9 ms·

But is it wrong for a rich person to hoard wealth, or to spend only on luxuries for themselves? Why do they have to "contribute to society"? I'm by no means we

by cko 11y ago

But is it wrong for a rich person to hoard wealth, or to spend only on luxuries for themselves? Why do they have to "contribute to society"? I'm by no means wealthy, and at my age of 29 I've donated more money than many of my coworkers. And I'm all for a portion of tax dollars supporting the underprivileged. But when I read about Larry Ellison's yacht-racing hobby, I think to myself, "good for him." He can spend his money on whatever he wants, right? I don't see that he owes anyone anything just because he has more.

Futurebot 11y ago
That's not the argument. The "contribution" is through taxes to the society that enabled them to get rich in the first place. Sure, some people are upset about obscene displays of wealth (though in today's America, those people don't seem to have much of a voice), but by and large, no one begrudges rich people from enjoying themselves (this is America, after all. We love our rich people as a rule, even when some of them are terrible people individually.) We do begrudge people avoiding taxes, buying legislation and legislators, funding think tanks that support only the interests of the wealthy, and blowing up the financial system and/or economy.
civilian 11y ago
> Why do they have to "contribute to society"? This gets to the core of the question! How did a rich startup person get wealthy anyway? They built something that people wanted. People said: "hey, that thing you built, I value it at $20 and you're giving it away at $10, so I'm happy to buy it!" Anyone who made money from business has already created wealth and contributed to society, via the market. To the people who would disagree with me-- Look at your surroundings. Do you feel oppressed by the manufacturers of your laptop? Do you feel like you have no other option but to buy a $5 latte at the coffeeshop you're at? Are you being held at gunpoint by your new-used car? Do you wish the refrigeration oligarchs never existed? No! You are getting _insane_ value out of these relatively cheap items. Your $5 latte couldn't even exist a century ago. So it's okay that all the people who worked 40 hours a week to bring you your gadgets get a cut.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Capitalist wealth comes from repeated consensual and mutually beneficial transactions. If you want to get rich, create value for people. It really is a wonderful system.
  - vdaniuk 11y ago
    Poe's law invoked.
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      It's depressing that the idea at the core of our prosperity is dismissed by some as an extreme view indistinguishable from parody. Thankfully, people like Friedman and Hayek have laid down a rock-solid intellectual defense of capitalism. We ignore their wisdom at our own peril.
      - quadrangle 11y ago
        rock-solid my ass. The situation is less about ignoring Friedman and Hayek as about ignoring their critics (which is obviously what you're doing or you wouldn't have made the absurd "rock-solid" claim)
      - TuringTest 11y ago
        That's because the laissez-faire market forces you invoke are not the core of our prosperity, just one of the factors leading to it, so your comment did sound as an extreme parody of a right wing position (which may be more or less reasonable depending on how strongly you support it). Friedman and Hayek wrote their work before we had a thorough understanding of how complex systems are optimized. Thanks to more powerful computers, we now know that search guided by purely local improvements gets stuck in local minimum (in Economics, those are the Pareto points). Those local minima can be incredibly far away from a true global optimum, but can't be improved by "consensual and mutually beneficial transactions". Sometimes you do need to take actions that temporarily inconvenience one actor to achieve a point that will benefit all them in the long term; see the prisoner's dilemma for a simple example. The GP post mentioned 40-hours work weeks; those weren't brought by laissez-faire economics nor individual negotiation either, 60 or 80 hours a week were the norm before socialism. Capitalism tends to create immense concentrations of power without checks and balances on the hands of tycoons, of the kind that should make any true libertarian be very afraid of those holding it. The system that really works best is one where wealth is created for a few years through capitalism, and then that wealth is redistributed by government's welfare politics to the wider population. This is what has been going on in Western countries in the last century, bringing us stability and avoiding the frequent revolutions that plagued Europe and the Americas in all its previous history.
Frondo 11y ago
Ultimately, they have to "contribute to society" because enough of us believe that that is how society should operate. If you're looking for a "society molecule" to study its properties and see if "rich people gots to pay more" is one of its properties, you won't find such a thing, because all of this is human inventions.
mpweiher 11y ago
> Why do they have to "contribute to society"? In my country, it's part of the basic law (constitution). Specifically, 14/2 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_14.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_14.html
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
> Why do they have to "contribute to society"? Because we're in this together. Collaboration allowed us to thrive as a species. Greed and the "fuck you, got mine" attitude is what is going to ruin everything, starting with the ocean level rise in the near future.
gotchange 11y ago
> But is it wrong for a rich person to hoard wealth, or to spend only on luxuries for themselves? Why do they have to "contribute to society"? Well, in a non altruistic and Ayn Rand inspired world, rich folks don't owe us anything but MORE IMPORTANTLY we don't owe them anything either. I mean no bailouts, no tax breaks, no "Job Creators" incentives in public policy, no privileges or special treatment whatsoever. We're all equals and we all should be treated as such! It was a gigantic public policy catastrophe all the 2008 bailouts extended from the US taxpayer to Wall St. that they used to preserve their wealth and then denigrate the general public for not being as successful as them when it was the general public that saved their asses in the first place.
dzink 11y ago
Hoarding slows down the economy and creates dynasties who continue to excercise power well past the time their judgement on the stewardship of money and social good has been incapacitated. That is what death taxes are for. Luxury however is awesome - it is one of the fastest ways to transfer wealth from the incapacitated hoarders to publicly owned companies which then feed retirement savings (unless you're like a certain luxury brand dynasty and want to keep your money by tricking the tax system upon death). Oops. Politics is a zero sum game - at the end of the day everyone is pulling the rug in their own direction. The poor do it by voting in populist politicians, the rich by paying off those politicians through lobbying, or gaming the tax system. What everyone needs is an economic model that maximizes the wellbeing of society as a whole, so the pie at least gets bigger as it gets redistributed. That, and a political model that prevents any single group from pulling the rug completely out and causing war.

