In a democracy you don’t stop people from making as much money as they are able to make. As long as they do it legally, it is not up to you or me to tell them how much is too much or how they should spend it. If you want to increase tax rates or have a wealth tax or estate tax to collect some of that money that’s fine. Pass a law. But to equate how much money you have, whether it’s earned income or passive income, to being democratic or anti-democratic is just plain stupid. A poor man can be just as greedy as a rich man.
9
It is a Republic.....a democratic one....but they are not the same....But you are so right....the middle class has been decimated and it is only a matter of time before they have had enough.....
8
Duh. The French showed us the way as early as 1789.
9
Excessive Wealth Disorder! EWD!
4
Indeed!
1
Bravo, sir.
4
"Michael Tomasky is contributing opinion writer for The New York Times."
It gives me pleasure to read that. The Times and The New York Review of Books suit his talents better than the Daily Beast.
7
I was at a lecture by Mr Gates at the University of NSW in Sydney where he plainly said the US would HAVE to adopt universal health care.
I can't remember exactly what he said, but it is in this link and the upshot was.....the USA needed universal health insurance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qROud0hQUYw&t=2317s
2
Oligarchs should not lead a country. There we are today in the US (as in Ukraine, for instance...). On top of that, in order to protect their interests, those clever, articulate and knowledgeable people use arguments which I consider to be intellectually dishonest ones. This Michael Tomaskiy tribune is up to the point. Democracy, justice, etc...necessitate today to increase significantly the taxes on the rich, and especially the billionnaires, whose wealth insults the people. Not doing it, as written, could lead us to more populism, and maybe to fascism
5
Too bad for the billionaires.
2
Taxes or pitchforks. Am I missing a likely outcome?
6
Jamie Damon is an schmo. He’s created nothing. Not even a thought worth repeating. He skims money off the top of others hard earned savings and claims how he’s helping so many while just lining his own pockets. “Grab em‘ you the wallet.”
Congratulations Jamie. When you die I bet the first thing on your tombstone will say ‘self made billionaire’. You’re so proud of that. Will loving husband or father even make it? Some priorities.
8
He got a many-million-dollars sailboat he never sails. (The extreme concentration of money in work...)
1
By the vagaries of the market, Bill Gates is, was, and will be again, the richest guy in the world.
If anyone can honestly say, "no worries", it is Mr. Gates. He can choose to be generous or selfish, decent or monstrous, grounded in reality or lost in space. His prerogative to be who he wants to be is absolute. He answers only to himself and no one else.
Whether created by a PR consultant or an authentic in-his-DNA mensch, Gates strikes a posture of earnest public engagement.
Now, entering his dotage, he reveals a side of himself that threatens his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame for do-gooders.
His good-guy guise -- and charity -- is contingent upon his unquestioned virtue and noblesse oblige.
He forgets he's an accidental freak of wealth, not some genius who revolutionized life. In fact many would argue that his Microsoft operating system (originally called Quick & Dirty Operating System created by Tim Paterson who sold it to Gates for $75,000) was so bug-ridden and clunky, it delayed the widespread adoption and productivity of personal computer. Never has mediocrity and its monopoly been so gloriously rewarded.
Gates' redemption has been his philanthropy -- if you don't look too closely.
Forgetting how rich he got pouring software sand into PC gearboxes, he's now threatening to cut his nose to spite the face of his philanthropy.
He hung out with Jeffrey Epstein and prefers Trump to Warren.
Gates didn't make money as much as money made him.
14
Okay, let's look at the demand side of the growth economy. [The supply side is taken care of since there is enough oil, coal and gas in proven reserves to fry the earth several times over. So enough energy, enough people, enough capital.] In order to keep the growth economy going, you need to allow the middle class to keep enough of their money to buy all the new products. Remember Henry Ford's famous dictum, "I have to price my Model T at a low enough price so the people who make them can buy one." The rich elites have forgetten this simple policy. Now they are hoovering up so much of the world's money that the middle class is stuck on a treadmill. So . . . contraction, recession, whatever you want to call it. UNLESS the rich elites are smart enough to pay their taxes. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet seem to get this. They don't want to pay, but their positions are really for negotiating a smaller amount. It is really quite simple. 2% is a SMALL price to pay. We are not asking you to go live in a box on Fifth Avenue. Tell you what. You can keep enough for three houses. We get the rest - especially those who don't have a house at all! Don't let greed make you stupid.
6
I would remind the billionaires that the Bourbons, the Romanovs, and the Ceausescus all had wealth and power and thought nothing bad could happen to them. They found out too late that they were wrong.
8
The rich and powerful successfully play cities, states and countries against each other, to avoid taxes. Once America increases their tax burden, they will leave to whatever third world island offers them the best deal.
It's sad that someone wildly successful would be willing to give up the awesomeness of America (NYC! Maui! Burning Man! Yosemite!) to avoid Elizabeth Warren's $1 million annual tax on $100 million in wealth.
Come on you super-rich; be proud of America; be proud that your taxes can make this a better place for everyone!
4
Re ”Bill Gates, I Implore You to Connect Some Dots“
I’ll 2nd that emotion but to a different end.
Follow those dots from money in politics- money is speech, across the ocean to a St Petersburg troll factory where American ideas are reprocessed into polarizing memes, broadcast wholesale onto social media and voila! Democracy skitters off its rails, billionaires and all. Connect them dots !
5
A lot of these so-called charities have strings of high tensile steel attached to them. Just bother to read the details if they are available. F'rinstance who owns the patents on medical breakthroughs discovered at research centers funded by mega-donors?
The bottom line is "Poor man wants to be rich, rich man wants to be king, king ain't satisfied until he owns everything."
Jonas Salk may have been uniquely unscathed by greed.
Also the idea that billionaires are brilliant is absurd.
3
Complete nonsense. The middle class in the US is large and thriving. US middle class has strong earnings, wealth and spending with options for jobs and careers like never before. Easy access to Education and trade schools, amazing markets for cars, furniture, housing, vacations, and food stores from amazing value offerings like Walmart and Costco to Wegmens and Wholefoods. No one pines for the good old 1970’s. No one. As to some guy who’s company is worth a billion dollars that wasn’t there a year ago. No! It doesn’t effect me or you at all. Stop whining, it’s an amazing country with unreal
Opportunities and options like never before. Oh, and Hillary lost to Trump because African Americans in Philadelphia didn’t come out for her. Try some honesty, won’t hurt much.
3
Hollywood and high tech are partially responsible ... our people have been lured into worshiping false gods.
2
"...excessive wealth is the real threat."
True, but it's vicious, cowboy capitalism that leads to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few. And while that wealth doesn't always go into the wrong and undeserving hands, often it does.
Chris Hedges: "Capitalism rewards single-minded narcissists and often con artists devoid of empathy and incapable of remorse. It rewards those focused exclusively on personal gain and self aggrandizement. Once a capitalist class achieves complete control, as it has in the US, it dismantles the structures that make social bonds possible -- seeing in them an impediment to profit."
"The electoral process is a façade. One where... we get to choose between the friendly, and inclusive form of corporate fascism under the Democratic Party, or the raw-racist, Christian fascism of Donald Trump's White man's party."
From Hedges' talk on "American Anomie"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV0cS1TGve4
Anomie roughly means soullessness, the loss of social bonds that hold society together and give people meaning in their lives.
4
Boy oh boy, kinda like the Bolshevik revolution and Mao's China. Look where that ended up. Millions murdered by incompetent bureaucrats who can only take. They have failed and want to take you down with them. Let's punish those who succeed. The deep state wants their pensions!!!
3
First, how did these "rich" make ALL that money? Basically, by grossly over charging US, you and me! Then check ALL the tax breaks these "crooks" got and how did those "tax breaks"get on the books? And I could go on and on about "breaks" these ... get! Now you may say: "Oh, he's against the people that are sucessfull!" NO! I'm not! But making BILLION(S)$'s in one's life time? To me that's one definition of a CROOK!!!!!
3
Tax the $$$Rich, Tax the $$$Rich, Tax the $$$greedy, selfish $$$Rich!
+ Strengthen unions = Higher wages and benefits
Lower CEO pay, Workers on Board of Directors, as in Germany.
CAPITAL comes from the work of WORKERS!
4
Tumbrels is a word not many know the meaning of in this day and age.
Oligarchs should fear it’s return, and remember - there’s way more of us.
Also, Roosevelt’s greatest achievement was the saving of Capitalism as a viable system - by regulating the beejeezus out of it, and taxing the snot out of the very same people he saved from those tumbrels...
3
Could you list out what the governments in these countries supply to the general population.
Health Care
Education
The environment
Child care
Paid Holidays
Police and Emergency services
Infrastructure for roads, bridges
Maternity & Paternity
Etc etc
By focusing on wealth tax only you tell less than half the story and make it about hurting enterprise rather than paying for public services.
1
As far as I can tell, billioinaires are doing quite well in Russia, China, and many other autocratic countries, all they have to do is humor and support the dictator of the day. So the assumption that American oligarchs will mind the US not remaining a vibrant democracy is a nice thought, but not necessarily true.
They have enough money to survive come what may, democracy or dictatorship, stability or unrest, and they will get to keep their billions without any bothersome Democrat annoying them.
Then again, they already have the money, and the clout that comes with it, to influence (or should I say buy?) our politicians and their political message, so they are not in much danger.
Excessive wealth, if earned honestly, is no threat to anyone; excessive government that infringes individual rights is a threat to everyone.
2
This article should be required reading for every US citizen.
4
Perhaps excessive wealth can tip the balance of a civil society when the populists see injustice perpetuated by the plutocrats; however, the progressives are promoting an envious culture. The extreme right and left are dug in to see the other side as the great demon. Both sides have the W's "if you are not with us, you are against us" mentality.
This columnist, echoing Sen Warren* and others, are going to paint everyone wealthy with one broad brush. That, sir, is a real threat too.
* I voted twice for Sen Warren as my senator but I will not vote for her as my president - at least not in the primary since she, of course, is still better than Trump.
You can’t tax the billionaires at such a high rate
It will destroy our meritocracy
We need our billionaires as an example of what hard work can bring
It keeps our proletariat striving for that chance to become the next bill gates
Can you imagine the prospect of having the shot of only single-digit billions vs multiple digit-billions??
Two billion is almost not worth the effort. Why bother?
People would just shut down and view the economy as not worth the hard work.
Despite having no disruptive innovations, no set of historic lucky breaks, no psychotic work ethic, and no six-sigma snowballing self-confidence - our middle class and mere millionaires would have nothing to hope for other than a boring life of family, faith, and community
3
There are 2 issues in that one...
First the inflection point. As in once you are allowed to tax wealth where do you stop? It easy to target the 400 and then the folks below them and those below them and then you are in the millionaires. Warren today will start confiscating 2 percent of the $50 + million. That's just the start . it is perfectly logical to expect that threshold drop to $10MM. It did in France and went much lower than that. $5MM perhaps? Pay a little extra on your 3 bedroom Manhattan apartment. My 5000 square foot in Missouri is safe for the time being but for how long. Greed goes both ways.
Second is the relentlessness of it for lack of a better word. This wealth tax chips at the fortune on year one and on year two and three and four . It does not care if your investments are dropping in value because you did something stupid or the market did that or the dollar weakened and the yen strengthened. It does not care if your $10MM threshold is reached by the value of your principal residence plus your social security check. Hit the threshold: Pay . Can't do it ? don't care, downsize and pay. Or are you counting on the elected officials to exempt you because you live in an expensive area or are retired or had a down year?
The idea is noble. This country is a jungle with no social net. We need one and the fastest way to build one is to tax both income and wealth. Arguably we need to get there fast but this is a case when the remedy can kill the patient.
1
Many readers of the NYT are sincerely disturbed by the spectacle of the Trump administration, to say the least. But US billionaires and Wall Street are not at disturbed by Trump, as his policies pose no threat to them and some cases benefit them. They can live with a second Trump term even if you and I cannot.
The proper political approach is to call the "threat" of some billionaires to support Trump, should society force them to disgorge some of their booty. Pursue a politics that forces them into Trump's corner. They can then suffer Trump's inevitable fate. That would be a beneficial two-fer for the rest of the human race, and good riddance to both.
1
Without any labels the fact that all these illustrious wall street geniuses managed to crash the US and world economy for unadulterated greed and then had to be rescued by the lowly tax paying proletariat and only Bernie Maddof did time--this certainly portrays a system crooked at the top. Call it predatory capitalism, call it untethered speculation, whatever, the rank injustice screams for radical reform and or revolution.
2
I do not understand this debate. It not like the USA neesd money for nothing.
We have a $1T deficit. We have a $15T debt. We should probably TRY to pay it off. Seems like the right thing to do.
And the least painful way to pay it off is for the obscenely wealthy (who benefited from both the inheritance tax reduction and the three capital gains tax reductions) to pay a share that is proportionate to their wealth. Gates has pledged his money to Africa while stiffing Americans (including African Americans) at home.
3
Its such irrational insanity, how many years does Gates or Bloomberg or Bezos have left?
How can they possibly spend an ioata in that time, unless they buy whole countries [another reason its undemocratic].
They CANNOT take it with them.
How does this inescapable fact evade them?
1
Insult to injury, we taxpayers are subsidizing the insanely wealthy Walton Family among others. WE pay the taxes that provide necessary social supports such as food stamps as a result of the very low wages Walmart pays their employees. The game is, and always has been, to keep us fighting amonst ourselves while our we and our civil society is robbed blind. THEY, the people who OWN this country and the polititians they've ushered in, won't change the system...it's working beautifully for them. Immigrants and the working poor are NOT your enemy. PEACE!
3
The people who spend the money and keep the economy spinning on Main Street are not the billionaires. But the people who can enable people to spend more money on Main Street ARE billionaires. A good place to start would be to share the bonus and just give everyone beneath the billionaire class more paid time off...like they do in Paris and Sydney, where billionaires like to hang out.
Love Sydney? You can relax here. Ever wonder why Austrailians are more relaxed than their US counterparts? They aren't one ER visit away from financial ruin. Why not promote our family security oriented health care system. They have time to recharge and travel. Why not secure and family friendly 4 weeks paid time off for your country? Why not get the guns into gun clubs? We did.
Love Japan? Expand and finish California's high speed transport project city center to city center that will bring housing and jobs along the network.
Billionaire! You have a platform.
Use it.
Do something BIG with your billions that will tamp down the middle class rage that is simmering across the county in your cities, towns, and states.
FIX healthcare, transportation,
and education where you live instead of just buying up more
DO-Nothing politicians. At the very least, buy school supplies
for your local public school.
2
I ask those billionaires: Will a 50% tax on your income make any difference in your life?
3
To shut down billionaires shut down credit cards. and revert to a cash society and a gold standard.
The 400 votes the billionaires have won't allow them to carry an election, so we can ignore their self-interested opinions!
Actually this author is wrong about several points. Elon musk is cleaning up flints water, gates and Bloomberg nearly wipes polio off the face of the earth and gates also provided sanitation to India. Bloomberg is helping each state individually meet the Paris climate accord standards, gone after big tobacco, the gun lobby and even tried to help obesity rates in Mexico. These billionaires actually do things better than our gvt and without these two specifically we’d be far worse off. No one paid a 90percent tax rate there’s always been loopholes and deductions. You should be highly encouraging these billionaires to help solves problems like gates, Bloomberg and musk. Our gvt is horiffic with money and likely still operates on computers from 1990. If anything I want these tech billionaires to bring us to modern day instead of these old politicians that don’t understand AI or tech at all. Your mentally is stuck on solutions that don’t match reality. We want their intellect on our side and we need them to help fix America. They are smarter than us are success stories AND you want these people to love this country so they fix the broken system because they know how do run a business. If anyone complains that this isnt a business I will laugh hard, because our business is proving and exporting goods and services all over the world. That’s called an economy.
1
Please tell me how any job that any American does is worth more than about $600,000 per year. Tops.
2
And it all started with Reagan. Notice how all the charts showing the divide in wealth started in 1980? The narrative sold to the middle class which continues to thrive is the myth that it is the people below you rather than those above you who have their hand in your pocket. Reagan declared war on "welfare queens," not oligarchs. Trump villifies blacks, Latinos and non-Norwegian immigrants. The
1
Rich, middle class, poor. There's always an argument that's trotted out in defense of the rich. You know the one? Sure you do!
"He/she can get more productive use from his/her money than the (US) Government."
I say oh yeah? Says who? Why.....the guy with the money of course.
Here's the thing about the logic. And I'm allowing there is a modicum of truth in it. Mr. Gates (for instance), as laudable and beneficent as his charity is, makes a choice. He decides where he wants his money to go. He decides how it is spent. In and of itself there's nothing wrong with this. It is his money after all.
The government, though, has responsibility FOR US ALL! Sir Bill of the Gates clan does not. Socially speaking he cares less about the whole. It's not his mandate. That mandate, which is a far greater one, is the province of government don't'cha think? One man, one rich person, or even a gaggle of them, cannot do what the government is created to do, that being to support us all for our collective future prosperity.
Government is all about the group, the team, effort. The rich, effectively the primping primadonna's of our social order...okay....okay...I'll be kind and say the reigning quarterbacks directing things....need to understand that when they extract more than what's fair then that's the time they need to take one for the team; that social order which gave them their opportunity in the first place.
And that time? It's now.
John~
American Net'Zen
1
This is a really good opinion article. Clearly articulated without sounding ominous or apocalyptic.
No evil wealth transfer at work here. Nobody is robbing the middle class to pay the rich. Common misconception in this paper. Thankfully Bill Gates and Microsoft are here in USA vice some other country!!
["we have spent the last 30 or so years transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the people at the very top"... this is carnage..." ]
Rise in income disparity in the USA resulted more from the movement of capital offshore (ie loss of jobs to China).
The big problem with a wealth tax as of now is the lack of solidarity among the western countries - even within the Americas and the EU.
As those countries conduct a ruinous competition in the attempt to attract investments, they get easily duped out of the taxes they need to keep up their infrastructure, only to then find out, that these enterprises manage to hide their money in shady tax havens in the caribbean.
E. G. Amazon: To minimize taxes in Germany, they have a subsidiary, that is billing big money to Amazon Germany for services like marketing and organization, in the result zeroing out the wins in Germany. With tricks like these, tax dues can be passed around across several countries, until they simply vanish.
If the democracies don't start to get their act together, they will be ripped of by the multinationals.
66
We live in a sham democracy; it takes involved, knowledgable citizens; we don’t have them. Corporate toralitarianisn.
6
Gas lamps and candles would be lighting our homes if the current war on billionaires was conducted in the late 19th century. The play Amadeus shows how the mediocre—even the talented mediocrities, can be poisoned by their jealousy of true genius. That spirit is alive in the land. Allowing a true genius, whether it is Gates or Bezos or the guy who started Federal Express to pursue and profit from their world changing new ideas makes the world better for all of us. Letting them keep their money to pursue their ideas is good for all of us, even if they are spectacularly wealthy. History proves it.
165
explain to me how having billionaires pay a higher tax rate, that doesn't even erase their annual interest, is "war on billionaires"
1182
True genius gets you to the first couple hundred million. Loopholes and deficient regulation gets you the rest.
943
@ehillesum No, history doesn't prove your point even a little bit. How about the progress which occurred in the post WWII period when taxes were high? Hmmm? Heck of a lot of important technological gains then. And the play "Amadeus" isn't history. It's entertainment.
537
“freedom and free enterprise are interchangeable.”
Funny he should say that. Truly free enterprise would destroy the corporate monopolies and the resultant vast fortunes. We need to go back to 91% highest tax rate and strong antitrust laws.
7
Yes! But the hollowing out of the middle class goes back to 1973. It does improve slightly under Democratic presidents, but is quickly undone. Education, even with a shift in income, education, infrastructure (mass transit, broadband accessibility) takes decades to restore or bring to undeserved areas and people.
In addition to this, wealth is the more important statistic than income so taxing enormous fortunes is important. For example if I pay capital gains on what I withdraw from my retirement account, it is taxed at a higher rate than my extremely low income but a billionaires is taxed at a lower rate than income. This is a small but needed fix. There are others.
6
Wealth tax is an easy concept; all reported income is taxed at a minimum of 30%, no exception. One can spend millions on tax lawyers and tax avoidance, however, 30% is due.
If one does not report income, they would be sent to that new tax prison in the desert called "Al Capone's Haven."
1
@Don White, I don’t think what you describe is a wealth tax; it’s an income tax. A wealth tax involves figuring out the value of all assets and taxing that value. What I don’t get is how that value will be computed. Will we all have to inventory our homes and accounts and provide the data to the IRS? With greater enforcement, can we anticipate, under President Warren, agents entering our homes to check what we possess? I haven’t seen this issue addressed, although expensive art and yachts have been mentioned in some articles.
3
Here's one set of dots that needs to be connected as well: the middle class has bought into the notion that Ronald Reagan was right when he said that "government is the problem" and its corollary that "all taxes are confiscatory". The GOP has played this mantra to the hilt--- starving the government of taxes and thereby making it ineffective. Trump's agenda is the fruit of their labor.
Trump's base admires him for dodging taxes and fail to appreciate the benefits "the government" provides for them. They believe that tax avoidance is a shrewd business maneuver and that government employees are incompetents who couldn't find a job in the private sector if they life depended on it. They also believe their hard earned dollars go to "takers": people who are lazy and undeserving.
8
When was the last time our current government(s) built a bridge? All they seem capable of is policing the world (unsustainable) and hiring more bureaucrats. Philanthropy is a uniquely American phenomena that accomplishes much more than you know. Entrepreneurial capitalism created our wealth, built the highest standard of living in human history and grew a middle class that currently enjoys creature comforts and longevity previously enjoyed only by royalty. Before we throw more good money after bad, government heal thyself.
5
Perhaps the problem is not with the wealthy but with the middle class which has lost most of the get a good education and get a good job and work hard attitude and now is more interested in looking at what it can get for nothing. There is also an element of government interference. The Marshall Plan outlived its usefulness in the late 1960s, early 1970s, but, when our government failed to shut down the benefits given to Europe and Asia to help them get back on their feet, it became beneficial for US manufacturing to move to those areas with a massive loss of good jobs here. Government cannot give anything to anyone unless it takes it first from someone else. That is what this discussion is all about. It is a back door route to socialism which will make the government bigger, more intrusive in our daily lives, and ultimately lead to the total destruction of the middle class which will become entirely dependent on the government. Thus far, there is no conclusive evidence that socialism really works, and it probably doesn't.
7
The tax rate on the "working rich" is over 50% in high tax states, already too high. This is how to get access to unrealized capital gains.
1
Reason evaporated when the wealthy have their fortunes threatened.
The problem doesn't solely rest on the rich. We also have shifting government policies and regulations to blame for the state of our economy and inequality. Citizens United was a major shifting point - unlimited political contributions by shady "political action committees". Basically, this was a way for billionaires to fund government groups that benefitted them, while defunding the candidates that don't. At this point, our government has been bent over backwards so far to help them that we don't even know the top from the bottom anymore. The only way to fix this in my opinion, at this point, is to build everything from the bottom up, again.
2
Thank you. I have been appalled at the drumbeat of billionaires who have criticized Warren and the press that has consistently relayed their unspectacular concerns to the public. Even with Warren's plan billionaires will keep lotsa billions. They will still have the yachts and private planes. But maybe the rest of us will not have to worry about the cost of our cancer meds and correcting our babies' hairlips. Maybe our bridges--and our schools--will be safe. Maybe we will muster the resources to ameliorate the climate crisis. Give the Warren plan a chance.
6
@Cathryn no, actually you don’t understand her plan. She’s trying to tax assets and they will dwindle hard over time if you’re doing this yearly. The result will be less philanthropy from these billionaires and a curbing of their foundations which have done things our gvt is terrible at. Warrens plan won’t work the way she’s hoping. They will leave the US the rich can go to Switzerland or any other country at the drop of a hat.
3
@Location01 We do not NEED billionaire philanthropy. I'll give my hat a good toss downward to send the billionaires who want to go there to Switzerland.
We need a committed citizenship, pooled money, and good management.
3
If people start businesses and earn tons of money that's great for them. Just pay you're fair share of taxes on your businesses. It's patriotic to pay taxes. Taxes keep our engine going. What's not fair is all of our hard earned money going overseas and our own people getting stiffed on necessities that we earn our whole life. And what's really more patriotic is for a bazillionaire to send me 50.000 dollar so I can get out of this place. Never hurts to ask. Keep our money home. No one sends us money. Enough is enough.
@karen they way you get the money to come back is to actually lower taxes. When trump did Apple brought back billions to the us. The rich leave for lower taxes in other countries. If anything we should tax business less so small ones can grow.
1
The interesting thing about wealth is that is can be created - out of whole cloth. It is not a zero sum game. Bill Gates CREATED vast wealth that wasn't there before. Many many people have jobs based on what Microsoft has achieved. The US is more prosperous because of what he created. Yes, Mr. Gates kept some for himself (his fortune is based on the stock he owns in his own company) and he also gives a great deal of it away to cure disease and make our education system better, among other things. The real problem to look at is our government - it is not functioning well starting with the way legislation is made and it gets worse from there. Mr. Tomasky could better serve were he to connect a few of those dots rather than blame Bill Gates and other professional people who demonstrably know how to run large organizations, fix problems and make progress. We could use their expertise. I'm glad to see a few of them are signing up to try. (Requiring that tax returns be shared would separate the wheat from the chaff in a nanosecond.) Blaming billionaires is scapegoating.
5
Bravo! This was the most brilliant simple straightforward summation of the place we find our democracy. I couldn’t have said it better & thank you for saying it today! Every single American should read this article to understand what’s at stake. Rich and Poor must come together and find a solution if indeed we are to save our democracy. The poor and middle class have saved this country many times over through military deployments around the world now it’s time for the rich to step up and do their part. And philanthropy is not the answer or else we wouldn’t be in this current state that we are. Kudos to this article!
10
The first change needs to be where investment income and income earned from labor are taxed at the same rate.
8
From the looks of the comments here, billionaires in America appear to be despised by many of their fellow Americans. And, yet, the real issue might reside beyond our shores. Americans have been unwittingly participating in a form of global socialism for the past several decades through the transfer of good paying jobs here to developing countries overseas. An auto worker in America making $30 an hour has been replaced by a Mexican worker making $3 an hour. The Mexican worker has improved his standard of living but this transfer of jobs has resulted in the sandpapering away of middle Americans’ income and middle class way of life. This has been an overt act by American corporations in their never ending goal of increasing profits...creating wealth for shareholders at the expense of American workers; a race to the bottom as more and more Americans can now only afford Chinese-made goods from Walmart. So while some of those who would be POTUS are giving us proposals on how to extract more from the billionaires’ to finance national healthcare, the real long-term fix should be how to create opportunities not unlike the one experienced by our parent and grandparents after WW II. It won’t be in auto factories, steel mills and coal mines. But America knows how to innovate and create opportunities for its citizens. That needs to be the focus of Washington and the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon.
3
There is a argument that Elizabeth Warren can't win, that Bernie Sanders can't win. Warren and Sanders are pretty close in policy, and combined they have over 30% in the polls with Biden falling to 20% for his policies, and both Sanders and Warren beating Trump in the polls. Not a single vote yet, except, Virginia and Kentucky, we know what happened there.They say liberal policies couldn't become law any way, but what if there is a mass exit of Republicans in 2020, suddenly not so impossible. And it appears the billionaires are running scarred too. Makes me feel good! The United States may be leading the future around the world again. Wouldn't that be Great!
6
Good editorial. The disappearing middle class is the most significant issue facing our democracy. Pre-tax laws and policies concerning monopolies of mega corporations, the environment, patent protection, etc., contribute to inequality and insecurity. Tax laws are clearly unfair. Wages and homes of the middle class are highly taxed, while the capital of wealth is barely taxed and gets a free ride with opportunity zones.
10
Nixon’s Southern Strategy begat Reagan’s tax cutting, trickledown world. Reagan begat W’s doubling down on the above. Our Billionaire Class grew out of this greed machine. The propensity for these systems to concentrate wealth upwards will soon create a situation of power and naked greed, well represented in the animated movie, “The Lorax.”
We are living in a Greenback Greenhouse Effect economy.
The cure for this is Taxation and Regulation of excessive, unharnessed Wealth.
4
The numbers don't lie. If weath was taxed at the levels proposed by Elizabeth Warren, rich people would still be fabulously rich. No one can tell us that Bill Gates' lifestyle would be negatively impacted if he had $19B vs $97B, the same for Bezos, Bloomberg, Buffett or any of their peers.
For the top 400, wealth is just a scorecard, a way to compare themselves to each other, not a measure of the value they add or have added to society as a whole.
7
Another big mistake that people make is thinking about the 1% and the 99%. It more like the 0.0001% and the 99.9999%.
1% means just one out of 100 people. An Oxfam study in 2017 found that 8 people, 6 of them Americans own as much combined wealth as half the human race.
From WWII through the 1960's, productivity and worker pay, and thus quality of life, improved steadily for the overwhelming majority of US workers. Then in the 1970's through now, productivity kept increasing at steady rate, but worker pay did not keep up. In fact, in purchasing power, it went down for a very large number of families, while the top 0.01% kept the lion's share. This was used by many such people at the top to influence government, which in many ways hurt the average American. It did so in a ratchet-like fashion. Consumer protection was eroded, with astronomical interest rates on credit cards, which are given with lower creditworthiness standards because laws were passed to make it difficult to dismiss such debt in bankruptcy (whose likelihood increased with increasingly low credit standards).
The supreme court decision on Citizens United and the repeal of the Casey-Stegall Act, along with voter suppression and gerrymandering, all seriously undermined our Democracy and boosted the skewed distribution of wealth.
We will need strong democratic institutions to muster the political will to engage to protect the climate, foster hope for widespread financial security, and a re-uniting of America.
6
According to an economist (a magazine on economics) study, South Korea has the lowest inequality before taxes. While Ireland, and yes also the US, two of the highest. It would be interesting to figure out what is different about South Korea since it is also a capitalist system.
There was a related article today addressing how much less wealth certain well known billionaires would have today if Warren's proposed tax plan had been in place for a long time.
While interesting, what is far more relevant is how much more wealth everyone else would have under the same analysis. Publicly shared assets should be part of the adjusted wealth, things such as maintained roads and other infrastructure, better healthcare, better schools, etc. The potential seems high but I am concerned that pork barrel politics would siphon off more than the gains.
I am in favor of government policy that ensures that workers share in their increased productivity. Taxes are far from the only way to accomplish this goal. Perhaps the FED could be tasked with managing not only inflation and liquidity, but also the GINI index.
The GINI index is a measure of distribution of wealth, with 0 meaning everyone has an equal share of all wealth, and a 1 means that a single person has all the wealth. In the US, the before-tax GINI is not as bad as some advanced countries, but the after-tax GINI index in the US is among the worst of the advanced economies.
We are not a meritocracy, with nothing close to equal access to social and economic mobility. The places in the US that have good mobility are too expensive for most people.
The solution is to get the best and brightest to stop working for Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, and work for good government, with pay and prestige to match.
