
Capitalism and Inequality - kawera
https://avc.com/2019/01/capitalism-and-inequality/
======
helen___keller
This entire post is based on a strawman argument. AoC said that a system that
allows billionaires to emerge alongside extreme poverty is immoral - with
reference to hookworm(which she incorrectly referred to as ringworm) in
Alabama. It's hard to disagree with that, and it's a VERY different point than
claiming billionaires should not exist (which OP argues against).

By the way, the point AoC was trying to make when put in context is exactly
the argument that the OP was making, which is that people getting rich is OK
but it's immoral that people are getting rich and also people are living in
extreme poverty, so we should improve the system so people aren't living in
extreme poverty.

Where OP differs from AoC is (of course) in his assessment of _how_ we
eliminate extreme poverty - AoC is famously advocating a 70% marginal tax
rate, while OP suggested some unspecified mix of "technological improvement"
and "re-imagining of government" to achieve elimination of poverty. Frankly I
think OP is just naive. Maybe he thinks government is literally in the stone
age with an army of clerks shuffling paperwork, but I just don't see how
eliminating some unnecessary jobs (useful, yes) in government can achieve
"medical care for all, affordable education for all, and some amount of income
for all" (OP's listed aims).

On top of that, ANY change to government is inherently political. The kind of
revolutionary upgrades in government efficiency that OP wants would need to be
a major party initiative - which would be opposed by the opposite party,
watered down during negotiations, and subjected to compromise by the political
process. This is simply a fact about how the world works. We're not an
autocracy which means we don't get a visionary Steve Jobs figure who can
dictate what the government will do for the next 10 years, and we have to
accept both the good and the bad that comes with that.

To think that technology will magically save us from real world problems
plaguing real people by "reimagining government" and "cutting unnecessary
jobs" is literally wishful thinking. It belongs in a bygone era where tech
enthusiasts were sure facebook and google would revolutionize the world by
spreading democratic and free speech ideals to every corner of the earth.
There aren't easy solutions to every hard problem and OP doesn't seem to
appreciate this fact.

~~~
squirrelicus
What is "extreme poverty" and what is the character of the life of someone who
lives in "extreme poverty"?

One of my biggest fears with this line of rhetoric: Extreme is a relative
descriptor. If the most poor of us made 100k/yr, then they would be on the
"extreme" end of the income scale.

I fear that it's too easy to forget that making 15k/year today makes you
dramatically better off than median income earners from 100 years ago.

~~~
zemvpferreira
My own definition: While we have people who are incapable of paying for food,
shelter, healthcare and basic education, we have people living in extreme
poverty.

It's good that less of us are extremely poor today than 100 years ago, but the
fact that you can watch Netflix in comfort while your teeth rot inside your
mouth unattended does not mean change to the system isn't needed.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
Do you add any context to that? For example, lets say I go out and I spend my
paycheck on a new gaming computer, the next day technically I can't afford
food. Is it societies job to step in? What if I am able bodied but refuse to
work? What if I could afford to live with roommates, but I prefer not to? As
for healthcare is everyone entitled to cutting edge experimental therapies
from the mayo clinic, or would access to their local hospital and free clinic
be sufficient to meet your requirement?

Depending on those definitions it may be that the vast majority of Americans
already have those things or very few do. So clearly defining them is
important.

~~~
r00fus
I think you know the answer. That in your hypothetical example you had a
choice it’s clearly not what people in extreme poverty have.

That’s what sufficient (not impoverished) money allows - the freedom to
choose.

------
drugme
_I will end with a story from a book I read a few years ago._

Talk is cheap.

Rather than end on a touch-and-feely note, I'd much prefer that he get back to
the core question:

Instead of merely stating that he is a "fan" of things like Basic Income and
(truly) universal education (not to mention at least having a hope of dealing
in some reasonable way with climate change) --

The question to ask is: which progressive taxation measures, _specifically_ ,
is he willing to publicly endorse as a means (almost certainly the only viable
means) of attaining these goals?

Hard numbers, please. If it isn't AOC's particular step function -- "75
percent on all income above 10 million" \-- then _which_ progressive taxation
schemes would he be in favor of -- and be willing to publicly and state as
much?

The question of whether we "allow" billionaires or not is, to some extent, a
semantic dodge. What matters is that, at the end of the day, in order to
achieve any of these goals -- we pretty much have to "soak the rich" (in
addition to ending corporate tax evasion and related measures). It follows
from Occam's Razor and any level-headed assessment of all the ethical and
economic factors involved.

The only questions are _when_ (to which we already know the answer: _as soon
as humanly possible_ ) and _how_ exactly.

So again, it all comes down to hard numbers: Which progressive taxations is he
willing to support? And what's the best way to get them implemented in time to
avert further carnage and social disintegration -- that is, as soon as humanly
possible?

(AOC = Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)

~~~
beaconstudios
he said in the article that he doesn't think higher taxes are the solution -
that the government itself needs to be improved if additional programs are to
be introduced.

~~~
drugme
Without any arguments or evidence that this would either (1) be attainable or
(2) actually free up enough cash to fund all the good stuff he (claims to)
support.

~~~
beaconstudios
2) applies to progressive taxation as well. There's no reason to believe that
raising taxes on the wealthy is just a free wellspring of enough money to fund
huge, nation-wide social programs. There are myriad things that can go wrong:
loss of investment pools harming the economy, disincentivising
entrepreneurialism, the wealthy moving abroad, the actual collectable amount
being less than you'd expect (because "wealth" is a very fuzzy concept in
modern economies), the actual cost of these social programs being higher than
you'd expect, etc etc.

Not that I want to shit all over the idea, it could equally work really well
(I have no idea what the outcome would be), but a lot of the time these ideas
don't receive the clear-headed analysis they deserve because they're
ideological rather than logical in nature (taxation from the left, government
efficiency from the right). I'd love it if we could pool all the ideas for
ways to raise the minimum living standard, experiment with them and compare
the results in a scientific way rather than just having two sides shouting at
each other that their way is better.

~~~
drugme
_There 's no reason to believe that raising taxes on the wealthy is just a
free wellspring of enough money to fund huge, nation-wide social programs._

Actually there's a lot of historical evidence to the effect that, when taxes
are more progressive -- income inequality is less severe, affordable housing
gets built and infrastructure is better maintained.

And not only that: because we're "all in this together", society tends to work
more cohesively and deal better with external threats, like say, WW2 (compared
to the nosedive into nativism and paranoia we're experience right now, in the
face of comparatively lesser threats).

Source: U.S. history since the beginning of the corporate era (1880s or so).

