[Steve_American]

Market-Watch
Opinion: Billionaires haven’t earned all they have
Published: Feb 9, 2019 10:49 a.m. ET

The very wealthy do produce some value, but most of them are rentiers, piggybacking on the work of others

By REX NUTTING, COLUMNIST

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/billi ... 2019-02-07

By proposing to tax large incomes at a higher rate and to tax the wealth of the very rich, progressive politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are forcing a long-overdue re-examination of what billionaires actually contribute.

Are billionaires and other “people of means” (billionaire Howard Schultz’s preferred phrase) the main engines of social progress and economic growth, as many on the right say? Or, are they “vampire squids” sucking the lifeblood of the economy, as a few on the left believe?

Are billionaires the greatest makers in the economy, or the greatest takers?

My vote is for greatest takers.

On the example of patents creating vast wealth, my thinking is that the tax system needs to tax vast wealth very heavily. The inventor gets rewarded with big wealth but not with vast wealth. This is enough to cause future inventors to invent.

[Negotiator]

Why, duh.

Live on a lonely island and try to work as hard as you can your whole life and consume as little as possible at the same time.

No matter how hard you'll try, you'll fail to generate a value of even a single million all by yourself.

Thus you need society to make any higher gain. Which is why taxing rich people is correct. They wouldnt be rich unless they'd live in this society.

[Steve_American]

After thinking about this more, let me say this ---
Those total wealth estimates are almost certainly way too high.
If he tried to sell 40% of his Amazon stock, the prices he would get would rapidly fall.
So, I don't think it makes much sense to multiply the share value times the number of shares he has to get his net worth.

[skinster]

[Zionist Nationalist]

https://twitter.com/_Man_Like_/status/1095406406616993792

You cant really solve the world hunger by giving away free food
most countries experiencing hunger have majority uneducated population combined with a bad and corrupt government

"give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

[Rancid]

You cant really solve the world hunger by giving away free food
most countries experiencing hunger have majority uneducated population combined with a bad and corrupt government

"give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

True, however, it can be a stop gap until the problem is solved by more fundamental means.

"Give a man a fish, so he can not be hungry, and thus learn to fish." SOme shit like that.

[SSDR]

@Zionist Nationalist, Well those populations need the correct education so they know how to grow and process food. The bad, corrupt governments are holding their societies back. They need to replace those bad, corrupt governments.

My fuckin overall response to this topic: What more do the fuckin billionaires need to earn? Shit they got so much fuckin money that they don't even know what to do with it! So they create these "national debt" or "society 'owes' us money" theories to control people into actually thinking that the super rich haven't earned all of their wealth.

[Steve_American]

You cant really solve the world hunger by giving away free food
most countries experiencing hunger have majority uneducated population combined with a bad and corrupt government

"give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

This is certainly true. Maybe you should give vouchers to every farmer to double his harvest [with an equal amount of free food]. Then he can sell it.
Giving free food can destroy small farmers when noone buys their crop because they have food for free.

OTOH, teaching him to fish, assumes 2 things which may not be true.
1] there are places where people can fish as a free right.
2]There are a lot of fish in those places for them the catch.
If someone owns all the fishing holes and doesn't let people fish in them then your new fisherman is SOL, and starving.

[Rugoz]

The wealth of billionaires is primarily due to market power of their companies, that is by definition never earned (though it can still be a useful incentive). That comes before any 'surplus value' considerations.