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It seems ridiculously simple to me. Let's define wealth equality as 100 people all with 100,000 dollars a piece. Rather than having a small group of people eith

It seems ridiculously simple to me. Let's define wealth equality as 100 people all with 100,000 dollars a piece. Rather than having a small group of people either in a board room on the top floor of 85 Broad St. or a small group of communists allocate resources, let everybody use their money as a vote to decide how to allocate resources. People need to eat so some money will be spent on food. Most people will need transportation so money will spent on cars and trucks. In order to prevent running out of money people will invest some of it. Several people will purchase farm equipment and start growing food, individual small businesses. Others will create an organization and pool their money together to build a factory to make cars because without cooperation none have enough to cover the startup cost. People are rather stupid so there will be losers and some are smart so there will be winners when it comes to return on investment. There needs to be inequality, it's natural. Nobody needs to starve but people who are better at deciding how to allocate resources should be given more even if they decide to invest in a bigger house and a boat. This works until that small group of people in the board room at the top of the building at 85 Broad St. decide to allocate all the resources to build more houses than everybody else needs and bigger houses than they have resources to maintain. They are able to do that because they consolidated all the voting power of money into their control once a threshold is passed. Keep the inequality. Some people will make better decisions and then others. The people who make better decisions for example investing the money into research should be rewarded with money and the ability to decide how to best further allocate it including buying a bigger house for themselves or hire a house cleaner because they are busy innovating. There are no problems with that. The problem happens when they become too powerful. The way to prevent that is a progressive tax. In this case, make it very hard but not impossible to get above controlling 1,000,000. No one person and no small group of people are better at making decisions than a large group of people. That is what I mean by wealth equality is democratic. Perhaps, it is better to say there needs to be a wealth equilibrium rather than wealth equality.

jrochkind1 11y ago
I question your assumption that in the actual real world, having more money has any kind of correlation to being a better decision-maker. Also, more power to people who make the best decisions isn't, I think, what people generally understand 'democracy' to be, in part because there's no "objective" way to determine who are the better decision makers. I also still don't understand why there'd be some 'threshold' (threshold of what?) at which rich people would start making bad decisions (or at least decisions that are bad for everyone that's not them?), whereas before that they would be making 'good' decisions (meaning decisions that benefit people other than them, I guess?). I'm still not sure what you think 'democracy' consists of exactly.
- zappo2938 11y ago
  It's not a threshold of the amount of wealth a person has before he or she makes bad decisions. Have you read James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds?[1]"Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future." If that is true, no matter how smart or stupid individual people are, a group of 100 people each worth $10,000,000 using their money as a 'vote' will be better at investing than a single billionaire. The Koch brothers have $100 billion between them. They will spend one billion this year on political influence. They control the conservative conversation which has lead to people who follow them controlling a majority of state legislatures, a majority of state governors, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Those two are not stupid. However, any single person or small group of people with that much power is dangerous no matter how smart they might be. The point isn't to take money from rich people to finally pay for the Iraq war. The point is to take money from the most wealthy to prevent any one person or small group of people from having that much influence. Even the president steps down from power after two terms because our form of democracy doesn't work when someone passes a threshold of power from consolidation. The threshold is an amount of power that is consolidated where a person or small group of people are not longer competitive because they can eliminate all competition. Don't allow the consolidation of wealth into a few too big to fail banks. Break up the banks. Tax inheritance above $10,000,000 90%. Their children can innovate and invest to make money like the rest of us. I don't feel bad for them at all. Have a progressive tax structure using income, capital gains, and corporate taxes to prevent people from acquiring more than $250,000,000. Don't threaten me saying they are going to leave the United States. Please, please, please make them leave. They leave behind Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Cal, Stanford, and every other research school and university which will probably do better without their influence on the faculty. They will leave behind the abundant natural resources and infrastructure which sadly lately under their influence has been neglected. They will leave behind the most productive work force in the world. Americans specialize in management and upper management will see an increase in income without them taking a bulk of it. Please, make them go away. [1]http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706 http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/...
  - 11y ago

jrochkind1 11y ago

I question your assumption that in the actual real world, having more money has any kind of correlation to being a better decision-maker. Also, more power to people who make the best decisions isn't, I think, what people generally understand 'democracy' to be, in part because there's no "objective" way to determine who are the better decision makers. I also still don't understand why there'd be some 'threshold' (threshold of what?) at which rich people would start making bad decisions (or at least decisions that are bad for everyone that's not them?), whereas before that they would be making 'good' decisions (meaning decisions that benefit people other than them, I guess?). I'm still not sure what you think 'democracy' consists of exactly.

zappo2938 11y ago
It's not a threshold of the amount of wealth a person has before he or she makes bad decisions. Have you read James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds?[1]"Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future." If that is true, no matter how smart or stupid individual people are, a group of 100 people each worth $10,000,000 using their money as a 'vote' will be better at investing than a single billionaire. The Koch brothers have $100 billion between them. They will spend one billion this year on political influence. They control the conservative conversation which has lead to people who follow them controlling a majority of state legislatures, a majority of state governors, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Those two are not stupid. However, any single person or small group of people with that much power is dangerous no matter how smart they might be. The point isn't to take money from rich people to finally pay for the Iraq war. The point is to take money from the most wealthy to prevent any one person or small group of people from having that much influence. Even the president steps down from power after two terms because our form of democracy doesn't work when someone passes a threshold of power from consolidation. The threshold is an amount of power that is consolidated where a person or small group of people are not longer competitive because they can eliminate all competition. Don't allow the consolidation of wealth into a few too big to fail banks. Break up the banks. Tax inheritance above $10,000,000 90%. Their children can innovate and invest to make money like the rest of us. I don't feel bad for them at all. Have a progressive tax structure using income, capital gains, and corporate taxes to prevent people from acquiring more than $250,000,000. Don't threaten me saying they are going to leave the United States. Please, please, please make them leave. They leave behind Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Cal, Stanford, and every other research school and university which will probably do better without their influence on the faculty. They will leave behind the abundant natural resources and infrastructure which sadly lately under their influence has been neglected. They will leave behind the most productive work force in the world. Americans specialize in management and upper management will see an increase in income without them taking a bulk of it. Please, make them go away. [1]http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706 http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/...
- 11y ago