~~~
pcstl
That making taxes more progressive within certain limits has certain effects
does not imply that these effects will progress linearly as tax
progressiveness increases. After all, if you had a 100% income tax for some
segment of population, they would all just move their money abroad.

~~~
r00fus
We had a ~90% marginal rate in the 50s and 60s with a roaring economy.

I think 70% marginal at a much higher income stepping level even going back to
what historically worked.

~~~
zepto
In the 50’s and 60’s it was far harder to move one’s money abroad or operate
as an ‘international citizen’ simply because we didn’t have the
infrastructure. Not only that, the advantage of not having had world war 2 on
the mainland meant that there were not a lot of attractive and functional
alternative economies to move to, where now there are.

The argument that it worked fine in the 50’s and 60s and so it would be fine
now is based on the assumption that those decades were representative, when in
fact they were a historical anomaly.

------
kylestlb
"The one part of the economy that seems immune to re-imagination is the
government. If we were to force it to go through the same technological
revolution that the private sector is going through, we would see massive
efficiencies, and massive job losses, that would free up a huge amount of
capital that could be used to pay for things like medical care for all,
affordable education for all, and some amount of income for all."

What would this look like? The author doesn't really back up their claims from
the first stanza with this massive hand-wavey argument. I am all for
reimagining the government but I'm a little wary of throwing technology at a
problem and expecting it to go away.

~~~
sjg007
This is just like the tired old trope of saying run government like a business
and it will fix everything. The government is in fact being transformed by
technology. The government funds primary research that is the innovation
behind the technological revolution.

It's unpopular here but AOC is right on the money about increasing marginal
tax rates over $10 million. The American market is unique and we can support
it. All this talk of capital and billionaires fleeing is FUD.

~~~
dnautics
> The government funds primary research that is the innovation behind the
> technological revolution.

Why is this gospel? Let me tell you two experiences I had:

1) I worked in a bioenergy lab. We were on a DoE grant. The program manager,
who had a BA in biology, did not know what a promoter was.

2) I was asked to write a DARPA grant. I did not particularly want to work for
the military, but had to as a personal favor. I deliberately wrote it so that
anyone with half a brain would look at it and say "that's too little work for
two years". It was awarded.

I could go on, but these were the two most entertaining ones. The others are
depressing.

What's the point. One. Government science initiatives are run by idiots. This
has been going on for quite a while (installing a nobel laureate at the top
doesn't matter, as evidenced by the first anecdote), and that's largely
because you have to ask yourself "who goes to work in the labs and who becomes
a program manager" and when they get "outside experts" usually it's professors
and the professor promotion pipeline also is horribly broken away from
"competent scientists".

Two: In the context of the bigger question, increasing marginal tax rates
won't help. The big problem is that government mostly gives money to the
already-wealthy (I didn't get paid much for that DARPA grant, but I can tell
you most of the money for the work I did went to the executives at the small
company that got the SBIR). Without getting into how this money comes from
stealing from the poor, consider that maybe we look at politics wrong - we
think "people have no political power because they are poor" and consider that
maybe it's actually "people are poor because they have no political power (to
get grants, etc)".

~~~
pcstl
It’s sad how your lived experience is getting downvoted just because it
doesn’t line up with peoples’ almost religious faith that the government is
wise and government investment in science is always a good thing.

~~~
dnautics
ok here's one of the depressing ones.

When I was on the DoE grant, the place I was working for was applying for a
biology DARPA grant (different office from the DARPA grant that I was on
later, that was in CS). At the time, Arathi Prabahukar was the DARPA chief and
it was being whispered that she was very much grooming one of the "meta-PMs"
(I don't know what to call it, but a head of a group of program managers) to a
key part of her administration and possibly even her successor someday.

So there I was, at the head of the research institute's very nice mansion
overlooking the La Jolla shoreline and we were throwing a party for the DARPA
PM to try to, uh, nudge the person towards funding the project, basically
currying favor. I guess us plebs (postdocs) were invited because it was
necessary to show off that we did indeed have _some_ smart people around.

Anyways, we didn't get the grant. Around that time, though, a friend and I
were enjoying a bit of postdoc-schadenfreude following several science
controversies (through retraction watch and pubpeer) and a huge fight broke
out over a story that is now called "stripey nanoparticles". In short, a
postdoc at MIT was asked to repro some results in the lab and couldn't and was
convinced (and made very convincing arguments) that the previous PhD student's
work was entirely an instrument artefact. This postdoc was then abused,
retaliated against, and railroaded by the Principal Investigator (MIT
Professor). Suddenly I noticed that the PhD student's who produced the
unreproducible work name was familiar -- it was the DARPA head PM! The head
PM's PhD thesis was basically all junk. Really I don't mean to criticize the
PM, for this, in particular there should have been more guidance from the MIT
professor. But the point is that DARPA just looks at the person and says 'hey,
PhD from MIT, must be smart'. There's no deep review.

So we were taking bets on how long the head PM would last, and it was about
two or three years before the PM disappeared quietly from DARPA activities. I
think eventually the furor around stripey nanoparticles got to be so bad that
politically the PM's career in the government was effectively iced.

I was curious as to what the PM is doing now, and it turns out that - no joke
- CTO at a microfluidics-based medical diagnostics company.

------
rglover
A good place to start combatting inequality is the education system. It's a
long-term bet, but improving our schools, the information they give students,
and the skills they prepare them with for life will vastly improve their
chances of success.

The "obedient worker" model of education is obsolete. Kids should be given
more freedom to explore (a la the Montessori Method). They're inherently
creative and we should nurture that, not stifle it. Curricula based on
practical work that teaches high-level concepts like organization,
perseverance, and patience would do wonders. Add in basic finance skills and
boy howdy.

