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Problems with relying on billionaires to save us

39 points by 5faulker 5y ago

missedthecue 5y ago
"To Giridharadas, the real “stepping up” would come from billionaires renouncing the use of loopholes to evade taxes that weaken government’s revenue and ability to respond" I'm not sure... would the US covid situation be better if Amazon spent less on building out their infrastructure and instead sent more money to the Trump administration?
j_walter 5y ago
If the US confiscated all of the wealth of the billionaires in the US (which would absolutely wreck the economy as well as that wealth, since much of that their wealth is tied up in stocks)...it would fund less than a year of government spending and not even be able to pay for the $3.5T package that is currently being debated (maybe close...the most recent estimate wealth for US billionares is between $3T and $3.5T). ...and then we couldn't blame billionares for being the problem.
- lloydgrossman 5y ago
  I'm glad someone here is thinking about the lives of the billionaires.
  - sdf131 5y ago
    This isn’t about the billionaires. What is an immense amount of money for individuals (100 billions) really isn’t that significant for a Western government like the United States. Seizing Bezos/Gates wealth would have very little impact on the overall health of the country, the government is working with trillions already
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > Seizing Bezos/Gates wealth would have very little impact on the overall health of the country Why on earth would one build the next Tesla or SpaceX or Amazon here if this is the attitude the people will take?
      - AlexandrB 5y ago
        At some point during the 20th century financial success became the primary mechanism of measuring achievement. This isn't necessarily the natural state of things - see counterexamples like Jonas Salk or Grigori Perelman. So my question to you would be: why do we only count innovation that results in someone getting fabulously rich as valuable? Why are we worried about losing the next Tesla or SpaceX to taxation instead of worrying about losing the next Hawking to a fatally flawed healthcare and education system?
  - robswc 5y ago
    Why is this fallacy used EVERY single time someone points out the absurdity of liquidating every billionaire. I would make the same claim. I'm not rich. I just don't want people with "good intentions" creating "bad consequences" because they don't understand fundamentals.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - pydry 5y ago
      The bad economic consequences you vaguely alluded to would presumably apply to the 1950s when the US and its middle classes grew the fastest and top rates of tax were ~98%.
      - robswc 5y ago
        No. But I'm glad you seem to be familiar with this. So its funny you left out the countless proposed, failed and later repealed attempts at wealth taxes in Europe. If you want a very simple example, just look at how Sweden killed their markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_... Countless business lost, lives damaged and millions lost, just because someone wanted to introduce a "tax" with "good intentions" without thinking.
        pydry 5y ago
        >So its funny you left out the countless proposed, failed and later repealed attempts at wealth taxes in Europe. I do remember when news media outlets owned by the very wealthy claimed the French wealth tax failed because Gerard Depardieu left. >If you want a very simple example, just look at how Sweden killed their markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_... A simple example of what? This was not a wealth tax it was a transaction tax on securities.
        5y ago
- nebula8804 5y ago
  Lets ask this question in the other direction. How is it in most modern economies you are able to have good healthcare, a robust safety net, pretty decent infrastructure, the opportunity to further yourself via education without breaking the bank and still keep those economies trucking along while the US: the richest country on the planet can't seem to get this done? There is obviously some disconnect.
  - sdf131 5y ago
    I think we’re ignoring scale here. Is there a country with similar population levels that provides all that? I’m Canadian and I am thankful for our benefits but our public services have been stretched for decades and I’m skeptical that our systems could handle 10x the population.
    - xboxnolifes 5y ago
      Isn't the theory that 10x the population would mean 10x the tax revenue, and 10x the infrastructure? The same reason a lot of people like to look at per capita measurements over absolute figures? Or looking at it another way: with the assumption that a country of 30M people can have good infrastructure, and is not an outlier, and there can exists more than one of such country, what is different between 10 countries of 30M people each with good infrastructure and 1 country of 300M having bad? Governments are big, so it's difficult to just point a finger at a specific cause of an issue, but it would seem to me the issue is not continuously building out infrastructure. That, and poorly written, but possibly well meaning, legislation that leads to regulations massively increasing administration costs on every and all areas of our infrastructure (healthcare, general construction, transport, housing).