4
I’m in favor of increasing marginal tax rates on the very wealthy as well as higher estate taxes. The tax code can be improved to bring in more revenues to rebuild our infrastructure, improve public education, job training, etc. But Elizabeth Warren’s plan to finance a national health care system through a wealth tax on billionaires is folly. There simply aren’t enough of them to raise tens of trillions of dollars in the coming decades that would be needed for such an endeavor. Another commenter states that it would provide about $2,400 a year for every man, women & child; not nearly enough to fund universal healthcare. FDR knew that a social security system to provide a safety net for retirees, survivors, and the disabled would require all working Americans to finance through payroll deductions; our present day FICA tax system. Warren’s plan will not stand the test of time. Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
1
So you contend that the US, the richest country in the world, can’t afford to bring its citizens up to the same standard of care which other countries manage to do quite successfully. RUBBISH!
1
Tax ALL income at the ordinary income rates, no exceptions.
Set a limit on CEO compensation - say, 50x the lowest paid employee - after which the tax is 100% - then sit back and watch salaries rise.
Small, virtually invisible transaction tax on financial activity.
It really doesn't have to be complicated. The rich have plundered long enough. Things need to be brought in line with some kind of sanity.
6
Once a person has more than they could possibly spend in a lifetime, it isn't about financial security anymore. It is about societal control. Bloomberg, Gates and all the rest of them don't need the money, they relish the power it gives them.. over the rest of us, by definition. I honestly think Mr. Gates is a good and decent guy. Maybe I am wrong, but every time he talks of wanting to make the world a better place he seems genuine. In his own state of Washington there is a huge problem with teacher salaries and class sizes; simply there isn't enough money to hire enough qualified teachers and maintain enough classrooms for the students who could be Microsoft's future employees. Surely as he sits in his palatial estate on the shore of Lake Washington he has to see how his low state taxes (no income tax, a whole government run on sales tax and car tabs) leads to this problem? "taxes are the price we pay for civilization" Oliver Wendell Holmes said, and this is as true today as ever.
9
This, "war on billionaires" reeks of Jealousy. What's next, "war on lottery winners". Nobody deserves to win 500 million in the lottery, Let's have 500 million dollar winners instead, that will cure every ailment of society. To achieve personal prosperity requires three things: Hard work, make good personal choices, and a little luck never hurts. The govt's job is to make sure opportunity exists, Equal outcomes are not possible. And, you will never grow opportunity by making the least productive in charge of the most productive.
5
In the meantime, the latest statistics show that roughly 60% of working adults have less than $1000. in cash. One malfunctioning used car or pricey pre-deductible health expense and they are on the way to bankruptcy.
8
Unfortunately, money to govt. usually ends up in salaries, perks, privileges and pension besides rich exclusive health care that ordinary working poor do not have or cannot afford. Have you seen a phenomenon where when a state has a budget surplus, there is a clamour for pay hikes, extended health perks among govt. workers. That is a reality.
3
Rich is a relative word. Ask a person who won a million dollar lottery if he wans to part 90% (progressive) as tax, more than likely will say No!, Ask a movie actor if he will part 90% of his wealth or 90% of a signing amount for a movie, say $20 million so that his fellow crew can be paid more, you might a hear a big NO. For a middle class or a lower-wage earner if someone makes over $100,000 a year is a lot of money. So if someone, say working for the govt. makes $100000 a year, and if you ask that person to part with 90% to help the less fortunate, that also will be a big NO. Many business owners work 18 hour days+ and finally make it big while many others work 8 hour shift and some do not want to work. Do we support people making poor life choices. Some work hard, study hard and still others party all day.
5
It is not that we have transferred so much wealth to billionaires but which billionaires we have transferred it to. We should be happy to see wealth flowing to Bill Gates, Sergei Brin, Steve Jobs Jeff Bezos, and maybe even Elon Musk because these guys got it by generating previously unknown or untapped sources of wealth. They started new industries and even new industrial sectors and created new sources of wealth for everyone and so they earned it. But I can't say I feel that way about Jeffrey Epstein, the Sacklers or the Koch brothers or for that matter most of the financial,
real estate and consumer goods fortunes. I think that however we solve this problem, if we don't maintain this distinction we will have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, killed the goose etc.
1
Our Nation’s founding fathers fought against the inequality the British were dealing but immediately abandoned those principles when they saw how much money could be made subjugating others. Jefferson himself let his children grow up in slavery. And this was not because he believed in some self-evident truths: he had an estate many of today’s billionaires would drool over. We need ironclad laws and taxes to curb the egos of the extremely “successful” lest they forget how their estates got so big.
4
"Only government could do those things". Here is the false thinking that under-girds this poorly thought out essay. Nationwide high speed rail? In billionaire-heavy California, the government tried to build a high-speed rail system, and it has collapsed in obscene cost overruns, pay-to-play corruption and functional uselessness. Keep the countries air and water clean? Yes Government helps do this- and the existence of billionaires is not a source of water or air pollution, and the extend of Bezo's and Gate's wealth is irrelevant to the cleanliness of city air. A network of free opioid clinics? Billionaires could do this, but won't becasue it is a terrible idea; and if you love the idea of VA style clinics giving out methadone prescriptions will solve an national addiction problem, you must be crazy. Give towns that have been hollowed out by the global economy a second chance? Sounds like what private enterprize and opportunity zones have set about doing. "Only government can do those things" - that is neither an argument for or against the existence of Billionaires, nor does it show why Billionaires inhibit the things that government could/should do. But it makes a nice empty useless slogan that demonizes a class of people regardless of their accomplishments and blames them for the failure of both the Government and middle class wage stagnation. Why don't we judge Billionaires by the content of their character, and their records, than simply their bank accounts?
3
In addition to the four European countries you name, the Netherlands also has a wealth tax. The tax assumes you earn 4% income on all your capital (excluding the house you live in) and taxes that at 30%. So you pay 1.4% of your wealth a year.
The tax has become more controversial in recent years, along with inheritance tax. It is an interesting question of why this is. The amounts most people pay are tiny. But they appear to be vote as if they were all wealthy.
2
All these billionaires have joined the Giving Pledge and don’t want to destroy their progeny with too much money, so why do they care so much about paying higher taxes? If they have 30 Billion or 35 billion, it is not going to make an iota of difference to them. They ones who are giving it away find that their money is growing faster than they can give it away to worthy causes, ie Gates. The country needs infrastructure that no Billionaires can provide, like an updated electric grid. So please just raise the top marginal rates and increase inheritance taxes on the RICH.
6
I prefer an increase in income tax for the wealthy, and a substantial increase in the estate tax. That means you don't penalize people who have saved several million for retirement. Which last about 30 years these days, not only because people live longer but because so many are aged out of the workforce in their 50s. Meanwhile, not all medical expenses are covered, and definitely not long-term care. Income tax, on the other hand, applies to people who have regular income, and the estate tax applies only after they die.
4
Best synopsis ever of how far adrift we are. If our history means anything to us, these almighty rich need to wake up. I don't think any of them wants to live in Turkey. And if they do... Well all is lost.
10
I don't entirely subscribe to the wealth tax being unworkable. It would be difficult, and I would object strongly to it applying to more than the very richest, but taxing only high incomes at a high rate is not enough. There are a lot of wealthy people in this country who need to pay for what they should have been paying all along for what is going on 40-plus years right now - not just for a high income in the current year. For the amount of income that has come from interest on wealth accumulation over that period, one's current high income and their current high wealth can't be viewed nearly as separately. It is an infinite loop where one builds on the other. And it's building over the rest of us.
6
Mr. Tomasky, you do a disservice to Bill Gates as both he and Buffet have both stated clearly they are in favour of much higher taxes for the super rich. He just wants to have a discussion on how it’s done. Also, Gates was clear he’ll be voting for Warren (over Trump) if she is the democratic nominee. Personally I hope Trump is gone before the election.
9
The "billionaires" question is an intentional misdirection from the real question which is taxing the 1%. Or the 5%. The .00025% that this article's about, even though they're billionaires, don't have enough money to offer a safety net, because there aren't enough of them. All together, the billionaires' entire wealth redistributed would give each citizen $2400 a year for ten years, and then it'd be gone, used up. A true safety net like medicare for all and other programs would need more substantial benefits, like $24,000 a year, and sustainable, ongoing, not used up after ten years. *That* requires real sacrifice from a much larger funding source--the true mass of wealth in America: upper-class suburbanites, who must feel actual pain--which is not as easy a political sell, so we're not hearing about it and therefore we're not hearing about any real solution. Taking advantage of the electorate's inability to do the math.
4
Why Can’t we simply revert to pre- Reagan era tax rates? Middle class started loosing ground with Reagan tax cuts. I have no problems with billionaires as long as they don’t lobby to change the laws to favor them. It takes two to tango, so we need to send patriotic Congress women and men to Washington so we don’t have to worry about draining the swamp.
3
I’m surprised that Mr. Tomasky’s sense of risk to democracy is primarily about distributive justice or a matter of income fairness.
The great risk to democracy is that delapidated infrastructure (needing public investment), chronic disease costs (hurting consumer demand and worker productivity), mediocrity of public education (harming competitiveness), and climate crises (ruining future generations) require distributive fairness in public investment for the sake of wealth stability, too.
This helps the wealthy by investing in economic stability and productivity that serves the interests of long-term ventures and risks in financial markets.
Also, democratic capitalism models global exemplarity that calls for similar leadership by China, India, and the Middle East (including transferring away from oil income dependence).
Smart money doesn’t think short term.
And noble money wants to leave a stable legacy for heirs.
Besides, what does anyone need with more than a billion dollars? What is it, plutocrat, that you WANT with more than a billion?
6
I do not understand what some people do not understand about this: when it takes money to make money but often costs money just to not have any, over time wealth will accumulate and become concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. It's just mathematics.
This world is full of trade-offs that we can only optimize within. What cost are we willing to impose on human rights to optimize more strongly for property rights? Because we're already loving things and using people over loving people and using things. And there's nothing sustainable about it.
5
The billionaires have forgotten history, when there is a great chasm between the have and have nots, it will only take spark to start a revolution. America’s wealthy elite are under the false pretense that such upheaval boiling over elsewhere in the world cannot happen at home. Do they really think legions of under paid security guards will protect their property when the masses overrun the ramparts? We can avoid such a bleak scenario with good public policy to ease some of the inequity in our society. However the billionaire class loves to recite the narcissistic mantra that their lack of taxation really benefits the greater economy, while they really know it only benefits themselves.
11
Even some of my conservative friends who voted for Trump are upset at the billionaires
for giving their wealth to solving other countries’ problems, or getting tax benefits by creating foundations and charities in their name. However, as the author states, their billions cannot clean pollutes rivers, lakes, rising sea levels along coastal cities, or even build a high speed rail system.
On Sunday, November 10, CBS 60minutes had a long interview with Jamie Dimon of JP. Morgan who has underwritten a lab experiment in Detroit by investing several million dollars. It was unclear if it was a personal investment or JP Morgan undertaking. I think he plans to implement a similar investment in Baltimore(?)
I propose a challenge to the cohort of billionaires. In the late 19th century, to address the needs of rural America and still in operation, though it has evolved to meet the needs of the times, US government created Agricultural Experiment Stations which combined with the expertise at Land Grant Universities, and agricultural extension agencies made America the breadbasket of the world. I am sure Mr. Dimon and his wiz kids at JP can calculate the dollar contribution of the work of these institutions! Now, can the billionaires or the private sector “invest in” and design, and implement and replicate for the 21st century and beyond a model of urban development?
The Detroit experiment is a timid dollar undertaking- a coming face to face with real Americans! MD
2
I don't expect the members of our oligarchy to care at all about the well being of their fellow Americans. I also don't expect them to care about our government because they know it can be bought off with lobbyists.
Instead I'd like to call their attention to something they do care about--their own heads. They should remember that everything was fine for both the French Aristocracy and the Russian Czars--until it wasn't.
10
My father used to tell me that Jesus Christ was the original socialist. He fought for the poor. He argued that it is difficult for a rich man to get into heaven.
The rich are not evil. They are not inherently bad people. But to whom much is given, much is expected.
11
In ancient Greek Democracy the wealthy were not allowed to vote.
We,as people, supposing to uphold those ideals,have lost the
the spirit and the vision of a true Republic.
3
@peter Is that true about ancient Greek Democracy? I'd never heard that before. Is there some article or link describing that? I'd always assumed there were voting preferences to landowners and other wealthy in early democracies.
@James Guelcher Sweden Norway Denmark and Finland might have thriving tech sectors but they also have lots of billionaires. And nobody would have tech sectors without the kind of visionaries who imagined central electric power, human language operating systems, personal computers or untold things. I don't want to knock government innovation. I know that computers, the technology behind gps systems jet engines and cell phone technology were government initiatives but it is unalloyed folly to think that the vitality of tech, biotech and other previously unforseeable technologies and economic sectors could come about without the possibility of great wealth. The government as fiduciary guardians of the public trust cannot and should not invest in far out stuff.
2
@Bill H
I’m reminded of the story of Tesla who had the genius and desire to create free electricity for everyone. But he couldn’t obtain any funding for his project because investors wouldn’t make any money. Imagine if the government had funded Tesla? We would probably be a lot more secure without the threat to our power grid from cyber attacks, the environment would be much better, and the deadly fires in California could have been prevented.
4
By that logic, no one would have invented anything when taxes on the rich were 91 percent. But they did. Creative people create because they have an itch they have to scratch. Money is just the icing on that cake.
Tomasky’s well-meaning op-ed nevertheless misses the mark in claiming that an economic system that transfers trillions to the .0025% is “anti-democratic”. That’s confusing a policy outcome (our progressive tax system, or lack thereof) with its effect on our society by its beneficiaries. The reason it’s anti-democratic isn’t the ethics of millions of workers feeding the bank accounts of a few hundred, though that is bad enough.
The reason it’s anti-democratic is the power of such extreme wealth concentrated into the hands of so few. We decry drug lords and kingpins not just because they defy the law selling illegal substances, but also because the wealth they earn affords them the opportunities they have, buying weapons, people, politicians, mercenaries, and law enforcement, on a scale that defies the power of the state itself.
While billionaires like Bill Gates and Jamie Dimon may not be operating on the violence-level of a Pablo Escobar in defending their interest in being allowed to exercise autonomy, they DO represent a potential, depending on the nature of the perceived threat (say the candidacy of Ms Warren), to exercise an outsized influence on a constitutionally-mandated exercise of the state. THAT’S what makes extreme wealth anti-democratic.
Whether it's the Athenian, Roman, or today the American republic, they were/are undermined by the ability of wealthy individuals to challenge the state on its own terms. A republic cannot allow that to happen.
13
Pure capitalism is the state of nature. Dog eat dog. Social Darwinism.
The state of nature is that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. (Karl Marx diagnosed the problem correctly. His solution was not the right answer.)
We already know the correct answer, a well-regulated capitalism. This includes a progressive tax code, strong unions and labor, and anti-trust enforcement to break up monopolies.
Under a well-regulated capitalism, we have a thriving middle class. And the least fortunate among us are taken care of, and have a chance to lift themselves up. And there is opportunity for all to succeed.
That is the position that our public policy should return to. (America was recently like this, prior to 1980.) And that is the policy position that we should be voting for.
14
This did not happen by accident and it was not inevitable. The truth is that our government is no longer "for the people". The reality is that most of our politicians are not "our" politicians, they belong to the .00025. To change this, we can either have a democratic political "revolution" or we can have a social revolution on the streets of the country. The latter would be much less pleasant for all of us.
7
It's interesting how these very rich people, who wouldn't notice a larger tax bill, you know the kind that most working American see. Since Warren, is talking about a tax directed specifically at the very rich, suddenly, Bloomberg, who said he wasn't going to run, decided to run. Is it out of love for the country, or is it to preserve his fortune.
Then you have Bill Gates, who has never known real work, all he had was the DOS operating system that he licensed, other than that he was a dropout.
And while Gates spends money on other countries, Paul Allen invests in science, and exploration of the deep ocean, and his ship of discovery the Petral, had made some amazing discoveries of what we're once lost ships, including some famous WWII ships.
These are nothing more than people interested in themselves, not society, not the progress of this country. Instead they seek to insulate themselves from any kind of taxation, Gates is willing to vote for Trump, just to prove his point.
While Rockefeller was the richest man in the world in his era, he also gave away what amounted to 5 billion in today's money. And it wasn't a dime at a time either. No one supports a tax rate of 75%, but it's fair to say, that the rich need to contribute more not less, they are the beneficiaries of the tax code in this country more than working or middle class does. It's time that we demanded more that they pay more, otherwise, we're back to the days of robber Barron's.
8
In fact Billionaires have proven to be a bulwark against certain excesses. The plain fact is that a monopole society might tend a bit despotically. Bill Gates has been an extremely important source of funding for all kinds of essential public health initiatives while our government has lately wandered and Jeff Bezos has lately bought the Washington Post and respected its fierce tradition of independence when someone like Murdoch might have done to it what he did to the NY Post. We need a certain number of independent sources of wealth and power and there is no independent power without independent wealth. As for the wealth tax, that is a technical economic issue and whether and how it would work is something I have no idea about. On top of that Bezos and Gates were visionaries and innovators who brought untold benefit to the modern world, no matter how frustranted you might be with Windows or Amazon and going after them is killing off the growing tip of the American wealth and power tree, I am no fan of the Koch brothers or the Sacklers but enough with the cheap shots.
1
Gates, Bezos, et al owe their wealth to stock which they hold but have not yet sold. Why are candidates proposing to tax wealth which is not yet realized? This is absurd. Tax the sale of stock when it produces income, not on the potential value of it. Some of it isn't realizable, it's merely paper value.
Income inequality is something I understand. I've worked hard for companies that have paid their C-suite very large sums in salary, and in stock options and restricted stock units while minimizing our equity stake along the way. I've also had to pay AMT on imagined gains on stock options purchased, but not yet available for sale.
Close loopholes that allow tax dodges (like private life insurance vehicles), classify hedge fund income as ordinary income (not capital gains), etc. Don't tax on gains that aren't real.
4
Hoarded money is not being used productively to increase our country's total wealth. Great wealth buys political influence that counters political as well as economic democracy.
6
@semaj II You think that trillions used by our government to fight foreign wars were used wisely? I would rather have billionaires with small government and no wars than no billionaries with large government and a lot of wars.
Can someone explain to the government would ethically compel Jeff Bezos to pay more in taxes when the majority of his net worth consists of unrealized gains in the form of Amazon stock?
It seems to me that it is necessary for him to keep a majority stake so as long as Amazon provides consistent value for its other shareholders and the share price continues to rise Mr. Bezos will continue to get richer and richer. But so long as these gains are unrealized how could the government tax him on them? And also how would this wealth get transferred to the middle class, by this or other means?
1
@Steven C
But when Mr. Bezos sells some Amazon stock, the capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income (just like the rest of us pay on our earned income). Why should he pay a lower tax rate on capital gains?
Surely you would agree with that point, based on fairness.
4
Someone here quotes that we are "jealous of these billionaires." Not so. All we want is for them to return to the unspoken contract of yesterday in which they made a fair contribution to the people who made them wealthy. Without the poor and middle class buying power in sheer volume, most of those folks would not be as rich as they are. Really, it's obscene. Our country was at it's best economically when everyone had a share, however disproportionate, in the pie. Now the entire pie is being gobbled up by the 1% with nary a crumb for the rest of us. Question to them. At what point do they think this country will tilt over into anarchy when people are dying in the streets, unable to afford a roof over their head or medical care? With the rapid advancement of technology, that time is closer than anyone thinks.
3
So far the billionaires are indicating they are going to fight against everything explained in this excellent column. I think we should believe them. And be prepared for the fight, hopefully at the ballot box.
5
Well, Bill, all I can say is the rich, you "persons with large money", well, um, I don't mean to be money-ist, but you've got to give back more. Your Microsoft or Amazon or Walmart (I detest the Waltons.) wouldn't exist but for the existence of the nation and you would have zero profits were it not for your workers. Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Amazon and Walmart and on and on and on... You can still be paid well at Microsoft, but I doubt if their janitors would agree.
It may take a decade or two, but if you don't, there will be some very unpleasant times ahead for the upper class. I'm simply describing cause and effect here, common sense.
7
There is nothing wrong with having too much money, as long as you pay your fair share of taxes, do not buy politicians, and do not believe that "being richer" is the same as "being better".
8
No- stop justifying theft. Taxes can be legal and immoral.
"You might think the rich have become richer and the poor even poorer. But by the standard of basic comfort in essentials, the poorest people on the planet have gained the most. In places like Ireland, Singapore, Finland and Italy, even people who are relatively poor have adequate food, education, lodging and medical care — none of which their ancestors had. Not remotely.
Inequality of financial wealth goes up and down, but over the long term it has been reduced. Financial inequality was greater in 1800 and 1900 than it is now, as even the French economist Thomas Piketty has acknowledged. By the more important standard of basic comfort in consumption, inequality within and between countries has fallen nearly continuously.”
NYT
1
@Jeffrey Isaac
I actually agree with you that the problem is not the rich.
The problem is that real income has been stagnant since about 2000, and to a large degree, since 1982, for most Americans.
The uber-rich are largely irrelevant.
What we need to do is support policies that raise the least fortunate among us out of poverty, and policies that foster a thriving middle class. That is what has been lacking since 1980.
Let's start with a living wage of $15/hour. Let's allow labor to organize -- including in new industries such as the service sector. And let's make the tax code more progressive, and tax passive income at the same rates as earned income.
5
If the poor in this country are doing so great, why are they sleeping in tents on the sidewalk? I think the richest country in the world can do better!
1
1980s and the Reagan years had been the turning point. Our culture seemed to have turned en masse to worship wealth and praise the cowboy style of anything-goes when it goes to making money and amassing wealth. Conspicuous wealth was everywhere. Those were the days when Wall St rules.
And then, in 1990s, that cowboy style migrated to Silicon Valley. With the tech bubble, obscene amount of wealth suddenly seemed far more accessible to techies than those stiff suits on Wall St. Although the trend has slowed somewhat since the tech bubble burst, the consolidation in tech space is arguably worse since more wealth and power is now concentrated in a few Big Tech firms.
For the longest time, mere mortals drank those same kool-aid because we all wish that the idea of meritocracy (no longer was the days when you have to come from Old Money to be rich) could get us in the big boys' league. The nerdier you are, the better. The bottom half of the country tried to join the party through debts. No one complained...until 2008 when the music stopped. Suddenly those who had funded lifestyle with debts realized they really can't afford it.
Now comes the introspection. No one would complain about money if they feel like they have their hands on it. That much we know. My bet is, taxing the rich can only allow the bottom half of populace to tread water, but it's far from enough to make them happy again.
4
One problem with people like Jamie Dimon is that they believe too much that their success is of their own doing. They believe that because they are smart, creative, maybe visionary (in a limited sense) and have worked hard and intelgently that they deserve what they have. But I actually don't think they are as smart as they consider themselves to be. If they were truly smart and visionary, they would perceive that times are shifting dramatically and that value is no longer going to be about profit, growth and expansion but rather about capacity to serve - the planet, people and yes, all life. Such value will not be a by-product of the capitalist quest but rather the primary focus. This day can come none too soon.
11
@Anana Moose
I completely agree. I was fortune to make a small fortune in my 20s (in the 1990s), while living in Manhattan. I started to believe my own mythology. Worse, I started to believe that those less successful than me were inferior to me.
That was dead wrong. Fortunately, I was able to see the error of my beliefs, and correct myself and my erroneous views. Sure, I earned some of my success through merit. But part of it was also due to luck, good fortune, and being in the right place at the right time.
None of us should ever take our success for granted, nor denigrate those who have not done as well as we have.
We're all in this together. Each and every one of us should support opportunity for all Americans.
7
I have always admired the Gates and did not put them in the same class as other greedy billionaires. I admired their philanthropy. I am so disappointed in Gates remarks about Warren. He always seemed so careful and to come out without clarifying the issue with her is most disappointing. He gave the impression he might choose Trump over her in a match. I am appalled and I find I cannot think the same way about him at this point.
9
@Jeanette Powell
Too much candy spoils a child; too much money spoils a man.
1
I am one of the fortunate Americans. But I grew up lower middle class in the 1970s and 1980s. My parents did not make a lot of money. We regularly had our electricity cut off for non-payment. Our car (singluar) was always breaking down. My parents took out loans from a company called Household Finance, at usurious interest rates.
I am fortunate because I was was able to break out of that cycle. I am fortunate because I did well in school, and went to a great state university (UNC) and graduated with no debt.
I want every American to have the opportunities I had.
And I want every American who works an honest job to be able to support himself or herself -- without going into debt.
Any American who works 40 hours a week should earn enough money to pay their bills -- and afford shelter, clothing, food, healthcare, and basic transportation. That is the dignity of work. That is just basic fairness.
16
One cannot measure success by income or wealth; many great scientists and artists have, throughout history, been poor.
4
What a clear and articulate piece. Thank you Mr. Tomasky.
I was horrified when I watched the Bill Gates interview. Thought he'd be bigger minded than that.
12
At the end of the day, what it finally comes down is, any proposal to tax the "ultra" rich, will finally when it comes down to actual fine print, will end up raising middle class tax. Most rich do not have "earned income", they will have passive income, versus middle class, a family, where both the spouse will be earning around $60, 000 a month, together $12000 (which is about $30/hr). In California, where liberals talk the talk, middle class is hurting really bad, highest gas tax, highest sales tax, "deposits" on bottles, cans with nowhere to go for redeeming those deposits, banning of plastic straws while allowing plastic needles which is ok, charging for plastic bags. These might seem petty but disposable income shrinks for the working poor cosndering high rents or steep mortgages, student loans. The only option is to be poor by design to avail of welfare benefits. The ultra rich (hollywood, silicon valley elites) can easily shell out $200 for a plain hair cut or spend $10 or upwards on gourmet coffee drinks or have meals delivered from an expensive restaurant. The middle class can only look on but unable to participate. These tax rates are pushed by the liberals. Some perceive the progressive ideas as "all are equal, but some are more equal"; it is like who gets to be Kim-Jong Un?
2
No one pays much attention to public education but those who do should have seen 15 years ago how billionaires have destroyed democracy. To wit: a single person (Bill Gates) has been able to meddle in public education just by plunking down large sums of money and getting his policy initiatives enacted. Anyone remember his small schools initiative which—oops—didn’t pan out as he imagined and affected whole communities of students? One person should not have such an outsized voice even if it is done through philanthropy. Public education should reflect the wishes of the public. That’s democracy.
5
What would be the market repercussions if billionaires had to liquidate stock each year to pay taxes (especially the effect on middle class retirement plans)?
I think trusting the gov't to redistribute wealth would be easier to stomach if it could show some efficiency and foresight in planning and maybe even have a have a budget in place before it taxed anybody at all.
Just a sub-note:
with the latest GOP tax break the Walmart heirs' wealth increases by $4MM per hour while their stores provide application help for their employees to apply for food stamps and welfare.
And the 1% thinks they suffers.
10
Why should the taxpayers make up for their low wages when they have that kind of money?
1
"The 400's share has tripled since the 1980s."
Who was elected President in 1980?
3
I’ve been around for a while now and when I was younger, I used to listen to the status quo fear mongers whenever they attacked a plan or idea as being socialist. I thought, well they must know better.
The proof is in in the pudding. Things are getting worse for the hard working lot, a whole lot worse. So, no, they didn’t know better. They were lying.
I’m not afraid to vote for Sanders or Warren regardless of the fear mongering. I’ve been around long enough to at least recognize that at this point, the survival of our middle class demands major structural change to promote wealth equalization. Sanders and Warren are the only ones with plans that will help the majority of working class folks. I have private health insurance, indeed the best plan money can buy but I’m more than willing to forgo that if it means saving the lives of Americans who can’t afford health insurance. If I had a choice between providing every American with health insurance or just providing myself with the health insurance that I want, I would definitely vote the former. Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.
8
You sir, are a decent human being. A rare thing in this world.
The idea that increased taxes on the wealthy is radical left is absurd. It's back to the 50's, when the marginal income tax rate was as high as 90%. The same thing might be said about other "far left" policies of people like Warren and Sanders. How are they more radical than FDR and Social Security or LBJ and Medicare? How are the proposals for free public education that different from the very low tuition rates during the 60's and 70's. Our "socialist" candidates just want to try to return us to the minimal level of fairness of decades in the recent past.
13
Karl Marx was correct about the problem: The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
Marx was wrong about the solution. We actually know the correct answer: a well-regulated capitalism.
We recently had such a thing in the United States, but the semblance of this has long since disappeared, starting with the Reagan Revolution. And it has all been downhill since then (except for the wealthiest among us).
MAGA = Modern American Gilded Age.
===
The answer is not to abandon capitalism. But, rather, to regulate it appropriately. This includes a progressive tax code, labor unions, and anti-trust laws to limit monopoly power.
That is the system in which there is opportunity for all, and a thriving middle class.
Republicans don't get it all all.
Democrats need to wake up, and scream this from the rooftops.
9
Why is profit not considered a tax on consumers imposed by corporations?
The argument of the past rings hollow that consumers can choose whether to buy or not, when the massive amount of mergers and acquisitions have consolidated where a few companies have control of entire industries and where consumers have only one choice, it isn't choice, but rather taxation without representation and the politicians clip the ticket by favouring laws that protect these market dominances.
7
Bill Gates can connect dots.
He doesn't want to.
He became the world's richest man by using questionable means (I'm being charitable) to stifle competition.
Even after becoming the worlds richest man, he still found reason to violate employment laws and stiff his workers.
Bloomberg likewise used questionable means to gain much of his wealth.
Dimon wouldn't have a job if it wasn't for the largesse of the American people.
They care far more for their wealth than they do for the platitudes they give about the system which made them wealthy.
They can whine all they want; the more they whine, the better it is for Democrats.
13
Data from 1950 onward shows that an increase or decrease on tax rate has little to do with total revenues.
The problem is not tax rate but the greed of those few at the top who are unwilling to share the bounty with those who produce it.
If wages were fair we would not be having this discussion at all.
5
This article was on point 20 years ago. It's only become unfathomably more obvious ever since. We've returned to the 1920s in domestic affairs and the 1620s in foreign affairs. History provides the answers. Return to Keynes and Milton. Here's a useful Russian proverb: "In 20 years everything changes; in 200 years nothing changes."
1
The author assumes, incorrectly, that economic growth is a zero sum game. It is not. The "billionaires" did not steal from the middle class or the poor to obtain their money. Like the Sultzbergers at the Times, they ran or founded and ran businesses that sold products and services consumers willing paid for. The customer got something of value to him or her, as did the owner. Sadly, it seems most commentators believe their iPhones, food, entertainment, etc should be delivered without anyone ordering. Except when it is the commentator who would reap the benefit, of course.
3
Dimon most certainly got bailed out by the taxpayers. Many of whom lost their jobs and/or homes in the last recession
9
@Boston reader Except everything you say is a fantasy. Marketing, exorbitant pricing masked as worth, and on and on is the reality.