Give a kid context and I'd bet they'd shine. "Okay kids, we're going to learn
mathematics by learning how to design a space shuttle." That is easily a full
semester/year long project that could touch on a TON of different topics. Kids
wouldn't be left out because different jobs in designing the space shuttle
could be assigned, each touching on core concepts (e.g., "hold a successful
meeting with five other students to decide what happens if an engine fails").

~~~
dsr_
Education systems are highly local. The Zuckerberg kids aren't going to Cesar
Chavez Elementary, or any of the other public schools, and will only know the
children of other ridiculously rich people. You need to take steps to actively
combat that kind of class separation.

I'm not saying that rich kids shouldn't get a good education. I'm saying that
every kid deserves a good education.

~~~
rglover
Which is why this is a Department of Education level of implementation. I'm
not talking about "daddy, they don't have juice boxes" type of schools, I'm
talking middle of Iowa, watch out for that loose bail of hay on the road
public schools.

Designing those programs can be done in a way that teachers can be taught how
to teach them. Not easy or quick, but doable.

Ultimately it's a matter of admitting that the current education system
doesn't work and start a national effort to recruit minds that can design a
new one (and then actively start developing it and testing it).

~~~
dantheman
With public sector unions nothing will be able to change.

------
ashtonbaker
That headline from The Hill seems a bit disingenuous. The full quote was:

> “I do think that a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are
> parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t
> have access to public health is wrong”

And also:

> “It’s not to say someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet are immoral
> people,” she said. “I don’t believe that.”

Both of which seem basically in agreement with Fred's response to the quote.

~~~
refurb
Ringworm is an odd disease to pick out. It's not a parasite, it's a fungal
infection of the skin and quite common. Even if people have access to quality
healthcare, they can still get ringworm.

And in fact, you can self-treat with over the counter anti-fungals.

I think the author of that quote doesn't know what ringworm is.

~~~
smileysteve
Hookworm, on the other hand isn't. Hookworm is attributable to a government
(and its people) failing its people -- not disparate from Flint's water
crisis. Basic sewage (septic in most cases) maintenance not being performed.

Unfortunately, the primary solution, condemning the buildings on these lands,
could be seen as forcing people off of their land and hurting generational
wealth growth -- even though for the underwater mortgage amounts and
considering the land should be condemned -- and competing mortgages/rents to
cities with sewer systems would be less...

~~~
refurb
Reading the article, this is happening in areas of septic tanks, not gov’t
provided waste treatment. In addition, they are building on flood prone land
where septic tanks don’t work.

Seems more like somebody screwed up when they built a community versus some
epidemic due to poor healthcare.

------
umvi
I just don't understand how inequality can be truly eliminated in a world
where people are motivated by money and power. Until you can build a society
where people actually love and care for _each other_ instead of _themselves_ ,
a certain percentage of the population will always try to become more equal
than the others.

And, they _will_ become more equal than the others, just like the pigs in
Animal Farm, because once you have power, you can change any rules.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
I don't think the goal is to build an "equal" society, which god knows will
never work because people are just so different. I think the ideal goal is to
build a society which even the lowest members of society have their basic
needs met, a meal, a roof, health care.

~~~
maxxxxx
I would go one step further and say that all levels of society should benefit
on average equally from growth. It's ok that higher incomes get a larger share
but that share shouldn't be growing disproportionately as it has done over the
last decades.

------
klaudius
Inequality is a consequence of technological progress and barriers to entry.

Some human activities today have high level of productivity.

A doctor can only serve one patient at a time. Top tier athletes or actors can
serve millions of people simultaneously.

Local bar can serve fewer people than Facebook and those who own a local bar
will be much poorer than those who own Facebook.

-

Another component are barriers to entry.

Some professions are relying on brand power (acting) and others on credentials
(surgeons). Anyone can do a job of a janitor, but not everyone can be a highly
skilled engineer or surgeon or be highly recognizable name in entertainment.

Some businesses have barriers to entry (economy of scale, networks effects)
while others are in fierce competition.

\--

People who are poor are doing relatively unskilled, low productivity work
(service industry professions). People who are wealthy are relying on high
productivity and barriers to entry.

Why is Zuckerberg so wealthy? Because Zuckerberg's business can serve billions
of people every day directly and has monopoly power due to network effects.
Some low level Facebook employee is selling his services to one company which
is a low productivity activity (they are not selling anything directly to
billions of people, but selling services to one company) and those services
can probably be done by millions of people around the world so the barriers to
entry are low.

Once you understand this, you will realize that inequality is a structural
thing.

~~~
zip1234
Totally agree--look at ANY communist experiment. All ended up with massive
amounts of inequality (in addition to incredible poverty).

------
socrates1998
Jesus this was shit post. He doesn't make any sense or have ANY decent
argument in favor of billionaires. He just rambles on about how "I know a few
and they don't seem like bad people"

Whatever.

Billionaires exist because any system where people are given different
opportunities when starting out end in vastly different outcomes.

Modern business scales to the point where you can create something in your
basement that people around the world can buy.

Bill Gates isn't 100 billion times smarter than the top software people he
worked with at IBM. Yet, he is worth that much more than them.

Income inequality destroys the social fabric of a community. And our country
will continue down it's long dark path as long as billionaires and the rich
elite hoard their wealth and power from middle and lower class Americans.

~~~
njarboe
This topic is of course ripe for a flame war, but what I think is almost
always missing from this discussion is that not all "elite" rich people are
all the same. How people got and use their wealth is very important in the
consideration on whether or not "income inequality destroys the social fabric
of a community". Paul Graham's essay "How to make wealth"[1] is a great read
on this topic. One of the key values that emerged in the West was that if the
people with the power of violence in society do not just take everything from
the productive people, the whole society becomes much better off.

The people who take by force, the rentiers, the rich who steal by fraud, the
ones who just spend their days on yachts and luxurious island estates eating
caviar and drinking champagne, these rich elites should be scorned and
reviled. We should strive to make laws to punish them and take their wealth
and power.

But we do want inequality in the amount of society's assets that can be
accessed by people. Hard working people who have the skills, talents,
networks, drive, etc. to get important, very difficult, things accomplished
should have access to greater wealth so they can do great things for society.
Musk created and is the leader of SpaceX that is building reusable rockets. He
also spends a great deal of time and effort running Tesla, which made the
first great electric cars and is forcing positive change on the whole
automobile industry. Jobs and Wozniak built and sold great personal computers.
Gates may have been a bit of an asshole when running Microsoft, but he was
part of bringing computers to the masses and he seems to be really interested
to doing good in the world. A billionaire who has almost all of their
productive assets tied up in productive activities in which they are a
critical component, can do great good. They are not consuming but producing.
Look for people who strive to produce win-win situations. A free market system
(a system where people are free to trade with anyone else) with a strong rule
of law and allowing people to keep what others give them seems to work pretty
well. 80% income tax rates are not a good idea (and shouldn't we really tax
wealth and not income, if we want to get rid of the idle rich?).

It does not seem to me that governments will spend assets better than the best
of the wealthy elite, just move it to someone that is much more unaccountable.
One should remember that there are hierarchies that are built on competency
and cooperation as opposed to those built on the power of violence. We should
support the former and tear down the later. A hard problem, but a least
something better to strive for then just generic "tax the rich" refrain.

[1][http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