      - j_walter 5y ago
        The bigger you are the harder it is to do things properly or react fast enough to changing conditions. This is why most companies get huge and then end up failing...they can't change fast enough to stay competitive. It's one thing to be a Scandinavian country that has a homogenous culture and smaller population (and land mass)...and another to mix large amounts of different cultures across a giant nation of states and have everyone agree upon the same thing or be able to institute the same infrastructure.
- pupppet 5y ago
  I think it just comes down to where do you get the most bang for your buck. Money sitting in a bank/stocks (billionaires), or money in the pockets of people willing to spend it (everyone else).
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  You're right. The US government spends so much, and owes so much, that even raiding the wealth of the billionaire class probably wouldn't do much in the overall scheme of things. But how much of US economic and fiscal policy has been influenced by billionaires (and "the rich" generally) to the detriment of the country's finances and those of everyday citizens? It's the policies that are the problem. If you counted the costs of the tax loopholes designed specifically to benefit big corporations, real estate developers, Wall Street titans, the 1% of the 1%, etc., subsidies for the most powerful special interests, and regulations that actually stunt innovation and economic growth to protect large corporations, I suspect you'd be looking at many multiples of the wealth of individual billionaires. In other words, to get one astronaut worth a cool $100 billion, the country probably "spends" many multiples of that.
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    Exactly the never ending quantitive easing has just been piling more and more money into the hands of the rich in the name of helping the poor. Heaven forbid we have some deflation, and assets cost less while wages get stronger.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      Deflation benefits the rich. They have lots of money that gets to appreciate. You're just turning money into housing or Bitcoin. Something the rich speculate with to the detriment of the less wealthy.
      - merpnderp 5y ago
        No, they don't have lots of money, they have lots of assets. No one is sitting around with a silo full of doll-hairs they go swimming in like a greedy duck. And with deflation, those assets become cheaper. Inflation they become more expensive. The exact opposite of wages.
- cronix 5y ago
  > ...and then we couldn't blame billionares for being the problem. Of course we could, and would. The narrative would then just shift to be "because these ruthless bastards didn't pay their fair share when it counted and was needed, now we're in a situation that the problem is too big and it's too late....because of THEM. You are suffering because of THEM. Look at history as it's been done a number of times.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >If the US confiscated all of the wealth of the billionaires in the US Who is arguing for the government to do so? Certainly not anyone with real power in the US.
  - robswc 5y ago
    Why does it have to be someone with real power? I've seen several people on forums/twitter (yes, real people not bots) advocating or doing the math on what we could do with the "1% wealth" ... there's also this https://youtu.be/XX0u08Gb2Gc https://youtu.be/XX0u08Gb2Gc Which got through countless producers and two hosts without so much as a "?" from anyone.
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      >Why does it have to be someone with real power? Because unless there are either powerful folks advocating for this, or a huge group of people doing so (and neither of those exists, AFAICT), it will never happen. Yes, there are folks out there with ridiculous ideas. Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh?[0] If I were to promote the idea that we should require all women to wear shelf bras[1] (or none at all), that would make me a pig and an objectifier of women. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there were folks out there who already do so Would such a thing garner widespread support? Would someone advocating for such a thing be taken seriously by enough people (or the right people, which was the point of my initial comment) to make it happen? The same can be said of "confiscating the wealth of the billionaires." It makes me wonder if we should expand Peter Medawar's comment[2] beyond just religious institutions. [N.B. I am an American] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Nishtana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Nishtana [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bra_designs#List_of_bra_design_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bra_designs#List_of_br... [2] https://quotefancy.com/quote/1574828/Peter-Medawar-The-USA-is-so-enormous-and-so-numerous-are-its-schools-colleges-and https://quotefancy.com/quote/1574828/Peter-Medawar-The-USA-i...
