11 ms·

56% of billionaires build. 44% of billionaires inherit.

by tmcw 6y ago

RestlessMind 6y ago
This is an amazing nugget which should be the context for any controversial discussion about "Billionaires". I have utmost respect for the former category, but I also believe that the later category should not exist (as in those people should exist but they should not have any unearned billions and all the unearned power and privileges that come with it).
- austinpena 6y ago
  You don’t believe that if someone makes billions they should be able to pass it on to their children?
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. How long before we just have a permanent ruling class, and how does that move humanity forward?
    - eej71 6y ago
      There is always more wealth to create.
      - chillwaves 6y ago
        r > g, where r is the rate of return and g is the overall economic growth of the economy. It means the rich capture a growing portion of productivity, and in modern days it is on the strength of the financialization of productivity, not necessarily people actually doing work. How is this an optimal system? How is it even a functioning system? What we are doing as a species, today, right now, is not working and our ability to live on this planet is increasingly in danger.
      - RestlessMind 6y ago
        So? I already said that I have utmost respect for those who create wealth. I am in full support to letting people create wealth as much as they want. What I firmly oppose is someone who has a birth lottery of being born to such wealth creators - they don't deserve to inherit a vast fortune and all the power and privilege that come with it.
    - hnracer 6y ago
      Familial wealth disperses and collapses pretty quickly, eventually being split up between 2 to the n heirs thereabouts. Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. If they want to give it all to their kids, to a charitable cause, or just destroy it, that should be their right as owners of that property, it is not just for the state to steal that property because some people don't like it when the parent decides to give that wealth to the child. Focus taxation on things that harm an unwilling third party, not things that involve only two consenting parties where nobody is made worse off.
      - chillwaves 6y ago
        > Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. Hard disagree. We won't see eye to eye on this point, and it really invalidates the rest of w hat you are saying.
        hnracer 6y ago
        If I'm a fitness coach charging $60/hour, all my customers are there because they think I'm providing a service of value greater than $60/hour. Perhaps their subjective value is $80/hour, so they get $20/hour benefit and decide voluntarily to engage in this transaction with me. This is a positive sum voluntary transaction where all parties are better off (except for the carbon pollution which we expelled to drive to the venue, which I think should be taxed!). I find it hard to believe that anyone could disagree with the above, which means you must disagree that the fruits of this exchange should be my property. Well let me ask you this: the customer made $20 in utility by engaging in this transaction with me. Why should they be able to keep the $20 utility but I must give up part of the $60? And what right do you have to reach into my pocket? If my customers instead traded groceries for my hour of training, should I not be able to keep these groceries?Is it only money that makes the difference for you?
        confidantlake 6y ago
        No one is trying to take the $60 an hour you make coaching. The way Bezos or Gates or Zuckerberg make their wealth is not at all similar to how you or I do. If you want to take the conservative argument, Gates taking my tax dollars by selling his computers to the government is not a voluntary transaction. He then takes that money to lobby the government so that I have to give him even more of my tax money.
    - austinpena 6y ago
      Is your stance that wealth in the hands of billionaires tends to do less good to raise the “common good” than if it were to be distributed in some way? If so, what kind of distribution do you think makes sense?
      - chillwaves 6y ago
        You guys acting like democratic government has not yet been invented. It's not like alternatives to billionaires owning the planet doesn't exist. Just America seems to be fairly resistant to the idea of public good. And the other consideration is how the money of billionaires is actively used to make everyone else's lives worse, either through manipulating markets and commodities, raising our rent, or literally polluting and destroying the planet. Or buying media and brain washing the population with their crazy ideologies. These are all highly negative events that come from a small group of people having control of too many resources. No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario.
        buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
        > No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario. K, here's one, whether or not you accept it. I don't think the world would have SpaceX or Tesla were it not for the existence of billionaires. Elon Musk already had a billion before founding/buying these companies. If he had "maxed out" and couldn't make any more money, I think there is a good chance he wouldn't have taken risks on these companies. I think we are better off with the existence of companies like these. Even if you don't like Tesla or SpaceX, these are just examples. There are a lot of other companies that would not exist as well, especially if you consider the potential scarcity of funding in this scenario. And without their existence we would all be worse off. There are downsides to having billionaires too, but it's pretty disingenuous to pretend there aren't upsides as well.