~~~
patricius
> The people who take by force, the rentiers, the rich who steal by fraud, the
> ones who just spend their days on yachts and luxurious island estates eating
> caviar and drinking champagne, these rich elites should be scorned and
> reviled. We should strive to make laws to punish them and take their wealth
> and power.

Of course someone stealing or defrauding needs to be punished, but what's
wrong with eating caviar and drinking champagne on a yacht in general? :-D

------
sunshinelackof
While personally I don't think anyone's work can be worth billions a year, I
don't think people necessarily have a problem with the dollar amount of money
that the wealthy have. In my view it's the feeling of impotence and lack of
agency people feel. If you work a normal job that most people would expect to
work their whole lives you feel powerless for the most part. Your only option
is to plug away for an indeterminate amount of time until you retire (?) And
it's not guaranteed you'll work there forever as the lifespan of most jobs has
shrunk.

It leaves a paternalistic relationship between the business and the average
worker. They don't get to feel like they're interfacing with the labor market,
they're at the will of their employer. They should be grateful that your
employer provides healthcare otherwise they might actually die. Maybe they
should open a GoFundMe if they can't afford it. They should respect the
patronage of private donations and privately funded grants your city benefits
from.

The reason why universal programs are attractive is because they give the
average person a sense of agency. Because they're universal they aren't a
"handout," they're part of what it means to interact with society. Everyone
pays in and everyone gets paid out. But if they're not universal they quickly
become handouts for the poor instead of features of society.

------
colinyoung
He says he wants a new narrative, but makes no suggestion of how we can curb
inequality other than the standard Valley tech-bro "government is hella
inefficient" statement.

~~~
jasode
_> , but makes no suggestion of how we can curb inequality _

Fred's version of "curb inequality" is different than yours.

He's saying there's _moral vs immoral_ inequality:

\- immoral inequality: billionaires exist while poor people don't have basic
needs met

\- moral inequality: billionaires are ok if the poorest people have adequate
healthcare, education, and some UBI

His blog post is about moving the narrative towards the 2nd scenario of
inequality. One can also disagree with Fred's 2nd scenario. I'm just pointing
out the nuance in his essay.

~~~
samastur
I am tired of this shtick where when companies fail, it is a beauty of free
market at work, but when government projects do, it is because government is
inefficient and same people who keep expounding how you have to put money into
all sorts of ridiculous ideas because you can't tell which one will work, turn
around, lose all humility and just know how they could do better governing.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
When government projects fail everyone involved walks away with money, not so
when it comes to private sector projects. In fact take a look at some of the
big consulting firms like IBM, they get paid more when governmental projects
fail because they are paid first to implement them and second to fix the
implementation they failed at delivering in the first place. The politicians
who voted for the project are generally reelected and the cycle continues into
the next major project.

------
scrollbar
We are talking about opinions here, tips of extremely vast icebergs, so I'll
try to be careful. Disclaimer is that I disagree with Fred, agree with AOC.

I can agree with Fred that the bottom should have the basics covered, and
that's the most important point here. That is, we want an economic system that
allocates more resources to those at the bottom than we currently have.

Where do these resources come from? I think that the presence of billionaires
is simply the other side of the mathematical equation here. Assume with me
that wealth follows a power law distribution. Presumably we have the ability
to adjust the shape of that distribution (as AOC advocates in some way). The
outcome of shifting the power law from, for example, alpha=1.5 to alpha=3.5 is
a dramatic evening out of the distribution. The curve is flatter and the top
earners will have less relative to the average. So you would have fewer
billionaires.

OK- instead of flattening out the overall curve, maybe you put a floor
instead, as Fred argues for. What part of the distribution would you have to
take from to add the extra tail weight? Most of the weight in the distribution
is at the head, where the billionaires are... so I would assume it would come
from there. Hence, no/fewer billionaires, no?

I think Fred's and others' broader point is that we should continue having
incentives for success. I agree. Maybe a little less incentive, though.

I'm glad we have the opportunity to start discussing this topic on a national
stage.

EDIT: grammar

~~~
tomp
I'm not sure what are you trying to say. Do you agree with AOC or not?!

A tax rate of 1000% won't result in "fewer billionaires" as 0 of the top 10
(and approximately 0 of the top 100 I guess) billionaires made their wealth
through salary. It's almost always either entrepreneurship or inheritance or
marriage or more multiple of these. Taxing income won't change that.

AOC's suggestion is a cheap political play that encourages the low-vs-middle-
class adversity and might win her some votes, but really most billionaires
would applaud it, because, again, they'll escape unscathed. She can't suggest
taxing profits/capital gains/inheritance/trust funds of course, because then
she'd make enemies of _actually powerful_ people.

~~~
DFHippie
>She can't suggest taxing profits/capital gains/inheritance/trust funds of
course, because then she'd make enemies of actually powerful people.