1
@Boston reader Food and entertainment existed tens of thousands of years ago before money was invented much less billionaires or capitalism.
The fallacy of this article is that the success of the 400 has nothing whatsoever to do with the lack of success of the 60%. The economy is not zero sum; the 400 should be given due credit for expanding it for the benefit of all. Name me anyone in the bottom 99% who has created Jobs for 750,000. Jeff Bezos has.
6
Why would anyone think that the billionaires are interested in democracy? An appeal such as this falls on deaf ears. This class believes in oligarchy.
6
Income equality will only occur when everyone has none. People who think otherwise have not learned the lessons of revolutionary Russia and, more currently, Venezuela.
3
Oh please! No one is saying to take everything. We are taking about a tax of a few percentage points, not confiscating every last dollar they have.
8
Tomasky's quote of Gates is incomplete and disingenuous. Gates said " that he had paid over $10 billion in taxes, that it would be fine if he had to pay $20 billion, but not a $100 billion".
So, Gates is willing to double his taxes and that is not enough for Mr. Tomasky.
Gates has repeatedly said he will donate the bulk of his fortune to charity and that is not enough for Mr. Tomasky.
Reminds me of when Gerard Depardieu, the symbol of France, left France because he was not willing to pay 75% of his earnings to the tax man.
3
@Ricardo
About Gérard Depardieu ("the symbol of France"? in Hollywood perhaps, probably not in France): in 2013 he obtained Russian citizenship and was registered in Saransk (Mordovia). The Mordovians claim that he owes taxes, so he is now registered in Novosibirsk (Siberia).
For more details, Google "Gerard Depardieu and taxes".
Thank you, Michael Tomasky! Bill Gates comment that if has to give up $100 billion in taxes, what would he have left! Poor guy, just a few billion. Just to have a peep at what a billion dollars means: if you earned $5000/day since the day Columbus hit the new world, you still would not have earned a billion dollars.
5
The Yang proposal is a way to address the same imbalance in the distribution of AMERICAN WEALTH. However his chances to getting elected and implementing such a program are zilch. Here is another proposal that I believe may actually shut the billionaire whining down. Take those top 400 mega billionaires and have them fork over half of their assets. Now they will get the following in return. The right to spend the money on projects that the Federal government would use the money for, plus a lifetime of never again having to pay taxes on wealth accumulated when the 50% tax is applied. So Gates is worth 100 billion he will now be able to go from 50 billion to 100 billion without paying a penny in taxes. Also if Gates chooses he can then have the Federal Government designate his tax contribution to be spent on his projects or even Microsoft products. Now I believe that if we take that 50% tax revenue of the top 400 individuals and give it to the bottom 40% of Americans. Just imagine the economic activity that this will generate. Tax policy can even go one further by allowing a tax amnesty to all green economic activity. For example anyone buying an electric vehicle (including industry) will not have to pay any tax whatsoever. Yang's proposal will get dismissed with lies that it will lead to higher taxes and runaway inflation. The proof it will not is that the redistribution to the rich did not. This proposal only requires 400 individuals to believe they stand to make money.
1
Four pitchers in the recent World Series had higher salaries than Jamie Dimon, and Leslie Stahl's yearly pay doubled them! All six of the above were paid 1000X the lowest paid worker in their firms.
1
@Donna Gray
How much they earn is not the point. Do they pay their fair share of taxes? That's the question.
4
@Fran - The tax rate is the same for everyone who is paid a salary! Capital gains are currently taxed differently and that should be changed. However, employers can value and pay some employees much more than others. Warren often speaks of that inequality.
1
@Donna Gray
I agree, capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as wages. But will they ever be?
The billionaires should learn to share a lot more before the people get really upset and vindictive and elect someone like Lenin or Fidel. As more and more people have little to lose, the idea of plundering the rich becomes more appealing to them.
6
Exactly. Millions of people with nothing to lose means an unstable nation. And that is bad for everyone’s business.
5
So, Mr. Gates, what you're saying is it IS class warfare after all! Nice of you to come clean. If you would rather vote for Trump than lose power under a Democratic president, that says you value power more than the values of the democracy. Which is to say, you think the wealthy should run the country and do to the 99% as the wealthy think fit.
I'm hard pressed to see any more clear evidence of the real divide in America. The financial elite use the two parties to keep themselves in power. When one party seems as though it might actually support its voters over the financial elite, the financial elite threaten, yes threaten! to support the other party. That other party which will lie cheat and steal to keep the financial elite in power. And bear in mind, the financial elite did quite well under Trump. Apparently they're fine with him if it means the middle class remains depleted.
That divide is called class warfare. Remember when that was a thing and the media (owned by the financial elite) and politicians (also owned by the financial elite) pooh-poohed the idea and called it unconstructive and divisive? All the while They were doing all the winning?
Let's call it what it is: Class warfare. Bill is just the latest billionaire to spill the beans. They've always known it, now you do too.
So it's not
4
The argument that disallowing someone to amass billions or taxing billionaires is "punitive" is absurd. It's simply a decision about how to structure society. It's currently structured to enable people to amass fortunes that are grossly disproportionate to their contributions to society. Not to mention, it's hardly a hardship to have your wealth capped just below the billionaire mark. You'll still be set for life and your children as well. I look forward to the day when we stop talking nonsense just because we disagree with something. Don't want to eliminate billionaires? Okay. But please don't tell me that doing so would be "punitive." I mean, boohoo.
5
From time to time an opinion essay appears in the Times regarding inequality. And, I feel obligated to provide my “standard” response. The great arc of history has an unremitting march towards inequality broken for short intervals by: massive global conflict, catastrophe (famine, global climate change), revolution (not very effective or of long duration), and finally governmental rot (think Rome).
Billionaires believe their altruism can save us. The problem here is that they get to decide what is to be done, not the body politic.
So what is it to be this time for our brief interlude from continued inequality: massive war (yes, possible); catastrophic climate disaster (very likely), or simply rot from within?
The danger is that it will be the “last “ interlude because our planet will no longer be able to support Homo Sapiens.
4
I am reminded at least once a day of the truth of: some people have too much money. Spending a half a mil to get your kid into an elite college, 100K snakeskin boots etc, etc, etc.
2
What, are they made of solid gold? How does a pair of $100,000 snakeskin boots even exist?
@sleepdoc
"spending half a mil to get your kid into an elite college"
If the children of the rich were just plain "normally bright", their parents would not have to pay bribes to get them into good schools.
1
How long before the common people charge the palaces of the rich with hammers and sickles in their hands?
Alas - there are hardly any hammers and sickles left in the country. They are all replaced by harvesters and tractors and such, mostly run by AI.
1
Not very long now.
@Dreamer
Hammers are quite common, but where would you get a sickle nowadays? Amazon?*
------
* I just checked: Amazon does have sickles, all types.
Amazing how the prospect of a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren Presidency is causing billionaires to sweat and literally cry.
Kind of shows who will really drain the swamp .
8
"I don’t get why the candidates aren’t simply proposing to increase marginal income tax rates on dollars earned above some very high figure."
Pretty simple, really. Wealthy confiscation is much more appealing to the far left. The numbers are more dramatic; the jealousy itch more effectively scratched.
4
@Mr. Moderate
"The jealousy itch...": you are dated (1890 or so).
Excessive wealth in a society is like the cancerous cells growth in our bodies. It needs to be cured.
4
This is America's new Gilded Age. Who will be our generation's Teddy Roosevelt?
3
Inequality is going to destroy democracies around the world. It is happening right now in many countries around the world. So, they really should think about sharing more because we are seing more and more populist autocrats being elected by the people searching for hope.
3
I believe Mr. Bloomberg, entering the Democratic race, knowing Elizabeth Warren’s “wealth tax” might just come to fruition, is pulling a “trump”. He is not a Dem to me. 1%ers need to pay the fair share that they never have paid.
4
These billionaires are terrified of the thought of living on only a billion dollars.
5
I’m playing a sad song on the world’s tiniest violin just for them.
I totally agree with this article. Reading the comments posted, though, I was surprised to read how many people see extreme wealth as benign. If one looks at the history of growing wealth inequality over the past 5 decades, it doesn't seem so innocuous. Yes the economic pie has grown, but the vast majority of the gains have gone to a select few. Poverty has grown. Despair has grown. Personal debts have grown. The middle class has shrunk. A few at the upper end of middle class have become wealthy. But many at the lower end of middle class have lost ground, hence the numerous teacher strikes. Also the influence of money in politics ensures that the wealth inequality will continue to grow even more extreme, as we have seen with this last round of tax cuts. Any one studying these trends should find them apparent and appalling.
9
Let's be real about this. I don't think referring to Bezos' wealth is really all that pertinent at this stage, because most of his wealth is tied up in a single stock for a company that he created. This requires careful parsing.
The real threat is not wealth tied up in a single stock held by a founder, but rather wealth held through investments, cash and exhorbitant incomes.
I agree with a wealth tax, and I agree the wealthy threaten democracy existentially. But this has to be done right, and the rhetoric has to be right also.
1
While I understand the arguments for and against a wealth tax on billionaires, I would like to know why most European countries that have had wealth taxes in the past, eliminated them.
Did the wealthy just move their assets offshore, thus preventing their home country from benefitting from the use of those funds? Did this result in lower tax revenues and reduced employment levels?
1
Thought experiment:
Take away every smartphone on the planet. Imagine their inventors were so depressed at high taxes they just could not bring themselves to develop such a product in the first place.
Now imagine all the wealth that would have flowed into those inventors' pockets instead paid for good, readily available healthcare for everyone.
Trade?
4
Wealth disparity is the primary fault in our foundation from which all other problems arise. And it is the one thing both Republicans and Democrats can agree not to address because it is in all of their personal interests not to do so.
We need a strongly progressive tax system and heavily taxed transfers of wealth to minimize legacy. The progeny of these billionaires have immense advantages from their position already, they don't need to inherit fortunes. If we can put a stop to that, people like the current President could never fool the public into believing they are a self-made success. And maybe billionaires could stop focusing on how much wealth they are accumulating, and maybe keep score by bragging about the number of people they employ and the employee average salaries? Wouldn't that be something you'd like to see on a Forbes list?
The institutions that hold this Republic together are being undermined by nepotism. Any strides we can take toward meritocracy should be welcomed by the masses, but wealth controls the message we receive, and the masses have proven easy to influence.
5
You cite 37% as the current top marginal tax rate. If only. As Warren Buffett noted, with the concessional rate on pass-through entities and capital gains, his average tax rate is less than his secretary's. And it's not like Jeff Bezos declared income of $180 billion, paid 37% in tax, leaving "only" his current $113 billion. Income is such a slippery little sucker.
Less so for wealth. With the exception of a few pharmaceutical families, most billionaires own things that can be appraised and taxed: homes, investment properties, shareholdings. Mr Buffett's secretary will pay the exact same tax rate on owning Berkshire Hathaway shares as Mr Buffett, only a lot less in total.
Is that fair? I would argue that even the most died-in-the-wool libertarian would have to admit as such. Assume that all agree that the essential roles of government include (or, in the libertarian's case, constitute in full) maintaining civil order, upholding a justice system, and protecting the republic from external threat. On a user-pays principle, who benefits the most from civil order, the court system, and peace? Those with the most to lose. If a billionaire can pay his or her money manager 1% to protect the value of his or her assets, why not pay 1% to the institution which is ALSO protecting the value of those assets? Seems fair to me.
162
They should try becoming a billionaire someplace without a stable government. Not gonna happen. Why is it so wrong to ask the billionaires to pay their share for the security that allowed them to become billionaires in the first place?
34
@Bruce Arnold I found this editorial frustrating because the author really doesn't understand what's he's talking about. The above comment is much more informative. Increasing long term capital gains tax is a great way to decrease the wealth gap. Also left out of all of these conversations is the estate tax. Currently these billionaires are taxed at 40% through the estate tax. It should also be raised by quite a bit. With these two things in place the wealth gap would soon work its way out. What would actually be worse for tax revenues is a wealth tax which would take wealth out of the hands of the people who are best at creating it, thereby over their lifetimes making much less available to the IRS
3
@Bruce Arnold Clearly you don't know any libertarians. We are strongly opposed to paying taxes on things that we have already paid taxes on (double taxation).
Apparently this is a foreign concept to you. If you earn a dollar, you pay tax on that dollar. Then you spend the remainder on an asset -- let's say some stock. If you sell the stock for a profit, you have to pay taxes on the profit (capital gains). If you have to pay a tax on the stock every year, you are being double taxed. It is very possible that over the period you own the stock, you might lose value on it simply due to the taxes.
Furthermore, if you own a piece of land or a house, you pay property taxes on it. Having to pay the federal government again for that property is taxing the same asset twice (double taxation). Is the local property tax going to be deductible from your federal wealthy tax?
The only reason a person might think a wealthy tax is fair is if they are not subject to it. But even then, I believe it strikes many, if not most, Americans, as deeply unAmerican.
5
When I was a young kid, a large part of juvenile literature in Japan was biographies of people who founded companies like Sony, Panasonic and Honda, having made big (well, tiny compared to Gates and Bezos) fortunes only in their own life after the chaos of the WW2. My question is how US kids are looking at those American billionaires.
"Wealth has shifted to the top. It has been taken away from the middle class. That makes people anxious. Anxiety opens the door to demagogues. It’s not complicated."
It's not complicated! When you have to work more than 40 hours a week to pay your rent AND STILL need to go to the food bank to feed your kids, there's no complicated morality going on. It's wrong.
What would happen if Bill Gates had to make due with living off of $1,000,000,000/year from now on? Would that be devastating for him? How devastating would it be for him compared to the daily feelings of someone working two full time jobs and still being unable to feed their family?
It's not complicated to me.
5
With all due respect to The Times Editorial Board, there should have been a counter point OP-ED next to this grotesquely mis-/uninformed screed.
Bill Gates had the good fortune to work with Paul Allen et al. on what is now Microsoft. America has historically rewarded those who through dint of hard work, initiative, etc. CHANGED THE WORLD. Likewise, Jeff Bezos has changed the way we shop.
The continuing loss in retail has been tied to Amazon's success. The reality is innovators such as Mr. Gates and Mr. Bezos had the foresight to develop new ways of doing things THAT PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR. This is the essence of capitalism.
Punishing such men for their great successes CAN ONLY dissuade other young entrepreneurs from following the ONLY IN AMERICA way of doing things.
Mr. Tomasky is of the apparent opinion that one is locked into the future status of her/his life, based on their zip code at birth. Had Mr. Tomasky done minimal due diligence (before clicking send), he would have learned that there are special men and women throughout the USA who daily demonstrate that innovation can occur anywhere and everywhere.
The equilibrium will be restored. Patience is needed, since the US Economy is a true aircraft carrier. Turning around an aircraft carrier can be done, but it does take time to do so.
It is unfortunate that confiscating additional income and wealth from US workers (including people of means) will result in dis-incentivizing what "Made American Great."
Why the all caps?
High quality public goods such as the fail legal system, high quality roads, stable political systems, well educated populace and a host of others are much cheaper and effective when provided by the government. Those high quality public goods are what facilitate turning hard work of workers and entrepreneurs into success.
When was the last time you had to bribe a clerk to perform their official duty? This is not typical historically or through out the rest of the world.
I know this goes against popular culture but I believe the various layers of government in the USA work so well that we don’t appreciate them.
Try a thought experiment
Would Bill Gates have been successful starting Microsoft if his offices had a few random hours of power during the day? How about if each time he filed a patent he needed to bribe the filing clerk? Or each time he needed to enforce a contract or patent infringement in court?
We need a lot more millionaires who generate wealth by risking their capital and labor creativity and many fewer billionaires who manipulate the markets and finance schemes.
4
@dmanuta Willing to pay for? For my personal computer, an ordinary person like me has a choice between Microsoft and Apple. That's it.
1
If wealthy Americans are required to pay additional taxes every year to supposedly reduce income inequality, wouldn’t there be unintentional consequences people like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and AOC are not factoring in to their political agenda, such as a reduction in the workforce due to a reduction of capital reinvestment from dividends that may be transferred to other financial instruments to reduce their tax burden?
But that money would not sit. Every dollar spent on programs to help the poor and middle class would also help the economy and create jobs. Jobs aren’t created top down because some billionaire has extra money. They are created because businesses have demand that they can’t fill without hiring.
2
@Smilodon7
So what would happen if Bill Gates began divesting his shares from Microsoft over a 5 year period and moved those proceeds into his venture with nuclear energy, wouldn't Microsoft experience a significant capital loss / or means to raise future capital that may lead to layoffs?
Earlier this year, more than 50 percent of the dozen or so people in my department were let go, not due to performance in our business unit but because another business in the division had “bad numbers.” It’s not too surprising, but it impactful on the lives of people who were loyal to and worked hard for the company. Fealty to quarterly numbers is paramount, as is noted at every “all hands” stand up. Who benefits? Stockholders and top management. Line workers—the ones who drive productivity and therefore profitability—understand that they are just cogs in the rich man’s money making machine. Workers need corporations, so it is difficult to rebel. There’s no collective voice left to leverage the company. But politicians are replaceable, and now so too are political systems. Corporations that focus solely on profit do so at their own peril.
3
@Carl Millholland
So those left in your division - which was profitable - now have to work twice as hard, right?
State and local governments give companies millions in tax breaks to build facilities and create jobs. Rarely do the number of jobs created meet projections.
Why NOT tie taxes directly to jobs and compensation?
Set limits on individual employee compensation but require that a minimum percentage of profits be allocated to total compensation. Share profits with ALL employees by spreading out the wage pool (The owner of a company is not included here). Top executives have their compensation levels limited to 50 to 1, 100 to 1, choose a ratio, highest to lowest.
How about profit sharing for ALL employees? How about employee representatives on Corporate Boards? It's done in Europe.
4
This is beautifully written. I like your style.
The solution is simple. It is not complex and it is easily implemented without causing macroeconomic instability as many will argue.
The problem is our representative government cannot implement a correction to the course it is on with a Republican majority in either house of the Congress. It will be difficult even with a Democratic Congress if the President is a Republican because he will have veto authority over a more progressive tax code that would fairly tax income and strip the tax code of the tax expenditures ( exclusions, deductions, and special treatment of various kind of shelters). Income, capital gains, wages will need to be taxed at the same progressive tax rate.
The cap on income for payroll taxes would need to be eliminated so that the total income realized from whatever source would be taxed at the same percentage rate for everyone. This means that everyone including very rich people would pay the same payroll tax as the working people for Social Security and Health Insurance. These corrections to the tax code are simple but difficult because the political influence money seems to come out of the woodwork.
We should give this a try. If the economy goes into a tailspin and foundations and charities complain that they cannot exist without tax deductible contributions, I think we should give it a try just to see what will happen.
We start by voting Blue in all States and Congressional Districts.
3
This is a very important column and the ultra-rich & politicians should take heed. It is convenient to make Elizabeth Warren the boogie man but the danger presented by the skewed distribution of wealth is real and a danger to democracy. Both parties need to pay attention.
5
Problem: the premise – “we have spent the last 30 or so years transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the people at the very top” – is simply a lie. Not a dime was “transferred”; instead, freedom created huge amounts of new wealth, and much of it remained in the hands of the people who created it.
So what?
Put differently, if those 400 people didn’t have that wealth, it would not exist. Not a single middle class person is poorer because Bezos has billions.
Another lie: protests in France came from proposals to hike taxes to fight “climate change”. And you’d get an argument about the benefits of Chinese “security” from American-flag-waving protestors in Hong Kong. (China also have more than 30 billionaires, rather disproving the premises of this story.) They seem quite willing to exchange “security” for freedom.
This piece betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of wealth. It is not simply sitting around in a vault waiting to be stolen and redistributed. High taxes do not redistribute wealth or income; they destroy it. Which, of course, is the point.
The same policies which enable the rich to succeed also produced record low unemployment and steady wage gains.
No, democracy is not in peril; no one’s right to vote is challenged by someone else’s wealth. But freedom is at risk, because envy-obsessed scolds prefer that we all wallow in relative poverty than that any, by dint of talent and drive, disproportionately succeed.
Democracy is most certainly in peril. How long do you think people will put up with not being able to feed and house their kids even though they are employed and work hard? It won’t be forever. Revolutions have happened for less and yes, it really can happen here.
1
@Michael
You're wrong.
Those working at the top as employees of existing companies have gone to great lengths to give themselves more at the expense of the rest.
Large corporations have seen executive compensation levels soar. Those companies are not more profitable than they used to be. There is no justification for CEO's earning 90 times more than employees now than 40 years ago.
You have seen top management run companies into the ground putting thousands out of work while still collecting millions.
'Creators' of a business may well deserve to become rich from their efforts. Early employees at Microsoft got stock options and made millions. Now they use contract workers.
The Walton Family may spend millions through their foundations but they would do more good if they paid Walmart employees more by letting them work full time and collect benefits.
Concentrating more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands does NOT grow the economy. Buying one Bentley does not have the same effect as 20 people buying Malibus.
Our Republic IS in peril when our nation does not have jobs for its citizens. When all you have are the rich and the poor - when the middle class is gone, you are returning to feudalism or on the verge of revolution.
3
The most fortunate among us should absolutely pay their fair share of taxes. But what is more important is to support policies that lift the least fortunate among us up -- policies that promise opportunity for all, and a thriving middle class.
As a baseline and floor, any American who works 40 hours a week should be compensated with an income that allows him or her to pay for food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and basic transportation -- without going into debt.
Who can argue with that?
- This is about basic human dignity, and the dignity of work.
===
A national livable wage of $15/hr is a first step. There are very few places in the United States where you can support yourself - living frugally and responsibly - for less income than that.
3
@MidtownATL
Wages have been going DOWN over the last 40 years. Companies want to pay ordinary employees less and less while those at the top make 90 times more.
The 'working class' could once get by on laborer's and semi-skilled worker wages. They could marry and afford a family. No more.
The Middle Class could get by on one salary. Now both parents must work to afford children.
One of my children got a job after college- a BS and MS in a technical field comparable to mine. He's making double what I did 40 years ago with a better education and more experience. With inflation he should be making 3 1/2 times more. In comparison a subway ride cost 50 cents forty years ago compared to $2.75 now - a 550% increase. His education cost perhaps 10 times what mine cost.
The fact that the billionaires club is afraid of Warren just makes me dig in my heels harder and work to get her elected. Mr. Gates needs to get out of his blacked out window limousine and helicopter and walk the streets of Seattle near the homeless encampments. If that doesn't motivate him then he does think that he is royalty.
6
When we have people sleeping under bridges, for whatever reason, having billionaires is unconscionable. AOC is right on this point. This is the crisis of legitimacy the capitalist system faces, and it is really simple.
5
The billionaires in the U.S. don't want to be taxed fairly.They are having their cake and eating it too .Under the guise of their foundations ,they give the appearance of being caring people ,concerned for the world. What they care for is protecting their interests,their wealth. They are proving it by scrambling to put a candidate forward who thinks the same as them ,who has their interests at heart...a Michael Bloomberg ,for instance .They are doing this as Elizabeth Warren gains traction and talks of taxing them fairly. For the sake of democracy, you can't let them do it !
4
I agree, but it is not just the fact that the billionaires have so much money; the power and influence of global corporations and labor's loss of influence have also contributed to the draining of yhe middle class.
In the time before corporations began directing all of the profits to their shareholders, companies had one year plans, two year plans, and so on. In other words, there was a long term plan for slow steady growth that promoted stability and faith in the future. It also signified a company's commitment to its employees. The employees on turn were much more likely to show loyalty to the vompany.
What we are seeing and have seen for the last three-plus decades is greed and capitalism run amok. I'm with Warren; we need change.
6
I agree with that democracy cannot long endure the wealth inequalities seen in contemporary America. Nonetheless, if somehow Elizabeth Warren won the presidency, she would find that a wealth tax would be opposed by most centrist Democrats and all Republicans in Congress. If the wealth tax somehow passed, it would be litigated for years in the courts and likely be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. So why not take the more pragmatic approach of increasing the tax rate on billionaires and ending the absurdity that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than other income? Such a pragmatic approach is legal and politically feasbile though it doesn't have the symbolic appeal that taxing wealth itself has. Yet some of us prefer our symbolism to remain in art, literature, and film and favor pragmatism in politics.
2
Everyday Homeowners pay a property tax every year on their largest asset to support government services. And billionaires cannot pay a property tax for government services or the world will end and Atlas will sit on the couch.
Wow.
6
Billionaires are not the problem. Those billionaires who have achieved their wealth at the expense of the middle class are the problem. The average JP Morgan Chase employee earns a healthy wage. I love billionaires who have earned their wealth honestly, paid their taxes honestly, and paid their workers so that we the taxpayers don't have to supplement their income. Why not just eliminate the unfair loopholes that are the primary driver of unfair taxation? Some very wealthy people pay more than their fair share: others do not and work the system within the laws that the government approved. We should never lump ALL rich people under one umbrella. They are all different and should be viewed as such, not vilified as a group.
2
@Les
Talk to the JPMorgan employees just laid off or those who saw their division off shored to India. I know a few of them.
Dimon makes $31 million a year - he's worth $1.6 BILLION
Thats about a 1000 to one ration of CEO to lowest paid employee.
Billionaires like Gates, Buffett, etc., give much to charity—but charity has not and will never alleviate the suffering of the poor. No one in this richest of all nations should suffer from poverty or homelessness, nor should a “middle class” American work an 80-hour week and fail to make ends meet, yet I have several friends who fall into that category. So many of us are one medical bill or car repair away from utter ruin; this is America’s shame.
Tomasky is correct—income inequality is too great, and can not much longer be borne. Perhaps Warren and Sanders go too far, but the issue will not go away and must be addressed now, before our streets erupt like those in Paris (yellow vests), Peru, Argentina, and Hong Kong. We can reform our democratic republic now (Congress and the Senate could pass legislation repealing the Citizens United ruling of the SCOTUS, for a start), or we can face the ugly consequences to come.
8
Ask yourself a simple question. Who is more essential to the world? A first grade teacher, a person who plants and harvests the food you eat, or a hedge fund manager? The money earned should be reversed. If no salary could be higher than the President, and wealth was taxed or topped at 40M, we would have more creativity and innovation to solve problems.
8
Under Gates, Microsoft was constantly being sued for unfair business practices. Diamond's J.P. Morgan packaged high risk mortgages and sold them as high yield investment opportunities to their customers, all the while betting against their own product. These billionaires say they earned the money fair and square, but there were often a lot of heads they stepped on to get it. Meanwhile they push politicians to cut their taxes, which then puts the bulk of the tax burden on a stressed and dwindling middle class.
Business leaders now say profits have to do more than just enrich shareholders. Here's a suggestion: Pay your fair share of taxes, rather than do a few vanity projects (sports arena, etc) to show off your largess. Have some humility and work for the benefit of communities. Simply pay your share.
12
The billionaires are the supposed demons that have caused inequality in progressive Dems minds like this writer.
Yet, just a bit of grade school math will show you that if divide Bezos' fortune by 100,000 (a small city's population), you only get about $100,000 per person.
Since there are only 536 billionaires in US and Bezos is the by far the wealthiest, this simple math demonstration shows that very little of the inequality is due to billionaires taking it from the middle class.
Instead, womens' entry into the work force has been the driving force for lower wages since the early 1970s. This is simple supply and demand. As you double the supply of labor and hold the demand constant, wages have to go down and with it middle class living standards.
I cannot think of one single innovation that came from a billionaire. I cannot think of one single great piece of art that was written, painted or sculpted by a billionaire. I cannot think of one revolutionary social movement that had a billionaire at its helm. It seems to me that ordinary people are the ones to thank for progress.
10
But engineers, artists and other innovaters supported by billionaires? That's a long list. I don't think this is a very good argument
Why Wealth Tax instead of Income Tax: Compare the effect of
a tax of 2% on wealth above $50,000,000 vs.
a tax of 90% on income above $5,000,000.
If you earn $100,000 and pay tax of $15,000 your effective tax rate is %15.
Warren Buffet owns about 16% of the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding worth about $80,000,000,000. For the last decade that holding has increased in value by by an average of about 11% per year.
If this is an average year, his net worth goes up by $8,800,000,000. BRKA pays no dividend so his tax is $0.
Even if he took a $50,000,000 salary and almost no deductions, his tax bill under the high income tax proposal is $43,000,000 or 0.49% of his increase in net worth.
Under the 2% of wealth tax, his tax is $1,600,000,000 or 18% of his increase in value. This rate feels to me like a fairer tax rate. It will not stope most billionaires' fortunes from growing, nor is it a progressive tax rate, but it may be just barely enough to escape the "taxes are for poor people" mindset.
4
Seems to me business 101 starts with paying yourself next to 0 salary on paper in order to pay as little income tax as possible. Then hiring part time employees to avoid paying for benefits on top of below minimum wage. All small business owners I know do that. Some become very successful and their assets exceed millions. If this is the standard business practice, I don’t know what millionaires and billionaires do. Surely there are many tricks to hide and repackage their wealth for tax purposes. As Leona Helmsley famously claimed and Donald Trump practiced ‘ taxes are for little people’.
I think changing the laws should definitely be considered, things like executive pay is ridiculous. Golden parachute? Why do business people deserve more than say teachers or plumbers?
7
We need to change the tax code.
1. We should tax passive income at the same rates as earned income from a job.
- How is it fair that income from capital gains, dividends, and carried interest is taxed at a lower rate than earned income from a W-2 job?
- Very few people have earned income above 5-figure level. Many of the most fortunate people among us have passive income in the millions or above. Why is that taxed at a lower rate?
2. We should abolish the step-up basis for inherited assets.
- This is much more significant to inter-generational wealth transfer than the inheritance tax.
- How is it fair that a person selling their shares the day before they die is subject to capital gains tax. But if their heir inherits the shares and sells them immediately, the capital gains are erased in the eyes of the tax code?
===
I say this as someone who is fortunate to own stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, and who stands to possibly inherit 6 figures from my parents. I am willing to pay my fair share of taxes.
6
Born on third base:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ufe/legacy_url/410/BornOnThirdBase_2012.pdf?1448056427
The data in this report might be a little outdated (2012), but it is still a good read and shines some light on a problem even bigger than income and wealth tax: inheritance.
The report basically dissects the Forbes 400 and compares the "starting positions" of current billionairs with those of baseball players:
(the following is cited from the report)
35% Born in the Batter’s Box
Individuals who came from a lower- or middle-class background.
22% Born on First Base
Individuals who had opportunities that gave them an advantage, such as an upper-class background, inherited less than $1 million, or received some start-up capital from a family member.
11.5% Born on Second Base
Inherited a medium-sized business or wealth of more than $1 million or received substantial start-up capital for a business from a family member.
7% Born on Third Base
Inherited wealth in excess of $50 million or a large and prosperous company.
21.25% Born on Home Plate
Inherited sufficient wealth to make the Forbes 400 list.
