That’s the problem. I don’t think there are easy answers. Although I would suggest a progressive capital gains tax on stocks.
Uhhh there already is one?? Short term gains are taxed at ordinary income which is progressive and long term capital gains are taxed at 0% for people making less than $40k, 15% for 40K to 400k and 20% for people over that.
They should exist for the simple reason that they exist in other countries and in the age of high tech economies, they will just move to other countries together with their money and skill-set and teams and leave US in the dust and other countries will likely promote that as opposed to respecting patent laws and such. Why would Steve Jobs want to remain in US when he could become most powerful man in the world by moving to Canada to make a wePhone and Mapletosh there
Good piece and an interesting read. It does address many of the issues I'm trying to raise in this thread.
Good point bringing up the Gilded Age as that was the last time the US saw this sort of wealth disparity. Yes there were certainly a lot of problems with it but lets not forget to that the Vanderbilts and the Morgans did also do a lot to start universities and foundations. We are seeing the Bezos, Buffets, and Gates of now doing the same. I agree wealth is not fully created on it's own and there has to be the right conditions to do it. Commodore Vanderbilt took advantage of that in building the railroad and our billionaires of today are doing that with the Internet. Now I agree that building the railroads and the internet had a significant amount of public investment in them but it still took visionaries to see the opportunity and take the risk to advance them in the way they did. We don't really know what things would look like if left primarily to the state to do that. Regarding saying that we now have crumbling infrastructure, bad schools and poor health care you seem to be blaming that on billionaires. Is that really the fault of billionaires or is that misplaced priorities? I mean our budgets are many times larger than what they were 40 years ago and we could actually pay for those things if we prioritized differently. Given that neither the Republicans are addressing the debt anymore and Sanders and his supporters have put forward the idea of New Modern Money Theory the debt and lack of tax revenue isn't the issue. As the saying goes we're all Keynesians now
It is also important to know that people like Vanderbilt were murdering the work forces of opponents. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Wars
I'm sorry but I'm going to have to pick on you as this frankly is the most hackneyed answer to debates and a copout. It's a response that I hear all the time from Trump supporters. "My family came here legally and didn't get any help so why should we let all these Mexicans in illegally. I work hard everyday and feed my family so why can't everyone else.. I'm just going by what I see.." I'm going to get really philosophical on you now. According to David Hume we all go on what we see as the empirical basis of knowledge is inherently tied to what we can and have observed. That said what we can see isn't just limited to our immediate experience but as we have things like language and the means of transmission of information. To take the Rationalist side we can build upon knowledge from a mental construct. For example we can have a discussion on Ancient Rome yet I'm pretty sure none of us actually saw Ancient Rome. To be very blunt just basing your argument on I go by what I see is a defense of ignorant. Rant End.. I think you raise some very good points and even though I ranted earlier this is a really thoughtful post. I don't think anyone is arguing for billionaires should exist if they break the law. I think all of us accept the idea that a billionaire that has made their money illegally and even unethically should be subject to either criminal or civil law. I don't think anyone will defend the Sacklers right to their billions given that they made it through unethical means of pushing drugs. The question of whether too much money and power in too few hands isn't good is a complicated one. There are plenty of arguments for rule by an enlightened oligarchy going all the way to Plato. Much of the view of the Founders particularly Hamilton and Madison was essentially that and why the only direct democracy in the Constitution was the election of Representatives. Money certainly isn't wisdom but Bloomberg is basically saying that what it takes to make that much money is the largely the same traits that it would take run the country. I don't buy that completely but I do see how intelligence, understanding markets, understanding both your own people and your competitors, and seeing opportunities where others might not are things that could be very helpful in running the US. In that sense people like Bloomberg, Musk, Bezos, and Buffet, who built their fortunes largely from the same staring point as most Americans (not inheriting a lot of wealth or a position) are extraordinary. There is the argument that all money corrupts and someone could start out as a good person and in the process of becoming a billionaire be corrupted. That is possible but considering there are billionaires like Gates who is putting most of his money into a foundation. Bloomberg who is doing a lot for climate change and gun control and Musk who says he is trying to save humanity. Does their immense wealth make them not good people even though they are using it to do good? Yet I get that feeling that is the argument that many here are making that inherently being a billionaire means you can't be good. You, Franchiseblade and others have pointed out that these are subjective standards but I noted Franchiseblade has accepted that arbitrary standard of a cutoff at a billion dollars. I agree that a billion is arbitrary and I'm using it as the point of discussion since that is the figure specifically used in political rhetoric. That arbitrariness though I would use to argue against the idea of banning billionaires. Issues like fairness, equity, and common good, all are very subjective yet the argument against billionaires is based upon those. What if we decide that it's not enough to stop having billionaires but maybe we shouldn't have 100 millionaires, 10 millionaires and so on. This arbitrary scale could justify far more stringent caps on wealth. While a society where everyone has equal wealth might be a utopian ideal it has led to disaster in most large scale attempts to do so.
