Are billionaires rich enough yet?

[bilby]

Money is memory of favors not yet returned. To say it's bad for one person's wealth to exceed some amount is either to say it's bad for one person to do that much more for others than they have done for him, or else it's to say it's bad for people to remember the services others have done them and return the favors when they can. Both of those are moral insanity, on a level with saying it's wrong to write Harry Potter stories.

There are other possibilities.

One is that simple money fails to account for any asymmetry that might exist between the value to the buyers of goods or services, and the value to the seller of those goods.

Wealth is ultimately a measure of what the world owes each person. But pretty much every economic system ever, holds that what a person earns doesn't exactly match with what they are owed. The difference being 'taxes' and/or 'benefits'.

There's no fundamental or inalienable right to keep every last red cent of your earnings. The rules about how much you get to keep are fairly arbitrary, but the idea that the answer should, or must, be 'all of it' is clearly rubbish.

To suggest that there's a limit to how much one person can possibly have done to help out his society, and therefore to the amount society should be beholden to him, isn't unreasonable at all, once you accept that money isn't significantly different from social credit points, or a videogame score. There are rules, and what those rules are is to be determined by the people in charge of society. There are no wrong answers. Just poor choices about who should be allowed to make the rules.

IMO, letting people who think that their preferred rules are somehow a law of nature make the rules is a poor choice.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'd be happy to respond to your response . . . if I understood it.

Well, what tax rate do you want for billionaires? Do you want 100% or more? If so, then why are you complaining when whomever you're labeling "the right-winger" retorts that billionaires will stop serving humanity when you confiscate all their wealth? That's a perfectly sensible retort to somebody who wants 100% taxation.

You've imputed to me a view opposite to what I wrote or implied. You are either incapable of reading what I actually wrote, or are pretending to be.

You're projecting, dude. I asked you a yes or no question, and then I gave a case analysis showing what a "yes" answer would imply and what a "no" answer would imply. That is not me imputing a view to you. That is me asking you which horn of the dilemma you want to discuss. You are capable of reading what I actually wrote, and you aren't unfamiliar with how logic works. But I don't think you're pretending you don't know about case analysis; I think you simply aren't used to getting put on the spot to apply critical thought to what you wrote.

If I don't want to confiscate all of Musk's new wealth, then I WANT him to be even richer. I can see why someone might consider that a tautology — if they were in a contest to see who could misconstrue best.

Looks kind of like a tautology to me. What have I misconstrued?

Oh, but then you qualify it. You think I only want Musk richer so there's more to confiscate when "I" get around to it!

If I think you don't want him richer because you feel benevolent toward him, gee, I can't imagine what could have given me that idea. "Confiscate" was your word, not mine. As far as "you" goes, it was a plural "you". It refers to all the people who will collectively be choosing to impose a discriminatory tax on him if his tax rate is hiked from 30% to 32% as you describe. Granted you phrased it as a hypothetical; but you seemed to be taking it personally when your "right-winger" misconstrued what was being advocated, so I assumed you included yourself among the advocates. If in fact you think Musk should be paying the same income tax rate as the rest of us then pardon me for misunderstanding.

@ Bomb#20 — Read your own writing back, and pretend that you're objective and trying to treat a fellow with respect. Replace "Bomb#20" in the quote-tags with "John Doe." Do you find John Doe's argument style appealing?

Hostility to billionaires is every bit as respectable as hostility to gays. You want to be treated with respect, treat your fellow man with respect. If you replace billionaires with gays in your posts would you find your argument style appealing? Outgroups are like children -- it's different when they're yours.

Money is memory of favors not yet returned.

This is a peculiar summary. Did you read about the favors Josh Kushner did to earn his money?

So who ever claimed memory can't ever be faulty? You want to start a thread to lambast Josh Kushner, have at it. Plenty of people are corrupt. But if you're critiquing billionaires wholesale instead of retail then I'll defend them wholesale. By and large they got their money from people buying what they were selling.