        6y ago
    - dcolkitt 6y ago
      In aggregate, the 400 richest billionaires put together only constitutes 4% of the total wealth in America.[1][2] Even if you assume that power correlates perfectly with wealth, there's not really evidence that billionaires control anywhere near enough money to become a "permanent ruling class". [1]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth
      - oblio 6y ago
        Well, expand that category to include every billionaire and also everyone above 100 million, as an arbitrary figure that most people will never make throughout their lives. I imagine that percentage will go up immensely.
        dcolkitt 6y ago
        Two thirds of wealth in America is owned by the bottom 99th percentile, i.e. households with less than $12 million net worth.[1] A near majority of wealth is owned by the 90th-99th percentile, i.e. households with between $1-12 million net worth. By far the biggest source of wealth inequality is the division between the top and bottom 50th percentile, who have essentially zero wealth. The uber-wealthy may be rich on an individual basis, but in aggregate they still hold constitute significantly less than run-in-the-mill retirees, dentists, and actuaries. [1]https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
        jessaustin 6y ago
        That seems like a confused way of saying that those who are at least millionaires have 80% of the wealth. It's much easier for a billionaire to hire lobbyists to protect his latest exploitative venture than it is for some dentist to do so. That's why the 1% held 30% of the total thirty years ago and they hold 40% now. That is a dark trend.
      - 6y ago
    - gred 6y ago
      > Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. Your focus is too narrow. Broaden the timeline -- the meritocratic spoils cascade across the generations, as they ever have. It's part of the motivation to achieve.
  - lambda_obrien 6y ago
    If I had a billion pounds of rice, and millions of people were starving, would it be immoral for me to stockpile that so 50 generations of my family would be taken care of before the millions of starving people now? Edit: because i can't reply right now: I'm curious if a direct application of your question to something you need to survive would get a different answer. We think of money as something we can accumulate without limit but if you replace it with other things in a similar context it seems different. Why is it okay for billionaires to exist, but not for someone to stockpile too much food? I'm curious if anyone has an answer to both.
    - austinpena 6y ago
      I’m not here to make a point. Just ask a question to hear other’s thoughts.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Yes. 1-2-3 generations, ok. 50? Definitely immoral. They'd be as remote to you as a random fisherman in Kamchatka. They should also make their own contributions to society.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    In America, at least, we have historically rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Literally nobody is suggesting that the children of the wealthy should be penniless.
    - bluntfang 6y ago
      >In America, at least, we have historically rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Just looking at history of presidents...George Bush Jr and George Bush Sr. Do you think George Bush Jr would have been president if his father wasn't? I'm not saying that GWB isn't competent or anything like that...but is your assertion that if he didn't have the name (and inherited wealth and connections), he would have been a viable candidate? Same could be said about the Clinton's, so I don't think this is partisan.
      - pwinnski 6y ago
        Right, and we also have billionaires. That doesn't seem to negate the fact that historically, this country explicitly rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy.
      - samatman 6y ago
        In a hereditary monarchy, the king rules until he dies, or abdicates in favor of his son. If this breaks down, through war, sibling rivalry, or lack of an heir... that tends to be a real problem. In the United States, the titular head of state is chosen through a weird gameshow, and any given head of state can play that game twice. On two occasions, the son of a successful game show contestant has leveraged name recognition to also win a round in the hot seat.
        alisonkisk 6y ago
        A head of state can win twice. They can play more than that, as Grover Cleveland showed and Donald Trump might.
  - hh3k0 6y ago
    > You don’t believe that if someone makes billions they should be able to pass it on to their children? I believe no individual has ever _earned_ a billion USD. If it were up to me, people like Jeff Bezos would have everything to their name seized by the state. It should be used for the benefit of the many -- and not a selected few. He'll be compensated with a trophy, though: "Congratulations, you won capitalism. Continue for New Game+."
    - tasuki 6y ago
      > people like Jeff Bezos would have everything to their name seized by the state. ...everything? Also what does "people like Jeff Bezos" mean? Bald ones?
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        They're coming for the billionaires, and also for the bald.
  - ohashi 6y ago
    Why? Do they need to pass all of it on? If they made billions, wouldn't 10% be enough for a lifetime while 90% could be returned to the public?
  - danhak 6y ago
    The existence of compound interest and exponential growth mean wealth inequality will become more and more extreme over time as generational wealth accumulates. History teaches us that extreme inequality and class resentment leads to societal collapse. First there is civil unrest, then revolution. We have seen the beginning of some serious civil unrest this year. From a purely self-interested point of view, if you value living in a peaceful and stable society, you ought to be concerned about wealth inequality. Generational wealth is one of the major factors here.