Maybe you're right, but I very much doubt it. I'm at work, so I don't have
more time to research it, but I'd be willing to bet AOC will or has suggested
increasing taxation on at least capital gains and inheritance. These are
commonplace suggestions from the center to the left.

~~~
tomp
Well I sincerely wish they pull it off (not just cosmetically of course, but
in a way that prevents all tax avoidance) but I also sincerely doubt they can.

------
smileysteve
I want to jump in on this because of the hookworm topic as I'm located near
Alabama.

The Huffington Post article on Hookworm cites a homeowner that pays a mortgage
for a mobile home on land that has a broken septic system. Unfortunately for
the inequality argument, the article cites utility and mortgage costs that are
higher than if the homeowner were to move to a different (newer or more
permanent building on a different lot.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-
low...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes-
county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty)

Rudolph has a $611/mo mortgage payment and $300 electricity costs -- on a
trailer on a "campsite" (non appreciating asset, especially when considering
the hazmat of broken septic systems).

Perusing Zillow, there are many newer, larger, permanent structures, on land,
ranging from 20k-150k (read $150-$600 month mortgages on appreciating
property). Alabama also has a 3% downpayment step up grant program for
households w/ less than $97k of income.

Is this an affordable option on $1,200 month income (plus social security in 3
years,) maybe not, but it's probably more affordable than fixing a septic
system on land she doesn't own and a house falling apart - and indicates
rentals, especially between Lowndes Co and Montgomery or Atlanta would be
viable, healthier options.

------
ak39
I’m not a millennial but I’m with his kids. Tax the wealthy. Rebalance
directly. Any notion of trickledown and secondary effect rebalancing is
fraught with complexities and conditionalities. It would also take an entire
generation to figure out whether the approach worked or not.

~~~
refurb
The US has a more progressive taxation scheme than a lot of other
countries.[1]

[1][https://www.economist.com/united-
states/2017/11/23/american-...](https://www.economist.com/united-
states/2017/11/23/american-taxes-are-unusually-progressive-government-
spending-is-not)

------
achou
A question for those of you in France (or Europe more generally) - many of the
changes being proposed -- universal healthcare, free or low cost education,
paid for with higher taxes on the wealthy -- basically already exist in your
country.

Yet France has seen the yellow jackets, and there seems to be a feeling of
discontent that's spread far and wide throughout Europe. So my question is,
why? And what does that bode for the US if we move in that direction?

(BTW, out of curiosity I looked up taxes in France and I didn't realize that
it had a real wealth tax, which goes up to 1.5% of all assets:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_France)).

~~~
sjg007
France doesn't tax the rich high enough is the basic problem. Macron also
passed big tax cuts for the wealthy that did not stimulate the economy as
well. So the working class are feeling the taxes as well as not having enough
economic opportunity. Nationalism is also big in Europe as it always has been.
People see refugees getting resettlement benefits and that upsets them. It
doesn't help that ISIL want to shoot and blow people up as well.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/world/europe/france-
econo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/world/europe/france-economy-
protests.html)

~~~
umvi
> France doesn't tax the rich high enough is the basic problem

Not even 10 years ago, I read that France introduced aggressive taxation on
the rich ("75% supertax"), with disastrous consequences, so they got rid of
it.

------
ThrustVectoring
Concentration of wealth is the price we pay as a society for having a system
where we pay people to give us what we want. It's extraordinarily difficult to
have an Amazon without a Bezos, or a Microsoft without a Gates, or a Walmart
without a Walton.

This isn't to say that we should ignore concentration of wealth, or that we
shouldn't ensure that wealth generation produces positive externalities.
Rather, we should remain aware of the tradeoffs we're necessarily making when
we tamp down on inequality.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
> It's extraordinarily difficult to have an Amazon without a Bezos, or a
> Microsoft without a Gates, or a Walmart without a Walton.

This presupposes that any of these are desirable.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
For what it's worth, more affordable consumer goods are _way_ more important
to the everyday blue-collar folks who tend to not be the readership of this
forum. If you're making six figures, you care a lot less about a thirty cents
a pound price difference of ground beef, and can _afford_ to care about the
concentration and centralization of the retail industry.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
I'm not talking about the desirability of large corporations generally, but
about those three particular examples. There are large companies like Costco
(though obviously Costco is not targetting blue-collar people as much as say
Walmart) that deliver cheaper goods via economies of scale but are organised
rather differently from Walmart or Amazon.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
How do you propose interfering with Walmart's ability to compete aggressively
on price without interfering with Costco's?

~~~
_emacsomancer_
That's pretty easy. Require Walmart to give decent employee benefits. Costco
already does that, so that wouldn't hurt them.

------
profalseidol
Yet it is the Billionaires that keep the inequality in place, they keep the
minimum wage static, raise prices, destroy quality of life for the majority by
removing social funding.

Publicly funded projects work, CERN, NASA, the Internet, Telco Technology, all
funded by taxpayers. It's proven we don't need these Billionaires. Their
talent is welcome but not worth the lives of everyone else. There is plenty of
great individuals that are not as greedy as your clients.

> Those entrepreneurs, like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Bezos, Page,
> Zuckerberg, build very powerful monopolies and amass billions.

And what do they (or their descendants) do now? It is also worth noting that
the Federal Reserve (the biggest scam of all) which keeps printing money out
of thin air at will was the idea of a group that included Morgan (or
Rockefeller).

------
java_script
The author doesn't back up anything, quotes no theory on either side, no
history or economic data. It contains killer anecdotes and gut feelings though
- a ratio of about 100%-0% between navel gazing and chin scratching VS reading
Marxist theory where people have, you know, talked about the thing you're
talking about for over a century. It's particularly stunning that an essay on
inequality does not mention the word "profit".

My favorite part is the killer anecdote that seals the deal at the end, which
is basically the equivalent of "You dislike Wall St but you own an iPhone?
Interesting". It may as well have been pulled from a boomer Facebook meme.

~~~
sokoloff
I think that being late to a rally against charter schools because you were
busy trying to get your kid into a charter school is quite a bit more specific
and powerful form of hypocrisy than the above meme.

It’s strong evidence to me of a deep hypocrisy in a way that deciding you’d
prefer an iPhone over Android is not.

~~~
java_script
No it's collective action vs individual self interest. Or actual politics
versus consumerism. Not the same thing at all and should not be confused. If
you think a charter or private school is the best for your kid _right now_ and
_for you_ then that's one thing. And what is best for other families and
teachers in your community may be another. You can support them politically.

Also who gives a shit about the hypocrisy of protest attendees anyway? It has
no bearing on the what is right.