      - robswc 5y ago
        That's fair... I would argue that a significant % of people are arguing for this though, or at least open to the idea. I mean, would you say a significant % of people believe that Q nonsense?
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Personally I’m more interested in driving up the estate tax. The effect of generational wealth strikes me as particularly corrosive to a republic. The revenue raised is really only a minor side benefit. If you make billions, fine. Pay income tax, but you can remain a billionaire. But your kids should not get to keep that. They’ll have to make do merely with millions.
- simorley 5y ago
  > If the US confiscated all of the wealth of the billionaires in the US (which would absolutely wreck the economy as well as that wealth, since much of that their wealth is tied up in stocks)...it would fund less than a year of government spending and not even be able to pay for the $3.5T package that is currently being debated (maybe close...the most recent estimate wealth for US billionares is between $3T and $3.5T). That is so deceptive. You are assuming that everyone else won't be paying their taxes. Everything would be paid for but we could use the "confiscated" wealth for additional stuff. Not that I am necessarily for or against wealth redistribution. Nobody is saying the wealth should be used to fund the government. The american taxpayers do that. The additional money could be used for other stuff.
  - pjscott 5y ago
    Are taxpayers funding the government? Last year, federal tax revenues were $3 trillion less than federal spending.
    - simorley 5y ago
      > Are taxpayers funding the government? Yes. It certainly isn't the billionaires as all their wealth wouldn't as the OP noted. > Last year, federal tax revenues were $3 trillion less than federal spending. A once in a few generations pandemic will do that. See how when things are put into context, it doesn't seem so bad?
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Taxing billionaires out of existence isn't about solving funding problems, it is about muzzling their ability to throw their wealth at politics and distort democracy. > which would absolutely wreck the economy as well as that wealth, since much of that their wealth is tied up in stocks Yet somehow Mackenzie Scott is divesting billions and not crashing the economy. And you just got done saying how they don't actually have that much, yet if they sold it all its so huge it would tank the economy. That is a case of Schroedinger's equity.
swader999 5y ago
Save us? I'll be thankful if they just don't kill us off.
gojomo 5y ago
Billionaires at least introduce a diversity of perspectives & approaches. Such diversity is usually missing from the mandarin class of ivy-leaguers & federal-government-lifers for which Vox's 'explanatory journalism' manufactures consent.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  From where I'm standing I don't see any diversity of perspectives. I see a group of people who all generally believe that: * IP laws should me maximized to protect the "owners" * consumer protection laws should be minimized to remove corporate responsibility * taxes should be minimal * worker protections should be almost non-existent Basically libertarianism or "fuck you, got mine".
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Also, many of them are trying to create land dynasties. Bill gates is buying farmland.
  - pjscott 5y ago
    As an example of diversity of approaches, look at the Fast Grants program: https://future.a16z.com/what-we-learned-doing-fast-grants/ https://future.a16z.com/what-we-learned-doing-fast-grants/ It was created in 2020 to give grants for COVID-related research. Its big selling point was that it would give out money fast: very little paperwork to fill out, and yes/no decisions made within 48 hours. They were surprised to discover that even researchers at top universities were having a hard time getting funding out of the usual institutions like the NIH, which were adapting very slowly to the pandemic. They seem to have done very well in speeding up research, at least with the amount of money they had, just by giving out the funding in a way that few-to-none of the existing institutions would.
  - gojomo 5y ago