  - RestlessMind 6y ago
    If someone earns billions, they can do whatever they want with it as long as it is legal. Only when someone gets something which is not earned, that should become a taxable event. This way, a billionaire giving his fortune away won't be taxed. If that fortune goes to charity, still not taxed. If that fortune goes to his kids or to their trust fund, it should be heavily taxed.
  - 8note 6y ago
    No, if the kid wants to be a billionaire, they should build
  - NineStarPoint 6y ago
    I don’t. I don’t believe more than about 10 million should be able to be passed on to children. Maybe less than that. Just having been born to such rich parents is an opportunity that gives them incredible legs up in society, let alone them getting a ton of money due to the luck of their birth. If a parent that rich cares about their child they have many ways to help them achieve in life. If it is actually possible for a person to be so much better at creating things than another that they deserve billions of dollars, the parent can pass on that skill to their child. It’s hard enough to keep wealth from accumulating without also letting it accumulate across generations.
- tudelo 6y ago
  I agree, but in a distributed world I wonder how we could ever end up enforcing something like that in a positive way. Like, if we add some inheritance tax that ends up being prohibitively large, at some point the amount of money these people have seems to make it impossible to enforce.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  Neither category should exist. The fact billionaires exist is an indictment against our system and how we allocate resources.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line?
    - IanCal 6y ago
      In good idle games they shift the goal once you hit more boring levels. Stealing partly from someone else I can't find a reference for: Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. Not entirely serious but extreme wealth should be considered a bug. Perhaps it's true that the best system overall always results in this but it's worth considering that it might not be.
      - canofbars 6y ago
        Do you think billionaires would just stop and let the system collect their money? My first thought is they would just donate all ownership over the cap to family members. They could probably continue this forever before every family member gains $1B
        newen 6y ago
        Seems perfectly fine to me. Gifts are taxed in the US. If it causes resulting problems, deal with it then. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
        buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
        How is this considered "good" in this scenario? Income is taxed anyway. So how to rerouting money away from "taxed income" to "taxed gifts" help anything?
Context_free 6y ago
Also if we look at the so-called "self-made" billionaires, Bill Gates went to a fancy prep school where grammar school students had access to a computer in the late 1960s. His great grandfather was a bank president, and he was born with a million dollar trust fund. His mother was on an executive committee with the CEO of IBM. Zuckerberg went to a high school, current tuition cost of which is over $57000 a year. Warren Buffett's father was a congressman, his grandparents owned a retail business. Buffet was sent to an Ivy League school. Beyond this, Kleiner Perkins did not give Jeff Bezos millions in VC back in 1996 because they liked him. He was around then, but they were too. As well as the employees shipping out books then. As well as the employees shipping books out now. Kleiner Perkins gave money then, anticipating the exploitation of Amazon factory (and non-factory) workers now. The company was not built with Bezos as some Atlas figure. It was built by millions from Kleiner Perkins in 1996, and by the exploited people doing the work there every day. Bezos was given billions for successfully doing this. It does not waive away the expropriation of surplus labor time of those who work there.
- imgabe 6y ago
  Criticizing the level of "self-made"-ness of billionaires seems like a waste of time. These are extreme outliers. Of course they had to start with every advantage and have everything go just right and also work their asses off. You're talking about a 1 in a billion chance to get to that level. It's like looking at an Olympic gold medal winner and saying "Oh yeah, well of course they broke the world record in the 100-meter dash. They were born with genetic predisposition for the sport and they had the best coaches and their parents got up at 4am to drive them to practice and..." Well, yeah. But a lot of people might have those advantages and not achieve anything with them. Sure, Zuckerberg went to some fancy prep school. So did all of his classmates. None of them started Facebook. There's lots of other Congressmen who have kids. None of them are Warren Buffet. But claiming that being "self-made" is something that doesn't exist because the extremest outliers had unusual circumstances (this is surprising for some reason?) ignores all the people who make more modest success largely by their hard work and ingenuity.
- mark-r 6y ago
  I think Bill Gates makes an excellent counterpoint for this article. He was known for treating business as a competitive game, trying to win at all costs. Look at the way he acquired MS-DOS for next to nothing from Seattle Computer Products. Yes, he got his start by being genuinely hard working and smart, but from that point on he exploited every way he could get away with.
pazimzadeh 6y ago
Source?