(End of citation)
Bill Gates has 3 children to inherit his fortune, Jeff Bezos has 4, Micheal Bloomberg 2, Jamie Dimon 2 - Now guess which of the Forbes-400-groups mentioned above is growing the fastest...
3
Jamie Dimon is worth $1.6 billion and is paid $31 million a year. If he works 60 hours a week and never takes vacation that's 3120 hours a year - $9936 an hour, $165 a minute.
If his lowest paid employee makes $30,000 a year, Dimon makes over 1000 times more.
Dimon may be doing fine but he's laid off thousands of employees. Whole divisions are being outsourced to India. Google JP Morgan Chase layoffs. At the same time, fees for ATM's, checking accounts and all services have gone up.
Dimon did not FOUND JP Morgan Chase. He is an EMPLOYEE whose ownership stake came through stock options.
What makes him worth $30,000,000 a year?
16
Unequal distribution of wealth and the shrinking middle class are very serious problems. I've got nothing against taxing billionaires but is that enough to really sustainably reverse the damage from automation and off-shoring factories? I doubt it. We need a top-to-bottom economic policy redo that champions humans rather than corporations. Considering the corrupt (but legal) influence of big money in Washington I'm not optimistic root cause solutions will be seen anytime soon, regardless of who is in the White House.
4
It’s a start at least
I appreciate oligarchs pledging massive gifts to charity. Unfortunately for those who aren’t billionaires, their largesse doesn’t create jobs, inspire entrepreneurs, or fund the quality education that makes social and economic advancement possible. Taxes, properly allocated, do. Don’t be so darned concerned about your legacy as philanthropists Mssrs. Bloomberg, Gates, Bezos, etc. We'll remember you for the great works that built your fortunes.
7
I think it is both necessary and healthy that we are finally having a national discussion about income and wealth inequality.
Personally, I would prefer that we talk about how to bring the least fortunate among us up. A $15 livable wage. Supporting organized labor and unions (including for new sectors, such as service jobs). Opportunity for all -- including increased access to community colleges and universities. Eliminate medical bankruptcy.
It is natural in the political sphere for there to be anger at the most fortunate among us, especially the billionaires and the "1% of the 1%." The wealthy absolutely should pay more in taxes. We should tax passive income (capital gains, dividends, etc.) at the same rate as earned income from work.
My wife and I are fortunate to have a solid upper middle class income, and we are also willing to pay higher taxes. We didn't need or ask for a 3% cut on our marginal income tax rate. We also own some stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Why should the income from those be taxed at a more favorable rate than our income from our W-2 jobs?
But changing the tax code, while necessary, is not sufficient to address the problem.
Furthermore, I believe the message should be less punitive ("soak the rich"), and more positive and constructive ("opportunity for all", and a thriving middle class).
Anyone working a full time job should be able to pay for food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and basic transportation -- without going into debt.
8
I really appreciate your positive approach to help raise the standard of living for the middle class and those less fortunate citizens in the United States. Politics may be in your future.
2
Many of us are forced to work multiple part time jobs. No, we do not have full time jobs but we put in as many or more hours. We are also at the mercy of ever changing schedules, which makes juggling multiple jobs very difficult, and get no benefits to boot. We deserve to eat and keep a roof over our heads too. And I don’t think a vacation once every 20 years would be too much to ask.
6
@Smilodon7
Great points. Thank you, I agree.
With the sum of your part time jobs (equivalent to full time work), you should be able to pay your bills and not go into debt for food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and basic transportation.
Anyone working 40 hours a week should be compensated sufficiently to pay his or her bills. And that should be the floor -- a baseline of income for the dignity of work.
3
Gates and Bloomberg made world-changing tech. Dimon essentially just moves money around and gets a cut every time it changes hands. I agree that we need to rein in the billionaires, but I’d make a distinct between those who have actually made things (including intellectual property) and those who just “make” money.
Isn't the wealth created from these billionaires new wealth that they created and not wealth taken from the middle-class? I.e. it's not a zero sum situation but one where they grew the pie larger and created a large slice for themselves without making the other slices smaller in raw dollars (but obviously not as a percentage of the pie). The writer seems to suggest these billionaires have made themselves rich by taking dollars from the middle-class but I don't think that's actually accurate. The middle-class isn't getting wealthier because wages have been stagnant for them for too long, not because the rich are getting richer. If we tax billionaires more, that will help lower income classes since more government money will be available for programs that benefit the poor. But the middle-class probably won't be helped until middle-class taxes go down and middle-class salaries go up. If we want to help the middle-class it will have to be done with programs that benefit them directly like we have with the poor, and not by merely taxing the rich and hoping those dollars eventually wind up in the pockets of the middle-class. There would have to be some sort of law that disallows such large CEO salaries and forces corporations to use that money on middle-class salaries. A new tax on wealth will probably just be used to pay down the federal debt if it's not earmarked directly for the benefit of the middle-class.
Bill Gates would have paid over 50 billion in taxes in the Netherlands and there are plenty of reasons why. He’d still have over 50 billion left, so what is he wining about?
11
There clearly needs to be some mechanism to stop the dramatic disparity in wealth that is occurring. But I don't think Warran's wealth tax is it because it's largely unworkable and impossible to enforce accurately and fairly. Consider all the forms "wealth" takes... who is going to audit and set a value on real estate, fancy derivatives, private partnerships, etc. on a yearly basis? Which accounting method is going to be used? The complications go on and on. Since the vast discrepancy in social wealth began with Reagan's Trickle down economics, seems to me the simplest solution is to simply reverse that, along with market transaction fees for transactions over certain thresholds.
3
When reading, I noticed that you said "making the Chinese model - no democracy, but plenty of security - more attractive to a number of developing countries." This is contradictive, let alone a horrible example to further your point. China and Hong Kong have been feuding for almost a year. Pro-democracy protests vs traditionalist - mainlanders have stirred extreme unrest in the already corrupted country that have resulted in continuous civil escalation and deaths. There is no way that this would incline any struggling country to take inspiration from or even envision this form of a battle ground that you call for. A flawed thought on an already flawed piece.
A major problem is that those at the top manipulate the rules to favor themselves. This could be political, through manipulation of the markets or through other rich family and friends,
as Harry Truman said the last thing a capitalist wants is competition.
6
If the average American must spend all their time scrounging for a living, then our country will become an intellectual and artistic desert. A vibrant society encourages innovation and progress. A few people cannot hold all the marbles in a healthy country. Our best years were under Eisenhower when there were many marginal income tax rates and the rich were therefore encouraged to invest back into companies and employees rather than take gobs of money to the Riviera.
11
I don't think these billionaires really get it. Most people do not begrudge their success. I live comfortably on an amount that probably wouldn't buy Mr. Dimon a new suit - and consider myself very fortunate. However, what I do begrudge is a tax system that taxes wage earners at a higher rate than those who take their compensation in other forms -thus in most instances these billionaires are paying a much lower tax rate (or in some cases no tax at all) than the average person. They can hire legions of accountants and lawyer to assist them is avoiding paying any tax. Mr. Dimon recently stated he wouldn't mind paying more tax if "it wasn't going to be wasted". I wonder what he considers wasteful spending - would that be bailing out banks and corporations during the next financial crises brought about by their poor judgement? Or does he mean wasting it on assuring all children have access to quality public education? The billionaire class has had the advantages of our capitalistic system - but their wealth hoarding has created political instability. It also demonstrates an innately clueless or callous - take your pick -about how the average person lives. To see these people whining that they might have to pony up a few more million dollars in taxes shows they are incapable of being embarrassed.
13
If Gates is worth 105 billion and they claim he paid $10 billion in taxes something is wrong in Denmark. So he had wealth of $115 billion an through the years he paid $10 billion leaving him with $105 billion. Not even 10%. They form foundations to escape taxation. So let us put a 50% tax on all existing foundations with wealth greater then $50 million.
5
The real difficulty with all these freeloading billionaires goes to human nature: any privilege, however small or grand, once extended can never be revoked.
3
I love that article and I simply can´t get it why the middle class in this country does not like the ideas of taxing Billionaires. 400 to 150.000.000 c´mon.
Someone needs to explain that this can work and does not lead to Socialism at all. It´s just fairer.
9
Our government has been warped and corrupted so that Billionaires can secretly buy senators, congressional representatives, and presidents to protect and promote the billionairs' interests. This certainly appeared to be case when George W. Bush dropped Federal anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft after his first election in 2001. There are way to many avenues for wealth, whether corporate or individual, to corrupt our democratic ideals. All the issues that are supported by +70% of the population, yet don't get instituted into law by our legislative and executive branches. It's NOT legitimate.
11
Tax every gain, regardless of source, the same way, and in a progressive manner. Institute a national sales tax to get money from the underground economy that otherwise would cheat on gains. Tax every business on revenue, just like individuals, not on profit, which can be manipulated easily. Simple, fair. And no non-profits.
6
I think that Bill Gates (and probably some others in his economic class) have lost track of what it means to be middle class and worried about where our next paycheck is coming from or if we can pay all the bills for the month, or worse. Their success is built on our shoulders. We buy their products. We support them. We work in their companies or for subsidiaries. If we didn't buy their products, or patronize the stores, or work there these people wouldn't have their fortunes. To paraphrase Obama, they didn't do it all by themselves. Not one of them. Windows is not an original system. The GUI might be but the commands and structure are not.
The issues are not about being rich. The issues are about being so rich that the rest of us are crowded out, are not able to afford the basics in life, or aren't adequately represented because the richest are running the legislative agenda on their behalf.
I'm thrilled that Bill Gates helped make computers more accessible for most of us. I have no problems with someone like Len Schleiffer having a fortune. These two worked hard. However, neither one needs billions to survive. And many of our richest have inherited it, not earned it. Too many of our richest have no idea how 99% of us live. They are insulated from our lives. Even Bloomberg had his moments of sheer ignorance when he was mayor. Snowstorms and tickets anyone?
In short, think of the rest of us. We keep the "lights" on.
11/11/2019 5:55pm first submit
15
The billionaires are convinced to the core of their beings that they "earned" every penny of it, and that taxes are simply a form of coercive confiscation.
In short, they think they have the moral high ground in this debate.
There is no single argument to defeat this sort of logic. You have to take it one billionaire at a time to show them that what they have has been a function of more luck than brains, and a rigged system.
Hmm. Actually, there is a fairly finite number of billionaires out there. Maybe there is a way for the NYT to start an ongoing series which profiles individual billionaires, describes the origins and sustaining factors for their wealth, and asks them a standard set of questions on how they view their obligations, if any, to share their wealth, through whatever mechanism(s).
7
Warren is right, we do need a wealth tax, because these immense fortunes were accumulated slowly, and will persist even longer, even if the income tax were at 100%. Warren's proposed maximum tax is still only 6%, so it would take many years to significantly reduce inequality.
5
Perhaps Bloomberg, Dimon and Gates are happier with Trump than the rest of us are. They will be wealthy no matter the 2020 election outcome. And if a Democrat such as Warren should win, they will still be wealthier than 90 percent of the people in this country. Greed is still greed no matter how it may look to the greedy.
5
People like Bezos don't have hundreds of millions sitting in a savings account. Bezos is a billionaire because most of his compensation comes in the form of Amazon shares, and Amazon is making boatloads of money. If he loses too much of that stock, he loses control of the company, and the stock's value plummets as the company is thrown into turmoil. He can sell off small amounts at a regular schedule, but not so much that it disrupts the price.
Now you could say "tax capital gains!", but you'd have to plan around the fact that most people's retirement is tied up in the stock market, and would therefore be hit by this tax. You could set a lower limit for the amount required for taxation, but this would still harm businesses' ability to raise capital.
The top 1% already pay nearly half of federal income taxes; we need a system that isn't totally dependent on having billionaires and millionaires for funding, because capital is fluid and the Caymans exist. I'm in favor of universal healthcare, environmental protections, an expanded social safety net, etc., but we can't just say "tax the billionaires" every time we want something funded.
6
Tomasky claims that the billionaires got their wealth by taking it from the members of the middle class. However, they did not. Their wealth is new wealth that did not exist before. The internet, in all its ramifications, has in the past generation created vast amounts of wealth that did not exist before. Necessarily, that wealth is possessed by the creators of it. But it will be dissipated - as Andrew Carnegie observed, it's shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.
2
The internet was a U.S. military creation, ie: tax payer funded. Dot com wealth was built off U.S. taxpayer investments. Have you gotten your dividend check yet?
I fall in the progressive camp politically, having been raised in a Teamster home where my father's job gave us 100% coverage for medical, dental and vision(!) benefits while he earned a comfortable living wage, and I believe that this country would benefit from a return to tax rates more in line with the 50's and 60's. That said, I would find it very interesting and informative if these multi-billionaire complainers about the possibility of paying more taxes would release their tax returns for the last 10-20 years. We might then be able to be more sympathetic to their plight.
6
I love how people talk about increasing the tax on billionaires and the knee-jerk reaction of so many is to say that we can’t stifle innovation by increasing taxes on billionaires. They’ll still be richer than anyone else. There will still be plenty of incentive. Does anyone blame taxes for the end of the Beatles?
More importantly, let’s put this in perspective. We have people dying in war for this country. Paying taxes and paying more taxes is a small price in comparison. One could even go so far as to say, how dare you object to something that could do this country so much good and so little harm to those whom it’s asked of in comparison to dying for one’s country. Get your priorities straight.
9
Once upon a time, not so long ago, the top tax bracket was 90%.
We should bring that back and apply it to income earned by those who already have a huge net worth. For example, you're worth $100 million or more? Any new money you make, from whatever source derived, gets taxed at 90%.
4
After Gates grew weary of patching his bug infested software, he transferred most of his wealth into a tax free nonprofit, primarily for the purpose of feeding his ego. Billions of tax dollars were lost to his quixotic predilections including a fifth column campaign to destroy the concept of public education. Gates made his pile by monopolizing the market. We should not let him use the proceeds to to attempt to monopolize public discourse in matters that concern us all. Tax him and his cronies down to size.
16
I think this is a fairly well-reasoned argument made by Tomasky. I too do not think we have to be so "punitive" towards billionaires, but we must do something for the sake of our country. I also think they need to be taxed MORE. Do they really need that much money? The answer is of course not. At some point, their wealth becomes like one of those imaginary number most people cannot even think of, even in the abstract.
Also, I do not think being wealthy means you are some kind of genius. I know plenty of intelligent people who are not doing so well financially. I think being wealthy generally is more of an indication of ambition, than true "genius". Tell me how many of these Forbes billionaires truly invented something of note? The Waltons? No. Definitely not. I think we have lost our power and desire to invent; this has become less of our focus than the power to amass, exploit and ...not pay taxes.
6
The reality is that the Hedge Funds and Real Estate tax rates as well as the other ways rich people hide wealth are unfair and disproportionately help the rich. Also, the focus on elimination of inheritance taxes allow the passing of the wealth unfairly to the heirs. Why not close the offshore loopholes, the Delaware corporate tax hiding schemes through incorporation laws? Why not ask Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg how to fix the system to address the inequities: this could include asking them the proper increase in the highest tax rate which studies have shown could be 40-50% with no impact on promotion of business development? When will the journalists and panel moderators ask the hard questions without giving these people an escape route?
4
Simply remarkable that so many insist on demonizing the rich just because they are rich. Most are rich because they are successful and leveraged their passion and drive to build something from nothing. They didn’t steal, plunder, or trick us, they simply built something that we wanted and have benefited from that - and they pay the taxes that our governments ask them to pay. Rather that blaming them for the current state of affairs, remember that the government already spends $4.5 TRILLION per year, a fifth of that on defense, and we still lament that things that should be done, aren’t. What’s makes anyone think that if there was an extra 1,2,3 or more trillion, that would change? Real change will only come when we elect folks with different priorities. In the meantime, playing the blame game with billionaires is nonsensical.
3
This argument ignores the fact that the latest tax cuts, benefiting primarily the wealthy and large corporations, are growing our annual deficit to $1 trillion even though the economy is growing. Imagine how we will be able to weather the next economic crash with a debt-ridden government. The next crash could be much worse than '08.
2
They have bought the politicians and rigged the tax system in their favor. Why shouldn’t we correct that? It’s not like they will have to change their lifestyle. I’m supposed to feel sorry for the poor billionaires? Give me a break! There’s millions of poor and middle class people who work hard too and they don’t get billions for doing it. When I earn middle class wages, don’t have to work 3 jobs to survive & can afford the root canal I desperately need, maybe I’ll develop some sympathy for them. Until then, forget it!
1
Tax reform, a progressive tax structure and an asset / resource tax where the tax collected is redistributed for specific R&D that benefits all, education, infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, housing, food and healthcare security, workforce training and other programs that lift people out of poverty and raise the standard of living, etc. have all been advocated numerous times before. Now all we need is actual implementation.
2
You think "no billionaires" is too punitive? That a personal fortune of fifteen THOUSAND MILLION dollars is a more reasonable limit?
What this article misses is the more fundamental way that billionaires threaten democracy. Money is power. The reason the wealth of the top 400 has tripled since the 1980s is because those with the power get to write the rules. Money is power. More money brings more power. More power brings more money.
These billionaires aren't rarified geniuses. They're mostly a product of luck and privilege. Money begets more money. Most of their wealth came to them without them lifting a finger, and that's entirely because the rules of society are structured to benefit the rich. Anybody who's ever played Monopoly should understand how it works: one player ends up with everything.
3
Agree that inequality is a problem for democracy. This article seems to conflate wealth and income, arguing for higher income taxes while referencing the great wealth disparities. Not sure that higher income taxes fully addresses the problem: A Wealth Tax would go much further.
However, even if Warren or Sanders were to become POTUS, that would not immediately enact whatever policies they favor. That would require congressional agreement.
2
"... income inequality is less a result of tax policy than laws and regulations that have made the rich richer before taxes are even imposed. These changes have to do with monopolies, patents, executive pay and other matters."
It's not difficult to see that huge stock index surges powered by stimulus policy have exacerbated wealth differences, rewarded insiders, and encouraged a culture where competition is secondary to developing a monopoly. By focusing so heavily on taxing "the rich", you will spending political capital that could be that on that greater problem.
People desire easy personal targets for hate. That's not healthy for the country, but it's a simple and easy platform. Theoretically this tax issue shouldn't involve peoples names, but we see them daily: e.g., Gates, Bozos, portrayed as evil people, both in the NYT and on Fox News ... no coincidence.
So after all that Jamie Dimon and his banking buddies did to our economy in 2008, why the heck do people still listen to him? And as Bill Gates self-righteously declares that he is going to give his wealth away, why does it continue to grow exponentially? Make these billionaires all pay the top rate, tax investment capital the same way we tax income, and end Citizens United. Democracy and our economy would then have a chance.
7
THANK YOU. No one should listen to Jamie Dimon’s opinion on anything after that. Why is he still a billionaire after 2008?
2
I just have to laugh with a mixture of mirth, cynicism, disbelief, sadness and anger at the pig-squeal of "unfairness" lobbed at any public figure daring to seek marginal upper-end taxation that would put the plutocrat's overall tax rate roughly at the same level as their janitors or their children's private tutors.
Oh, the horror of it all, the descent to mid-grade gasoline for the Lexus which, poor things, is all they can any longer afford.
4
If you have to "implore" the billionaires to do the right thing, you've already lost.
3
Don't you think riding on this contrived narrative casting visibly famous rich people as inherently villainous and oligarchic might be a tad simplistic and reductive? Wouldn't it be better to rail against executive manipulation of the fed as a means to engender precarious asset bubbles that artificially stimulate the economy in the short term (by both dem and repub admins throughout our history)? To suggest that the rich and purportedly 'oligarchic' inclination of the hyper wealthy is corroding the fiscal integrity of our sovereign state is 'V for Vendetta'-grade puerility. Don't peddle this binary delusion to the populists, please. The problem is bipartisan negligence of our financial institutions, not some bald(ing) richie on a yacht.
Money is so entwined with our government. Through A.L.E.C., state lawmakers get templates from corporations of what they want to see passed as legislation. High donations to campaigns buys political access. Some donors might even be foreign billionnaires. Technically this isn t legal, but through lobbyists it happens. So a Chinese firm might have more influence over how a politician votes than that politician's constituents. John McCain saw the influence of money in politics as a problem and he fought against it.
That balding Richie on the yacht is the one giving large contributions to the politicians to get them to do it.
Sorry, Mike. Not buying it. You're trying to paint all billionaires with the same brush, as if Bloomberg and Trump are the exact same. In certain contexts we might call this discrimination. Yes, take down the robber barons, but be careful who you title as such...
1
I wish you would write opinion pieces far more often, especially in the next year. A strong analysis of the ridiculous inequities existing in the American classes. Of course, the white, male billionaires will do everything possible to dump on Elizabeth Warren. Mr. Gates’ comments made me sick, but then he was a friend of Epstein. So much for his good judgment.
4
Though you profess to support no particular candidate Mr. Tomasky, you should take heart that (though you’d never know it to read the the NYT), Bernie Sanders is currently on the right course to win the democratic nomination and the presidency in 2020.
The times they are a changing.
Giving rich people more money and expecting them to fairly distribute it with “trickle down” is like giving kids bags of candy and saying, “now distribute all of this equally!” It will never happen. Money is like that. The more you have, the more you want, and it is never enough. Uncle Sam is the parent coming in and making sure everyone shares in the prosperity. Unfortunately, he has been rather MIA in these duties for the last 40 years. He needs to start doing his job again.
3
Hmm. Talk about connecting the dots: the author fails to connect the dots between large concentrations of wealth and a failing sense of security among the middle class. He merely asserts the conclusion without any foundation. This is an important subject that requires serious thought and analysis. This piece does not contain the kind of thoughtful analysis this topic demands.
2
Well this is a refreshing column from the NYT.
It is per stop on IMO" Democracy is in peril."
For some who are likely innumerate seem to confuse millionaires and billionaires. Take say a millionaire like
Justin Beiber on David Letterman, they can buy a great house and take a private plane to Tahiti. What they can't do is build a space program, build and fund a private army or acquire WMD.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gate and many other billionaires can do that that is wrong and very dangerous. Imagine if our president was really that rich, congress could say we will not fund your war Trump could say I'll pay it.
1
Mr. Tomasky, this is my second comment on your piece:
"But here’s something they’re rarely called but ought to be: anti-democratic."
Are you kidding? "Everyone", you'd notice, if you read your own paper, is making the point that extreme wealth is blatantly anti-democratic. Haven't you heard any of the social scientists, average people, and even politicians! making this exact point?
3
Bloomberg, Dimon and Gates wealth is only exceeded by the monumental state of selective ignorance they live in.
4
To paraphrase Shakespeare:
"First, get rid of all the billionaires".
3
The author's mistake in this article is assuming that American billionaires actually believe in democracy. When you are that wealthy, you can buy anything and everything, even a government.
7
Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. These billionaires are going to eventually find out how their greed will cost them!
2
Wealth is excessive when its a moral reproach to the haters of man’s independent, focused, productive mind.
“I’m so old that I can recall when another person’s achievement was an inspiration, not a grievance.”
-economist Thomas Sowell
"They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.”
-Ayn Rand
1
Thank you for this column, Mr. Tomasky.
Those on the Left are terminally gullible. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos - in fact all the billionaires - have together but a tiny fraction of the US government's wealth, and none of its power. And we are supposed to applaud Uncle Sam confiscating even more private wealth??!! Gates, Buffett, Bezos et al pose zero risk to citizens' freedom and well-being. Uncle Sam on the other hand, can imprison you, take as much of your income as foolish, jealous voters deem 'fair', even execute you if he sees fit. Over powerful, over wealthy government is where the real threat to Americans lies.
1
Bill Gates has golfed with presidents. That is power at play, having the government's ear on the ninth hole. So Gates and government, not so separate.
1
the problem is that 400 richest americans do not breed and this wiil be the end of the american empire like it was with the roman one the elites just refused to breed.
Bill Gates pays no state income tax which is better than most of you can say. His property taxes seem to be so low that the city he lives in is going belly up trying to fund fire/police services. Bezos lives on the same street.
The 2 richest men in the world and their own little town is having a hard time paying the fire department? And they have the 4th lowest property tax rate in the country?
https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/city-of-medina-facing-financial-woes-amid-private-wealth-of-residents/281-94fa4dfe-ce25-49c6-b766-387aea9a476d
Billionairism is a mental disorder. It is a form of advanced hoarding and they all need help. No one needs two super-yachts or a dozen private islands. Not when the fire department of your own city is struggling.
7
According to the author's own newspaper:
"Mr. Gates said he was “all for super progressive tax systems..."
So where it the door to vote for Trump that the author mentions? In these times of fake news, we need everyone with a brain, including Mr. Tomasky, to write without hype.
The goal of this piece is laudable but does Bill Gates really care all that much?
A native american woman who wants to scalp billionaires for universal healthcare?
YOU'RE HIRED!
1
LOL...the Billionaires who all love the idea of people like Obama handing them Trillions?
1
Socialism is fine-for them.
This article is poorly written. More specifically, this article’s logic is flawed and borderline idiotic.
Taking away more from billionaires will not stabilize the economy and national debt. It would stifle and smother businesses and slow if not halt growth.
Fact: smaller businesses that have experienced higher taxes that are based in California have moved out of the state to states such as Texas and other more business friendly/supportive states. The irony is that California’s debt has only increased substantially because of their un-savvy economical and business practices.
Don't doubt that Gates would vote for Trump. Fortunately, despite his vast wealth, he unequivocally commands only one vote, just like all of us peons. If Bloomberg wants to humiliate himself with an abysmal showing for what he imagines is now the billionaire's sinecure...the White House...fine. It's a campaign that will drive Democrats to vote for Warren or Sanders. These guys don't get it. In their universe, what they do, their existence, is benign and positive. They understand that they have huge fortunes, but they don't associate those fortunes with greed. They don't comprehend that their greed has grown so bloated that it's threatening the life of our nation. A metaphor would be a ship whose center of gravity is all in the topcastle; it lacks ballast; such a ship is in imminent danger of being capsized by an ill wind, a rogue wave, a hard blow. It's passengers and crew know something is wrong. Many want to throw the folks in the topcastle into the sea, and place their enormously heavy treasure in the ballast where it will do the most good. The topcastle folk accuse the mutinous crew of ingratitude. They demand the captain protect them. In their minds, the ship is their conveyance, the crew is for their service, the other passengers are steerage, restricted by their poverty to limited space and resources. This is the natural order of things, as ordained by God, or by Nature, the fittest rise to the top. This is how they think.
2
No wait. Let's try and get through to Oprah. Once she knows what is going on, she will fix it. Or Ellen...or any other celebrity. They are good people. Honest, real...you know, just like us. Beyonce? Trust the suburban woman demographic. We can drink wine, commiserate, have a march. Issue demands. That elects leadership. Doesn't it?
1
Far, far too many people in these comments are justifying their nullification of property rights based on billionaires not “needing” their billions. Okay, you most likely have a couple hundred grand to your names yourself- why do you “need” that? There are starving kids in Africa! Why do you get to keep your wealth?
Oh, right, because you only believe in property rights when it applies to you. Envious thieves, the lot of you.
3
I get taxed. That’s not considered someone else stealing my property. Why is it so morally wrong for a billionaire to pay their taxes? This is how we pay for things like roads and the military. They don’t just poof into existence.
1
It's far beyond the time to decapitate the billionaires from their undeserved wealth. They are bad for democracy and civilization.
3
Thank you!
OK, Billionaires.
2
Ugh. These guys...
Gates , while talking about his commitment to climate change mitigation, has a Canadian tar sands railroad... His pal Warren Buffet owns Burlington Northern frack express, and has been singlehandedly confounding efforts to develop alternative energy markets/exchanges.
I guess you can have it both ways -- if your wallet's fat?
Shame on bg, that he would vote for Trump because of taxes, when he has more than he could possibly spend, but it's really no surprise at all.
4
It might do the author well to trace the transfer of wealth between classes back to its original.
Hint: It didn't start with Reagan like every simpleton parrots.
Here, here!
1
... Jeff Bezos is worth $113 billion....Mr. Bezos could get by on $15 billion or so
I bring you the Communist Democratic party
And why would this be popular? Might it have something to do with the vast numbers of people with jobs that still can’t make ends meet?
An employer who treats his workers well never need fear a union.
1
Gates has one vote like the rest of us. If he doesn’t like Warren’s tax policy he can express his dissatisfaction at the polls. He is not royalty owed the significant platform the media has bestowed on him.
4
Hey billionaires. Who paid for your last tax cut? We did! Your greed is disgraceful.
4
Ridiculous Progressive article Not worth the paper it's printed on.
Anyone who wants a "secure" life needs to start when they are a young teenager. It's actually not the least bit complicated.
Simply:
- Stay in school
- Study hard
- Don't waste time on sports unless you're Michael Jordan, etc.
- Don't waste time partying
- Learn to dress appropriately
- Develop a hobby you're intensely involved in
- Pay/learn from all clichés
- Don't hang around with idiots, fools & no good bums
………….and more
@john sloane You're absolutely right. Stay in school, and don't waste time with anything other than studying hard. That will guarantee you'll graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt to the latest bank whose executives "created value" by buying your loan as part of a securitized package, which they'll later sell to another bank as part of another securitized package. (The tax system rewards this kind of "value creation" over uncool old-fashioned production of goods and services.)
But in return for such a righteous and ascetic youth, you'll have no guarantee of getting (or keeping) a job that pays enough to service that debt, let alone to afford anything beyond that debt service. Maybe working two or three side hustles will bring in enough to make the monthly loan payment?
Meanwhile the "idiots, fools & no good bums" who spent their time in school partying and making connections with people who happen to have chosen the right parents (or else have their right parents themselves) are living high on the hog. And one of them is the CEO who just laid you off to "unlock shareholder value" by replacing you with a robot or someone in Vietnam who earns slave wages.
That's what makes America great!
1
A serious french journalist has published a book about Gates Foundation : " L'Art de la Fausse Generosite : la Fondation Bill et Melinda Gates "
Actes Sud- Lionel Astruc.
' The Art of Fake generosity : Bill and Melinda Gates foundation ."
2
My take on wealth is first all to ask, what can you do with billions of dollars in cash? How much caviar can you eat, after all. Surely spending that much on consumer goods is ridiculous, impossibly silly even to manage. So, what is the point ?
I am convinced that the point is POWER: the ability to impress your ultra-rich colleagues no doubt, but even more the ability to over-power them, out-bid them, out-bribe them, shape society into the paths you favor far beyond the power of the one vote our democratic system allows you. All over the world we have seen the corruption of democracies by the rich(and powerful-the terms are almost synonymous) to buy votes of nominally democratic governments, to make them a mockery of equal rights to the people.
There is surely a limit to how much caviar you can consume, but there is no limit to the amount of power you can wield if only you are rich enough to compete with you ultra-rich fellow citizens. And the wealthy covet this power, even the the nominally most liberal, because they covet the control it gives them over the lives of others. This should be as obvious to us all as it was not to even many of the democratically convinced 1860 Southerners, that negro slavery was an outrageous crime against an entire race of people.