    I dont see much of your bullet-item beliefs from billionaires like: * Winfrey * Dorsey * Soros * Steyer * Benioff * Bloomberg * Simons * Sussman * Pritzker * Buffett * Scott * Omidyar * Williams * Kardashian * Lucas A few of them support IP protections, at least at current levels supporting their sources-of-wealth, but not your other examples. (And whether they support IP any more than the average voter, or union-member, is unclear.) Maybe partisanship "from where [you're] standing" is blinding you to the social & political programs of many billionaires?
catlikesshrimp 5y ago
If you could seize anyone's wealth at will, without any regulation, you would be like China, or Venezuela: A dictatorial state. I recommend watching the series " Billionaire " on Netflix.
robswc 5y ago
Yea, go ahead and start your decent into hating successful people. I have 0 doubt if you got rid of billionaires, problems would remain and then you would go after millionaires... The biggest irony is that you'll chase the most productive and brilliant people away. Think of how many great scientists and intellectuals came from the Eastern bloc... or Germany during the rise of Hitler. They literally expelled some of their most brilliant and successful people, making the US (or whatever country they fled to) stronger.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Drug cartels are successful as well. The real problem is that legal work isn't being rewarded. Simply letting your money or real estate idle is a much better bet than actually investing it in an economy with slow population growth.
  - pjscott 5y ago
    Wait, what? The asset classes with the highest rates of return over the past decade have all been equities, i.e. actually investing it in the economy: https://advisor.visualcapitalist.com/asset-class-risk-and-return/ https://advisor.visualcapitalist.com/asset-class-risk-and-re... Letting your money sit idle has had much worse performance.
  - robswc 5y ago
    >Simply letting your money or real estate idle is a much better bet than actually investing it in an economy with slow population growth Do you have anything that points to a majority of billionaires doing this?
zarkov99 5y ago
Who should save us then? Young activists with nothing to offer but righteous ignorance? Cynical politicians, who believe nothing but their focus groups? Our well appointed chattering class whose hatred towards billionaires is obviously rooted in envy? I would say we are better off sticking with the billionaires. They have competence on their side at least.
catlikesshrimp 5y ago
Not a popular opinion: The Western world economy is ruined and will collapse because you stopped working for money... ???? You have been relying on China to supply your goods for decades. Surely, cheap plastic toys can' t amount for much, right? Then add textiles, tools, electronics. People in the US think a call center job is lame (said in this forum), so it is offshored. You also have to consider that by ending slavery, which I think is a good thing, you have to equalize the income for the lower class. Before, slaves didn't have an income, nor property. As time goes by, the blacks should be approaching their white counterparts, by sharing the wealth The US, and Canada, will keep printing paper money, until the world stop taking it, just as China stopped taking in US garbage. That won't happen tomorrow, but you get the picture.
dreen 5y ago
I'd say the main issue is that not a single one of them cares about our problems and never will, even if they have a charity that makes them look like saviors.
- oliv__ 5y ago
  And why should they? Are billionaires responsible for your problems?
  - dreen 5y ago
    Exactly, so relying on them in some hope they fix something is a bad idea.
    - oliv__ 5y ago
      I don't see how anyone is forced to rely on billionaires, and if anything I'd rather rely on a billionaire than on a politician: one of the two has actually done something.
- pjscott 5y ago
  That's a puzzling empirical claim. Why would no billionaires care about other people's problems?
oliv__ 5y ago
What is it with this "billionaire hate" narrative? What have billionaires done besides create enormous wealth for their country and themselves? How is that a bad thing?
- mabub24 5y ago
  I think there are 2 questions that do deserve discussion and debate: 1. Whether a society should be structured to allow billionaires at all; and, 2. Whether the existence of billionaires is actually helpful/creating a net benefit for everyone else. The debate originates out of the dominant ideological form of liberalism in Western liberal democracies, Rawlsian liberalism, and, in particular its idea of the "difference principle", which argues that inequality can exist so long as democratic institutions are accessible and enabling upward social mobility, and so long as the majority of the benefits from government actions/programs/policies benefit the most worse off populace the most. In a sense, the debates around wealth, and especially the extremely wealthy, start when there is the popular sense that that "difference principle" is failing or no longer operating as it should be. Billionaires begin to be seen as extractive rather than as a benefit for a country.