~~~
sokoloff
> If you think a charter or private school is the best for your kid right now
> and for you then that's one thing.

If you think that, act on that, _and simultaneously seek to deny that to
others_ , I think you’re a hypocrite and adjust the coefficient of my caring
about your opinion on the topic to zero or negative.

~~~
java_script
Deal, I'll consider your coefficient adjusted then.

But for my benefit, can I just confirm my suspicion that you sincerely don't
understand the difference between politics & personal marketplace decisions?
Because if so that's some VERY strong ideology you've got going on.

~~~
sokoloff
I understand the difference, but if you seek to get some good privately and
prevent others from having access to that good by policy, I think that’s a
dick move at a minimum.

Same issue as the uproar over a US politician going to Canada for an elective
medical procedure after working against changes to the US system to make it
more like the Canadian system.

------
Flenser
I'm trying to find an essay I remember reading in the past 5 years titled
something like "Inequality in Equalville" but my googling isn't finding it.
Does anyone remember what it was called?

~~~
Flenser
Found it: [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-
equ...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in-
equalland.html)

------
jawns
So many people think that capitalism and socialism are the only economic
systems -- two ends of a spectrum, and society needs to decide where on that
spectrum it falls.

The English writer G.K. Chesterton, who popularized the idea of distributist
economics, calls distributism a "third way" that doesn't fall on the spectrum,
but sits outside the line entirely.

Chesterton pointed out that both capitalism and socialism entail consolidation
of ownership of productive property. Under capitalism, you end up with Big
Business, and under socialism you end up with Big Government.

Chesterton advocated for distributism, where the ideal is that the ownership
of productive property should be as widely distributed as possible. Note that
distributism does not advocate for a redistribution of wealth, but rather
economic policies that make widespread ownership possible, such as those that
help address some of the disadvantages that small businesses and worker- and
consumer-owned cooperatives face when it comes to competing against megacorps.

~~~
orthecreedence
This seems more an addendum to socialism than an opposition to it.
Specifically it calls for distributed ownership of the means of production
(which most socialists advocate, as "state socialism" isn't really desirable).

Also, it talks of forming workers' guilds. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_socialism).

It seems to me the ideas are actually quite aligned in their ultimate goals,
however it looks on the surface to be different to socialism because socialism
tends to be synonymous with "state socialism" in people's minds.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
It's more like anarcho-syndicalism than statist socialism though.

------
specialist
Creating the middle class was a deliberate policy choice [1]. Hard fought and
narrowly won.

That the rich get richer is just math. It's not a value statement.

Without active wealth redistribution, accelerating inequity is inevitable.

\--

I personally don't care how we do it. UBI, cashectomies of windfall profits,
restoring progressive taxation to subsidize the safety net. Whatever.

I am tired, however, of the bickering over the details. As though the primary
issue at hand is tax brackets and capital gains. These food fights just muddy
the core conundrum.

The trick is balancing capitalism with democracy, lifting the floor without
lowering the ceiling.

\--

[1] Kevin Phillips, Reagan's conservative economist, detailed our history of
purposefully creating a middle class and the upper class' efforts to thwart
such efforts:

Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich Paperback
[2003] [https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-
Am...](https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-
American/dp/0767905342)

~~~
Ygg2
> Without active wealth redistribution, accelerating inequity is inevitable.

Having watched Mark Blyth, he has a theory that the capitalistic system can
operate in one of two modes
([https://vimeo.com/247596824](https://vimeo.com/247596824)):

A) Mode that favors the workers (US before 1970)

B) Mode that favors the capitalists (US after Reagan & Thatcher)

When capitalism is in Mode A), you get horrible level of inflation, but rising
wages and profits for the workers (and since one man's wage is another man's
expense the prices rise too). It creates great environment for taking credits,
since inflation devours any profit bank can make on a credit. This hurts the
returns of capitalist and investors, who stage a "market-friendly revolution"
that will change system to B).

When capitalism is in Mode B) you get stagnating wages, and rising profits for
capitalists. On the other hand, this causes inequality. Credits are available,
but generally a bad idea, since the wages are decreasing. Usually in this
environment the Supply Chain is Globalized making it really hard for Labor to
move, but making it super easy for Capital to transfer (as Mark says "Good
luck striking, if I can move my production to China")

~~~
CryptoPunk
1\. Income redistribution via social welfare programs has massively increased
since 1970. The actual statistics contradict the theses of the equality
sophists.

2\. The unions that pushed wages up 1950-1970 also eroded America's
manufacturing competitiveness and efficiency, which contributed to the
outsourcing of manufacturing. The reason union membership numbers in the
private sector declined was because the industries that employed unions
contracted. And that was largely the doing of unions and the very generous
collective bargaining agreements they got for themselves. IOW the gains they
brought about were not sustainable. In contrast, the wage gains attained in
the pre-union, free market era of the late 19th century were sustainable. They
accompanied an increase in the competitiveness of American manufacturing,
instead of coming at its expense.

------
DFHippie
I stopped reading after this:

>I also understand that government is bloated and there are many places where
we could cut spending to fund these new innovative programs that could help
counter the immoral wealth imbalance we have in our country.

His understanding is wrong. To the extent that there's fat you can cut from
the U.S. federal budget to fund other programs it's in healthcare or defense.
"Waste, fraud, and abuse" are the equivalent of the Underpants Gnomes' "???".
It's a placeholder for a real argument.

------
quantumwoke
I find myself wanting more specifics from this short essay. A lot is said by
the author who has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo with vague
references to UBI and other changes but no concrete policies that would
actually implement real change in society.

As is, the Silicon Valley establishment is certainly not invested in paying
more tax, thank you very much. While I don't believe billionaires are
inherently immoral, I would like to see sample implementations of UBI rather
than yet more posts equivocating about it.