Yes and many other unsavory things too. Would we be better off though as a country without Vanderbilt's railroads, universities and foundations? It's rare to find figures in history that were all good or all bad and I'm certainly not going to claim Commodore Vanderbilt as a good guy but he did do some good that wouldn't have been possible without his immense wealth.
While it is possible that hundred millionaires shouldn't exist, I think one billion is good because of the bang for the book. It means a significant injection of money while doing minimum economic harm to the former owners of the billions.
But Vanderbilt was competing with others for the railroad market. We would have had them with or without him. If all of the resources used to slow others down, we may have had them sooner. The wealth motive to develop and innovate can still happen with hundreds of millions as reward, too.
I'm not sure what exactly you are arguing for so I'll hold off on any critique. My point was simple. Capitalism was already proven unsustainable in the early 20th century. The only way capitalism survived was through compromise. The US instituted a heavy progressive tax with a 90% bracket at the top. Meanwhile, Europe went much further than just progressive taxes and instituted socialist policies like universal healthcare, free education, pension system, etc as standard practices. A 100 years later, the wealthy in the US have systematically dismantled the progressive tax, reduced the 90% bracket down to 37%, and are fighting all efforts to implement any European style socialist programs. That's the fight we are in right now. Without any compromise, capitalism is once again proving to be unsustainable.
The presumption here is that we wouldn't have any of those things if it weren't for Vanderbilt. I severely doubt that's the case. For example, the government subsidies that helped fuel railroad construction would still have been there with or without Vanderbilt. A similar argument is made by some Britishers who try to justify the colonization of India. "Well, we did build a railroad system so in a sense we helped industrialize India". A lot of countries have made railroads without having to be colonized beforehand, it's a ridiculous justification. Lastly, the point on foundations/universities is an interesting one. Currently, many billionaires/"uber-wealthy" use contributions and donations to sanitize their hands. The Sackler family is a great example of that. If you have time check out this interesting discussion on how wealthy people use institutions like Harvard to sanitize their name. This is the same guy who wrote that NYT piece I posted earlier. His recent book, "Winners Take All" is very relevant to the discussion we are having.
I meant that statement as a signal of humility before I entered this discussion. I am not formally educated in philosophy, I am not familiar with the well known "-isms" or common arguments/debates in the field etc. My comments are based on everything that I have read, seen, and interacted with. From that, I form a perspective that I am very well aware is not the whole truth, that it is just my subjective understanding of the world. Essentially, what I "see". Your perception of my statement as a "defense of ignorant" is an issue with your perception. Just by reading the rest of my original post, you can clearly see it was not my intent to provide shortsighted arguments without any empirical defense. You projected previous experience with some Trump supporters onto me, which isn't exactly in keeping with an open mind. Perhaps I should've elaborated further on what I meant by "just going by what I see" , but I didn't expect someone just looking for an opening to "dunk" on me. I'm happy to discuss further on the original billionaire topic, but I found your tone condescending and if you would've given me that lecture in person in that manner I probably would've just told you to go **** yourself.
I don’t think all capitalism is bad. But pure unfeathered laissez faire capitalism is unsustainable. There has to be a balance.
God created billionaires and wants them to succeed and last forever -- for further details please read the biography of King Dave.