39 points by 5faulker 5y ago

"To Giridharadas, the real “stepping up” would come from billionaires renouncing the use of loopholes to evade taxes that weaken government’s revenue and ability to respond" I'm not sure... would the US covid situation be better if Amazon spent less on building out their infrastructure and instead sent more money to the Trump administration?

j_walter 5y ago

If the US confiscated all of the wealth of the billionaires in the US (which would absolutely wreck the economy as well as that wealth, since much of that their wealth is tied up in stocks)...it would fund less than a year of government spending and not even be able to pay for the $3.5T package that is currently being debated (maybe close...the most recent estimate wealth for US billionares is between $3T and $3.5T). ...and then we couldn't blame billionares for being the problem.

lloydgrossman 5y ago
I'm glad someone here is thinking about the lives of the billionaires.
- sdf131 5y ago
  This isn’t about the billionaires. What is an immense amount of money for individuals (100 billions) really isn’t that significant for a Western government like the United States. Seizing Bezos/Gates wealth would have very little impact on the overall health of the country, the government is working with trillions already
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Seizing Bezos/Gates wealth would have very little impact on the overall health of the country Why on earth would one build the next Tesla or SpaceX or Amazon here if this is the attitude the people will take?
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      At some point during the 20th century financial success became the primary mechanism of measuring achievement. This isn't necessarily the natural state of things - see counterexamples like Jonas Salk or Grigori Perelman. So my question to you would be: why do we only count innovation that results in someone getting fabulously rich as valuable? Why are we worried about losing the next Tesla or SpaceX to taxation instead of worrying about losing the next Hawking to a fatally flawed healthcare and education system?
- robswc 5y ago
  Why is this fallacy used EVERY single time someone points out the absurdity of liquidating every billionaire. I would make the same claim. I'm not rich. I just don't want people with "good intentions" creating "bad consequences" because they don't understand fundamentals.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pydry 5y ago
    The bad economic consequences you vaguely alluded to would presumably apply to the 1950s when the US and its middle classes grew the fastest and top rates of tax were ~98%.
    - robswc 5y ago
      No. But I'm glad you seem to be familiar with this. So its funny you left out the countless proposed, failed and later repealed attempts at wealth taxes in Europe. If you want a very simple example, just look at how Sweden killed their markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_... Countless business lost, lives damaged and millions lost, just because someone wanted to introduce a "tax" with "good intentions" without thinking.
      - pydry 5y ago
        >So its funny you left out the countless proposed, failed and later repealed attempts at wealth taxes in Europe. I do remember when news media outlets owned by the very wealthy claimed the French wealth tax failed because Gerard Depardieu left. >If you want a very simple example, just look at how Sweden killed their markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_... A simple example of what? This was not a wealth tax it was a transaction tax on securities.
        5y ago
nebula8804 5y ago
Lets ask this question in the other direction. How is it in most modern economies you are able to have good healthcare, a robust safety net, pretty decent infrastructure, the opportunity to further yourself via education without breaking the bank and still keep those economies trucking along while the US: the richest country on the planet can't seem to get this done? There is obviously some disconnect.
- sdf131 5y ago
  I think we’re ignoring scale here. Is there a country with similar population levels that provides all that? I’m Canadian and I am thankful for our benefits but our public services have been stretched for decades and I’m skeptical that our systems could handle 10x the population.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    Isn't the theory that 10x the population would mean 10x the tax revenue, and 10x the infrastructure? The same reason a lot of people like to look at per capita measurements over absolute figures? Or looking at it another way: with the assumption that a country of 30M people can have good infrastructure, and is not an outlier, and there can exists more than one of such country, what is different between 10 countries of 30M people each with good infrastructure and 1 country of 300M having bad? Governments are big, so it's difficult to just point a finger at a specific cause of an issue, but it would seem to me the issue is not continuously building out infrastructure. That, and poorly written, but possibly well meaning, legislation that leads to regulations massively increasing administration costs on every and all areas of our infrastructure (healthcare, general construction, transport, housing).
    - j_walter 5y ago
      The bigger you are the harder it is to do things properly or react fast enough to changing conditions. This is why most companies get huge and then end up failing...they can't change fast enough to stay competitive. It's one thing to be a Scandinavian country that has a homogenous culture and smaller population (and land mass)...and another to mix large amounts of different cultures across a giant nation of states and have everyone agree upon the same thing or be able to institute the same infrastructure.
pupppet 5y ago
I think it just comes down to where do you get the most bang for your buck. Money sitting in a bank/stocks (billionaires), or money in the pockets of people willing to spend it (everyone else).
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