The is endures now: the ultra-wealthy fear to turn equal power over to those ignorant, lazy, poor folks who cannot be trusted to run a modern society. I have that fear, but we MUST let it go!
1
Takes one to not know one...
1
so when these same people gave hundreds of millions to YOUR political leaders Gore, clintons, Obamas, etc....did you have a problem?
Obama believes he will receive $1 Billion in KICK BACKS
1
Go, WVU guy! Preach it. Tomasky!!
1
The creation of a super-rich strata sucking the wealth out of all those below is certainly a predictable end to capitalism without compassion - but the impact of unaffordable health care and the ridiculous overcharging by big Pharma in America is a worse tragedy than the creation of multiple wealthy individuals.
The billionaire taxes are a good idea and will serve the US public well if for once they aren't convinced by fork-tongued Republicans to vote against their own interests. However, taxing property and investment holdings aggressively rather than maintaining a focus on earnings and realised capital gains is heading too far past a reasonable impost.
1
Good, but you don't go far enough. The top marginal tax rate needs to be back to 91% now just to begin to make up for all the losses to the middle class and lower class going to the uberwealthy. And certainly no one needs more than 999 million dollars - Bernie Sanders is correct.
1
How could anyone ever spend so much?
The real question isn't how much of the pie is owned by a small percent of very, very rich people. The first real question is, How big is the pie, and did these business-creators make it bigger by building businesses--especially new businesses such as Microsoft and Amazon--that created new jobs? In the past few decades, Microsoft and Amazon did exactly that. (I'm not up on what JP Morgan Chase, a much older business, did in terms of jobs.)
Tomaskey argues only that money/wealth has moved from not-wealthy people to these enormously-wealthy people who, he says, get a bigger share of the pie. But he ignores the fact that business-creators, such as Gates and Bezos, created jobs that otherwise would not exist for people. They made the pie bigger. The fact that they have a very big share of a bigger pie is less important to the lives of less wealthy people, who have jobs directly because of the businesses they created, or indirectly because of the goods and services those businesses and their employees buy or stimulate. Ask yourself, how many more pairs of shoes or books or batteries are sold by their manufacturers because of Amazon? How many application software businesses exist today because of Microsoft operating systems?
3
@Holly No, the pie has not gotten bigger. That is a neoliberal myth that has been used to move massive amounts of money to the 1%. In the last 45 years the incomes of the bottom half of the American people has actually declined. In the 35 years after WWII, while taxes were much higher on the rich, all incomes increased substantially .
I urge you to do research and not be conned by a myth.
3
@Holly In theory, capitalism grows ever larger pies that give everyone the opportunity to earn a piece.
In practice, if capitalism is inadequately regulated, the largest player in a Market can make more money more quickly by grabbing the pie than by growing the pie. They can either destroy competitors by (temporarily) undercutting them, or else acquire competitors through mergers (preferably in transactions that "leverage" other people's money and make them bear any risks).
The resulting monopoly allows the remaining player to "create value" by charging rents. But that "value" accrues only to the monopoly owner; and the costs of rents siphon value from the rest of the economy. And if the tax system preferentially taxes rents and financial transactions at a lower rate than income from selling goods and services, the monopoly drains even more from the rest of the economy. A monopoly does ultimately grow the pie-- but the owner of the pie is the only one who gets to eat any of it.
That's the rigged American economy. In the name of "free market capitalism," it actively encourages the concentration of wealth. That means billionaires get tax breaks to accumulate and pass on their wealth. Corporations can consolidate into monopolies without antitrust concerns, and even get tax breaks on the transactions and the monopoly rents.
A vibrant, sustainable economy grows the pie. Our economy lets entitled gluttons gorge themselves on pie, while more and more go hungry.
2
I'm all for some form of taxation of wealth, but to assume that only big government can solve social problems or build large infrastructure projects is just not true. In fact, they are terrible at it.
California has all of the wealth and taxes a state could imagine. How is their handling of the opioid epidemic going? What about their $600K per unit for homeless housing (financed at great taxpayer expense). Let's not even discuss their failed high speed rail.
4
So far, business hasn’t done so well either. Otherwise we wouldn’t have massive income inequality right now. Business exists to make money. They do not care, most of them, about society. At least until the pitchforks & torches come out and by then it’s too late.
1
@Smilodon7 I agree completely. Once we collect that additional revenue, I'm interested in how we can limit the bureaucracy and graft to get the greatest return on the funds. It's challenging to spend such large sums of money effectively. Still, no time like the present to starts figuring it out.
Prior to the 2016 election I happened to be on a plane next to a guy - who I didn't and still don't know - said he had made "his" money in biotech. And I think that's great for him and any and all other Americans who manage to do the same.
What he said next, shocked me because I assumed I was the only person who had similar thoughts. He said, "...If things don't change, there's going to be a revolution..." I agree with him then and I agree with him now.
2
Thank you, Mr. Tomasky, for your opinion. I agree with you. Billionaires are all well and good and Capitalism is fine too as long the playing field is level. Right now it is not. Wealth concentration among a few at the expense of the rest of the population is just immoral and undemocratic, as you stated. Gates & Bezos, of course, can spend money on their pet philanthropic projects around the globe, but, not by transferring wealth from the middle class to them! Not fair and it is dangerous! We are courting another French Revolution in the US and around the globe by the current trends.
2
Since a wealth tax may be unconstitutional, what are some income tax changes we should be making to address inequality and our budget deficit?
1. Raising the top marginal tax rates. CBO estimates around $125 billion per decade in additional revenue for each 1 percentage point increase in the top two brackets.
2. Removing some of the $300 billion/year the top 1% get in “tax expenditures.” For example, treating capital gains as ordinary income just for this group is about half that amount.
3. Financial transactions tax. A 0.1% tax would generate nearly $1 trillion over a decade.
4. Removing the cap on the Social Security payroll tax, which impacts only the top 6% of wage earners, but covers 70% of the program shortfall for 75 years by bringing in nearly $200 billion/year.
5. Corporate greenhouse gas emissions taxes are about $ 1 trillion per decade, double that if we also reverse the Trump corporate tax cut.
Warren should make sure she has a plan that ratchets up the income and estate taxes first, with the wealth tax a secondary element that ratchets up over time, just in case.
4
Thank you M Tomasky for pointing out what should be obvious.
A society which allows poverty, homelessness, inadequate wages and bankruptcy from medical costs alongside unimaginable wealth needs to be fixed. A competitive economy should not mean the advantaged can take all they can get from the less lucky and less talented.
7
As if there wouldn't be massive tax loopholes. And they know this, that's what makes it so offensive.
2
@Ellen
Well, if you do it their way. The GOP way. The moderate Dem way. In other countries the loopholes are much smaller. But, hey, why look to the Happiest Countries on Earth for any successful examples? Let us do it the Trickle Down GOP way!! The Moderate Democrat Way!!
Just a side note here: At least Gates and Bloomberg founded and built businesses. Mr. Dimon is one of the most over-rated employees I have seen in my six decades on Earth. The billions in fines and the massive trading losses involving the "London whale"...he skated from all of that. Mr. Dimon is a wealthy farce, benefiting from respect he is not worthy of.
3
No Society, including a democracy like ours, can flourish if there is a so uneven distribution of wealth. Just to be clear the wealthy cannot be punished for being wealthy - The French and Russian Revolution are proof of the wrong in that track. But when there is no way out of poverty or upward migration, those conditions resulting in revolutions, and as the above examples show, destroying those societies in the correction process. A strong democracy, economy, and society need entrepreneurs and encouragement to move up the socioeconomic ladder. But when the upper end is so top heavy, it kills upward socioeconomic movement. The concentration of money and property to a small cross section of society is a form of hoarding. Time and energy is exerted more in not losing wealth rather than new ideas that generate wealth. The protection of wealth leads to the creation of laws that freezes the status quo, and the siphoning of monies and properties in the form of financial institutions that siphon funds from the classes other than the ultrarich. If everyone, including the ultrarich are required to contribute their fair share, government is allowed to fund the programs that improve the lives of ALL citizens. Government spending also redistributes the wealth to the lower and middle classes in employment. A rising tide lifts all ships large and small. And new opportunities for small agile companies more agile and more likely to advance ideas that advances society.
5
The problem with all this is you are forgetting the other winners in the billionaire scenario - the customers of the billionaires who's lives are much better off. Because of Gates, Bezos, Walton, Ford, Rockefeller etc. everything we need and want is more affordable. Our overall standard or living is far better. Every dollar of these business earned was exchanged with a customer whose life is better off as a result of that exchange. Get rid of the billionaires, and there is massive poverty. Shave 10% of their wealth away, they have less to invest, and in time their customers (including the bottom 20% of income earners) are worse off, not better.
Please, read an economics text book for crying out loud.
3
No it’s not more affordable! Have you paid for anything lately? The price of everything has gone up. Healthcare, college, housing, a car - the things we need to live and work keep getting more and more expensive. Everything goes up except wages.
Personally my life would have been happier without Windows, thank you very much. Worst OS ever.
@George G. No one is saying get rid of billionaires. But they do need to be taxed fairly, like the rest of us peons. They have billions. Billions. Also, you obviously have not purchased anything in the past several decades, because nothing is inexpensive: food, education, a standard car, a modest home, a child. Nothing is affordable.
This perspective is SO needed right now. The argument for our increasingly regressive tax system is that we need to aid "capital formation." Gates used it himself in one of his pieces. Gates is a fine man & I respect his philanthropy, but at some point we need to be clear that is not only financial speculation that creates innovation. Electricity is delivered by an infrastructure that was fostered by government and labor. And capital. Also Tesla had a better approach to using electricity and was less interested in financial gain than Edison. But Edison out flanked him in using patents guaranteed by the federal government for which he probably would not be willing to pay a flat tax. Capital formation for workers, whose biggest asset is mostly housing, is being bled away by "intangible" (financial) assets as Tomasky points out. This amount is at least $7T since 2008 and at least $21T since 1980. Why is the working class not allowed capital formation. The article's warning of more political strife is spot on. Thanks Mr Tomasky!
2
In 2010 we had an initiative measure in Washington State to enact a state income tax, a first step toward repealing the highly regressive sales tax. Bill Gates Sr. was a prominent and enthusiastic advocate for it. It would have only affected individuals with income above $200,000 or couples with income above $400,000. I campaigned for it and encouraged everyone I know to vote for it. It was defeated. Such is the power of propaganda wielded by the one per cent.
As Louis Brandeis pointed out: We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.
7
In all the ink regarding wealth inequality I haven't seen this point: 400 or even 400,000 filthy-rich people can't make the countless small purchases that sustain a broad, deep and diverse -- a healthy -- economy. The plutoclass might collect superyachts and other Veblen goods, but they won't buy tens of millions of pizzas, toasters and t-shirts every year. No one ever called Henry Ford a socialist, but he knew that to ensure mass sales he needed a mass of customers. Why have today's Fords forgotten that?
9
Couldn’t agree more.
If the middle doesn’t have any money to buy the stuff these “billionaires” create....well then what?!
" . . . making the Chinese model — no democracy, but plenty of security — more attractive to a number of developing countries around the world than the American model. Our billionaires ought to ponder this."
I'm sure they have. Their panic over the idea is causing them to double-down in an attempt to beat back the forces "threatening" them. They're so accustomed to feeling that they are an untouchable elite that they are both frightened and affronted when they are challenged.
1
The article is based on a faulty rabble-rousing premise that"wealth has been taken away from the middle class and shifted to the top". No sir- net new wealth has been created by the likes of Gates etc. Who deserves to keep how much of that wealth is a different discussion but no one is worse off than before because of the creation of that new wealth.
4
"...any democracy needs a robust and thriving middle class, and we have spent the last 30 or so years transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the people at the very top."
Well that's the #1 problem facing America. Maybe it's not as immediate and gut-wrenching as gun violence or immigrant children being locked up and separated from their families, nor trigger the passions as abortion, or inequality (of any stripe), but it is the SINGLE biggest problem affecting almost every American, and has been doing so for decades. As Mr. Tomasky points out, it is exactly what led to Trump.
What makes it even more destructive is how insidious it is, like undetected cancer, eating away at the fabric of our democracy and sense of fairness that America has always prided itself on. We have log ago lost our democracy, and have been living under an oligarchy, where the system is designed to benefit a very tiny minority, but it was done so quietly, under the radar, that most Americans never even knew it happened.
We've now had a couple of generations who consider no job security, benefits, pension, or having to work multiple jobs, is normal. America was once about being able to climb up the ladder, and seeing your children do better than you did, but now the new "normal" is trying to keep from falling down the rungs, and expecting that your children will be worse off.
And who has benefited from this? The billionaires. We'd be better off without them.
10
The number of people commenting who believe billioonaires ought to be allowed to keep their billions so that they can use them to fix what ails society because they know best how to do it is chilling. Sounds like the old "benevolent dictatorship" idea to me. If people don't believe in democracy anymore, we are really in trouble.
When I opened up this comment box, I thought to say, excitedly, that I hope Tomasky's comments are heard far and wide. They seem so obviously right on to me. But, I close it , fearing that democracy is indeed doomed.
8
Bloomberg's fear of Warren/Sanders is so great that he may well run for president to siphon away Biden support in order to, from his point of view, allow one of the progressives the nomination & thus lose to Trump. In the final analysis he's a Trump supporter. Go head on Bloomberg. Run as an independent if you want. Same outcome.
Public support for your nemeses can only increase. Our best chance for a progressive victory!
2
The Billionaires will keep destroying the middle class until it's gone--give it 2 generations, 3 tops. And they'll be in denial all the way, as they are now. Facts be damned (the 60's, anyone?) Banana Republic, Here we Come!
5
All of these billionaires benefit grandly from government services. They reap the benefits of public education from preschool to postgraduate programs when they use our labor. They rely on employees being able to get to work on public transportation and public roads. They use our roads and airports to move their goods. They benefit from the security provided by our laws, police, judicial system and armed forces. Of course they need to pay a higher tax rate. A return to the tax rates of the 1950s would not stifle growth or innovation (it didn't then).
I don't know a single middle class family that is confident their children will hold onto their middle class status and can name many whose children have already lost that battle because of the triple whammy of stagnant wages, lousy benefits and no job security. I agree with Mr. Tomasky. Our democracy depends on a middle class and our middle class is in free fall. Damn what the 400 richest want. Vote to save your country.
15
It's not like we have to choose between our current system and Venezuela's. There's an enormous amount of space between the two.
9
Please keep Bill Gates above and out of politics. He is not a Koch brothers or George Soros. Leave him alone. He is the greatest philanthropist in our time. He is investing lot of his money, resources and time for the less fortunate people all over the world . He found another selfless partner Mr. Warren Buffet. He did steal or made money illegally. We should have respect for the honest business people who creates jobs. We should wage war against the successful rich people. Our tax policy is far from fair. But any politician preach socialism or wants to destroy the billionaires can not win in general elections. Most American voters are at the center. Make tax policy real progressive and the rich have to pay more tax and the poor and middle class should get fair break in tax. But stop war against billionaires , specially the good philanthropists.
4
I wonder how many billionaires were 6-figures in debt after four years at a public university. I know they are the hardest working people on the planet, but before they got that filthy rich and successful, were they living in a home with a mortgage and able to get by if they broke an arm, or something?
3
How about not waiting for billionaires to amass their fortunes, but change how they get there to begin with: giant payouts for keeping costs down and increasing shareholder value. That often means offshoring jobs, which we all know hurts the American worker. How about instead of incentivizing CEOs to cut costs wherever possible and so increase their pay and bonus, make it worthwhile for them to keep jobs here. Maybe the bottom line will be less impressive, but in return the CEO will have the satisfaction of helping spread the wealth around. And if that satisfaction isn't enough of an enticement, think of the increased purchasing power of Americans who have jobs that steadily raise their economic power.
2
@Stickler . I am all for keeping jobs in the US. But I also understand this may materially raise prices on most things modest income folks buy at Walmart or Target or Amazon. We need to accept that and all be willing to pay more.
1
@david thanks for that thought; I should have mentioned in my original post that instead of paying C-suiters giant sums, their compensation could be reduced to be more in line with historic norms. Those savings may take some pressure off the need to raise prices to account for higher US-based production costs. As an aside, I don't think this should be legislated or government-mandated, but some kind of policy-driven approach would help.
We are not talking confiscation here. We are talking about wealth as power. As well, though I am a green democratic socialist, a true capitalist would want a wealth tax Why, capitalism is about using capital for (in the original usage) improvements. One wants those capital to use it creatively and taking risks. The worst possible use of capital is clipping coupons on bonds. The tax on net wealth should be set at level just slightly higher than the interest rate on super safe (like t-bills) bonds.
2
Do these billionaires think it's unfair that, in many states, people who live paycheck to paycheck pay tax on food? Do these billionaires even shop for their own food? Ok, this isn't a federal issue but it shows, together with all of the other regressive taxes, how out of whack our tax system has become.
Indeed we have a serious inequality problem, and the billionaires who are criticizing Warren's plan have played an oversize role in creating that problem.
They don't even understand the problem they've created, so why are we even listening to a few billionaires when the welfare of hundreds of millions is at stake?
Warren's plan might not be the solution, but the "new" plan can't be a concerted effort to keep the existing tax system and its loopholes that created this mess.
If I can lose my SALT deduction, billionaires can give up something that's meaningful to their bottom line.
The billionaires will do just fine with a higher tax rate.
13
A swarm are claiming income inequality is not a thing, citing statistics from 50 years ago.
Workers at the bottom have 30% more since 1970? CEO salaries have gone up vastly more.
Ask the workers in factories and Amazon and other places if $15 per hour without much in the way of benefits compares to $30-60 per hour with full benefits, vacation+sick days, affordable health care, and retirement.
Ask the Walmart employees whose "lounges" provide instructions on how to get government benefits.
Check with the "gig" economy that provides no income security or benefits, while filtering the profits to the top.
We are now past the level of inequality that led to the crash of 1929. Trump tax cuts go to those who have, while punishing "blue" states that have proper financing of public services like schools and first responders, by rolling back credits for state taxes etc.
Will the Democrats be able to fix the mess the don't tax and spend Republicans leave with their giveaways to the wealthy and powerful supporters? I don't think so. Obama did a good job, so did Clinton, but Bush and Trump spent the benefits to gin up their popularity. But this time the irrational blindness won't be fixable, especially since climate change is taking a hand.
Lots of people are losing their homes and/or livelihoods. Toss 'em some paper towels? Subsidize the rich to rebuild in flood/fire zones?
Greed goes with cruelty and blind avarice!
This encourages people to not pay for the things they need.
7
Socialism doesn’t appeal to people who feel they are getting fair wages and benefits. It appeals to people who are exploited. Don’t want socialism? Do something so that people don’t have to work multiple jobs to survive. Fix it so we can afford healthcare and retirement. Make it possible for working people to afford to live in their communities. Wages have stagnated for 40 years, allowed to continue long enough and that WILL destabilize this country.
6
Excessive wealth is a problem. Virtually every revolution since the middle ages has been precipitated by increasing disparity between the wealthy and others. But there is a distinct danger to overreacting. Like it or not, markets and the profit motive are what has driven the incredible increase of the standard of living since the late 19th century and every country that has squashed that motive has ultimately failed. Beware of killing the golden goose.
4
We do have a wealth tax. It's called the Estate Tax.
Of course, the GOP has renamed the Estate Tax to the "death tax," a focus group friendly misnomer. Of course, the GOP has never denied a wealthy donor.
The Founders knew the dangers of cross-generational, accumulated wealth. It's time to tell the billionaires to buzz off. They reaped the benefits of capitalism a zillion times over. They need to do their share according to their means.
It is naive to think that genius and progress are only driven by the desire to grab excessive wealth, but monopolies and cartels are more likely formed that way. There is clearly some need for correcting the wealth distribution in they country, and it is great that there is a public debate about it. The bottom line will have to be a change in our system of taxation that gives working Americans a chance to catch up.
3
Warren's wealth tax is a direct tax and therefore proportional meaning you cannot levy an individual tax payer greater than their proportion of the states levies.
Semantics above notwithstanding, the middle class that made this country great are detached from what created our great middle class. Sorry to say that social reforms of the New Deal were clearly what made our middle class grow unabated for decades. Reagan successfully changed the narrative to what today gives us the greatest wealth inequality we have had since the roaring twenties. Yes, progressive reforms were the boon to the working man and to white america certainly more so than to black, but, it is the vast majority of white americans that no longer identify with what made them great on the contrary, the majority castigate progressivism. We are divided based upon false narratives of difference of culture and our democracy is indeed in danger when we confer vast amounts of our resources in the hands of so few for such arbitrary purposes.
3
The key is not to vilify the ultra successful and insist that they be stripped to somehow provide for others, but rather change the system so that a greater share can be reasonably and rationally distributed on the basis of labor, invention, or such other contribution, for it is the ultra's who by virtue of their endeavors have created the greater environment for success.
Warren is not going to strip the wealthy of everything. Why is it that any argument about this there are always people who think taxing the wealthy means they will be left penniless? They will still be billionaires. Gates makes billions every year. He’ll be fine. I wish people would have more concern for their Uber driver or the Amazon warehouse worker. They are the ones that need it, not Gates.
2
Human productivity can be measured by the ratio of income to wealth. Poor people tend to be productive because they have little or even negative wealth (debt exceeds their assets). A handful of billionaires also have a high income to wealth ratio and they are the good stewards that should be rewarded not punished or taxed at higher rates. Those that are less productive - the not so good stewards, should be taxed fairly and that means eliminating all those tax expenditures and deductions that are counterproductive.
The fair way of doing this is with an inverse taxation of wealth and income. Let rich and poor have the option of paying some wealth tax (up to 2%) in exchange for the lowest income/payroll tax rate (perhaps 8%). Those who don't want to pay any wealth tax would pay the highest income tax rate with no tax expenditures (perhaps 28%).
Most people would pay a 2% wealth tax and keep much more of their income. What would Bill Gates do and why?
1
But it’s hard to imagine that one of our country’s leading oligarchs sees the drift toward oligarchy as a problem.
well said, good article, thank you.
3
Why is the focus on taxing billionaires and not on passing laws to regulate the industries that are allowing these people to get so rich so fast in the first place?
3
It is immoral and criminal for the top 1% of national governments to want to generate even more revenue. How much money will be enough for the US Treasury? How can all the countries of the world prosper if the US Treasury has so much? It's not Fair!
4
I know if Trump is reelected we will see Fahrenheit 451 come to fruition in this country. They won't have to sneak around libraries hiding books negative to Trump. Now I'm wondering if Bloomberg is thinking a society like depicted in the novel Rollerball. I'm going to have to rethink my position to vote for him. After the tax cuts credited to Trump devised by Mnuchin there should not be a discussion for lower taxes for the elite in this country. If anything we should have discussions to reach a fair balance and get the train back on track and Trump relegated to the caboose. May the train stop at all polls in the U.S. and let the passengers off to vote.
1
I am not poorer because Bill Gates is rich.
I agree he had luck, and there is a legitimate case to be made that Microsoft's market power was once too great. But odds are that the rest of us are better off because of Bill Gates.
"Billionaires" and immigrants have a lot in common. They are mostly hardworking and highly productive people who get demonized by some Presidential candidates.
6
Today's billionaires sound a lot like Andrew Carnegie. He argued that it was wrong to tax the wealthy because they were so much more brilliant than us common folk Carnegie was a philanthropist who gave away most of his wealth but of course he got to decide which causes he gave to.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gives away a lot of money to causes that they believe in and which seem worthy to me but should they get to have all of the say? Does anyone really need $100 billion? Is Warren's wealth tax the right way to go? I don't know for sure, but we definitely need to raise the top tax bracket significantly and we should also tax capital gains at at least the same rate as regular income. Billionaires need to pay their fair share.
9
@Dave Exactly - that's what's so puzzling - why do people think it's so terrible for these ultra wealthy folks to at least pay their fair share? No one is saying that all of their money should be taken from them, just that they shoulder a share of the burden. It's disgusting to me that they don't want to give even a little more when there are people going hungry, living on the streets, working multiple jobs just to stay above water, and we have veterans without healthcare, decent housing, school teachers purchasing supplies using their own money, etc. What the heck????
1
It's been all downhill for the USA, since the 16th Amendment was enacted. The Founding Fathers were wise indeed, in prohibiting income taxation in the original Constitution. Now that the majority have figured out they can help themselves to the income and wealth of the minority, simple by outvoting them (like thieves gang up on a victim), civilized government is doomed.
2
"...income inequality is less a result of tax policy than laws and regulations that have made the rich richer before taxes are even imposed. These changes have to do with monopolies, patents, executive pay and other matters."
There you have it! Add to this the fact that corporations have become entities with more (de facto) rights than individual citizens and you have the the whole story of how the US has floundered politically, economically and morally.
Hardiest congratulations, Mr Tomasky, for describing the dysfunctional injustice of the present situation - and its enormous peril to democracy - in the clearest terms I've read.
5
To use the title of Robert Heinlein's sci-fi book, I feel like a stranger in a strange land. A $30,000 a year worker pays more taxes than Amazon, or Trump, for that matter. And yet these red state folks keep supporting politicians who are beholden to billionaires, not the voters who elected them.
We have an oligarchy, not a democracy, or a republic, for that matter. Issues, such as background checks for guns, never even get to a vote.
6
Here are some stats on inequality that might help the rich take a great deal from Warren, before they get a worse deal from the next FDR:
1. If we split America’s $100 trillion net worth evenly, every household would have a net worth of $800,000, rather than the $100,000 median we have today.
2. The top 1% now have about 40% of the wealth, vs. 25% in 1979, the pre-Reagan era. In other words, the top 1% have about $15 trillion more than they would have with more progressive policies. That’s roughly the “debt held by the public”, the marketable assets portion of the National Debt.
3. If we recast 2016 income at the more egalitarian 1979 distribution, the middle class would get about $20,000 more per year per-tax or $4,400 more after-tax.
To put that into perspective, the ACA shifted $600 per year in subsidies to the average bottom 40% family, by taxing the average top 1% family about $20,000 more, without slowing the economy or increasing the deficit. Growth in 2015 of 2.9% was the same as 2018, but in 2015 the deficit was below historical average as %GDP.
We would need redistribution of about 10 times the ACA scale that to get back to the 1979 after-tax distribution.
3
@David Doney
That is a problem, or intent, of Warrens Wealth Tax; it doesn't go far enough. The next FDR/Sanders has a much more progressive Wealth Tax. One that actually decreases the inequality, although not excessively punitive. Warrens plan actually keeps the split; but slows the growth.
https://slate.com/business/2019/09/wealth-tax-bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-billionaires.html
3
Great article.
What frustrates me about the discourse on this topic is the construction of a false dichotomy between a world with low redistribution and high innovation and one with high redistribution and low innovation. It mirrors the absurd discourse around capitalism vs socialism, as if what warren or sanders are calling for is anything close to actual socialism.
Do people not understand that most of the billionaires would STILL be billionaires under this type of policy? And are we seriously suggesting that a 20 something Jeff Bezos would not have started Amazon if he could only be worth 10B not 100B?
There is a huge amount of redistribution that could happen without hampering any real innovation. Most of the money for folks this at this level of rich is sitting idle. The billionaires speaking out against this are too smart not to know this - they are clearly just toeing a party line
6
The central fallacy in Tomasky's argument is that somehow the rich got that way on the backs of the poor or middle class. This idea is born out of the belief that our economy is a fixed pie. Someone's big slice effects every other slice. But in an open economy wealth is created. Send Gates 20 bucks when you buy a computer doesn't make you poor, it makes you productive. Use the computer to come up with an idea, market it to others, and then list the company on the stock exchange. Voila wealth. People like Gates, Musk, Bezos, Page et. al. should not be vilified but held up as examples of innovation and excellence.
3
What type of person is more innovative for 100 billion dollars than they would be for 500 million dollars? It might actually be good if the people motivated entirely by money had less opportunity, and the rest of us had more.
8
This is one of several articles I've read in the NY Times, Washington Post, and NPR that have said there are only 4 European countries with a wealth tax. This is not true. Netherlands has a wealth tax also. Look it up. If Netherlands is missed in these articles, what else is incorrect? How many other countries might there be with a wealth tax?
2
Even Billionaires like Gates, who donate a lot of money, are undemocratic. Yes, they are generous, and I sometimes agree with their priorities. But even their considerable philanthopy has to be viewed as autocratic. Personally, I would rather have an elected government determining which programs are funded. What Gate's distaste at losing some of his fortune to government highlights is that he doesn't trust democracy to produce governments that will allocate funds to programs as well as he does.
4
Imagine them as actual visionaries. They see that animus toward the rich is high. Instead of reacting, they predict. They see they can not only achieve philanthropic goals, but buy goodwill, and head off societal troubles by moving up and tranching their planned 99% wealth give away. These are decisions business people make regarding allocation all the time.
1
why use the term implore? we do not need to implore anybody, in particular people like Gates that egoistically and hypocritically are trying to make their own interests.
1
They must be running scared of Elizabeth Warren, and they should be. Obscene wealth is one of the roads to destruction.
7
My thoughts exactly. They really think she could win
3
If money equals speech as the SC so ineloquently stated, and speech is vital to democracy, is it fair to allow laws built from that democracy to assist the accumulation of excessive (I'm labeling say 750 million+ excessive, which even in NVC I believe would be true) wealth, then the democracy is affording a select few with the capacity for excessive speech. As a place where one man/woman is supposed to be one vote as a measure of their speech, it would seem to follow that the pile-on of these excess of speech past any reasonable bounds of political expression by virtue of money is antithetical to any exercise in democracy. These are not Solons. They are Midas. So I don't think it defers from people's ambitiousness to reward excessive wealth with an equal exercise is excessive patriotism, which is to say paying back into a system that has helped them. If Gates wants to vote for DT, it just shows that money is his primary and sole political motivation. With that in mind, he should realize that it taints the entirety of his other philanthropic endeavors as mere pittances set against his true worship of Moloch.
A limit on INHERITANCES would help.
How much should one person be able to inherit? How much does a person 'deserve' simply because of their birthright?
Many wealthy people set up charitable foundations but those are a way to escape taxes while still maintaining control of their wealth.
Alice Walton has a great art museum - a way of collecting art while writing off the cost.
I've been astounded at what some foundations pay for. A fourth home - a ranch in Montana - serves as a performance venue and museum for outdoor art. A foundation to protect the environment pays to buy the land around a mountaintop home. Educational foundations pay for vacations all over the world. All this for people who never had to work a day in their life. I saw one person complain that he hadn't been left cash to pay the inheritance taxes on a hundred million in property he had gotten.
Why is it so many of the wealthy want more and more and more?
I know an attorney who is an expert in securities law. He isn't happy with his life but is unable to change it. 'All I do is make rich people richer - they can't spend it as fast as they make it.'
He is from a family of modest means and is appalled at what he sees daily.
5
There have been many examples from history that show what happens when a tiny, entitled class exploits everyone else. The results are not pretty.
8
Socialist economic ideas and proposals are reactionary and punitive. There have been no theories, studies, or experiences that show they would work. Just to get rid of loopholes for the rich has been impossible, let alone bringing down billionaires.
