
Abolish Billionaires - dkoch
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/opinion/abolish-billionaires-tax.html
======
macinjosh
In 2019 the US federal budget is $4.407 trillion. [1]

The combined wealth of America's top 400 billionaires in 2017 was 2.7
trillion.

If the social democrats got their dream and took all of their money we could
fund the government for only about seven months. When will D.C. and the
American people realize that tax rates aren't the problem?! It's the spending
stupid!

Edit: Yep, keep downvoting facts people. That will surely save us.

[1]: [https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-
sp...](https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-
spending-3305763)

[2]: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
interactive/2018/sep/...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
interactive/2018/sep/26/america-oligarchy-dominated-billionaires-big-money-
series)

~~~
wonder_er
Pointing out how high the base-line level of incompetence of the government
seems ineffective.

I think the line of reasoning is something like this:

> "The rich" are bad, we need the government to save us from them. The
> government is underfunded, so when it takes money from the rich, it'll be
> funded enough to become competent.

The federal debt is $20 trillion. The 400 billionaires and their 2.7 trillion
is about 15% of the debt we're in.

Why does the government always get a free pass in... everything?

~~~
happytoexplain
>I think the line of reasoning is something like this: "The rich" are bad, we
need the government to save us from them.

Isn't the argument that extreme wealth disparity is bad, and that government
is one of the best and/or only vectors for affecting societal problems on such
a massive scale? Your version sounds mangled on purpose to make half of the
people in the discussion look bad.

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Gustomaximus
I feel this abolish billionaires movement needs some tweaking.

History has many examples of people changing the world for the better and
getting filthy rich doing so. If we start wealth taxing these people to limit
their resources you are limiting their ability to push boundaries and
hopefully advance society.

Where I feel the issue sits is with dynastic wealth. Just because grandpa did
something, great grandchildren 10 generations on shouldnt be expected it's
their right to be sitting on massive trusts of assets.

And I think this limits society if we let capital accumulate for a bunch of
reasons but mainly 1) we become a divided society with little social mobility,
2)we lose innovation as people sit on assets and industries reduce
competition. And poor people don't have the access to time or resource to
innovate themself and 3) most importantly if we let small groups of elites run
the country they stop caring about services that matter to most people. Things
like schools and hospitals become cost lines to be reduced because they or
their kids will never use the public system so that increasing teacher ratio,
or longer waiting lists become less meaningful.

~~~
empath75
Carnegie wrote about this 100 years ago in the Gospel of wealth and that’s why
we had estate taxes and a high top marginal tax rate.

~~~
masonic
... and no wealth tax.

------
edoo
In a just society the only way you can get rich is through voluntary
interaction by adding value to world. In our society you can get rich through
legislation, which has created the wealthy parasitic class that earns a living
by preventing competition.

To target all the rich is to loot and destroy your society. To target the
wealthy parasitic class would be a revolution frankly.

~~~
krupan
Since most governments are also billionaires, maybe we could abolish them too.

~~~
edoo
I think the original success of the US was due to the paradoxical government
we created. The entire purpose of the government was to protect people from
the government.

------
imgabe
This is a very stupid idea that will no doubt get a lot of attention for the
author by people who will explain in great detail how stupid it is. I wonder
if that was the intent?

There is zero chance of this ever happening. It is not worth the time to read
about it.

Edit: Seriously, this is populist clickbait drivel the Times is running so the
broke millennial demographic can drool over revenge fantasies of smashing the
bourgeoisie while the Times and their cadre of surveillance partners figure
out how to get them to buy a Lexus. Ignore it.

~~~
ryandvm
You may be right, but I don't think you could have made a less persuasive
argument.

~~~
imgabe
I doubt anyone who doesn't immediately dismiss this as nonsense is capable of
being persuaded by any kind of rational argument.

~~~
happytoexplain
This kind of black and white vitriol actively drives people away from what
you're saying.

~~~
imgabe
This article is a troll. It is not a good faith argument. It's an attempt to
gain attention by saying something outlandish. The proper response to a troll
is to ignore it.

There are real discussions to be had about how to best redistribute wealth to
benefit society. This isn't it. Thy picked an arbitrary number and declared
people with more money than that "bad" and "immoral". There is zero mention of
what mechanism would be implemented to stop people from attaining more money
than the arbitrary "bad person" number, so there is nothing to discuss in
terms of whether this would be helpful.

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manigandham
Putting aside moral issues, taxes don't redistribute wealth. They just give it
to the government.