You're right. The US government spends so much, and owes so much, that even raiding the wealth of the billionaire class probably wouldn't do much in the overall scheme of things. But how much of US economic and fiscal policy has been influenced by billionaires (and "the rich" generally) to the detriment of the country's finances and those of everyday citizens? It's the policies that are the problem. If you counted the costs of the tax loopholes designed specifically to benefit big corporations, real estate developers, Wall Street titans, the 1% of the 1%, etc., subsidies for the most powerful special interests, and regulations that actually stunt innovation and economic growth to protect large corporations, I suspect you'd be looking at many multiples of the wealth of individual billionaires. In other words, to get one astronaut worth a cool $100 billion, the country probably "spends" many multiples of that.
- merpnderp 5y ago
  Exactly the never ending quantitive easing has just been piling more and more money into the hands of the rich in the name of helping the poor. Heaven forbid we have some deflation, and assets cost less while wages get stronger.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Deflation benefits the rich. They have lots of money that gets to appreciate. You're just turning money into housing or Bitcoin. Something the rich speculate with to the detriment of the less wealthy.
    - merpnderp 5y ago
      No, they don't have lots of money, they have lots of assets. No one is sitting around with a silo full of doll-hairs they go swimming in like a greedy duck. And with deflation, those assets become cheaper. Inflation they become more expensive. The exact opposite of wages.
cronix 5y ago
> ...and then we couldn't blame billionares for being the problem. Of course we could, and would. The narrative would then just shift to be "because these ruthless bastards didn't pay their fair share when it counted and was needed, now we're in a situation that the problem is too big and it's too late....because of THEM. You are suffering because of THEM. Look at history as it's been done a number of times.
nobody9999 5y ago
>If the US confiscated all of the wealth of the billionaires in the US Who is arguing for the government to do so? Certainly not anyone with real power in the US.
- robswc 5y ago
  Why does it have to be someone with real power? I've seen several people on forums/twitter (yes, real people not bots) advocating or doing the math on what we could do with the "1% wealth" ... there's also this https://youtu.be/XX0u08Gb2Gc https://youtu.be/XX0u08Gb2Gc Which got through countless producers and two hosts without so much as a "?" from anyone.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >Why does it have to be someone with real power? Because unless there are either powerful folks advocating for this, or a huge group of people doing so (and neither of those exists, AFAICT), it will never happen. Yes, there are folks out there with ridiculous ideas. Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh?[0] If I were to promote the idea that we should require all women to wear shelf bras[1] (or none at all), that would make me a pig and an objectifier of women. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there were folks out there who already do so Would such a thing garner widespread support? Would someone advocating for such a thing be taken seriously by enough people (or the right people, which was the point of my initial comment) to make it happen? The same can be said of "confiscating the wealth of the billionaires." It makes me wonder if we should expand Peter Medawar's comment[2] beyond just religious institutions. [N.B. I am an American] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Nishtana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Nishtana [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bra_designs#List_of_bra_design_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bra_designs#List_of_br... [2] https://quotefancy.com/quote/1574828/Peter-Medawar-The-USA-is-so-enormous-and-so-numerous-are-its-schools-colleges-and https://quotefancy.com/quote/1574828/Peter-Medawar-The-USA-i...
    - robswc 5y ago
      That's fair... I would argue that a significant % of people are arguing for this though, or at least open to the idea. I mean, would you say a significant % of people believe that Q nonsense?
ashtonkem 5y ago
Personally I’m more interested in driving up the estate tax. The effect of generational wealth strikes me as particularly corrosive to a republic. The revenue raised is really only a minor side benefit. If you make billions, fine. Pay income tax, but you can remain a billionaire. But your kids should not get to keep that. They’ll have to make do merely with millions.
simorley 5y ago
> If the US confiscated all of the wealth of the billionaires in the US (which would absolutely wreck the economy as well as that wealth, since much of that their wealth is tied up in stocks)...it would fund less than a year of government spending and not even be able to pay for the $3.5T package that is currently being debated (maybe close...the most recent estimate wealth for US billionares is between $3T and $3.5T). That is so deceptive. You are assuming that everyone else won't be paying their taxes. Everything would be paid for but we could use the "confiscated" wealth for additional stuff. Not that I am necessarily for or against wealth redistribution. Nobody is saying the wealth should be used to fund the government. The american taxpayers do that. The additional money could be used for other stuff.
- pjscott 5y ago
  Are taxpayers funding the government? Last year, federal tax revenues were $3 trillion less than federal spending.
  - simorley 5y ago
    > Are taxpayers funding the government? Yes. It certainly isn't the billionaires as all their wealth wouldn't as the OP noted. > Last year, federal tax revenues were $3 trillion less than federal spending. A once in a few generations pandemic will do that. See how when things are put into context, it doesn't seem so bad?
lamontcg 5y ago
Taxing billionaires out of existence isn't about solving funding problems, it is about muzzling their ability to throw their wealth at politics and distort democracy. > which would absolutely wreck the economy as well as that wealth, since much of that their wealth is tied up in stocks Yet somehow Mackenzie Scott is divesting billions and not crashing the economy. And you just got done saying how they don't actually have that much, yet if they sold it all its so huge it would tank the economy. That is a case of Schroedinger's equity.