We need to reform campaigns, elections, lobbying, office terms, etc. first, then try some moderate tax reforms gradually. There always will be rich and poor, like healthy and sick.
Gates and Buffet have done much more for the humanity than all the pundits and agitators.
@ehillesum
"Gas lamps and candles would be lighting our homes if the current war on billionaires was conducted in the late 19th century."
Nikola Tesla was the great genius that made it possible for America and the world to have abundant, cheap electricity, and for inventing the AC electric motors that are ubiquitous today.
Tesla is the man who, more than anyone else, helped modernize the world, replacing dangerous gas lighting with relatively-safe electricity. But Tesla was motivated by science; not $$!
Nikola Tesla died POOR and unrecognized.
Edison, who became wealthy and has been given all the credit for the inventions of many, many others, including Tesla, was a cut-throat capitalist as well as being a good inventor. But Edison was neither the genius that Tesla clearly was nor was he as ethical.
Westinghouse likewise profited from Tesla's inventions and his name became a household name as well.
Only the recently-marketed Tesla auto has brought his name to the ears of the general public.
See the film "Current Wars" as a palatable way of learning about some of this, though, as in most historical, period films, many liberties have been take with the facts. There is still a lot of truth the film.
Unfortunately, in an effort to reach a broad audience, the science has been watered-down to the point of almost being ignored in the film. Deep understanding of the laws of physics was Tesla's real genius, in addition to his amazing inventions.
8
The mission of all corporations is to make money. And they do that now by doing away with the cost of human employment. Computer codes, androids, robots, drones and low labor costs are what allow Bezos, Gates, Dimon to make money. The human element is being replaced. And through it a very few make billions of dollars. Does not seem like a recipe for a successful society.
7
Who do they think is going to buy their stuff? Robots?
The US had a higher marginal tax rate than progressives are suggesting in the 50s and 60s when the US had its best economy and standard of living. There was no billionaire class. Since the 1940s, income inequality in the US has never been higher than it is now.
5
@PVW
We can't go back to the 1950s. And high marginal tax rates won't miraculously bring us back to the economic success of the 1950s. In the 1950s, we had just emerged from WWII: the world's economy was devastated, and manufacturing/industry were essentially obliterated everywhere but in the US. There was NO competition from Japan, German, China, Korea, etc.
It was a very different world in the 1950s and 1960s, and higher tax rates won't take us back there.
1
"Billionaires will protest that they’d rather give it away than trust the government with it. I applaud their generosity. But even someone as rich as Michael Dell, who went on a rather infamous riff along these lines at Davos, could not build a nationwide high-speed rail system, clean the country’s air and water (and keep them clean), create a network of free opioid clinics across the country or give towns that have been hollowed out by the global economy a second chance. Only government can do those things." BINGO!
3
I'm perplexed by the fear people seem to have of hashing out vital new ideas. Obviously the platforms of Sanders or Warren, like The Green New Deal, show a direction, a vector of necessary change. But their presidencies would not automatically allow a massive overnight change. Electing them means we as a people are ready to address inequities on a massive scale. It will be up to congress to live up to the challenge. Start worrying about our reps and senators--do they have the brains and integrity to work on our tax structure and economic playing field? If not, let's get moving.
4
Mr. Tomasky, “what economists call pretax distribution. ....that income inequality is less a result of tax policy than laws and regulations that have made the rich richer before taxes are even imposed. ... I don’t get why the candidates aren’t simply proposing to increase marginal income tax rates on dollars earned above some very high figure. That seems a lot more straightforward to me.”
Billionaires (and millionaires) have little “taxable income"; hence they pay little income tax (fed or state), little SS/MC. So high marginal rates are nice but won't produce the hoped for results with the corp friendly additions in the tax code since the 1960s.
Dean Baker is correct, but it is more pervasive than the changes you list. They manage to amass tax-free “distributions” (not taxable) of multi millions or more a year. They manage that through our tax system with passthrough (and liability free) entities, structuring any taxable income for lower cap gains rate, carried interest, accelerated depreciation and other loopholes to decrease the entities' taxable income, and then any taxable losses gained through our tax laws can be carried forward to offset future earnings, and on and on.
So for the wealthy to pay their fair share, meaning to me a % of what they accumulate yearly (not "earned" income as defined) while enjoying the public benefits this country provides, without rewriting the current tax code (we wish), we have to tax the increases in wealth.
3
I somehow doubt that any of these billionaires became rich because they were wonderful employers who paid their employees highly with generous benefits and a pension.
Seems to me most got rich because they kept the profits for themselves and paid their employees poorly with minimal benefits - there were no trickle down economics at play!
Bill Gates got rich because he had connections, bought a good idea, and kept the profits to himself. Trump got rich because he stifled his sub contractors and of course because of inheritance. Amazon is getting rich because they pay minimum pay and no taxes.
But please, tell me where all this money is really coming from? It is money that should be going the middle-class, the workers! Why should they be getting poorer and poorer so that some billionaires can amass so much money it is difficult to fathom!
We need to tax the rich and save this country while we still can!
11
The democrat's plan to tax the wealthy might be better received by all if they also included a plan to squeeze corruption and waste from government spending. Collecting more tax revenues while not spending in the most efficient manner possible is insulting.
2
Excessive wealth is not in and of itself the problem. Passing that wealth on like British landed gentry is. We need to force the uber wealthy to distribute the bulk of their wealth before passing. Gates and Buffet are poster children in this regard.
1
Nobody is saying that you can't make a lot of money. But I think we are finally at a point where some of us are realizing that there has got to be a cap on earnings. Maybe top out at a billion a year? The more these billionaires cry, the angrier I get. But unfortunately, there seems to be a wide swath of society that cares more about football scores, or what the Kardashians are doing, than they care about how our society is evolving. Until we get angry people out in the streets, nothing will change. Enough is enough. We need this revolution to begin as soon as possible.
2
A problem in America today is not that there are obscenely rich oligarchs, but rather that our charity and non profit system has been weaponized and designed for the oligarchs to retain control of their wealth in perpetuity via deductible charitable gifts.
Think about it. The Ford family and the Rockefellers funded their foundations over a hundred years ago with ten million dollars, designed for the families to avoid estate and income taxes while retaining control of the stock and wealth they "donated".
The Foundations use their outsized wealth and influence in order to get the local state and federal governments to use taxpayer dollars to fund their policy preferences.
If someone suggests we are spending too much money on healthcare, the Kaiser Family Foundation [the lobbying are for the for-profit Kaiser entities] reports some accurate statistics that are meaningless in terms of policy. Meanwhile, for-profit and charity hospitals increase their billing rates to the government and insurance companies.
Buffett gets billions in wind energy credits. The credits are not passed to consumers, but benefit exclusively the investors. Same for Musk and solar credits. The progressives own the narrative: life as we know it ends unless the American government gives us lots of money to replace fossil fuels with wind. Look at what progressive policy has done to California: money was spent on renewables instead of infrastructure and fire prevention. Black outs.
1
Billionaire: Wonder what I'm going to do with this billion? Another property? New jet?
Me: Wonder what I'm going to do with this twenty bucks? Food? Prescription?
Billionaire needs neither.
Me needs both.
8
“I don’t get why the candidates aren’t simply proposing to increase marginal income tax rates on dollars earned above some very high figure.“ Income isn’t the same thing as wealth; and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than income. The wealthier a person is, the more easily he can dodge income taxes. That said, I am one who sees a tax on wealth as a “direct tax” and therefore unconstitutional.
The Robber Barons of the late 1800's created jobs and built industries. Much of today's wealth comes from the ELIMINATION of jobs or lowering of labor 'costs'.
The Robber Barons also made fortunes through stock manipulation and 'Trusts' - monopolies that kept prices high while they kept the wages of their employees low.
In time the labor movement improved salaries but this happened only after violent strikes and protests. We teach little of the Colorado Mining Wars and Molly Maguires in school. Nothing is taught of the strikes needed to raise wages.
Early Microsoft workers had stock option but today's workers are likely to be contract workers with no benefits.
The Walton family is worth BILLIONS - and makes more every hour. Why not share some of that with Walmart employees. Let them work FULL time so they can get benefits.
Most executives now get stock options - often granted for CUTTING COSTS (reducing employees and cutting pay).
Wealth in the hands of many grows an economy. The rich can spend only so much and do so in self-serving ways.
Capital has become more important - and more profitable - than Labor.
Keep this up and we'll be headed for war between labor and owners once again.
6
Those billionaires who didn't inherit their wealth may be smart and hard-working (although that is not a given), but they aren't billions of dollars smarter and more hard-working than most Americans. While philanthropy is laudable, a single billionaire throwing money at something he views as important with solutions he unilaterally adopts is itself undemocratic and may not even be beneficial. Our societal problems should be solved by our elected representatives using tax money, to which the billionaires contribute thier fair share.
And arguably billionaires are less patriotic than ordinary citizens. Some of them are preparing to renounce their U.S. citizenship if Elizabeth Warren becomes president. They love, love, love their money, but not their country.
6
@CH Let them renounce their US citizenship and good riddance to them. Confiscate their property and bar them from doing business here.
1
The referenced Business Insider article is incomplete. The Netherlands also has a wealth tax. We’ve had this for a very long time. Any wealth above ~30k (cash, real estate, jewelry, cars, and so forth) gets taxed yearly. It doesn’t seem to be very impactful in society; neither positively or negatively.
2
I’ll leave aside numerous misleading facts in this article (e.g., something like 8 people actually paid the 91% marginal rate; yes the wealthier have become considerable more wealthy but they have been far from a static cohort and the bottom 20% have seen their incomes rise by 30% adjusted for inflation since the 1970s even by liberal estimates, etc.). What I find most curious about this article is that the author is fearful of concentration of wealth among several hundred billionaires, but his solution is to create an even greater concentration of wealth an power in the central government. History has shown repeatedly that concentrations of central government power have very poor long-run outcomes, even when there are some short-term benefits. Would you really feel more comfortable today with Trump leading an even bigger, wealthier government?
1
Not only is excessive inequality a threat to democracy, it’s a threat to progress and innovation. For every hugely successful business idea, there are plenty of less successful plans and ideas that fall by the wayside, some of which might even have yielded higher quality items or better results in the long term. It’s why we have discouraged monopolies. Once a single entity or individual gains the power to deny success to their would-be competition, alternative ways of doing things can be bought up and kiiled or kept from the marketplace entirely. Who knows what great inventions or ideas are out there that will never see the light of day? Billionaires aren’t the only guys with good ideas, even if they’d like the rest of us to think so.
5
Gates and these other billionaires are obviously feeling insecure and frightened at the prospect of trying to get by with fewer billions.
Many more Americans are feeling insecure with policies that threaten average Americans.
They ought to try living like the rest of us.
12
@Grove yes....living like the rest of us is exactly what they're afraid of.
3
Taxation is not what caused the rise in income inequality. Globalization is the cause. Think about the number of customers the typical large USA corporation had in the 70's or 80's. Globalization gave them billions of new customers. It also added those same people to the labor pool. The effect that has had on labor supply has caused wages in developed countries, like the USA, to drop.
2
Both taxation and globalization have caused the rise in income inequality.
1
It occurred to me that this is a question of whether Bill Gates gets to decide what he does with his money, or whether the government gets to decide. We all know Bill Gates has done some incredibly positive things with his money, and that is something I must admit I do not trust the government to do. Of course, not all billionaires have the social conscience Bill Gates has, but it still seems to me he should be the one deciding what to do with his earnings, however huge.
@amy - yet the issue is one of the public good vs. the good that some individuals choose to loosen some money to fund.
The problem wouldn't be a problem if these plutocrats were getting wealthy while the rest of the country was also making gains on their incomes. That's not the case. The concentration of the nation's wealth and property into a small part of the population has been happening while the decade-over-decade income for a large part of the rest of us has been declining.
So Bill concedes to fund what he picks, without oversight, with some of his tax-sheltered money.
Bill and the others are also fighting against putting money into the public pot - which funds the roads, air and rail transport systems and Post Office that Amazon and others use to great benefit.
Bill and Jeff and the other super-wealthy also benefit from the public funding that went to invent the Internet, and they profit handsomely from the regulatory systems and generic honesty of our rule of law, compared to places like China, where intellectual property is not something kept from the government's hands.
The Koch, Scaife, Mercer and other families (and some of the internet whiz kids) use considerable wealth to fight against the tax boost they got that led to funding Obamacare. The Walton family got wealthy while depending on public assistance programs to help feed their underpaid workers. Koch fights public transit and pollution laws.
So forgive me but I'm not ready to thank these people.
3
I'm so excited to vote for Warren. If a centrist democrat gets the nomination, I will not vote. Given all the investigations into Trump, I doubt he'll be able to do much. And if he can, then let's just hit bottom so was can rebuild. If the wealthy among us don't care for the millions living in poverty, our poor schools, student debt and medical bankruptcies, then we can surely live without them. They are free to move. They are literally destroying this country with their avarice.
5
@GFF
What if the bottom we hit is lower than you imagine it is? What if it's so low, rebuilding isn't possible? Remember that almost no one imagined a President trump.
Consider that those who chose not to vote in '16 because their boy Bernie didn't get the nomination (i.e., took their ball and went home because they didn't like the way the game was going) are partly responsible for trump's victory. Actually, you can remove the word "partly" from that sentence and still be accurate.
Think about it.
4
@Sixofone
Where as your comment 3 below GFF says the system is rigged. That it "...is actually a sham. It's really a plutocracy/oligarchy dressed up as a democracy."
Yet you are castigating a few voters because they refused to be pawns/tools in this system you call a sham?! What does that make everyone/you/me who did knowingly participate?!
2
If Bill Gates' taxes went up significantly...he wouldn't even notice that it happened.
6
I do not know that I agree with Warren’s agenda here, but I cannot forget that we bailed out JP Morgan and this guy is still a $billionaire. Are we rewarding hard work? Because it is getting harder and harder to believe that now.
10
Where were the bailouts for the ordinary people who lost their jobs and homes?
1
"[Bill Gates] left the door open to voting for Donald Trump should Democrats nominate Ms. Warren."
That wouldn't bother me a bit if his opinion amounted to a single vote. What makes his opinion troublesome is that in this country, rich people can multiply their votes many times over through virtually unlimited campaign and PAC contributions (if they launder them correctly).
This is America's shame, that what passes for democracy is actually a sham. It's really a plutocracy/oligarchy dressed up as a democracy. But, as with drag queens, you can always tell if you look closely enough.
12
I am curious as to where the author and many of you think all of this money is. Do you think Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates has a bank account with $100 billion in savings at 0.09% Because that's the only way your solutions make any sense. Otherwise their "wealth" is mostly numbers on a ledger tied into the workings of Amazon or Apple or whoever. So what you are suggesting is that they be forced to transfer some of that ownership to someone who will buy it (China perhaps?) so they can pay taxes to pay for what you want. In essence you are selling large chunks of successful US companies (something we don't actually have enough of) to foreign interests to pay for your pet projects. What could possibly go wrong? (see also: NBA). And somehow in your reasoning this transfer of wealth from rich Americans to rich Chinese/Russians/Arabs benefits the American middle class. I suppose it's because you get a short term fix of cash to throw away before you die leaving the future generations even worse off than this one. No thanks.
2
"The 400 richest Americans — the top .00025 percent of the population — now own more of the country’s riches than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60 percent of wealth distribution. The 400’s share has tripled since the 1980s."
At what point will the bottom 60% (150M people) not have enough money to support the .00025?
Now you know why the .00025 are going to China to seek more fortune. The US has already been plundered.
Capitalists are greed based and care about government only to the extent it can be controlled for their own benefit. The Republican economic policies like "trickle down" have been disproven. Yet they stay the course, showing their true colors: fascism, theocracy and white supremacy.
cHump is devolving the government and using it to protect the wealthy and doing everything he can to remake into a dysfunctional and chaotic mess, just like he is.
Oh, here's a thought: take each billionaire's fortune and multiply it by the past tax rates. How many billions will they still have if they had paid 91%, 77%, 50% marginal tax?
Since our economics arose from slavery, the Republicans are intent on returning us to that time as financial slaves along with committing financial genocide.
So, if you're independently wealthy, vote for Trump. If not...
Good luck.
5
Who are you going to rob next, when billionaires go broke? People that make $150k per year?
1
Whose benefits are Republicans going to cut next once currently poor and middle class people have had all their government benefits taken away but are still with us? It’ll be an impossible task for charities to handle.
1
Scamper to a bookstore, preferably an indie (note the virtue signaling), and pick up a copy of McCloskey's "Why Liberalism Works." (The title is in probably-purposeful contrast to Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed," which I also urge upon you.) Turn, now, to page 177, chapter 12, entitled "The Rich Do Not in a Liberal Society Get Rich at the Expense of the Rest."
"What is worrying Piketty is that the rich might possibly get richer, even though the poor get richer, too. His worry, in other words, is purely about difference ... about a vague feeling of envy raised to a theoretical and ethical proposition. ... [Inequality] goes up and down in waves, not very large in amplitude, for which we have evidence from many centuries ago to the present, which also doesn't figure in such a tale. According to his logic, once a Piketty-wave starts [it would never stop]. ... Why then did the share of the rich not rise anciently to 100 percent?"
"Since 1800 in the average rich country, the income of workers per person increased by a factor of about thirty and even in the world as a whole, including the still-poor countries, by a factor of ten, while the rate of return to physical capital stagnated."
"Piketty does not acknowledge that each wave of inventors, of entrepreneurs, and even of routine capitalists finds their rewards taken from them by entry. ... Because Piketty is obsessed with inheritance, he wants to downplay entrepreneurial profit, the innovism [sic] that has made the poor rich."
"There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning." - Warren Buffett
10
Mr. Gates is funding worthwhile cause all over the world not to mention Gates Millennium Scholarship to minority students here in the US. I trust him to manage his money better than the corrupt government in DC.
1
Good article, important and complex topic. Mr Tomasky writes - Billionaires will protest that they’d rather give it away than trust the government with it. Please reply Mr. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Michael Bloom Berg, Michael Dell and Jamie Dimon. How are you improving democracy in US, and its government. Mr Tomasky writes any democracy needs a robust and thriving middle class. Billionaires You agree ?
5
They, the billionaires are entrenched into power since the days of the FDRosevelt New Deal, just read their "efforts" to stick together since NARAs 1940s! Why do you think Trump, that absurd, out of limits man is till our president? Because the billionaires and their servants, the GOP. Can we have a democracy with all these people? No. Can we have a justice system functioning with Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and the worst of all, Kavanaugh? No.
4
Jamie Dimon should have been tried for causing the deaths of untold numbers of people for his role in the housing disaster and tanking the economy in 2008. How dare he grouse about Warren's plan to take back some of the money he and his fellow kleptocrats have stolen from us by hijacking the legislative process.
I would like to see a candidate who is committed to exterminating these parasites, not just asking them to return what is ours. More and more I am convinced that we will need the remedy that the French found in 1793 for Louis XVI. Lots of innocent people will die before the parasites do.
2
Billionaires crying about unfairness. That's rich.
7
A French veteran journalist wrote a book titled :
" The fake generosity of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation . "
2
What’re the odds?
I don’t care how significant the innovations of someone like Bill are. And Amazon? Please. None of these self-important billionaires amassed their fortunes alone. But still, I don’t know how one goes about redistributing wealth. Consolidated wealth among a few is not good, but unless and until those controlling the pots recognize the problem and find a way to deal with it, it’s not going to get better. I find the best corporate models are the ones that respect those ho have worked top to bottom by giving them a part of the company, for example, UPS. Someone like Gates massages his ego and his guilt through philanthropic deeds. But in the end it’s still him controlling all that money.
Why does one need to hold on to 100 billion dollars?!
1
@Dee
Why does anyone need more than one child?
Oh the whinging of billionaires--poor them! It makes me sick. Where did there money come from-outer space? No, off the backs of hard working middle class and poor people. Right out of their pockets. These people and their peers are completely disgusting. The problem with just raising the income tax rate to 90% is they don't need anymore income-they can just sit on their holdings. That's why a wealth or asset tax is needed as well as confiscatory inheritance taxes so that their monopoly on the nations wealth isn't passed down to their brats.
3
Excessive wealth is unfair! It is greed and self-centeredness at its worst.
1
The striving entrepreneurs these men were before they became selfish billionaires would certainly disdain what they have become. It is sad to see how a few years of comfort turn formerly talented people into soft, selfish whiners.
Excessive wealth is a threat to the excessively wealthy.
If the adage is true, that the rich get richer and the poor get more children, then there will be more voters who will be less tolerant of the rich. Simultaneously, if the wealthy strangle the economy then the poor won't have the ready cash to keep the wealthy in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. The parasite destroys the host and ends it's own life. A healthy economy is based on ecology and symbiosis, rather than fouling the nest or eating the seeds for the next harvest. Stupid people, those wealthy are and their days are going to end before ours do.
3
why can't we just call them greedy people and shame them?
@Sirlar
No. You've got to hit them right where it hurts -- right in their pocketbooks
2
Really good piece.
1
Restore pre reagan era tax levels...simple as that...heck even reagan era tax levels...
2
The Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation may do a few good deeds. But it is, at its heart, a money laundering scheme to cleanse a vast fortune of the stench of porcine greed.
7
The words penned here by Tomansky are not worthy of being taken seriously. His criticisms are fodder for the leader of a band of lemmings that are smiling while falling off a cliff.
Do/create something of substantive and lasting value rather than criticize. Not easy, eh?
2
Thank you. Again, thank you.
It's Socialist, wealth envy, nonsense like this that makes Trump look like the lesser of 2 very great evils.
2
Excessive STUPIDITY is the real threat!! If people have a great idea, successfully implement it, and make a lot of money, good for them!! I’m sure this was as true for the person who invented the bow and arrow as it was for Bill Gates. As long as they earned their money legally, and in a fashion that doesn’t violate fundamental moral standards and human rights. I think it’s great. The idealization of false equality, has been proved wrong thousands of times in human history. Just because we have equal rights, doesn’t mean that everybody is equal, anymore than it means everybody is the same height!! Some people are taller, some are shorter; some are faster, some are slower; some are smarter, some are not as smart. It goes on and on.
2
We send our kids to college to get an education to get a good job. If they succeed and become wealthy they then become "the enemy." The far-left is so crazy these days. Bill Gates gives so much to so many, and employees so many, it is so sad that he then becomes the hated.
3
Blame globalization for the wealth disparity we found ourselves in now. The fall of the Soviet Union was great for freedom and liberty but bad for Middle and low income class.
The US is a consumer based economy, therefore needs a strong middle class with a good purchasing power to buy the goods and services offered by billionaires and their companies. Before the economy went global, they had an incentive on keeping a strong middle class in America. Now, they have 180 countries where they can sell their products. ( Reason why most of them are against Trump's trade war with China).
I've been in countries where the gap between the rich and poor are so huge that the rich have to hide behind fortified walls and most of them would buy a home in the West, the only place where they could enjoy their money without fear of being attacked. Now that the same gap between rich and poor is being imported in Western countries, I don't know where the rich people will go to enjoy their money.
Maybe that is why Amazon Bezos and Tesla Musk are working days and nights to bring people on the moon or Mars.
2
I did not hear Bill Gates say it was unfair. He said (paraphrase) that he would be happy to pay more taxes but that there should be more of a discussion because it could impact the economy in ways we wouldn’t expect.
2
Democracy in action is when "The People" elect someone whose ideas have resonated with them--Senator Elizabeth Warren's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination featuring a tax policy affecting those with out-sized wealth to help pay for needed programs for the population as a whole is a case in point.
There are a lot of people in America who evidently are quite impressed with her ideas on what to do about wealth and income inequality.
Expecting those folks with vast amounts of wealth to respond positively to appeals to their sense of decency and concern for democracy are all well and good--but, just to be on the safe side, let's see them also be required by law to pay a bit of their wealth toward promoting some balance in this nation.
The first half of the 20th century (a so-called "American Century") saw tax rates as high as 90% (during the Eisenhower years of the 1950s) at a time when there weren't even that many "social programs" needing to be funded--this nation was in the throes of unprecedented productivity and expansion.
It's no coincidence that when taxes for the wealthy began to drop after the '50s, so too did the quality of American life:
1) fewer full-time employment opportunities due to smaller investments in business;
2) decline of livable wages;
3) reduction in union membership;
4) loss of skilled labor positions;
5) budget constraints for education;
6) infrastructure neglect;
7) productivity lags, etc
"You get what you pay for"--indeed.
2
We don't tax people, we tax income. All income is targeted at various rates no matter who you are.
Higher income taxes on people like me ($500K in two-income household) I welcome. Higher taxes on huge carried interest gains I welcome.
But this column says billionares are to blame for all that ails us. They are not. Address the globalization of the labor market. Address the legal avoidance of corporate taxes.
Elizabeth Warren does not do that. She had two classes of citizens. Selfish rich and deserving middle class/poor. Note that bet wealth puts her in the first group.
4
Higher income taxes on people like me ($500K in two-income household) I welcome. Higher taxes on huge carried interest gains I welcome.
But this column says billionares are to blame for all that ails us. They are not. Address the globalization of the labor market. Address the legal avoidance of corporate taxes.
Elizabeth Warren does not do that. She had two classes of citizens. Selfish rich and deserving middle class/poor. Note that bet wealth puts her in the first group.
This assumes billionaires care about democracy, or about anyone other than themselves, their families, and their favorite causes. That may not be a valid assumption. Many of them show by their words and actions that they consider themselves entitled to as much wealth as they can amass, by whatever means they can amass it.
They do seem to believe government exists to help them amass more entitled wealth. That's the agenda billionaires and corporations have bought from the Republican Party. The rise of Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders, who won 22 state primaries without help from the Party fundraising machine and donors, and now Elizabeth Warren, perhaps suggests that democracy is no longer properly serving billionaires' interests.
If so, maybe a dictator or junta they completely own might be better than preserving what's left of our democracy. And it's surely cheaper and easier to buy a loyal dictator or junta than to buy thousands of loyal federal, state, and local politicians. On the other hand, Russian oligarchs can't count on remaining in favor with Czar Vladimir the Greatest. Those who fall out of favor fall very hard and very far.
Still, the "One Dollar, One Vote" version of American Democracy we've had at least since Reagan has been very good to billionaires, as evidenced by the "beautiful" inequality of income and wealth. Maybe they just need to buy a few tweaks to neutralize the threats, and to keep us on the right track of increasing inequality.
1
We don't need a wealth tax, which is not likely to be workable, but rather a strong estate tax to level out the playing field at least a little bit and serve the same purpose as a wealth tax.
The writer reminds us that some billionaires have said that
Some billionaires , the author reminds us, have said that they would do more good by giving their money away than by paying taxes and trusting the government with it. What would happen if I told the IRS " give me back my tax money and I will donate it to the charity of my choice"?
2
I feel like so many of our problems could be solved with just one intervention: make corporations pay their employees ROBUST wages.
Then, folks wouldn't need government-run healthcare, because they could purchase a good private policy that works for them.
Folks wouldn't need "free" pre-K because they could pay for their children to go to a program of their choosing....
Folks wouldn't need government to absolve them of their college debt, because they'd be earning enough post-graduation to pay it back.
I'd love to see the federal government (a) make corporations pay employees WELL while (b) simultaneously stepping back from running various social programs. These programs would be much less needed, and reserved for those with physical or cognitive disabilities that render them unable to work.
2
And I’d add that if corporations pay their employees very generously, then their corporate tax rates should be very low.
1
And you didn’t even mention the oligarchs like the Kochs and their friends who give their money to directly control who gets elected, and also who, once elected, will gerrymander and otherwise warp our access to voting in the future.
2
No responsibility for the debt Mr. Gates?
None of the top economists in the world think that your level of wealth concentration is desirable.
2
Mr. Tomasky, please explain to me how Bill Gate's wealth was stolen from the middle class.
It wasn't and there is zero proof that it was. Your argument fails on its first principle.
Second, there is also no proof that taxing wealthy people makes anyone else better off. We could use the money for guaranteed income, or free healthcare, better roads, etc. But there is no guarantee those programs will be enacted.
A large number of Americans understand this very clearly. Not sure why so many liberal politicians and commentators still keep trying to make it seem like higher taxes on the wealthy is going to transfer some of that wealthy down to others.
2
Bill Gates was donating practically nothing until Ted Turner shamed him earlier this century. What he gives now is always through his foundation, which is simply a vehicle to allow him a place to park what he would pay in taxes, yet allow him to direct how the money will be spent, a privilege only allowed to wealthy people with enough money to create a foundation. Bloomberg donates approximately what he earns in interest on his wealth, but gets to keep his wealth and the opportunities that wealth affords him to make more wealth. He's 77 years old and has little reason to worry unless he literally wants to take his money to the grave. And Bezos' biggest charity to date has been his wife. 250 million dollars is more than enough incentive for most well-adjusted people, no? It's a sin we have billionaires while half the world starves for food and medical care.
5
Do you really think that the Billionaires among us will just give their money back to the rest of us without a fight? In many countries, the only way that has happened is through a revolution. When the U.S. did it, it took the Great Depression of the 1930's coupled with that great equalizer and creator of the U.S. middle class: World War II. It's obvious our economy can't function without a robust middle class. And it's obvious the plutocrats and oligarchs in the U.S. have hijacked our government so they don't have to share with the rest of us. So far Trump is the only lawless actor on the scene. How long do you think the American people will sit by while the richest among us break the law in their own interest?
3
I wouldn't be so sure about the 'Chinese model' - wealth disparity is probably even greater in China; state security trumps personal security so that the poorest and least powerful have little voice when their land is polluted, they are displaced, or they die from epidemics the state keeps quiet. The safety net the people used to have under the communist model has been mostly washed away so neither good education or medical care is available to the poorest, rural citizens
In the board game of Monopoly that we all played as kids, players would collect rent from their opponents, with the goal being to drive them into bankruptcy. We are seeing this play out in real time.
3
Great idea. Take the money from the rich and give it to the government. There is almost nothing that the government gets involved with that doesn't turn out badly. This is class envy. Work hard or come up with a great idea the world wants instead of crying, "poor me."
5
Call it what you want, but do you really think it is a sustainable society and economy in the longterm if the income gap continues to widen and more and more resources go to fewer and fewer people while the masses have to fight over the leftover scraps? If you paid any attention in history classes, you should understand the answer is no.
2
I think these figures need to published a lot more often. Don't think the average American has any idea how out of whack things are in this country. Good article.
4
What’s unfair is that 3 people own the resources of the lower 50% of this nation. What’s unfair is that couples have to struggle to pay their bills where 50 years ago, one income could suffice. What’s unfair is that we’re in a culture that you need a masters degree to fly a kite and the cost of college can take until one’s middle age to be paid off. What’s unfair is that communities of color are systematically disenfranchised a half century after the Civil Rights movement. What’s unfair is that the decisions made by Congress are influenced primarily by the billionaires who get their candidates elected and not by the people. What’s unfair is that Trump can lose almost a billion dollars and brag that he’s “smart” that we have to pay for it. Yet, Bernie or Warren or Yang pitch ideas to help ordinary Americans and the nation loses its mind. What’s unfair is the practice of giving despots and business friendly regimes around the world bottomless sums of money and in some cases American blood to prop up interests of billionaires and those who profit off of billionaires.
