony in a petrie dish that keeps eating and dividing...making more and more bacteria, until the limits to growth are reached, and the colony collapses. As it stands now, the human colony is almost at the edge of that precipice where it can grow no further, and time is running out. Glorifying consumption and greed has to become a thing of the past. But guess what! Greed pays decreasing dividends when you accumulate more and more crap anyway. Becoming super rich doesn't even do squat to increase your personal happiness. A little food for thought from Jonah Lehrer in Wired Magazine:

Once we escape the trap of poverty, levels of wealth have an extremely modest impact on levels of happiness, especially in developed countries. Even worse, it appears that the richest nation in history – 21st century America – is slowly getting less pleased with life. (Or as the economists behind this recent analysis concluded: “In the United States, the [psychological] well-being of successive birth-cohorts has gradually fallen through time.”)

Needless to say, this data contradicts one of the central assumptions of modern society, which is that more money equals more pleasure. That’s why we work hard, fret about the stock market and save up for that expensive dinner/watch/phone/car/condo. We’ve been led to believe that dollars are delight in a fungible form.

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/happiness-and-money-2/#ixzz0vW2gOrcQ

[bush_cheney2004]

....Once we escape the trap of poverty, levels of wealth have an extremely modest impact on levels of happiness, especially in developed countries. Even worse, it appears that the richest nation in history – 21st century America – is slowly getting less pleased with life. (Or as the economists behind this recent analysis concluded: “In the United States, the [psychological] well-being of successive birth-cohorts has gradually fallen through time.”)

More America as benchmark....good to see nothing has changed.

[Bonam]

Thank you Gordon Gekko! Well, I might have been inclined to cut this sort of disaster capitalism some slack, if lived in a world with abundant resources for the next few centuries....but we don't!

I would argue that we do. The Earth has abundant resources, many of which we have yet to tap, and unimaginable resources beyond that are available elsewhere.

A new way of thinking, and a new way of economics has to come about before we doom future generations to extinction. We are like the voracious bacteria colony in a petrie dish that keeps eating and dividing...making more and more bacteria, until the limits to growth are reached, and the colony collapses. As it stands now, the human colony is almost at the edge of that precipice where it can grow no further, and time is running out.

Alarmist nonsense. While people are fretting about these issues, engineers and scientists will already have devised ways to keep our civilization prosperous and growing. We are not bacteria.

Glorifying consumption and greed has to become a thing of the past. But guess what! Greed pays decreasing dividends when you accumulate more and more crap anyway. Becoming super rich doesn't even do squat to increase your personal happiness.

Greed means not only acquiring material goods, but other things that one may covet. Whether it is a fulfilling job, a stable marriage, a healthy child, it is the basis of how human functions. Being super rich may not increase happiness, but having enough money to achieve your goals in life, whatever they may be, can certainly contribute to happiness.

Once we escape the trap of poverty, levels of wealth have an extremely modest impact on levels of happiness, especially in developed countries. Even worse, it appears that the richest nation in history – 21st century America – is slowly getting less pleased with life. (Or as the economists behind this recent analysis concluded: “In the United States, the [psychological] well-being of successive birth-cohorts has gradually fallen through time.”)

The article is already wrong. The US is not the world's richest nation. Many nations exceed the US on a per capita basis.

Needless to say, this data contradicts one of the central assumptions of modern society, which is that more money equals more pleasure.

Who makes this assumption? Do you? Do I? Does a poll show that people widely believe this statement? It is nonsense, a caricaturization of a position that doesn't exist, so that it may be easily countered.

Edited August 3, 2010 by Bonam

[TimG]

I dont have any problem with someone becoming wealthy. But a society with extreme wealth concentration wont last.

Show me the evidence that the 'concentration of wealth' at a global scale is greater than it was 200 years ago or even 50 years ago? The trouble with the comparisons that end at the border of a wealthy country is they ignore the masses of cheap labout which are essential to the lifestyle of the poor and middle class in the wealthy countries. I believe that free trade and capital have lead to a global reduction in income disparties between societies even as the disparities within them increases. That is something that needs to be taken into account before declaring the system a failure. Edited August 3, 2010 by TimG