swader999 5y ago

Save us? I'll be thankful if they just don't kill us off.

gojomo 5y ago

Billionaires at least introduce a diversity of perspectives & approaches. Such diversity is usually missing from the mandarin class of ivy-leaguers & federal-government-lifers for which Vox's 'explanatory journalism' manufactures consent.

AlexandrB 5y ago
From where I'm standing I don't see any diversity of perspectives. I see a group of people who all generally believe that: * IP laws should me maximized to protect the "owners" * consumer protection laws should be minimized to remove corporate responsibility * taxes should be minimal * worker protections should be almost non-existent Basically libertarianism or "fuck you, got mine".
- imtringued 5y ago
  Also, many of them are trying to create land dynasties. Bill gates is buying farmland.
- pjscott 5y ago
  As an example of diversity of approaches, look at the Fast Grants program: https://future.a16z.com/what-we-learned-doing-fast-grants/ https://future.a16z.com/what-we-learned-doing-fast-grants/ It was created in 2020 to give grants for COVID-related research. Its big selling point was that it would give out money fast: very little paperwork to fill out, and yes/no decisions made within 48 hours. They were surprised to discover that even researchers at top universities were having a hard time getting funding out of the usual institutions like the NIH, which were adapting very slowly to the pandemic. They seem to have done very well in speeding up research, at least with the amount of money they had, just by giving out the funding in a way that few-to-none of the existing institutions would.
- gojomo 5y ago
  I dont see much of your bullet-item beliefs from billionaires like: * Winfrey * Dorsey * Soros * Steyer * Benioff * Bloomberg * Simons * Sussman * Pritzker * Buffett * Scott * Omidyar * Williams * Kardashian * Lucas A few of them support IP protections, at least at current levels supporting their sources-of-wealth, but not your other examples. (And whether they support IP any more than the average voter, or union-member, is unclear.) Maybe partisanship "from where [you're] standing" is blinding you to the social & political programs of many billionaires?