If I win $100 in a poker game, what favor did I do the losers? Poker lessons?

You gave them the opportunity to gamble against you, which apparently they wanted.

 

[Bomb#20]

There are other possibilities.

One is that simple money fails to account for any asymmetry that might exist between the value to the buyers of goods or services, and the value to the seller of those goods.

Any judgment of symmetry or asymmetry in such values is metaphysics. Whether you value X more than Y is an observable; whether you value X more than I value X is not an observable. It isn't money's job to account for metaphysics. If you think a metaphysics-based economy makes for a better society than a money-based economy, feel free to argue for it, but the track record of such societies isn't all that great.

Wealth is ultimately a measure of what the world owes each person. But pretty much every economic system ever, holds that what a person earns doesn't exactly match with what they are owed. The difference being 'taxes' and/or 'benefits'.

There's no fundamental or inalienable right to keep every last red cent of your earnings. The rules about how much you get to keep are fairly arbitrary, but the idea that the answer should, or must, be 'all of it' is clearly rubbish.

And? Tell it to somebody who argues we shouldn't have taxes. Of course we should have taxes. Of course billionaires should pay taxes just like everyone who can afford to should. Billionaires are not an alien life form. They're just people who are better at making money than you and me, same as J.K. is better at writing novels than you and me.

To suggest that there's a limit to how much one person can possibly have done to help out his society, and therefore to the amount society should be beholden to him, isn't unreasonable at all, once you accept that money isn't significantly different from social credit points, or a videogame score.

That's a religious belief; and what money is or isn't is immaterial. Some people make a little difference in other's lives, and some people make an absolutely enormous difference. For you to pick an arbitrary quantity of help and declare that nobody helps others more than that is something you can't possibly provide empirical evidence for.

There are rules, and what those rules are is to be determined by the people in charge of society. There are no wrong answers. Just poor choices about who should be allowed to make the rules.

Of course there are wrong answers. If there were no wrong answers then there'd be no basis for calling a choice about who makes the rules poor.

IMO, letting people who think that their preferred rules are somehow a law of nature make the rules is a poor choice.

When you claim there's a limit to how much one person can possibly have done to help out his society, are you saying that's a law of nature?

 

[bilby]

same as J.K. is better at writing novels than you and me.

I have read The Casual Vacancy. I assure you, she isn't. And That's based on my certain knowledge that I am crap at writing novels.

Indeed, even the HP series show a clear progression of lower and lower quality of output as her success made it harder and harder for her publishers and editors to stop her inherent lack of ability from shining through.

 

[Politesse]

Since Mao's golden age of non-oppression ended, the amount of oppression in China must have been shooting through the roof.

They're pretty hard on dissidents, yeah. And currently committing genocide.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Billionaires should be taxed at whatever rate, and by whatever channel, will stop them undermining democracy and economic growth.

Ideally zero.

 

[Elixir]

@Bomb#20

Did you know that poverty is defined by China as anyone in rural areas earning less than about $2.30 a day?
By that same definition, I think we eradicated poverty in the US a long time ago.
Your graphic should make us grateful to billionaires for having done us that favor, right?

 

[Swammerdami]

I'd like to address Mr. Bomb.

As I've stated before, a message should stand on its own merits. The TITLE of a message or thread can be just "click-bait." This is particularly true when the title is a question or not a complete sentence.

The opening post in this thread began with this sentence:

I perused the Forbes List of Billionaires for 2022; and will report on some names that caught my eye.

And this is what my opening post consisted of: a look at names and facts that seemed interesting.

I thought it was interesting that the 10th richest man in the world had a house with THREE helipads; and that he had a younger brother who was once much richer than himself but zeroed out. Yes, wealth dissipates after a few generations, but I thought it interesting that several heirs of Sam Walton have $66 billion each.

And I thought it interesting that one of the richest persons in Ivanka Trump's extended family was someone I'd never heard of. Am I poorly informed? I am curious whether other Infidels had even heard of Josh Kushner, but so far none has deigned to answer that simple yes/no question.