Stop your crying Gates. The economic system is a construct. And it’s long past the due date to recalibrate it to reflect the American people.
8
My mantra: Eisenhower taxes!
Simply return the U.S. tax structure to the one that was in place during the surge in the U.S. economy during the 1950s. That progressive structure, with marginal taxation that rose with income, was certainly adequate to the times. Its demolition has triggered the wealth-chasing-wealth financial industry, at the expense of production and stable, career employment. The result has destabilized the nation in many ways, and a return to former days can help to restore Americans' belief in their economic futures.
4
Nobody needs more than $1 Billion to live well. These ultra-rich guys have gotten used to being their own little countries that are basically parasites on the U.S. The U.S. taxpayer does all the back-end "dirty work": taking care of physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.), police force, etc., and providing the relatively-stable political climate which allows these huge fortunes to grow. The U.S. also provides the workforce that supports their businesses. Then these guys swan around dispensing largess, but not too much largess. They need to "preserve" their wealth for the next generation of princelings.
1
Start BOYCOTTING Microsoft, Amazon, Bloomberg, etc. AND voting for candidates who will tax these robber barons fairly.
1
Individuals can't really disrupt these company's bottom line. They each profit from providing business services and satisfying government contracts. Businesses and governments are the only thing they're afraid of losing. Not individual purchasers.
Hidden deep beneath the surface, both Conservatism and Liberalism, understood correctly, are simply methods of evolution. Mother Nature, concerned with 'survival of the fittest', would refer to these two terms by using their basic names; Parasitism and Symbiosis. We need them both as evolutionary tools. The trick for humanity is to intuit when one serves evolution better and to move more in that direction. On Earth today there exists a species that is destroying its own habitat and that of all other life at an astounding rate, like rats fouling their own nests. This species is humanity. Clearly, it's time for a more cooperative and collaborative effort on the part of humanity at this time, this juncture. This is why 'conservative' emphasis is so very destructive and short sighted at this time. Exclusively conservative thinkers can argue this point all day long but at the end of the day, all they are really arguing for is armageddon. Be careful when you listen to untutored minds like those of Donald Trump and his son. These are dim witted souls and should not be anywhere near alpha status. That's a big weakness in humanity. Money buys unearned alpha status and therein lies a terminal danger for our species.
3
After you have one billion dollars, seriously, how much more do you need? And most importantly, how do you sleep at night knowing that while you worry about making your next billion, people who WORK FOR YOU are struggling to make ends meet: to put food on the table, make rent, pay ... ahem, their taxes (in a higher bracket than you). Stop fooling yourselves wealthy folks: you didn’t get there by yourself. And no one is saying you can’t be
wealthy. But let’s bring the hoarding of money down a few notches so the rest of us don’t end up on the streets.
3
The article's claim that he "left the door open to voting for Donald Trump should Democrats nominate Ms. Warren" is at best very misleading. What Bill Gates said in the referenced interview was:
"I'm not going to make political declarations [...], but as much as I disagree with some of the policies that are out there, whoever I decide would have the more professional approach [...] is the thing that I'll weigh the most."
This is obviously a snarky, roundabout way to say he'd vote for Warren over Trump.
The implications of taxes like this are complex, particularly when the taxed individual is donating so much of his fortune. Maybe he has more of an obligation to the country that helped make him so wealthy, but if your moral sphere includes all of humanity, interventions like those that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds can be orders of magnitude more cost effective than the opportunities we'd have with the additional tax money in this country (see https://www.effectivealtruism.org/).
Regardless of your stance, we should be able to hold billionaires accountable without going out of our way to universally vilify them. Now I'm not making any declarations about which ones we should vilify, but someone being under national investigation for crimes against the United States is probably what I'd weigh the most.
"Unfair" is a child who has nowhere to live. "Unfair" is not having enough to eat when there is excessive food on the tables of others who share the planet. "Unfair" is having to drink lead contaminated water because the government lacks the will and the funds to fix it. "Unfair" is being fired because, after taking 3 buses to get to work, you arrive late.
Any billionaire who utters "unfair" when referring to himself should be thrown in jail.
These billionaires have amassed their wealth in large part by making money--benefiting from the middle class and poor who pay THEM interest to do things like live in a house, buy clothes, go to school and eat. Even if the poor and middle class-god forbid--wish to indulge in a vacation or entertainment or, say, dance classes for the kiddos, we end up paying more for everything. Making money from money adds NOTHING to the economy, It shouldn't be included in GDP it adds nothing to quality of life and actually detracts from it (2008 crash, anyone?) However, the wealthy pay people lots of money to put their fingers on the scale of EVERYTHING and make themselves out to be some sort of heroes. They are not.
There should be a cap on wealth, for the good of the community and the good of the planet. Wealth=power by stealth.
Genius my foot. They are geniuses at self-promotion and public whining.
I'll believe a billionaire cares when he gives BACK his $ and wealth to the government. Flint is waiting.
5
Bill Gates is now a real hero, because of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Michael Tomasky is on target, when he boils a major problem down to simple language. He wrote: "I imagine that Mr. Gates is repulsed by Mr. Trump on some level, and at the end of the day probably couldn’t vote for him. But if I could meet Mr. Gates, I’d ask him: Sir, do you not see the link between your vast fortune and the ascendance of Donald Trump? If not, I implore you to connect some dots. Wealth has shifted to the top. It has been taken away from the middle class. That makes people anxious. Anxiety opens the door to demagogues. It’s not complicated." Those last 5 sentences are brilliant in their power and simplicity.
Where Tomasky perhalps slips, is in suggesting that Bill Gates said he would seriously consider voting for Trump if Warren were the other candidate. When I read the article hypertexted as evidence, there was no such statement. Gates said he would be opposed to a tax of $100 billion, which is all of his net worth. He said he was fine with his current 10 billion of taxes, or if it doubled. If he said he would consider supporting Trump, I missed it.
(David is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion blogs at InconvenientNews.net.)
As for Bill Gates, everything in his life that followed his decision to build a 66,000 sq. ft. home has made it impossible for me to consider him anything other than lacking good judgment.
And speaking of good judgment from billionaires, Bezos' 1-square block "home" (converted museum) in Washington, D.C., is another dead giveaway of a faulty thinking person.
And WHY is it, Mr. Tomasky, that you "think Mr. Bezos could get by on $15 billion or so." --? Hopefully, you're being totally silly and sarcastic?? I believe there should be a wealth cap in civilized societies, but that it should be considerably less that $15 billion. NOBODY needs even $1 billion.
In the end, the true measure of a person should be how much they've given away to others, not how much they can swing around to their personal benefit.
1
These billionaires dont like America, they like exploiting America but the well being of the masses, public service, isnt their goal. They are here to make money and whatever good things they do on the side is incidental. Even the charity they engage in comes at a cost namely tax deductions where you and I pay for Gates' supposed largess and generosity. But it is not really charity if you just pass the cost on to someone else. It would be charity if they didnt take tax deductions. Then again if they were the kind of people who did that then they would just be paying their taxes in he first place instead of lobbying governments to cut taxes on them and enact a host of lucrative laws that benefit them and then take that stolen money to "donate" to a cause which they then get further tax deductions on.
The ultra-rich have always been the bane of humanity, but now, at this stage of human "development", they're a danger to all surface life on this planet. It's time we permanently rid ourselves of the problem because if we don't, at the rate we're going, humanity's going to go extinct with this same mass extinction event we've already initiated.
To do this is very straight-forward; tax them out of existence. We can quibble over the dollar amounts beyond which is too much, but whatever point that is, surely people can still be rich, just not so rich that they threaten control of our supposed democracy.
Or we can go straight for the pitchforks and a revolution.
3
What really bothers me is that my mother who is 74 and a secreatry in a law firm, saw her tax bill increase by approx. $2K under the Trump tax cuts. But for our business, my husband and I would have seen our tax bill rise due to the SALT deduction being gutted. Why are we accepting of a world where the middle and upper middle classes pay for so much in tax where we FEEL it. Jeff Bezos and Amazon got rich off our roads, infrastructure, rule of law, stability of our judicial system, patent office and education of their workforce. They also are a direct beneficiary of our government's early investment in the creation of an internet. Give back Amazon... they paid literally NOTHING in taxes last year. Shameful.
4
I don't think the billionaire class has any understanding of how angry a large chunk of the American public now is. Trump is not an accident, but merely the first poorly conceived, flailing attempt at casting off the ruling class. I don't think they realize how badly *they* need some policy for redistribution and how ugly things could get for them, particularly when our next recession arrives. FDR recognized the need to act, and wound up saving capitalism from itself.
Thank you, Mr. Tomasky. It's articles like this that makes New York Times great.
James Dimon and Bill Gates are wrong.
After the 2009 Lehman Brothers recession we had soaring inflation. With inflation, the economist say the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Except now the middle class get poorer too.
My brother in law has to take a cancer drug that costs $20,000
a month. Why are we paying $4.00 a gallon in California, when there is a glut of oil in the world. They don't even know where to store all that oil.
Bright minds, creative minds and entrepreneurs that contribute to society should be rewarded by all means but needs to be a capped. $131 billion is not fair anymore . It has become
totally obscene when others are struggling to make ends meet.
1
From your writing to God's ears!
"we have spent the last 30 or so years transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the people at the very top"
What is OK about that. Why are we dismantling our economy to benefit a bunch of greedsters who don't know when to stop?
3
It is not fair to vilify the rich for being rich but it is fair to vilify their greed and their lack of humanity. Having an obscene amount of money and refusing to share some to help your countrymen survive poverty, get health coverage and education is not just
selfish and inhumane is most certainly unpatriotic.
You can’t love country and remain indifferent to the needs of its
people. These people are your consumers, their taxes pay to facilitate your business and their welfare is a reflection on you.
Who wants to be rich in a poor country, who can enjoy life being surrounded by poverty and diseases and who can be proud of a country where most of its people lack education?
Mr.Gates is a great philanthropist and humanitarian and it is difficult to understand how such a generous and intelligent person would vote for Trump rather than try to convince his peers to face their patriotic duty and lead the country towards a better future.
Money should be used to innovate, educate and help humanity. When money becomes a powerful tool to discriminate, abuse, disconnect and isolate people, money is nothing more than a vice and a disease.
1
This really is a problem with how wealth is distributed. Our current system always works in favor of the billionaires. That is why we have people who are homeless and people who are sick and cannot get healthcare. The billionaires continue to buy politicians and skew the system ever more in their favor. Then when Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders points out the gross inequalities they howl like hurt pigs, complaining that we are after all of their wealth.
No one wants to take all of their wealth. What we want is fairness. We want is good health care and an end to homelessness. Billionaires and their charitable donations will not solve these problems. What we need is a system that will give our citizens a decent living wage with the benefits our economy can afford to give all. We need to stop glorifying greed and avarice. We need to stop this cult of admiration for the billionaires who always take care of their interests first only to drop crumbs for the rest of us.
1
What's unfair is this lumping of billionaires together and deliberately distorting what Bill Gates said. Gates is a guy who has given more than $50 billion to charity (It's why he's no longer the world's richest man) and has promised to give his entire fortune to charity, except for $10 million to each of his kids. He has also supported--SUPPORTED--a wealth tax and higher income taxes for himself. He just thinks that a 6% wealth tax per year is too high. And he's right.
1
There is a trend all overthe world cannot be ignored. interestingly it is more eye catching in developed and developing nations.
Billionaires wanted their own selves to be elected, for example Ukraine, USA, Italy etc.
Now we have much deep infiltrating brain wash methods than previous century , such as twitter, facebook etc.
World is becoming increasingly similar to Orwell's 1984.
Billionaires complaining about a return to the tax structure of fifty years ago as "unfair"? What next? Invocations from the March Hare and the Mad Hatter dancing merrily to the Lobster Quadrille? Cheshire cat smiles? I find my sympathy for these types absolutely flagging right about now.
3
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
John F. Kennedy 1/20/61
It was true then. It is true now.
5
It's very funny that all these anti Dem ideas.. complain about taxes and says that Tax is not the solution.. but then never offers one from their side as well.
Tomasky may be right that people vote for demagogues because they feel powerless knowing there are billionaires around -- but they always knew rich people were around and they often voted for demagogues in the past. They could just as easily feel powerless because the university-educated ruling class makes huge social decisions without consulting them. For instance, that class has already decided that public multi-person washrooms will be desegregated to make life easier for transsexuals -- and anyone who disagrees is a bigot whose hate speech should be suppressed. They will implement that decision within 10 years. No one asked me, so that sure makes me feel powerless.
Ignorance in print. Democracy is not American; we are a republic where the masses choose smarter men to lead them, guided by a constitution which guarantees personal liberty.
Why on earth would we want to be ruled by a mob of uneducated, unsuccessful people who covet the wealth of others? We do not. We are not; thanks to the Founding Fathers and their genius.
@EWG Your argument is a false equivalency. How are you equating fair tax laws with " being led by uneducated, unsuccessful people"? We get it. People like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want a nice infrastructure, yet howl like a wounded animal when asked to pitch in to fund it.
1
I would suggest looking African countries that have redistributed wealth. Penalize the people that produce products and services and you end up with a society that can NOT feed nor house its populace. Warren is dangerous.
The discussion here is not really about Bill Gates. He is just a symbol for a system that has outlived its' time. There is not so much difference between absolute communist and absolute capitalism; the communists hoarded absolute power and the capitalists hoard absolute wealth. The taxpaying public are the loosers in both cases.
1
I'm very disappointed in Bill Gates.
1
"we have spent the last 30 or so years transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the people at the very top".....This statement is not true and never supported in any of these "oh whoa is me in the middle class" articles. Exactly how did a billionaire sneak in the window and steal off the nightstand of the middle class?
Billionaires are a danger but not as much of a danger as collectivism and communism, and that is what is really at play here. And you might ponder, as Gen X,Y, and Zers do, “Hmmm, Communism is not so bad”. OK, ask anyone who ever lived in a communist country. They will give you a different answer.
Thankfully, they still only get one vote.
1
I agree with the author that billionaire's threaten democracy.
But, read Chris Hedges' column today, where he explains why it is futile to appeal to the conscience of the billionaire's, as individuals or as a class:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/death-by-oligarchy/
"In the same interview in which he knocked Senator Warren, Mr. Dimon said “freedom and free enterprise are interchangeable.”
How about the freedom to have 3 jobs to barely put food on the table & be chronically sick due to insecurity? Is that "free enterprise"? Hardly, Mr. Diamond.
Free enterprise can only exist & thrive on a level playing field.
What we have here is a rigged economy with wall-to-wall economic injustice brought to you by late stage capitalism, idolized by neoliberals spawned by Milton Friedman's Chicago School converts. What we have is a zero-sum-game
"winner take all" system where people like you are able to "amass" fortunes & "freedom." Vampires & parasites all.
2
It is my belief that contentment is the death of ambition. That people who are comfortable with their lot in life just settle in and enjoy themselves.
When America was a more equitable country , this meant a large, employed middle class who had a place to live, they could cover their bills and had some extra cash in their pocket to spend. Best possible situation for a capitalist. Lots of people to sell things to.
As that comfy middle class has shrunk, America now has an ever larger amount of people who are no longer comfy. Soon, their happy thoughts turn to grumpy and grumpy can turn to anger.
You can see the anger in Trumps base. A lot of whom collect guns. You think a whole lot of armed men with no sense of a future worth living will sit still in front on the TV forever? Can the rich not see that some of them might actually start protesting, with violence?
It may be against the ones they see as the other to start with, but at some point it will turn against the leaders who promised them a better future and have failed to deliver.
Someone is going to decide that a Molotov Cocktail needs to get tossed. Then more of them. And the target of these outbursts might very well be the monied class they see as the oppressers.
1
I am hoping and praying that a plurality of voters next year finally connects the dots and elects either Warren or Sanders, along with a democratic Senate. Anything else will allow this slowly unfolding disaster to continue, with grave consequences for the future.
1
It may not matter either way if excessive wealth is a domestic problem. If there are going to be billionaires in the world, Americans will want them to be American.
Maybe it sounds unfair to take 20% of a billion dollar fortune.
But, I think it sounds more unfair that someone like Donald Trump was born into vast wealth he never earned, while hardworking people struggle every day for scraps left over from the billionaires tables.
I don't believe in communism or even socialism, but at the very least all our children deserve an even playing field without wealth playing a part in their successes or failures.
Bill Gates is donating 'billions' to key global challenges like polio and sanitation in third world nations.
I strongly believe this money is better spent by the Gates Foundation than by our Congress.
Mr. Gates has a better track record with spending money wisely and effectively.
The Democratic Party's moderates are encouraging Democrats to run on bread-and-butter, kitchen-table issues rather than Trump's unfitness to be President. This means that the party's moderates think that voters do not care about abstractions like the rule of law or the separation of powers or checks and balances. Our checks and balances have been producing gridlock, so their workings have to be fixed. But Trump is proposing fixing them by throwing them overboard, and our voters do not think they are important as long as our system is delivering for them.
If the moderate Democratic strategy carries the day, Democrats will not have a mandate to strengthen our system of government under law, but only a mandate to change its distribution of goodies. Such is the political wisdom imparted to citizens by growing up in one of the oldest, most successful democracies in the world -- the wisdom that what matters is winning or at least doing better, which is the wisdom of Donald Trump.
Exactly! Well said, Mr. Tomasky. You have spoken for me but did so more clearly and concisely.
An interesting article in this month's Scientific American. It essentially argues that the natural tendency of a totally "fair" free market tends towards an oligarchy. The only corrective is some sort of redistribution (via taxes or some other mechanism). It is very interesting, not too wonky, and worth reading
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/
1
Bill Gates eases his conscience by giving millions every year to worthy causes. He should have paid higher taxes and given more to his employees to begin with so that more American's went to work, our education system didn't get stripped, the infrastructure got rebuilt and science, technology and research nation wide were developed on the scale of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The justice system would have been able to handle immigration, we would have tackled climate change and eased the suffering of millions. But now he gets to feel like his life has meaning because he wakes up every morning and decides how generous he will be with money he essentially stole from his country. He thinks he earned that money. He didn't. By keeping all of it and yet using everyone else's tax money to build and support his enterprise through low interest loans, judicial systems that protected him, infrastructure, science and technology research, educating his work force, free internet and airways, etc. etc. etc. he basically stole it. Time is up on the wealthy and greedy.
3
Billionaires are not our friends.
The billionaires, even the "liberal" billionaires, still ignore our recent economic history and consider themselves the great technological liberators of the future. Neoliberalism has proved itself a failure, unless you consider extreme class division to be a good thing. In any case, Trump is the outcome since the Democrats offered no alternative. Please read, 'Bad Samaritans' by Chang, or learn from Wendy Brown or Robert Kuttner and others about neoliberalism.
2
Just so.
I was all in for Senator Warren when I thought the heart of her candidacy was going back to the American way before Reagan on regulating the financial sector, progressive taxation, infrastructure and other public goods, and regulating monopoly power and unfair business practices to ensure the sort of fair competition that fosters innovation, spreads the wealth, and inspires business and consumer confidence.
I’m sorry to see her candidacy get bogged down in Medicare for all when the time is ripe for a public option (and we can then see how that works out), free college when the time is ripe for going back to the days of affordable college, and the like.
2
This article is so on target. We are told that Democrats can't win if:
1. We tell billionaires that they have to give up a few of their billions-- so can't have a real debate about income inequality.
and/or
2. We don't respect the views of white working class men--so we can't have a real debate about structural racisim and gender inequality.
3. We propose big bold plans to make sure that all Americans have access to health care.
Seems to me that that leaves a very narrow band for the Dems to work in. I'm proud of Elizabeth Warren for pushing the debate forward.
5
If the billionaires calculated all of the benefits conferred upon them -- from reduced income tax rates, to favorable capital gains tax rates, to opportunities to exclude income from taxes, to subsidies and tax breaks for their businesses -- from the reign of St. Ronnie to the present, I have no doubt that it would more than make up for the increases in taxes proposed by any of the candidates, and likely all of the candidates' proposals combined. The fact it, many of these people amasses their wealth largely because of the changes in the tax code over the last 40 years that have favored them. So please, stop whining. Most of us have paid full rates on all of our earned income for the last 40 years, and what do we get in return? Threats to cut our social security and medicare benefits, and limits on the amount of state and local taxes we can deduct from our income.
6
There is not a level playing field in this country. The Rich live by different rules in the Judicial system, and when it comes to Taxation. Warren Buffett for many years, and likely still, pays less taxes each year than his secretary. The degree of wealth inequality in this nation is not absurd, it is profoundly anti-democratic, and goes against everything our Founders stood for. Currently, there is little life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness when Billionaires are paying less in taxes than secretaries. It is not only immoral it is amoral. It is the definition of injustice. The social fabric of this nation will continue to fray and eventually dissolve until Billionaires pay their fair share. What is their fair share? Look at Andrew Carnegie and look at how much of his wealth he gave away. That should be a starting point in regards to a fair level of taxation for Billionaires, who are not creators of wealth, but financial and social parasites paying a mere fraction of what is good, necessary and just for a nation to not merely subsist, not merely survive, but to thrive. Imagine how much better our healthcare and educational systems would be once Billionaires start paying their fair share?
2
@Raphael
"Warren Buffett for many years, and likely still, pays less taxes each year than his secretary."
No, that isn't what he said, and it isn't true. He was talking about marginal tax rates, not the amount of taxes paid. Of course he pays more than his secretary, much more.
Financial illiteracy is the problem. Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders are the symptoms, not the cure.
I remember growing up in the 60's, when the basic building blocks of the American dream were a secure job and home ownership. Who can assume they can have either in today's world? Homes, even basic homes, cost a fortune in many metropolitan areas, which is where the jobs are. And job security is a thing of the past.
How many employees at Chase Bank work 40 hour weeks and are unable to make ends meet, much less purchase a home? And what about part-time employees at Whole Foods who lost their health care benefits when Bezos took over the company? Meanwhile, his net worth continues to grow. These people are tone deaf and callous if they can't do better for the people who work for them. If they want to silence Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders there's an easy answer: do something to improve the lives of your workers.
3
“ I don’t get why the candidates aren’t simply proposing to increase marginal income tax rates on dollars earned above some very high figure. That seems a lot more straightforward to me.”
You should read Thomas Piketty.
1
The USA currently harvests about 27.1% of GDP in taxes.
China rings in at 30%.
Warren's programs would vault the USA's tax to a GDP ratio so far beyond China's that we'd have to swap the descriptions of our economy's.
China would become the Capitalist Nation, and the USA would assume the Communist Nation mantle.
Odd.
1
Thank you! Huge piles of wealth accumulated and inherited do not help anyone except those few super-rich families who have it. It is turning us into a middle-class-less society. We should go back to the Eisenhower-era tax structure (and actually heed his warnings about the military-industrial complex.)
5
@SherlockM, Another Ike fan. You do know there were so many deductions back then nobody paid 90%? it was 38%-40%
The column is predicated on an economic lie, and we must stop perpetuating the lie because it interferes, significantly, with addressing the solution. To whit:
"...we have spent the last 30 or so years transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the people at the very top."
Nope, the economy is NOT a zero sum game, never has been, and repeating this profound misunderstanding of how the economy grows, and creates wealth, fuels rage and anger that is misplaced.
Rich people didn't rip off everybody else - that's the zero sum, the-economy-is-a fixed-pie argument, that is so soul-satisfying, but is dead wrong. What DOES happen, during boom times and the creation of new industries, is that new wealth is created and in its creation is unevenly distributed, sometimes in so rapid a fashion that it re-sets inequality extremes in ways that surprise all of society, probably including those who benefit most.
THAT"S the problem we need to address, and the solution must focus on how to share these rapid wealth-creation events more broadly, more even across the members of society. Maybe taxes on the wealth created are a solution, but wouldn't it be a better idea to spread pockets of rapid wealth creation across more employees, for example?
At any rate, back to the main argument - no transfer of wealth happened, period. Perpetuating that trope harms all of us.
2
I agree that this claim of transfer is misleading, but there is more to inequality than an uneven distribution of wealth.
Wealthy people, and wealthy corporations in particular, can have lower tax rates than the middle class. This results in an uneven distribution of taxes, with poorer people and smaller businesses paying higher tax rates (rates; not absolute amounts).
For example “Why Amazon paid no 2018 US federal income tax” https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/04/03/why-amazon-paid-no-federal-income-tax.html
Initially, tax deductions and tax cuts were intended to encourage pro-social and pro-economic behaviour. I think that at this point we can legitimately wonder wheat her the benefits received by large corporations and wealthy individuals still have any pro-social or pro-economic consequences or whether they have crossed the line into oligarchic welfare.
1
@BGA Remember that one of the dual mandates of the Federal Reserve is to keep inflation low. They do this by slowing the economy down when it starts heating up. Hence, while the economic pie may not be zero-sum (ie not growing), it grows at a finite and regulated(not free) rate.
Hence if folks are making more money than they are expanding the GDP by, they have, in fact, figured out how to have wealth transferred to them.
Funny how we both watched the same interview between Gates and Sorkin and you perceived it so differently? I heard Gates say that he pays a tremendous amount in taxes, and has concerns about paying double that. I also heard Gates state cautiously that he would be more likely to vote for a "professional" candidate he disagreed with, then someone unprofessional. It was clearly a dig at Trump.
3
What bothers me is not that they had a profitable idea and made money, but that they did it on the taxpayers back. How many of their employees through the years and still do have needed public assistance in the form of food stamps, health ins and housing assistance? Amazon should be paying corporate taxes, so we need to change the tax laws. Corporations have used the Trump tax cuts to buy back stock, not R and D.
6
Wealth tax was never a big issue for me, I might even feel it may not be the best for the economy. But I have to say, hearing the billionaires complaining about it have made me support it and I’m now more likely to vote for Warren instead of Biden who I was considering because I thought he would have the best chance.
5
I am mystified in general, by the response of the billionaires who speak out against significant wealth redistribution. I think most people outside of really expensive metropolitan areas would consider a family with a net worth of 1 million dollars to be at least doing OK. Bill Gates, with a net worth of 100 billion dollars has a net worth of 100x1000x that 1 million dollars, or 100,000 x 1 million dollars. I genuinely don't understand what would be wrong with him having 50 billion instead, or what would be wrong with halving the net worth of all billionaires, as was written in an analysis of Warren's proposal. I don't know enough to say what kind of strategy makes the most sense for redistribution but I just cannot see a truly coherent argument against it in principle.
When I try to get into the heads of these people I think maybe they have a fear of losing power or status, or maybe they somehow feel they are thousands of times more worthy than everyone else around them. I don't know, but from my perspective as a normal human, it seems they are relying on some significant cognitive distortions to convince themselves that the status quo is OK.
7
Mr. Tomasky is right on the money, as it were. He might also have mentioned the electoral college, which is intended for the rich and works in their favor, as we saw with Bush and Trump.
3
While not to dismiss the rationale and market based immorality of wealth accumulation, what is missing in the American minds is the growing insecurity among many to maintain a living standard of recent generations. There is uncertainty among wide swaths in our economy from manufacturing, agriculture, retail to health care. Compound this with not only structural issues in our domestic economy by inequality among nations, a neocolonialism that motivates one million humans clamoring to our borders. We are at a crossroads of unrest here and around the globe--a series of transforming decades that have morphed into several wars. But it seems the best we can muster is to point fingers rather than identify trends, root causes and best practices
1
I can accept the idea that the middle class in America has long been in decline. There are many reasons for this. I can also accept the idea that an increase in capital gains tax above a certain level is also appropriate. Most of the very wealthy don't make their money in ordinary income. (Most people with high ordinary income but no real-estate or stock based capital gains are not especially wealthy.) But I fail to see how a dollar that goes to Bill Gates is directly taken from the hands of the middle class.
Bill, Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffet and many more of the super-rich got their because they started a business or improved a very small one. The vast, vast majority of their wealth comes from the value of the stock in their companies. Most of it still is. So, if Microsoft shares increase in value another 10% and Bill Gates gets richer, how exactly is this taking from the hands of the middle class?
2
@Robert M. I'm working poor and an aspiring novelist. For years, Microsoft Word came free with each computer I bought. Now, I have to pay for it yearly. This makes me ever so poorer. You still think that Mr. Gates hyper extreme wealth doesn't come at some cost to us low levels? Think again.
1
@Mac7429
But your computer is cheaper now, right? Your problem isn't with billionaires. Rather, your problem is your lack of financial/economic knowledge.
It is the manner of wealth acquisition which is the problem, not wealth per se.
Most of the very wealthy got their wealth from monopolies, not by competing fairly in free and competitive markets. Our government has creates the largest number of monopolies by its over-generous copyright and patent laws (nearly all with no limits on the prices that the monopolists can charge. Copyrights are the primary source of Bill Gates' fortune. Copyrights are responsible for the bulk of the income of the entertainment, sports, and publishing industries. Patents are responsible for the very high drug prices that Americans are charged.
Other monopolies have been acquired by corrupt behavior (sometimes legal, sometimes illegal). All major real estate development requires approval of key government officials, a system that invites corruption.
But Gates' and Dimon's criticisms are accurate. Warren and Sanders want to punish all the wealthy, not just those who acquired wealth my anti-competitive or corrupt means.
Michael Tomasky, exactly. Our economy needs to achieve a steady-state income and wealth distribution consistent with democracy. It needs to stay that way. Otherwise, the rich will keep getting richer than the rest of us until democracy disappears and we 99% will be crushed like the peons, peasants and serfs of earlier regimes. This country started off with more natural resources than we could use or even recognize at the time, but it's developed now and people can't just "move west" and homestead a new spread. We have got to make money flow down to the middle and the poor just as fast as it flows up to the rich. Up is the real direction of the trickle (or flood). And it doesn't happen by accident. In fact, the tax cutters since Reagan or even Kennedy set loose and upward flow of money that's greatly increased inequality and continues to do so. That growth of inequality needs to be reduced by taxing the rich even higher than in the past for maybe 20 years to restore economic equality to what it used to be. This needs to happen. In the past, it took the Revolutionary War to throw off the yoke of the rich guys of that era, the British nobility and royalty who thumbed their noses at the 99%. That war was a lot of bother. It's far better to tax now while society is civil and that level of force isn't needed.
2
Just to keep the math straight, a billion dollars is a thousand million..... meaning you're a millionaire a thousand times over. Why does anybody need more than that? And most of these guys aren't necessarily exceptional in any regard (or honest/morally sound for that matter), they were just in the right place at the right time or their grandparents were. Good for them, I'm not one of these people that resents rich folk for making a good go of it or who won the parent lottery. I just don't understand their resistance to lifting up the country that they are blessed to be in. They would be heroes.
6
Excessive wealth is a threat to excessive wealth, and socialism is a threat to all wealth.