catlikesshrimp 5y ago

If you could seize anyone's wealth at will, without any regulation, you would be like China, or Venezuela: A dictatorial state. I recommend watching the series " Billionaire " on Netflix.

robswc 5y ago

Yea, go ahead and start your decent into hating successful people. I have 0 doubt if you got rid of billionaires, problems would remain and then you would go after millionaires... The biggest irony is that you'll chase the most productive and brilliant people away. Think of how many great scientists and intellectuals came from the Eastern bloc... or Germany during the rise of Hitler. They literally expelled some of their most brilliant and successful people, making the US (or whatever country they fled to) stronger.

imtringued 5y ago
Drug cartels are successful as well. The real problem is that legal work isn't being rewarded. Simply letting your money or real estate idle is a much better bet than actually investing it in an economy with slow population growth.
- pjscott 5y ago
  Wait, what? The asset classes with the highest rates of return over the past decade have all been equities, i.e. actually investing it in the economy: https://advisor.visualcapitalist.com/asset-class-risk-and-return/ https://advisor.visualcapitalist.com/asset-class-risk-and-re... Letting your money sit idle has had much worse performance.
- robswc 5y ago
  >Simply letting your money or real estate idle is a much better bet than actually investing it in an economy with slow population growth Do you have anything that points to a majority of billionaires doing this?

zarkov99 5y ago

Who should save us then? Young activists with nothing to offer but righteous ignorance? Cynical politicians, who believe nothing but their focus groups? Our well appointed chattering class whose hatred towards billionaires is obviously rooted in envy? I would say we are better off sticking with the billionaires. They have competence on their side at least.

catlikesshrimp 5y ago

Not a popular opinion: The Western world economy is ruined and will collapse because you stopped working for money... ???? You have been relying on China to supply your goods for decades. Surely, cheap plastic toys can' t amount for much, right? Then add textiles, tools, electronics. People in the US think a call center job is lame (said in this forum), so it is offshored. You also have to consider that by ending slavery, which I think is a good thing, you have to equalize the income for the lower class. Before, slaves didn't have an income, nor property. As time goes by, the blacks should be approaching their white counterparts, by sharing the wealth The US, and Canada, will keep printing paper money, until the world stop taking it, just as China stopped taking in US garbage. That won't happen tomorrow, but you get the picture.

dreen 5y ago

I'd say the main issue is that not a single one of them cares about our problems and never will, even if they have a charity that makes them look like saviors.

oliv__ 5y ago
And why should they? Are billionaires responsible for your problems?
- dreen 5y ago
  Exactly, so relying on them in some hope they fix something is a bad idea.
  - oliv__ 5y ago
    I don't see how anyone is forced to rely on billionaires, and if anything I'd rather rely on a billionaire than on a politician: one of the two has actually done something.
pjscott 5y ago
That's a puzzling empirical claim. Why would no billionaires care about other people's problems?

oliv__ 5y ago

What is it with this "billionaire hate" narrative? What have billionaires done besides create enormous wealth for their country and themselves? How is that a bad thing?

mabub24 5y ago
I think there are 2 questions that do deserve discussion and debate: 1. Whether a society should be structured to allow billionaires at all; and, 2. Whether the existence of billionaires is actually helpful/creating a net benefit for everyone else. The debate originates out of the dominant ideological form of liberalism in Western liberal democracies, Rawlsian liberalism, and, in particular its idea of the "difference principle", which argues that inequality can exist so long as democratic institutions are accessible and enabling upward social mobility, and so long as the majority of the benefits from government actions/programs/policies benefit the most worse off populace the most. In a sense, the debates around wealth, and especially the extremely wealthy, start when there is the popular sense that that "difference principle" is failing or no longer operating as it should be. Billionaires begin to be seen as extractive rather than as a benefit for a country.