56% of billionaires build. 44% of billionaires inherit.

by tmcw 6y ago

56% of billionaires build. 44% of billionaires inherit.

This is an amazing nugget which should be the context for any controversial discussion about "Billionaires". I have utmost respect for the former category, but I also believe that the later category should not exist (as in those people should exist but they should not have any unearned billions and all the unearned power and privileges that come with it).

austinpena 6y ago
You don’t believe that if someone makes billions they should be able to pass it on to their children?
- chillwaves 6y ago
  Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. How long before we just have a permanent ruling class, and how does that move humanity forward?
  - eej71 6y ago
    There is always more wealth to create.
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      r > g, where r is the rate of return and g is the overall economic growth of the economy. It means the rich capture a growing portion of productivity, and in modern days it is on the strength of the financialization of productivity, not necessarily people actually doing work. How is this an optimal system? How is it even a functioning system? What we are doing as a species, today, right now, is not working and our ability to live on this planet is increasingly in danger.
    - RestlessMind 6y ago
      So? I already said that I have utmost respect for those who create wealth. I am in full support to letting people create wealth as much as they want. What I firmly oppose is someone who has a birth lottery of being born to such wealth creators - they don't deserve to inherit a vast fortune and all the power and privilege that come with it.
  - hnracer 6y ago
    Familial wealth disperses and collapses pretty quickly, eventually being split up between 2 to the n heirs thereabouts. Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. If they want to give it all to their kids, to a charitable cause, or just destroy it, that should be their right as owners of that property, it is not just for the state to steal that property because some people don't like it when the parent decides to give that wealth to the child. Focus taxation on things that harm an unwilling third party, not things that involve only two consenting parties where nobody is made worse off.
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      > Irrespective, the wealth is the property of an individual who earned that wealth through voluntary exchange. Hard disagree. We won't see eye to eye on this point, and it really invalidates the rest of w hat you are saying.
      - hnracer 6y ago
        If I'm a fitness coach charging $60/hour, all my customers are there because they think I'm providing a service of value greater than $60/hour. Perhaps their subjective value is $80/hour, so they get $20/hour benefit and decide voluntarily to engage in this transaction with me. This is a positive sum voluntary transaction where all parties are better off (except for the carbon pollution which we expelled to drive to the venue, which I think should be taxed!). I find it hard to believe that anyone could disagree with the above, which means you must disagree that the fruits of this exchange should be my property. Well let me ask you this: the customer made $20 in utility by engaging in this transaction with me. Why should they be able to keep the $20 utility but I must give up part of the $60? And what right do you have to reach into my pocket? If my customers instead traded groceries for my hour of training, should I not be able to keep these groceries?Is it only money that makes the difference for you?
        confidantlake 6y ago
        No one is trying to take the $60 an hour you make coaching. The way Bezos or Gates or Zuckerberg make their wealth is not at all similar to how you or I do. If you want to take the conservative argument, Gates taking my tax dollars by selling his computers to the government is not a voluntary transaction. He then takes that money to lobby the government so that I have to give him even more of my tax money.
  - austinpena 6y ago
    Is your stance that wealth in the hands of billionaires tends to do less good to raise the “common good” than if it were to be distributed in some way? If so, what kind of distribution do you think makes sense?
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      You guys acting like democratic government has not yet been invented. It's not like alternatives to billionaires owning the planet doesn't exist. Just America seems to be fairly resistant to the idea of public good. And the other consideration is how the money of billionaires is actively used to make everyone else's lives worse, either through manipulating markets and commodities, raising our rent, or literally polluting and destroying the planet. Or buying media and brain washing the population with their crazy ideologies. These are all highly negative events that come from a small group of people having control of too many resources. No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario.
      - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
        > No one yet has responded to me why it's such a great idea for billionaires to exist. I wonder if an argument could even be made that didn't even a personal fantasy/wish fulfillment scenario. K, here's one, whether or not you accept it. I don't think the world would have SpaceX or Tesla were it not for the existence of billionaires. Elon Musk already had a billion before founding/buying these companies. If he had "maxed out" and couldn't make any more money, I think there is a good chance he wouldn't have taken risks on these companies. I think we are better off with the existence of companies like these. Even if you don't like Tesla or SpaceX, these are just examples. There are a lot of other companies that would not exist as well, especially if you consider the potential scarcity of funding in this scenario. And without their existence we would all be worse off. There are downsides to having billionaires too, but it's pretty disingenuous to pretend there aren't upsides as well.
        6y ago
  - dcolkitt 6y ago
    In aggregate, the 400 richest billionaires put together only constitutes 4% of the total wealth in America.[1][2] Even if you assume that power correlates perfectly with wealth, there's not really evidence that billionaires control anywhere near enough money to become a "permanent ruling class". [1]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth
    - oblio 6y ago
      Well, expand that category to include every billionaire and also everyone above 100 million, as an arbitrary figure that most people will never make throughout their lives. I imagine that percentage will go up immensely.
      - dcolkitt 6y ago
        Two thirds of wealth in America is owned by the bottom 99th percentile, i.e. households with less than $12 million net worth.[1] A near majority of wealth is owned by the 90th-99th percentile, i.e. households with between $1-12 million net worth. By far the biggest source of wealth inequality is the division between the top and bottom 50th percentile, who have essentially zero wealth. The uber-wealthy may be rich on an individual basis, but in aggregate they still hold constitute significantly less than run-in-the-mill retirees, dentists, and actuaries. [1]https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
        jessaustin 6y ago
        That seems like a confused way of saying that those who are at least millionaires have 80% of the wealth. It's much easier for a billionaire to hire lobbyists to protect his latest exploitative venture than it is for some dentist to do so. That's why the 1% held 30% of the total thirty years ago and they hold 40% now. That is a dark trend.