And, yes, at the end of the post I repeated the question in thread title: "Are billionaires rich enough yet?" It seemed a fitting way to conclude the message and provoke debate but is a question and should not be treated as a sentence in indicative mood.

Now let's look at my follow-ups. Here's the ONE where I did seem to take a "political stance."

If you risk your money on a speculative investment, should you not get to reap any rewards?

If you see an opinion you think you disagree with should you NOT propose a false dichotomy?

I really liked this response!

While Derec often seems almost reasonable, many right-wingers cannot resist exaggeration and false dichotomy. Advocate a tax hike from 30% to 32% and the right-winger will retort that billionaires will stop serving humanity when you confiscate all their wealth. . . .

I mention that some MIGHT advocate a tax hike from 30% to 32% and Bomb#20 feels it necessary to propose that I MIGHT favor confiscation! And, YES, I've seen message-board posts — though not here, thank God — where it is assumed that a small tax hike should be extrapolated at once to a 100% tax!

And then, finally, I reveal my true thoughts:

Salvador Barios and his team found that countries that switched from a flat tax to a progressive tax experienced some modest positive effects on their economy:

THIS is the key point. Reducing income and wealth inequality is appropriate NOT because of any issue of "morality"; the reasoning doesn't use words like "deserve" or "greed." Reducing income inequality is good because it makes for a better happier society.

Read this carefully, Mr. Bomb. Does "Reducing income inequality" imply a 100% tax rate on billionaires? Do you agree or disagree with this statement by Swammerdami? Now please go back and re-read your responses to me and show me what comment by Swammerdami you were responding to.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Politesse]

And I thought it interesting that one of the richest persons in Ivanka Trump's extended family was someone I'd never heard of. Am I poorly informed? I am curious whether other Infidels had even heard of Josh Kushner, but so far none has deigned to answer that simple yes/no question.

I'd heard of him in connection with his brother and several conflict-of-interest scandals during the Trump presidency, there was an accusation that Josh and Jared's "diplomatic" trips to Saudi Arabia had more to due with personal economic promotion, and indeed this accusation has been borne out since, with billions of the Saudi foreign wealth fund invested in one Jared's toy PE funds. So I definitely remembered that Jared had a brother. Their father Charles is also extremely wealthy despite spending years in prison for tax evasion and witness tampering before getting inevitably pardoned out by the in-laws.

That said, I wouldn't be able to recall his name if I weren't looking at it. The Kushners share a dangerous quality of being extremely forgettable, a certain weaponized dullness often found among second-gen new money.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Are you suggesting being a billionaire makes a person an oppressor? Or is "class oppression" a guilt-by-association thing?

No, but oppression makes billionaires.

Since Mao's golden age of non-oppression ended, the amount of oppression in China must have been shooting through the roof.

It means I don't give ... about billionaires. They are a symptom of societal cancer.

Fred Phelps would no doubt say gays are a symptom of societal cancer. What makes you think you're a better societal oncologist than him?

How dare you introduce such inconvenient facts?!

In one sense the Chinese billionaires are a cancer--they're getting there far more from corruption than through legitimate business. However, the real reason for their growth is the economy overall--the Chinese pie has gotten a lot bigger in those years.

 

[Elixir]

How dare you introduce such inconvenient facts?!

It’s easy; define poverty as around $2.50/day, and presto! No poverty and the economic engine is fully stoked with millions of subsistence level laborers.

 

[Politesse]

Are you suggesting being a billionaire makes a person an oppressor? Or is "class oppression" a guilt-by-association thing?

No, but oppression makes billionaires.

Since Mao's golden age of non-oppression ended, the amount of oppression in China must have been shooting through the roof.

It means I don't give ... about billionaires. They are a symptom of societal cancer.

Fred Phelps would no doubt say gays are a symptom of societal cancer. What makes you think you're a better societal oncologist than him?

Fred Phelps was a bigoted homophobe. I'm not. But that's irrelevant anyway. I haven't asked you to accept anything on my say-so.