Bezos and Company earned their cash, and employ millions for their vision.
I reject any effort to penalize them for playing by the rules.
I applaud any effort to change the rules going forward, by increasing the minimum wage across the Nation to $15.00.
As well as all efforts to raise wages for the Middle Class. The best leverage on this account is a booming economy, wherein labor markets are tight, and competitive.
This accompanied by an increase in health benefits for all American's, by allowing market forces to bring down costs. Medicare is not allowed to negotiate prices? Ridiculous.
This transfers wealth to the people at the ground roots of capitalism, as opposed to from the top down, aka Socialism.
One should ask why China allowed Private Property in 1984, and what happened afterwards, economically, before rushing to revive thier failed socialist model in the USA.
2
I don’ think anyone is advocating for a switch to the Maoist model. Warren, Sanders, et al. just seem to be advocating a return to post-WW2 Keynesianism.
4
@Tom Warren and Bernie's programs call for a 53% bigger government on Day One.
Paid for by a 76% rise in taxes. Per the needs to balance the budget.
As in never gonna happen. They are selling lies, which is displeasing to my soul. And a ticket to Trump's re-election. I am a Biden guy... with Klobuchar as his wingman.
Give me Biden/Klobuchar, not more Trump!
1
"I don’t get why the candidates aren’t simply proposing to increase marginal income tax rates on dollars earned above some very high figure"
Seriously? The point is that the very wealthy don't take much income - they allow their investments to accumulate untaxed. You should understand that if you're going to write for the New York Times.
3
This is an odd argument. It is one thing for Steve Forbes or Donald Trump to whine about taxes when they inherited their wealth. Gates, Jobs and Bloomberg created new things that changed the world does things. In all likelihood John D. Rockefeller was disproportionately richer. Income taxes should be raised, capital gains taxes should be raised but "sticking it to the rich" especially when professionals will assume it will impact them will be a political disaster.
Bill Gate and Microsoft should have been RICO'd for their antitrust violations and outright theft (see STACKER). His gains are ill-gotten and got away with it.
2
It is just fallacy to think that some brilliant, young inventor is not going to "grace" us lower humans with his creation because he might only make 10 billion dollars from it rather than 100 billion.
Billionaires today seem to be obsessed with playing the game as zero sum. It's not enough for them to win significant wealth - they have to be assured that the rest of us lose and are kept in our place of having to depend on them for charity.
Dear rich people: humanity doesn't want your charity - people deserve to make a good living for themselves and their families, which means significantly better salaries than the bottom 70% are making now. The entire world would be better off if the distribution of wealth were a little more equitable and all workers could afford to live a middle class lifestyle, able to afford all of life's necessities along with some pleasure.
6
Gates, post Microsoft, has done many admirable things. But I remember an interview I heard on NPR IN 1992 in which one of the several interviewees ( a roundtable of Oracle's Ellison, Apples Jobs, Dell and others who met weekly for a talk fest of their own) was talking about Gates. The person said how interesting it was that they were all changing the world. Upon hearing this Gates was supposed to have said "yes but only one of us will survive the competition." In a democracy no single individual can be allowed to alone survive "the competition." Thats what its all about.
1
This amount of wealth is obtained at the expense of a great number of people. This wealth has been earned on the labour of workers who do not share in the wealth. It is obtained and protected by government's laws & regulations. This is a form of SOCIAL VIOLENCE, a form of WAR. It is also a form of THEFT as well as violent Warfare. Since the universe is balanced, if you allow this invisible WAR to continue without regulation eventually it will become a visible war between the opposing sides.
5
We all agree that billionaires should be paying more taxes. However, it should be in the form of a higher INCOME tax rate, NOT the wealth tax proposed by Senator Warren. Many reasons, but foremost a higher income tax rate is much simpler to implement. That said, don't blame billionaires for all of America's problems. Loss of jobs (and the power of labor) due to global trade and automation of the workforce are much more to blame.
2
The problem with billionaires is not their money per se but the laws passed by elected officials that allow for tax avoidance and wealth accumulation in countless ways. Of course, those officials receive financial contributions that make their re-election possible, and they receive insider information that makes them richer. Does that sound like a quid pro quo or just “let’s make a deal” antics? No matter. It’s this “arrangement” that has created capitalism-on-steroids and unprecedented income inequality. It’s incompatible with democracy. It’s unsustainable without bad consequences. Almost everybody knows this. Few are gutsy enough to talk about it. Reason to hope or despair?
4
Once a person is worth a few billion, what are they accomplishing for themselves by increasing that figure to billions and billions? Why don't they have any sense of concern for millions and millions of their fellow citizens who aren't earning enough for a decent life?
13
@DB
They are after control. They own our politicians so keep their own taxes down. Then they can use their money as only they wish - their wealth does not go to a government where the government (presumably representative of the people, although that has become increasingly questionable) decides what uses are made of the money. See, e.g. Apple's recent offer of $2.5 billion to build housing. They get to choose how their money is spent and how much of it they wish to donate. Of course, we don't get that luxury. All of our tax money is handed over to levels of government where elected representatives decide what happens to it.
4
It’s interesting that so many of the NY Times articles on this topic focus on the impact to billionaires but does not say much about what the impact of this tax would mean for everyday people, ie tell me how many college educations this would fund for people who could not afford it, tell me about the aging infrastructure across the country that could be rebuilt and spark employment opportunities, tell me about the affordable housing that could support, tell me about how many people it could help fund for healthcare, give me some statistics, give me the big picture of what it means for all of us, not just what it means for a few billionaires who confuse capitalism for democracy. Lift your game NY Times and tell me what this tax could mean for every American.
14
I don't believe people are inspired to be creative and inventive and build amazing things primarily by a desire to earn bazillions of dollars. I believe they are driven to create and build because those are intrinsically satisfying pursuits, central to what it means to be human.
It is a horrific fallacy to argue that we would be living in the dark ages if billionaires couldn't have profiteered as they have over the past 50 years.
People look back on the 1950s as a halcyon, lovely period of American stability and growth...despite the oppression of women and minorities, Communist scare and other ills. The reason is that it was a period of calm, stability, and relatively equal opportunity, at least for a majority of white males. During that time, the marginal tax break was above 90%, and CEOs were well paid but there was a great deal more balance economically.
It's time to end the Monopoly game before it's the end of our great country. Tell all the billionaires to turn in their houses and hotels and play money and re-deal so we all can enjoy playing the game once again. In other words, re-implement the highly progressive tax structure (90% is fine for billionaires) and re-circulate economic benefits so that the middle and upper-middle classes will once again feel secure and the country can rebalance economically and solve other problems such as homelessness, mental illness, addiction and crime.
Do it NOW, before it's too late. Our precious democracy CAN be lost.
8
Contrary to what the article claims, we have NOT “spent the last 30 or so years transferring trillions of dollars from the middle class to the people at the very top.” Rather, the upper class increased its wealth, due largely to an enormous increase in labor-related income, if we are to trust the data revealed by Daniel Markovits in his book The Meritocracy Trap. 
The claim that this income was somehow “taken“ from the middle class is dubious at best and smacks of the worst kind of entitlement mentality.
My standard of living as a member of the middle class has not suffered by an iota because Bill Gates got rich. If anything, the standard of living of all Americans, not just the rich, improved substantially in most dimensions since the 1970s. Rather than choosing to obsessively worry about the obscene wealth of others, I choose to focus on the privilege of living a fulfilled life, which is possible in 21st-century United States.
Let us stop complaining and appreciate the life that most other people on this planet will never be lucky enough to enjoy.
5
Labor related income is just another way of saying the thing you deny- that the wealth was simply taken from the Middle class. The dollars that went into the very wealthiest Americans didn’t just spin out of thin air. The “labor related income” was created in part by underpaying workers, minimizing benefits and maximizing profits.
1
That is the point. While you and I are fine most of the people in this country are not
1
@D. S. But then, you are not considering our 22 trillion debt, our ridiculous healthcare system, our badly deteriorated infrastructure, our obscene student debt, etc., etc.. And no, the standard of living post WW II starting going downhill around 1973...if you do your research, it has not "improved substantially in most dimensions since the 1970s".
If we’re connecting dots, how about the role that the millionaires and billionaires play in determining who makes the rules we all live by - the government? You can’t fix the system if you don’t change who selects who runs the system.
6
No one needs the kind of wealth that these guys have amassed. And their wealth has to have come from somewhere. My guess is that a lot of people have less money because these guys have more.
The wealth that billionaires possess is obscene. It is as simple as that. And the fact that our current tax code is enacted entirely to benefit the wealthy makes matters even worse. Taxing billionaires at a higher rate is not confiscatory, it is simply drafting a better tax code that makes sure that everyone pays his (and they are all male) fair share.
14
Having given away manufacturing to China, the idea that America will introduce extreme taxes on its billionaire innovators is economic suicide.
People forget that most of the billionaire fortunes under discussion consist of paper wealth in the form of shares in the companies the billionaires have created.
To pay tax on such capital assets, they have to be sold.
Who is going to buy them ?
China ? Saudi Arabia ?
Why would American billionaires not simply quit America in favour of foreign tax friendly jurisdictions ?
Just how far do the socialists think the billionaire wealth is going to stretch ?
$10 trillion divided by 330,000,000 people is $30,000 per person so the party ends pretty quickly.
Rather than getting carried away by a socialist brain explosion, it would be far better to implement sensible constitutional and electoral reforms to restore a properly functioning democracy.
Key steps:
1. Compulsory registration of all eligible voters in a Federal voter database managed by an independent statutory body.
2. Implementation of a proportional representation system so the voice of the people cannot be suppressed.
3. Strict constraints on the amount of money political parties and candidates can spend on elections.
4. Accounting for the spend of political action groups supporting specific parties and candidates in the party or candidate budget cap.
5. Reinforcing oversight provisions of the Constitution so rogue office holders can be held to account.
2
Jeff Bezos doesn't have a money bin with 113 billion one-dollar bills in it. He owns part of Amazon. In essence, what Bezos owns is the tools that Amazon employees use to deliver their services and earn their livings. The only way that Bezos can pay a tax on his wealth is to liquidate part of it, which is to say, to liquidate part of Amazon, and therefore some of the jobs that it provides. Liquidating the private sector to fund progressive spending dreams is not a good idea.
7
Does he liquidate to pay his level of taxes now? No. What the article says is these billionaires are securing their wealth BEFORE it gets to paying taxes through laws and regulations that ensure their cash flow to profits. So you missed the point, just like the Dems asking for more taxes.
1
This article and the beliefs it espouses are so simplistic, reminding me of the kind of "ideals" that spawned the French Revolution. It's easy to point at the high fliers and want to shoot them down (makes a great show) but it's more complex to look at the gross and irresponsible waste that would result from essentially usurping their wealth for what is ostensibly the "public good." You know that their wealth would go to the Pentagon, to bail outs, to buy-offs of foreign governments (aid), to golf trips and fancy political dinners, and not to the creative uses which their present holders can make of it. We are not poorer because Gates is richer. He is richer because people buy the products of the company he founded. Do you realize how he is working to eradicate many diseases with his money? It's not a frivolous thing he is doing, and it's driven by a higher moral sense of purpose than the mob screaming "gimme some of that!"
3
Counterpoint: given his wealth, Gates’ charitable contributions are roughly equivalent to an average American giving $20 a year to charity.
If Gates truly is the benevolent billionaire he claims to be, why doesn’t he donate 99 billion to charity and enjoy his still massive fortune?
The French Revolution worked.
6
@Thom. The French Revolution led to the Reign of Terror. Mass starvation, chaos, murders, and poverty even more severe than before the revolution. The chaos was only stopped by the rise of a dictator, Napoleon. There were then 20 years of war with Napoleon trying to conquer Europe. Did you really write that the French Revolution worked?
1
Making billionaires poorer reduces their political power, so in and of itself is a good thing. Reducing oligarchic control is a good regardless of what the taxes themselves fund.
2
Bravo, thank you for this clear article. It needs to be shouted from the mountain tops.
5
Tax the poor. There are many more poor people than billionaires. A tax on the poor would also create many more poor people who could then also be taxed. It's a win win proposal!
4
In the 60's and 70's, when we had a strong middle class, up to date infrastructure, and the best public education system in the world, corporations and the top 1% paid 40% of the tax revenue.
Today, thanks to the Republican party and their trickle-down 'economics', corporations and the top 1% pay only 12% of total tax revenue.
From 40% to 12%. It's ridiculous, and is seriously harming our country. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our public education system is deteriorating (not even in the top 20), Medicare, Medicaid and SS are threatened, and there simply is no middle class anymore.
We MUST raise taxes on corporations and the rich, not just a little, but dramatically. If they actually care about this country, they would be more than happy to pay their fair share.
15
A couple quick calculations to get an idea of the scale:
1 million USD is $50,000 per yr for 20 years - a career for most working folks. And most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
If you cleared $5,000,000 per YEAR it would still take you 21,400 YEARS to make what Mr. Gates is worth today ($107,000,000,000). That's much longer than Steph Curry is likely to play.
I have very little sympathy for their complaints or their entitlement.
17
And bang goes Bill Gates' legacy. Going forward he'll be remembered as the alpha-billionaire who would rather send the planet into chaos and undo all of his philanthropic endeavors than pay a higher tax rate. History will not be kind to this man.
22
Steve, I’ve never heard bill gates say he wouldn’t pay more taxes. Gates simply objects to the scale of tax proposals out there.
As warren Buffett has pointed out, the wealthiest havent paid what most consider a reasonably fair share. higher taxes on capital gains, dividends and estates as well as closing loop holes and tax avoidance strategies would be much more effective, tho, than a wealth tax.
1
@Dsr
" I’ve never heard bill gates say he wouldn’t pay more taxes. Gates simply objects to the scale of tax proposals out there."
>Difference without distinction?
1
I disagree. If our democracy is destroyed it will be because of wealth confiscation of the Warren type. Incentives to innovate will be destroyed. Capital will flee en masse to a more hospitable location. The door would open to a strict authoritarian socialist leader.
Then the U.S. is officially..... Venezuela. With the associated suffering and abject poverty.
Be careful what you wish for.
6
You are fighting the ideological “war on wealth” battle. It’s an extreme argument, it says that nothing can change without blowing the whole system up.
6
@Pono While Senator Warren's plan may be punitive, I disagree with your argument that higher taxes on the rich will cause capital to flee and innovation to be destroyed. During the 1950's and early 1960's, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90%--and the economy, middle-class, and stock market boomed. We also sent men to the moon.
4
Long term billionaires have the following choices:
1 - sacrifice some of their opulence to preserve Democracy
2 - watch growing unrest among the 99% lead to the downfall of Democracy, to be replaced by either socialism or a despot (and we are already pretty close to having a despot)
This is what has always happened throughout the history of human civilization and America Exceptionalism won't stop it from eventually happening here too.
7
@rs I agree. Unfortunately, the super-rich have no interest in preserving democracy. In fact, I am quite certain they are deliberately working to destroy it. Why would they want to share their power with us?
1
Middle class is a buffer between the rich and poor classes. History teaches us that whenever the middle class essentially becomes marginalized and starts disappearing there is a major revolution in the country to throw out the rich.
The last time when the contribution between Corporates and Individuals paid equally (35% each) to Federal Treasury was in 1944. Thereafter the individual taxation has increased to nearly 50%, whereas corporate tax share has decreased to about 10%. Its time we focused on taxing the corporations, giving them credit for contributions to improving the society - like housing, building/sustaining infrastructure, creating public schools and making secondary and higher education cheaper.
4
Elizabeth Warren is proposing a 2% wealth tax. This would mean that someone like Bill Gates who has $15 billion, would be taxed $300 million , leaving him with $14.7 billion.
He would rather vote for Trump than have to survive on only $14.7 billion dollars!!
6
@Sallie
Senator Warren is proposing a wealth tax that would be imposed on an annual basis.
1
any good billionaire will have investments that are making more money every year - even with a couple percentages scraped off every year, they will still see their wealth continue to grow year over year.
2
So? Bill Gates will still be a billionaire. He makes billions every year.
5
I agree with this piece, and would add that billionaires have benefited disproportionately from the free society, infrastructure, services, and other advantages provided by living in the USA. These advantages are all funded by taxpayer dollars. Billionaires, and indeed multi-millionaires, should therefore pay a a much higher percentage of their wealth in taxes to reflect they disproportionate advantages that have allowed them to amass that wealth.
Also, without a middle class, who will buy from Amazon and support Microsoft? I see no other end in sight here than the creation of a handful of massive feudal estates that will take control as our democracy crumbles (along with much of civilization as the climate apocalypse looms). They will have their own militaries (why pay for a police force), their own court physicians (scrap Medicare and government sponsored health services), their own private schools for their children (who needs publicly funded education) and so on. I fear that a new world order is on the horizon if we don't turn this around quickly.
5
FANTANSTIC piece! Thank you Mr. Tomasky. Stability does have a price indeed. So too does just the day to day workings of any society. Our infrastructure, once the pride of a nation is crumbling, our school systems are eroding and where has the money gone that used to pay for these things? The middle class understands that we're all in it together. It's the greedy multi-billionaires that don't even recognize that they are part of our society let alone benefiting from all of our hard work and innovation.
5
The people who most use "The System" to their financial benefit are the ones who should pay the most for it. I derive no direct financial benefit from the portion our Navy and Coast Guard spend maintaining open shipping lanes. I benefit very little from our regulated capital markets, airports, Interstate Highways. Besides keeping us "safe", our military protects our "interests" abroad. You can protect MY interests with a padlock. There are a lot of arguments favoring the progressive income tax system.
2
Businesses need customers who can afford their products / services. Paying higher wages and reducing the tax liability of working class people helps the businesses because the extra money will be spent and support the business community.
Who will be the customers once all the money has gone to the top?
Also, as has been pointed out by others, business benefits from infrastructure such as decent schools to educate potential employees, roads and bridges to deliver products and allow employees to commute to work, etc., etc. That all requires tax money.
A system that does not compensate people enough so they have money to spend on non-necessesities and does not maintain its infrastructure is unsustainable in the long run.
1
The USA has a great tradition of philanthropy funded by "excessive wealth", benefitting educational, cultural and medical ventures and institutions, and we have all benefitted by them.
1
The USA has a great tradition of philanthropy funded by "excessive wealth", benefitting educational, cultural and medical ventures and institutions, and we have all benefitted by them.
The Warren / Sanders proposals would completely change the direction of our nation. I personally think they would take decades to implement. Having said that our ship of state is sinking, it is sinking right now. I would suggest the first priority should be to save the ship, we can argue about direction later.
If you look at some of the changes that will result from the tax cut and jobs act, or the ludicrously named "Tax Payer First Act" you might notice (among other things) that medical deductibility increases to any excesses over 10 percent of adjusted gross income instead of the previous excess of expenses over 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. This directly affects seniors on fixed incomes and blue collar workers (largely) whose incomes have remained stagnant for decades. There is plenty more. Although I would love to see Herr Trump's federal 1040s for the past 10 years, his NYS IT-201 state tax filings should be a hoot.
1
I think that you are missing a point. If you "tax away" Jeff Bezos wealth, then the only way he can pay the tax is to sell his Amazon shares and slowly lose control of the company. It's the same with Mike Bloomberg - he has control now which he would not have if he had so sell his stock. I also suspect but cannot prove it that Gates position on Microsoft's board would be jeopardized if he was made to sell his shares. It's not like these people have MONEY, they have STOCK from their own efforts. I don't think that a modest wealth tax is going to ruin competition but it will certainly be avoided through loopholes. The big issue is that these guys will pass their wealth on, which is when things get really unfair. Have a proper estate tax and you can control great wealth easily and constitutionally.
Rgrds-Ross
2
I wonder how many lives Bill Gates has saved with his unfair "Excessive Wealth".
1
@Craig G
I don't get a vote on how Bill Gates "saves lives". I do get to vote for my representatives that decide how we the people will "save lives" or "improve lives" or build a subway, or a school that actually educates. You may have faith in the benevolence and decision making of billionaires but I don't - regardless of their intentions.
3
@Mark That may be. But he has probably saved over 1 million lives in Africa. He built a company from nothing. I fear a country where it is thought that the fruits of his labors don't belong to him, but to a government that decides how much it will allow him to keep. If the problem is politicians that are bought off by these billionairs, find better politicians. Don't have elections where representatives in Cities that don't work win 70-80% of the vote. Democracy has to be practiced. Start practicing. And Mark, just so you are aware, you get to vote for a person to represent you. You NEVER get to vote for a tax rate.
@Craig G, Didn't he contribute in a big way to the malaria ending prevention fund? So, thousands if not millions.
2
I am soooooooo tired of all these billionaires whining and crying about paying more in taxes. They are already so wealthy that they can never spend it all.... no matter how lavishly they spend... and yet.. they want lower taxes.. which in turn forces the middle class to be taxed for the resulting shortfall in total tax revenue.
They already pay far lower taxes then billionaires in prior generations did... and they come cross as whinny little spoiled brats, while actual middle class US citizens are constantly forced to squeeze their income and/or incurr more debt just to make week to week ends meet.
Stop whining, grow up, and actually care about the rest of the citizens that are being harmed by your continuing lower tax rates everytime tax legislation is "reformed" by Congress.
7
Do a few billionaires know best re: allocating mega-billions of dollars? That idea is fundamentally flawed. Elsewhere on today's NYT website, Elon Musk is launching a hoard of satellites that scientists fear will alter the night sky for all the rest of us. Nov. 2091 Atlantic describes Jeff Bezos' fantasies of humanity moving into "high frontier" space satellites; some observers speculate that may be Bezo's ultimate plan for his incomprehensible wealth. Such enormous schemes need far more reality checking than merely the personal preferences of a few billionaires.
4
@ghsalb Typo - it's the Nov. 2019 Atlantic, for the Jeff Bezos profile.
I used to respect Bill and Melinda Gates for their foundation work and causes.
No more. Bill lives in a 66,000 square foot custom built mansion, with a current market value of $127M. He he whines that he might have to pay 5-10% more of his annual income in taxes.... while sitting on a portfolio wealth in excess of $100B.
Bill has now lost all credibility as a philanthropist, and I refuse to support his foundation and it's efforst any more.
I feel sorry for Melinda. Melinda gets it, and has been instrumental in both setting up the Gates foundation as well as getting "stingy Bill" to spend down some of his billions for the benefit of others. Bill... he has clearly demonstrated with his latest tantrum that he is just another greedy little poser.
19
@Chuck ,
I wish they both would just give big chunks of the money to clearly good and established charities, instead of micro-managing it to (I guess) clear their guilty consciences. The last thing Africa needs is gmo corn.
(also note bg is a large stockholder of (eww) monsanto).
Gates, Dimon, and Bloomberg, the ancient regime, are so blinded by their billions they fail to see that Sanders and Warren are the last hope to save capitalism from self-destruction. The coming recession and possible ’08 level financial collapse are going to turn the country upside down. If they don’t want to listen to Warren, watch videos of Chile, Lebanon, Iraq, Paris, Barcelona, Hong Kong. People are sick of austerity economics, corrupt, elitist politics, and technocratic billionaire philanthropists, and it’s just a matter of time before they storm the manor house here in America.
7
I can not vision a fair and better society organized any other way than by democratic fair elections. I agree that there is something seriously amiss in a society where a fraction of the population has amassed wealth and power “grizzly” disproportionate of total wealth! Forcing the wast majority to crouch and scrape by. Life in the US was better in the 60-80’s. The American society is slowly becoming a powder keg building pressure. Voters look desperately to vote for someone who they can place their hope and trust on. Trump is a symptom of this, who is sorely proving to have been corrupt and a shocking disappointment! The alternative, Hillary Clinton might have anyway been marginally better? Voters did not really have any good alternatives 2016! GOP’s misguided support for the corrupt President is puzzling? Is capitalism broken? Could Joseph Stieglitz progressive capitalism be an alternative? Which card should voters now place their hopes on? Change must take place by peaceful democratic elections. When that change goes amiss as now has happened, the correction must be democratic and hopefully towards the better! Laws and taxation must be fair. It can not be as what Leona Helmsley once said: “Taxes are for small people!”
152
@Chris Isaksson the elections ate ANYTHING BUT fair when the voters do not engage in civic processes because they are too busy eking out a living by working 2-3-4 minimum wGe jobs.
Taxing capital gains at same rate as wages is a start. Progressive rates on top are better. A 2.5% tax on wealth may fix some past inequities.
12
@Chris Isaksson
Your last few lines put your finger on the problem. As long as enormous wealth equals speech, it can buy public exposure and drown out alternative voices. So what then becomes of peaceful democratic elections? They become a facade for furthering the interests of the super-rich.
14:30 EST, 11/11
18
@Chris Isaksson and we all know where Leona Helmsley finally wound up don't we: behind bars in prison.
5
Can't leave this one alone.
Money is an abstract concept, binary code on a machine somewhere. It has meaning only if we choose to honor that abstraction.
Billionaires are very unlikely to lose their lofty position by taxation, they may lose their spot in the "Richest People in the World" articles but going from 20 mansions and 10 yachts to 10 mansions and 5 yachts, I think you can work through that pain.
No, the only way billionaires will end up bereft is if enough people think capitalism and democracy is a fool's game, and buy into might makes right. If climate change becomes bad enough, or streets become violent, or the people's will turns out to be meaningless, then everything if off the table.
You want to see billions disappear? Look at Venezuela.
You don't think it could happen here? Hopefully not, but lots of things are happening here I did not think could happen.
Pay up and be grateful for the privilege. Support the democratic institutions you secretly despise, or reap the whirlwind.
9
Agreed for the most part, but one point: Capitalism IS a might-makes-right system already. That’s why it needs to be regulated and buffered by govt programs in order to work inside a democracy at all.
Check out this piece on the indexes of “economic freedom” put out by the Heritage and Fraser foundations. These are the values of capitalism, and they rank many autocratic nations well above democracies.
Stephen Moore, whom Trump nominated for the Federal Reserve Board, summed it all up clear as day. “Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy,” he said in an interview. “I’m not even a big believer in democracy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/11/democracy-defenders-economic-freedom-neoliberalism?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Start over. We need one fixed tax rate for all on any and all income; and no deductions. No deductions. Deductions is simply a way of having other pay some of your taxes for you. And as we see, most of the rich – and their corporations – that had their politicians designing all these deductions, pay little to nothing in taxes.
2
I'm eager to see the phrase "un-redistribution of wealth" become even more widespread than "redistribution of wealth," the latter always uttered disapprovingly and by those on the right to assail sensible policies that would undo the ruinous wealth-hoarding of the past 30+ years.
It feels as though this topic is analogous to climate change: The data is in; the data is solid; disruption has begun; and if those with power don't stop playing games with our lives, then the outcome is going to wipe us out.
Nations that understand the value of the common good (such as the Scandi nations) function well because they have a solid tax base that ensures steady funding for infrastructure, education, police and firefighters, and a safety net. Those nations work because they aren't subjected to fluctuating, and decreasing, tax rates.
If billionaires threaten to leave the US because they don't want to pay their fair share, then let them -- but also revoke their US citizenship and bar them from ever setting foot in the country. They can't have it both ways -- they can't strip-mine the nation in order to hoard wealth and then refuse to pay their fair share of the taxes that keep the nation running.
4
Don't expect integrity from Gates, he is only a business man.
Only interested in his own interest.
257
@Fred Armstrong Bill Gates is arguably the most significant philanthropist alive today. I listen when he has a point of view. Look into his efforts with the Gates Foundation.
21
@Greg
Philanthropy is nice, but it's always on the terms of the donors. You can't depend on it to fill society's unmet needs that don't match their interest.
14:35 EST, 11/11
49
@Greg
So what.
The laissez-faire anti-regulatory environment of the Reagan revolution allowed Bill Gates to amass a vast fortune by protecting property rights he acquired, and by ignoring the lessons of the past by dragging its feet on anti-trust issues so he could extract monopoly rents on PC operating systems. He didn't invent the software or the PC - those were invented by others - he just was a shrewd businessman.
That same system undertaxed the wealth created by this extortion of monopoly rents so that Gates now has tens of billions of dollars to give away. Tens of billions of dollars that should have been taxed or accrued to other (e.g., competitors, or employees that were in a competitive labor market for their skills, or consumers and businesses that had competitive choice for products) in the first place.
That you ascribe value to what Gates says because of his philanthropy which only exists because he was a ruthless businessperson that took advantage of the system is really the whole point of this article.
It's nice that Bill Gates gives away his money. But I didn't vote for him, and the taxes he and his billionaire friends haven't paid over the years have starved our schools, roads, public transit, defense, food safety, etc. of the funds to do them better for all of us.
That the billionaires are now fighting to protect that power is exactly the problem our democracy faces.
76
Redistributing the first $100 billion of rich folks' annual income to the poorest 300 million Americans amounts to a whopping $333 each. This will take down the rich about 100 billion notches, but it won't do much for the rest of us.
A better way to achieve wealth equality might be to inflate away the wealth of the rich while creating millions of good paying jobs in infrastructure, climate change, education, health care, etc. This would involve running deficits large enough to push the INFLATION rate to, say, 5%. If the Fed keeps INTEREST rates at, say, 2% the wealthy will see a steady erosion of their wealth over time.
Of course, this won't be possible until we shed our unfounded fears about the so-called "national debt," which is currently approaching $23 trillion. The thing is, it's not a "debt." That figure represents the amount of financial wealth the US Treasury has injected into our economy. Commercial banks can't do this because all of their loans and deposits must sum to zero. Only the government can create true FINANCIAL wealth, and they've actually done a very good job of it.
1
Quick question for Bill Gates - what percent of your earnings is $10 billion?
It’s the share of total - not absolute amount that informs whether any person has paid their share.
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Well Bill Gates is closer in philosophy and in class to Trump than Warren, I am happy he gets to clarify this himself...
This article is based on the ridiculous proposition that money has been taken from the middle class and given to the billionaires. How did that happen? Simply stated, it didn’t. Elizabeth Warren likes to say that the wealthy became wealthy by exploiting the nation’s infrastructure (roads, fuels, etc.). That is a fallacy. In our economy, people buy things. And people create things. The people Warren, Sanders, Tomasky and other like-minded left-wing zealots deplore didn’t steal their money or have it given to them by the government. Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Bloomberg, Bezos and other entrepreneurial mega-billionaires got their fortunes by being creative and successful. Socialists and others may feel resentful, and envious, but that is their fault, not the mega-billionaires’. The mega-billionaires don’t represent a threat to democracy. They represent an exemplar to the rest of us that capitalism works. They have created their wealth and have added to the nation’s wealth. We should hope there are ever more of them.
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The rich free ride all over the place. They consolidate businesses eliminating jobs, creating downward pressure on wages and slowly inflate prices.
They also externalizations costs. Opioids have uses. But pharmaceutical practices maximized profits and imposed a cost on the rest of society. Those who profited will never pay for that.
Part of the reason for this is that the corporate form of ownership was designed to maximize capital formation and profits, but limits liability. Risk is involuntarily socialized to you and me.