    - 6y ago
  - gred 6y ago
    > Do you believe in meritocracy? Because ownership of that amount of wealth is surely going to skew the entire system. Your focus is too narrow. Broaden the timeline -- the meritocratic spoils cascade across the generations, as they ever have. It's part of the motivation to achieve.
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  If I had a billion pounds of rice, and millions of people were starving, would it be immoral for me to stockpile that so 50 generations of my family would be taken care of before the millions of starving people now? Edit: because i can't reply right now: I'm curious if a direct application of your question to something you need to survive would get a different answer. We think of money as something we can accumulate without limit but if you replace it with other things in a similar context it seems different. Why is it okay for billionaires to exist, but not for someone to stockpile too much food? I'm curious if anyone has an answer to both.
  - austinpena 6y ago
    I’m not here to make a point. Just ask a question to hear other’s thoughts.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Yes. 1-2-3 generations, ok. 50? Definitely immoral. They'd be as remote to you as a random fisherman in Kamchatka. They should also make their own contributions to society.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  In America, at least, we have historically rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Literally nobody is suggesting that the children of the wealthy should be penniless.
  - bluntfang 6y ago
    >In America, at least, we have historically rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Just looking at history of presidents...George Bush Jr and George Bush Sr. Do you think George Bush Jr would have been president if his father wasn't? I'm not saying that GWB isn't competent or anything like that...but is your assertion that if he didn't have the name (and inherited wealth and connections), he would have been a viable candidate? Same could be said about the Clinton's, so I don't think this is partisan.
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      Right, and we also have billionaires. That doesn't seem to negate the fact that historically, this country explicitly rejected the idea of a hereditary monarchy.
    - samatman 6y ago
      In a hereditary monarchy, the king rules until he dies, or abdicates in favor of his son. If this breaks down, through war, sibling rivalry, or lack of an heir... that tends to be a real problem. In the United States, the titular head of state is chosen through a weird gameshow, and any given head of state can play that game twice. On two occasions, the son of a successful game show contestant has leveraged name recognition to also win a round in the hot seat.
      - alisonkisk 6y ago
        A head of state can win twice. They can play more than that, as Grover Cleveland showed and Donald Trump might.
- hh3k0 6y ago
  > You don’t believe that if someone makes billions they should be able to pass it on to their children? I believe no individual has ever _earned_ a billion USD. If it were up to me, people like Jeff Bezos would have everything to their name seized by the state. It should be used for the benefit of the many -- and not a selected few. He'll be compensated with a trophy, though: "Congratulations, you won capitalism. Continue for New Game+."
  - tasuki 6y ago
    > people like Jeff Bezos would have everything to their name seized by the state. ...everything? Also what does "people like Jeff Bezos" mean? Bald ones?
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      They're coming for the billionaires, and also for the bald.
- ohashi 6y ago
  Why? Do they need to pass all of it on? If they made billions, wouldn't 10% be enough for a lifetime while 90% could be returned to the public?
- danhak 6y ago
  The existence of compound interest and exponential growth mean wealth inequality will become more and more extreme over time as generational wealth accumulates. History teaches us that extreme inequality and class resentment leads to societal collapse. First there is civil unrest, then revolution. We have seen the beginning of some serious civil unrest this year. From a purely self-interested point of view, if you value living in a peaceful and stable society, you ought to be concerned about wealth inequality. Generational wealth is one of the major factors here.
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  If someone earns billions, they can do whatever they want with it as long as it is legal. Only when someone gets something which is not earned, that should become a taxable event. This way, a billionaire giving his fortune away won't be taxed. If that fortune goes to charity, still not taxed. If that fortune goes to his kids or to their trust fund, it should be heavily taxed.
- 8note 6y ago
  No, if the kid wants to be a billionaire, they should build
- NineStarPoint 6y ago
  I don’t. I don’t believe more than about 10 million should be able to be passed on to children. Maybe less than that. Just having been born to such rich parents is an opportunity that gives them incredible legs up in society, let alone them getting a ton of money due to the luck of their birth. If a parent that rich cares about their child they have many ways to help them achieve in life. If it is actually possible for a person to be so much better at creating things than another that they deserve billions of dollars, the parent can pass on that skill to their child. It’s hard enough to keep wealth from accumulating without also letting it accumulate across generations.
tudelo 6y ago
I agree, but in a distributed world I wonder how we could ever end up enforcing something like that in a positive way. Like, if we add some inheritance tax that ends up being prohibitively large, at some point the amount of money these people have seems to make it impossible to enforce.
chillwaves 6y ago
Neither category should exist. The fact billionaires exist is an indictment against our system and how we allocate resources.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  So what should happen to your assets when the total of their market capitalization crosses the $1B line?
  - IanCal 6y ago
    In good idle games they shift the goal once you hit more boring levels. Stealing partly from someone else I can't find a reference for: Ownership capped at 1 billion, you get a sticker saying "I won capitalism" and all further growth and income goes to the government for social programs. You get a new ticker that estimates lives saved and people homes/fed/educated - that becomes your new boasting figure. Not entirely serious but extreme wealth should be considered a bug. Perhaps it's true that the best system overall always results in this but it's worth considering that it might not be.
    - canofbars 6y ago
      Do you think billionaires would just stop and let the system collect their money? My first thought is they would just donate all ownership over the cap to family members. They could probably continue this forever before every family member gains $1B
      - newen 6y ago
        Seems perfectly fine to me. Gifts are taxed in the US. If it causes resulting problems, deal with it then. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
        buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
        How is this considered "good" in this scenario? Income is taxed anyway. So how to rerouting money away from "taxed income" to "taxed gifts" help anything?