by cko 11y ago

Futurebot 11y ago

That's not the argument. The "contribution" is through taxes to the society that enabled them to get rich in the first place. Sure, some people are upset about obscene displays of wealth (though in today's America, those people don't seem to have much of a voice), but by and large, no one begrudges rich people from enjoying themselves (this is America, after all. We love our rich people as a rule, even when some of them are terrible people individually.) We do begrudge people avoiding taxes, buying legislation and legislators, funding think tanks that support only the interests of the wealthy, and blowing up the financial system and/or economy.

civilian 11y ago

> Why do they have to "contribute to society"? This gets to the core of the question! How did a rich startup person get wealthy anyway? They built something that people wanted. People said: "hey, that thing you built, I value it at $20 and you're giving it away at $10, so I'm happy to buy it!" Anyone who made money from business has already created wealth and contributed to society, via the market. To the people who would disagree with me-- Look at your surroundings. Do you feel oppressed by the manufacturers of your laptop? Do you feel like you have no other option but to buy a $5 latte at the coffeeshop you're at? Are you being held at gunpoint by your new-used car? Do you wish the refrigeration oligarchs never existed? No! You are getting _insane_ value out of these relatively cheap items. Your $5 latte couldn't even exist a century ago. So it's okay that all the people who worked 40 hours a week to bring you your gadgets get a cut.

marcoperaza 11y ago
I couldn't agree more. Capitalist wealth comes from repeated consensual and mutually beneficial transactions. If you want to get rich, create value for people. It really is a wonderful system.
- vdaniuk 11y ago
  Poe's law invoked.
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    It's depressing that the idea at the core of our prosperity is dismissed by some as an extreme view indistinguishable from parody. Thankfully, people like Friedman and Hayek have laid down a rock-solid intellectual defense of capitalism. We ignore their wisdom at our own peril.
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      rock-solid my ass. The situation is less about ignoring Friedman and Hayek as about ignoring their critics (which is obviously what you're doing or you wouldn't have made the absurd "rock-solid" claim)
    - TuringTest 11y ago
      That's because the laissez-faire market forces you invoke are not the core of our prosperity, just one of the factors leading to it, so your comment did sound as an extreme parody of a right wing position (which may be more or less reasonable depending on how strongly you support it). Friedman and Hayek wrote their work before we had a thorough understanding of how complex systems are optimized. Thanks to more powerful computers, we now know that search guided by purely local improvements gets stuck in local minimum (in Economics, those are the Pareto points). Those local minima can be incredibly far away from a true global optimum, but can't be improved by "consensual and mutually beneficial transactions". Sometimes you do need to take actions that temporarily inconvenience one actor to achieve a point that will benefit all them in the long term; see the prisoner's dilemma for a simple example. The GP post mentioned 40-hours work weeks; those weren't brought by laissez-faire economics nor individual negotiation either, 60 or 80 hours a week were the norm before socialism. Capitalism tends to create immense concentrations of power without checks and balances on the hands of tycoons, of the kind that should make any true libertarian be very afraid of those holding it. The system that really works best is one where wealth is created for a few years through capitalism, and then that wealth is redistributed by government's welfare politics to the wider population. This is what has been going on in Western countries in the last century, bringing us stability and avoiding the frequent revolutions that plagued Europe and the Americas in all its previous history.

Frondo 11y ago

Ultimately, they have to "contribute to society" because enough of us believe that that is how society should operate. If you're looking for a "society molecule" to study its properties and see if "rich people gots to pay more" is one of its properties, you won't find such a thing, because all of this is human inventions.

mpweiher 11y ago

> Why do they have to "contribute to society"? In my country, it's part of the basic law (constitution). Specifically, 14/2 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_14.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_14.html

stefantalpalaru 11y ago

> Why do they have to "contribute to society"? Because we're in this together. Collaboration allowed us to thrive as a species. Greed and the "fuck you, got mine" attitude is what is going to ruin everything, starting with the ocean level rise in the near future.

gotchange 11y ago

> But is it wrong for a rich person to hoard wealth, or to spend only on luxuries for themselves? Why do they have to "contribute to society"? Well, in a non altruistic and Ayn Rand inspired world, rich folks don't owe us anything but MORE IMPORTANTLY we don't owe them anything either. I mean no bailouts, no tax breaks, no "Job Creators" incentives in public policy, no privileges or special treatment whatsoever. We're all equals and we all should be treated as such! It was a gigantic public policy catastrophe all the 2008 bailouts extended from the US taxpayer to Wall St. that they used to preserve their wealth and then denigrate the general public for not being as successful as them when it was the general public that saved their asses in the first place.

dzink 11y ago

Hoarding slows down the economy and creates dynasties who continue to excercise power well past the time their judgement on the stewardship of money and social good has been incapacitated. That is what death taxes are for. Luxury however is awesome - it is one of the fastest ways to transfer wealth from the incapacitated hoarders to publicly owned companies which then feed retirement savings (unless you're like a certain luxury brand dynasty and want to keep your money by tricking the tax system upon death). Oops. Politics is a zero sum game - at the end of the day everyone is pulling the rug in their own direction. The poor do it by voting in populist politicians, the rich by paying off those politicians through lobbying, or gaming the tax system. What everyone needs is an economic model that maximizes the wellbeing of society as a whole, so the pie at least gets bigger as it gets redistributed. That, and a political model that prevents any single group from pulling the rug completely out and causing war.