------
griffinkelly
From a fiscal perspective a higher tax rate would not make much of a dent in
the the US deficit; a piece in the WSJ addressed much of it:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crippling-cost-of-70-tax-
ra...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crippling-cost-of-70-tax-
rates-11548104300)

------
nateberkopec
FTA:

>I also understand that government is bloated and there are many places where
we could cut spending

The problem with this critique (the right-wing rallying cry since at least
Reagan) is that no one ever wants to cut any _particular_ program (which Fred
acknowledges later in his charter school story). The right in the US, for
example, bemoans government spending every year, then doesn't cut any
spending, raises military spending, and then cuts taxes. Again, Fred
acknowledges this, but doesn't take the next step of doing the unpopular, hard
work of deciding where we can size down. I'd like to hear exactly what
spending Fred thinks we should cut, otherwise this position is pretty empty.

> If we were to force it to go through the same technological revolution that
> the private sector is going through, we would see massive efficiencies

Again, this is what the Republican party has been saying for 30 years, but has
been unable to deliver. We can say we want "more efficient government" until
the cows come home, but there is something in the system that is preventing us
from doing so. What is that thing? Let's talk about that. Otherwise, this post
is just a rehash of Republican talking points and slogans, without any real
proposals.

~~~
BurningFrog
A _lot_ of people wants to cut a _lot_ of spending!!

It is politically impossible because the spending has very strong political
power behind it. That's why it exists in the first place.

~~~
ksdale
A lot of people say they want to cut a lot of spending, but everyone wants to
cut different things. Ask half a dozen people what they want to cut and
they’ll say things like everything but military spending, or everything but
Medicare or Medicaid or SS, and after you tally up the un-cuttables and cut
everything else, you’ve still got a budget that’s 95% of the current one.

~~~
sokoloff
I’m not anti-military by any means, but I’d be more than happy to cut the JSF
project (and replace it with something else, so not 100% net savings).

The problem as I see it is the same outcome but different mechanisms as you
describe. Those who benefit from a project are very willing to spend time,
energy, thought, and money to preserve the status quo, while those who are
opposed have a very diffuse opposition to most of the specific programs.

~~~
jki275
The JSF project is essentially complete. You're advocating dumping billions of
dollars of R&D to start over and build something else, when all that's left
now is conventional aircraft building -- and oh by the way that aircraft is
now being built by our allies (who helped to fund the R&D) as well.

------
vernie
Contrary to popular belief I'm not a billionaire, just a humble
centimillionaire.

------
CryptoPunk
OAC appeals to the instinct of shared sacrifice.

"Let's all sacrifice some of our liberty to ensure no one is left behind"

It's a useful instinct in small villages of 180 closely related people. It
does not work for countries constituting 300 million people with very little
linking them together.

First pragmatically: social democracy has tremendous adverse effects on
economic growth. The poor are better off with less redistribution and a higher
rate of recurring economic growth. This can be demonstrated mathematically, no
matter what our gut instinct may say.

Second, as a matter of principle, we do not have a moral right to force others
into this shared sacrifice pact, simply on the basis of shared nationality.
Billionaire or not.

People may claim billionaires amidst poverty is immoral. I think it's far more
immoral to violate the principle of voluntarism and force people to sacrifice
alongside us.

------
Zigurd
Government in the US is a captive of corporations and money politics. Many
laws are written by lobbying groups working for large corporations. Do you see
these laws improving the quality of government?

------
golemotron
In an ideal world, school kids would be taught how power law networks work -
how they result from preferential attachment. Then they'd be able to connect
the pieces and see that popularity and capitalism are the same and produce the
same inequalities. Inequality is not about money.

~~~
plainOldText
Agreed. We need more tools to study complexity, and the study of networks is
one such tool.

------
SCAQTony
He seemingly believes that the government is a barbarous relic in need of
computational analytics and technology to make it work fairly. What this has
to do with capitalism was missed by me. Perhaps we can all agree that if we
the people were granted a 'capitalistic infrastructure' that allowed anyone
who wanted to work could work and have the most important factors in Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs scale fulfilled; (food, water, shelter, electricity,
security, education) we would have less envy, anger, violence towards one
another and way less crime

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs scale:
[https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html](https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html)

------
strikelaserclaw
I agree with the author but how exactly do we fund a basic income type system
for the masses without raising taxes on someone or some entity?

~~~
ozzyman700
Why would raising taxes be a bad thing? The highest US tax bracket in 2019 is
37% for income over $500,000. I don't see why a higher tax bracket, along the
lines of WWI or WWII would be untenable. Could you elucidate why you are so
averse to raising taxes?

I find it harder to accept that every person making income is subject to a 10%
fed. income tax, in a country where the basics of survival are not even
provided. Why shouldn't income over a million a year be taxed at a much higher
rate?

~~~
conanbatt
I can tell you why I'm averse to raising taxes.

Because the utlitity of government expenditures is really low: for each
successful program it has failed programs that last decades and sometimes even
have negative returns, let alone justify what private investment would have
gotten.

Because the person that advocates the most for the tax, the politician, gets
to spend it, and has nothing to lose by doing so and plenty to win.

Because the mechanism itself allows to get money from anything and put it into
anything, and once in place its exceedingly difficult to take out, even if it
has short term positive results.

Because even today, the government as it is wastes money on a plethora of
projects but instead of cleaning itself up, it demands more resources.

Because the consolidated expenditures of the entire government is
23k/year/capita which means that if you just slashed government in half, you
could give a thousand dollars to each american every month without raising a
single tax.

~~~
zip1234
The top 3 richest counties in America are actually surrounding Washington D.C.
Money is extracted from everywhere else in the country via taxes and paid to
people in that area.

~~~
jki275
That's not how taxation works... The rich counties around DC are for quite
different reasons.

~~~
zip1234
If you mean that people that earn less pay less tax--what I am trying to say
is that money is being taken via taxation across the entire country. However,
that money is being spent by the Federal government in high concentrations in
certain places. The DC area is one such place. Any military base or Federal
government office is such a place. Money is being spent there that was earned
elsewhere. Why do you think senators fight so hard to keep military bases in
their states? It is because a military base is a firehose of Federal money
going into their state from elsewhere.

~~~
jki275
My point is that the rich areas around DC are not rich because of tax money.

Military bases are a boost to the economy in some places. They're a drain in
others.

------
aphextron
There's nothing new about rich people wanting to kill off government.
Fortunately it hasn't entirely worked yet, and our current safety net (as
paltry as it may be) is still somewhat protecting the vulnerable margins of
our society from being mercilessly swept up in the maw of modern scorched
earth capitalism. This new generation of politicians like AOC will be our
savior from the last three decades of self-serving grifters picking away at
what was once a great nation with a sense of civic duty.