Context_free 6y ago

Also if we look at the so-called "self-made" billionaires, Bill Gates went to a fancy prep school where grammar school students had access to a computer in the late 1960s. His great grandfather was a bank president, and he was born with a million dollar trust fund. His mother was on an executive committee with the CEO of IBM. Zuckerberg went to a high school, current tuition cost of which is over $57000 a year. Warren Buffett's father was a congressman, his grandparents owned a retail business. Buffet was sent to an Ivy League school. Beyond this, Kleiner Perkins did not give Jeff Bezos millions in VC back in 1996 because they liked him. He was around then, but they were too. As well as the employees shipping out books then. As well as the employees shipping books out now. Kleiner Perkins gave money then, anticipating the exploitation of Amazon factory (and non-factory) workers now. The company was not built with Bezos as some Atlas figure. It was built by millions from Kleiner Perkins in 1996, and by the exploited people doing the work there every day. Bezos was given billions for successfully doing this. It does not waive away the expropriation of surplus labor time of those who work there.

imgabe 6y ago
Criticizing the level of "self-made"-ness of billionaires seems like a waste of time. These are extreme outliers. Of course they had to start with every advantage and have everything go just right and also work their asses off. You're talking about a 1 in a billion chance to get to that level. It's like looking at an Olympic gold medal winner and saying "Oh yeah, well of course they broke the world record in the 100-meter dash. They were born with genetic predisposition for the sport and they had the best coaches and their parents got up at 4am to drive them to practice and..." Well, yeah. But a lot of people might have those advantages and not achieve anything with them. Sure, Zuckerberg went to some fancy prep school. So did all of his classmates. None of them started Facebook. There's lots of other Congressmen who have kids. None of them are Warren Buffet. But claiming that being "self-made" is something that doesn't exist because the extremest outliers had unusual circumstances (this is surprising for some reason?) ignores all the people who make more modest success largely by their hard work and ingenuity.
mark-r 6y ago
I think Bill Gates makes an excellent counterpoint for this article. He was known for treating business as a competitive game, trying to win at all costs. Look at the way he acquired MS-DOS for next to nothing from Seattle Computer Products. Yes, he got his start by being genuinely hard working and smart, but from that point on he exploited every way he could get away with.

pazimzadeh 6y ago

Source?