 

[Bomb#20]

same as J.K. is better at writing novels than you and me.

I have read The Casual Vacancy. I assure you, she isn't. And That's based on my certain knowledge that I am crap at writing novels.

Ooh, snarky!

Still, I have to ask. Why did you read The Casual Vacancy?

Indeed, even the HP series show a clear progression of lower and lower quality of output as her success made it harder and harder for her publishers and editors to stop her inherent lack of ability from shining through.

3 > 6 > 1 > 7 > 5 > 4 > 2
Really not seeing a clear trend there, more just general unevenness.

 

[bilby]

Still, I have to ask. Why did you read The Casual Vacancy?

Perhaps so I could claim to have done something truly unique?

I read a lot of truly awful books. It's a character flaw; Once I start a book, I feel bound to finish it, no matter how awful.

In terms of more proximate causes, IIRC someone suggested that I should read Harry Potter, and I responded that those are children's books, and hasn't JKR written some stuff pitched at adults...

I doubt that I can be bothered to sue to get her to give me that wasted time back, and as nobody else has read the dire thing, a class action seems unlikely.

 

[Hermit]

Are billionaires rich enough yet?

No. They deserve better than a return of $5000 per second for the sweat of their brows. It's only fair, because in The Free World™ anybody could do that, but only the hard workers could be bothered to put the effort in.

 

[Hermit]

So is it good or bad that one American has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion?

No one billionaire has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion. They acquired their wealth by creaming off the difference between the value others have created by their labour and what they have been paid for.

 

[Bomb#20]

Since Mao's golden age of non-oppression ended, the amount of oppression in China must have been shooting through the roof.

They're pretty hard on dissidents, yeah. And currently committing genocide.

And they weren't hard on dissidents and committing genocide in Mao's time? What's the body count of the current genocide, and how many people did Mao murder? The theory that it's oppression that makes billionaires is without empirical support.

 

[Bomb#20]

@Bomb#20

Did you know that poverty is defined by China as anyone in rural areas earning less than about $2.30 a day?

So is your theory that the Chinese people are impoverished and it's only because they call people making over $2.30 a day non-impoverished that it looks like 99% are out of poverty, but back when 10% were earning over $2.30 a day, they weren't a lot more impoverished? How the heck does the official definition of the poverty line change in any way the reality that they're astronomically less impoverished than they were forty years ago?

Your graphic should make us grateful to billionaires for having done us that favor, right?

Quit poisoning the well. Who the heck said anything about gratitude or even suggested the billionaires caused the poverty reduction? The graphic, obviously, shows that poverty was getting better long before billionaires started popping up. My point in posting the graphic, obviously, was simply to refute Politesse's baseless claim that oppression makes billionaires. The correlation between billionaires and dropping poverty rates is due to their both being effects of the same underlying cause: the general progress in production and prosperity, which resulted from the general overall reduction in oppression in China, which resulted from the greatest gift Mao ever gave the Chinese people -- dying. Lack of oppression makes billionaires. Lack of oppression makes reduced poverty rates. Lack of oppression makes many good things.

 

[Bomb#20]

Fred Phelps was a bigoted homophobe. I'm not. But that's irrelevant anyway. I haven't asked you to accept anything on my say-so.

And the difference between a bigoted homophobe and a bigoted billionairophobe is that the one has a theory for why his outgroup deserve to be hated, while the other has a theory for why his outgroup deserve to be eaten.

 

[Bomb#20]

Still, I have to ask. Why did you read The Casual Vacancy?

Perhaps so I could claim to have done something truly unique?

I read a lot of truly awful books. It's a character flaw; Once I start a book, I feel bound to finish it, no matter how awful.

In terms of more proximate causes, IIRC someone suggested that I should read Harry Potter, and I responded that those are children's books, and hasn't JKR written some stuff pitched at adults...

I doubt that I can be bothered to sue to get her to give me that wasted time back, and as nobody else has read the dire thing, a class action seems unlikely.

[youtube]