~~~
ahallock
You completely ignore the scorched earth left by war. How is that exactly
protecting the vulnerable? It would not be possible without massive entities
like the State.

------
eric_b
The discussion is always around increasing or decreasing the size and expense
of the government. So I like that the author is advocating increasing
efficiency instead. Doing more with the same amount of spending is a good
goal. And I think there are a lot of places the government could be made more
efficient.

But, as a staunch capitalist myself, I believe we _do_ need to start raising
taxes on the rich. I think the 70% marginal rate on people making 10M a year
is a good start, but ultimately more a token gesture than anything meaningful.
It won't raise enough money, since there aren't enough of those people.

We need to start counting capital gains as income. No more long term 15% rate.
If your investments are kicking out money that you live on, that should be
taxed at the same marginal rates as my wages!

The problem of course is that the true rich have influence over the
politicians. So they point the politicians at the upper middle class, and say
"hey, raise the marginal rates on these people instead!" Pretty soon the
narrative is "oh, you make more than 100k a year, that's immoral!" And the
wealth divide would just get bigger and bigger.

TLDR: We need to tax wealth in some capacity. There are many many approaches
to this, but we need to find a way to actually tax the rich, not just fleece
the upper middle class.

~~~
dantheman
If you tax capital gains then no one will invest unless things are 100%
guaranteed. Your winnings need to cover your losses.

Capital gains aren't wages

------
yonran
It’s true that the current income tax has shortcomings due to the mobility of
capital owners. I think it would promote competition to focus more on wealth
taxes on immobile assets (on e.g. land, patents, spectrum, and ownership of
networks) as an alternative to some income taxation. See e.g. Glen Weyl’s book
Radical Markets on this topic ([https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-
Uprooting-Capitalism-...](https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-
Capitalism-Democracy/dp/0691177503)
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494))

------
jondubois
The fact that there are billionaires in the world is unfair. Most of them
didn't create any value for society. They just captured value created by
others. They were just at the right place and at the right time. Wealth is so
concentrated today that it has turned capitalism into a zero-sum lottery.

It's a lottery not only in the sense that there are very few winners and that
the payouts are huge but also in the sense that the winners are chosen
randomly. Investors invest randomly because they have no idea what's going to
work; that's why less than 10% of all companies succeed. There is no skill
involved in distributing capital efficiently; it's either completely random or
the result of monopolistic wealth-concentration.

------
g_sch
Some other commenters have pointed out that The Hill selectively quoted
Ocasio-Cortez in the tweet mentioned in the article, but I want to engage the
selective quote ("Economic system that allows billionaires is 'immoral'") on
its own, and argue that it stands on its own. I think that we've lost some
perspective on how obscenely much money a billion dollars really is, and it's
worth thinking about the implications of this gigantic number.

Money is something we give people in exchange for labor. Is it possible to
imagine any amount of labor that would be fairly compensated with a billion
dollars? If a restaurant worker makes $25,000 in a year, what kind of work
could one person possibly do to deserve 40,000 years' worth of restaurant
wages? For that matter, we can even compare those numbers to the earnings of a
software developer. If you make a salary of $150,000, it would take you 166
_lifetimes_ (6,666 years / 40 working years in a lifetime) to make a billion
dollars.

I know that capitalism offers ample justification for why someone might
accumulate that much money (risk! market efficiencies!) but none of those add
up to a moral case for me.

~~~
gnarbarian
Without the ability for a single man to acquire that much capital we wouldn't
have Tesla or SpaceX.

Labor doesn't always have value. If I spend 8 hours digging a hole nobody
wants there is no value in it despite strenuous effort involved.

But if someone with the talent, ability, resources and balls to earn a billion
and then risk it on a new company to cure cancer, or solve similarly worldwide
problems does so they deserve it.

I'd argue that musk and bill Gates are far more effective with their money to
improve humanity as a whole than if 90% of it were distributed to the
destitute. SpaceX has also proven to be far more flexible, efficient, and
agile than NASA in recent memory.

------
vernie
Give that domain over to the VideoLAN project already.

------
TaylorAlexander
So, a few things. First, I don’t feel like the author really addresses the
problems people have with inequality. In my mind, the real issue is that the
floor is too low, which is related to inequality. If one person makes a
billion dollars a year and another person can’t make $1000 a year, they’re
very unequal. If we could adjust the system so the first person still makes a
billion a year but the second person makes $100k/yr, we’ve reduced inequality.

But we have huge structural problems in the US that I think could be mitigated
by stronger social support programs. I’m a “libertarian socialist” which is a
real thing, but it means I don’t really advocate that we use the government to
form social programs, but I do strongly advocate that we form social programs
through voluntary means. Unfortunately the left ignores the ways we could help
each other without the government and the right ignores the fact that some
people actually want to pay to help others. I feel as though the right could
get a lot of what they want by working with the left to form strong voluntary
social support programs that compare favorably to government programs.

However, I’m not against using the government to help people. Martin Luther
King Jr was a brilliant man who understood the needs of his people, and he
advocated both for community power and for government programs.

We have real problems in the US that leave millions struggling to feed
themselves. Millions our children grow up with poor schooling, which can lead
bright people down a dark path. Soon we throw them in prison and forget about
them.

My issue with billionaires is not that we have billionaires, but that we have
billionaires and starving people. We have homeless people who die every winter
because it gets too cold. We have enough money to care for them! The wealth is
there. But we’ve failed to organize ourselves well enough to use it
effectively.

I don’t mind billionaires, but I do mind that we have billionaires and
destitute people. We have enough wealth to do better. It is not immoral in
itself to have billionaires, but I do think a system that produces both
billionaires and poverty is wrong. The left wants a solution and all they can
think of is taxes. I really wish the right would see that helping build
community power would reduce the need for government support.

Also someone please break the military industrial complex.

------
yourbandsucks
This fucking guy leads with an anecdote about a family ski trip?

My heart goes out to him and the other poor maligned ultra rich.