How is the government going to be suddenly better at managing money? What
leadership controls this new spending? What makes them so much better? This is
the day 2 stuff that never gets any thought, and yet is the critical piece of
this theory.

~~~
happytoexplain
I too would like to see this half of the proposal. Surely there must be
educated writing out there somewhere about the less dramatic part of the
story.

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IvyMike
The rich should be the ones who are the most concerned with runaway wealth
inequality, because the historical endpoint of that line usually isn't pretty
for anyone. (But can be especially bad for the rich)

[https://aeon.co/essays/history-tells-us-where-the-wealth-
gap...](https://aeon.co/essays/history-tells-us-where-the-wealth-gap-leads)

------
cwperkins
Real question: If I start a business and people love my product so much so
that I become a billionaire. Am I a bad person?

~~~
pnw_hazor
Under current Democratic party norms: yes.

~~~
happytoexplain
I find it hard to believe this curt post portrays your real intellectual
opinion, as opposed to your emotional feelings. It just seems like shit
stirring.

~~~
pnw_hazor
It is pretty clear that new wave Democrats (e.g., Justice Democrats, or the
like) are more than willing to consider any billionaire immoral because they
are billionaires.

At least that is what their most prominent pols say.

~~~
Rapzid
That's... The opposite of clear. It's not Billionaires that are on trial, it's
the system. Billionaires are the symptom.

You may not agree with that, but that's what's going around.

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lawrenceyan
Abolish billionaires. Okay, and then what? These ideas never seem to consider
what the next steps are. Wealth and inequality will always exist no matter how
hard you try to eradicate it. It is fortunately or unfortunately depending on
your viewpoint, a fundamental part of the human condition.

The only viable stable long-term solution is focusing on uplifting the masses
from the bottom up such that, even the poorest classes of people can have a
basic standard of living. This of course entails some kind of universal basic
income, which will definitely be difficult to achieve, but it is far more
realistically achievable than just "abolishing billionaires". Violent and
angry rhetoric like that may feel good and be great for garnering support, but
is a road that leads ultimately to ruin.

~~~
empath75
Fixing wealth inequality is a never ending process. You have to continuously
transfer wealth downward, as wealth in a capitalist system has a kind of
gravity such that it flows more to people who already have it.

You don’t need to eliminate wealthy people or raise everyone into the middle
class, you just need policies that constrain the extremes within reasonable
limits — for the sake of societal stability if not of basic fairness.

------
macawfish
The existence of billionaires is about distribution of agency. Right now
agency is distributed in an extreme and convoluted way. How can you have
universal basic income without fixing the other end of the spectrum? The power
to invest resources, to effect meaningful material change in our world, is
being concentrated in the hands of very few.

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rbanffy
I don't think this should be flagged. Individual comments, yes, but the post
itself, no. This is a discussion our society needs to have - we need to weight
the pros and cons of allowing unlimited accumulation of wealth and power by
individuals.

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so_tired
Can we start maybe with the basic stuff?

Tax profits and capital gains as much as we tax income. If there are 3
dominant companies dont allow 2 of them to merge. U know, the basic stuff.

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webwanderings
Solution is simple. The more money you have, the greater is your
responsibility towards others (beings and nature).

Taking things out by force (from anyone and anything) is never a solution,
because everything is relative in this world, including your wealth.

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Glench
The concentration of the vast majority of wealth in the hands of a small
number of people is obviously an unbalanced and unjust system that can't
continue to work.

~~~
dazilcher
It's been this way forever. What is the forcing function you believe will lead
to a change _now_?

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macawfish
I'm ready to quit hacker news if we can't have substantive discussions.

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orasis
So the billionaires are the ones causing all your problems?

~~~
hylianwarrior
Literally, yes.

~~~
dazilcher
So none of your problems are caused by anyone/anything other than
billionaires. Literally.

Good to know that millionaires are safe from your wrath.

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sleepysysadmin
There is an effort to push communism without calling it communism.

When you ban the rich(or for that matter tax them so heavily they are no
longer billionaires) and also raise minimum wage. Everyone ends up in the
middle class. That's called communism.

When you have equality of outcome, the 180 IQ software developer who is
extremely successful gets the same pay as a 80 IQ. What's the incentive to
work or do anything more than that 80 IQ person? ~10% of the population has an
IQ below 80. If I don't get my Mclaren and private jet, why bust my ass?

The problem with communism that you lose your purpose. Then you must have work
camps; where you are forced to work. It's the only way for communism to work.

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chewz
As Lenin said - steal the stolen

~~~
kobiguru
and in a few years, people started to starve to death.

