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Wealth inequality stands at its highest since the turn of the 20th century - the so-called 'Gilded Age' - as the proportion of capital held by the world's 1,542 dollar billionaires swells yet higher. The report, undertaken by Swiss banking giant UBS and UK accounting company PwC, discusses the roles technology and globalization play in the status quo, and appears two weeks after the IMF recommended that the rich should pay more tax to address the enormous disparity.
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When I met th'POPE back in '58, I scrubbed him with a MILD SOAP or
DETERGENT for 15 minutes. He seemed to enjoy it ...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @11:09AM (17 children)
Why? Muffy Vandercunt never having to work a day in her life doesn't affect the economy or your financial position within it at all. And even yoinking all Bezos's fortune back directly into the economy on his death wouldn't amount to a drop in the bucket given the relative size of the bucket it's going into.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by crafoo on Sunday October 29 2017, @02:58PM (3 children)
It might incentivize them to do something useful with it. The hoarding tendency to protect your offspring might not trigger as strongly. If you know it's gone when you're gone, you might start a very risky but interesting or useful endeavor with it instead. I agree that the government getting it all is maybe the worst possible outcome, almost a punishment to everyone as it just feed useless bureaucrats. But it might provide an incentive to do glorious, risky things.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:15PM (1 child)
Using an inflationary currency was designed to take care of that by making truly stagnant money (of which there is very, very little) worth less every year, thus providing incentive to reinvest in the economy. And it would if we could manage enough growth to allow for it. Destroy the middle class and you destroy growth though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @06:57PM
The use of an inflationary currency was designed to avoid a deflationary death spiral. It's well established that the richest are more likely to have large portions of their money tied up in stocks that are relatively resistant to inflationary pressures.
What's destroying the middle class is the kind of policies that you're advocating for. Allowing the rich to hoard so much money that they can't even spend it all makes it all but impossible for the poor to make enough to keep up with inflation, let alone get ahead.
The problem here isn't economic growth, the problem is that it's being hoarded by the greedy rather than distributed to the engines of the economy, the working class.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:03PM
Yes, like bribe politicians to protect their wealth, build some Rube Goldberg tax avoidance/evasion scheme, or move to a country where heirs can inherit.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @03:28PM (4 children)
Because as long as money = political speech, inheriting multimillions makes our government a hereditary monarchy.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:17PM (3 children)
How'd that work out for Hillary? She outspent Trump by an enormous margin. Money's not as powerful as you think.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:39PM (2 children)
You're confusing "100% dependably powerful" with "powerful" again. :)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:05PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:10PM
Nah, they're just confused about what words mean. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @03:33PM (4 children)
Yes, it would, Most of the inequality is driven by a handful of extremely wealthy people hoarding money that they could never spend in their lifetime. If there was a maximum limit on how much you could leave to your children it would greatly reduce the need to bribe government officials for more tax breaks. Allowing one to leave just $10m per kid would return a massive amount of money back to the economy in terms of taxes that could be used to fund things like education. For example, Bill Gates has about $88bn dollars to his name and 3 children, that would allow $30m to stay with the family when he and his wife die, That would be roughly 99.966% of his wealth being returned to the country and his kids would still not have to actually do anything productive with the rest of their lives.
It's a similar deal with the rest of the billionaire class, even allowing them to leave an obscene amount of money to their children, there's still a massive amount of it to go around and mitigate what they did in the process of accumulating it.
But, the biggest benefit to the rest of us is simply that accumulating money past a certain point wouldn't be worthwhile. You'd see a larger number of individuals and businesses splitting the pot rather than a small number that are able to exert undue influence on the country in terms of refusing to pay decent wages and buying votes.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:21PM
It'd take too long to school you on how wrong you are and that even if you weren't you're trying to use a chainsaw to fix a hangnail. I prefer brevity and I feel a sunday afternoon nap sneaking up on me, so someone else can explain it if they like.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by khallow on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:11PM (2 children)
This illustrates the enormous flaw in your thinking. They don't hoard money, they invest it.
No, it'd create incentive to bribe government officials so that you could leave more to your children.
Such as employing tens of thousands to millions of people for decades. Do we really need to mitigate that?
I don't get my jollies from this activity, be it accumulating wealth, being poor, sky diving, getting married, driving, bicycling, walking, having and speaking other opinions, eating weird food, living in another country, getting an education, having a family, just about anything really. Thus, I don't see any reason anyone else should be doing these activities either and hence, they should be banned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @07:05PM (1 child)
This is why nobody takes you seriously. You're deliberately missing the point. The economy doesn't grow because people invest. The economy grows because there's more people buying things and engaged in trade. It would make business a lot easier if all we had to do is invest more money and suddenly we'd have more profits, but that's not how it works and that's why supply side economics has been such an abysmal failure.
They don't employ tens of millions of workers out of the goodness of their own hearts, they do it because that's how they're able to steal from the rich. It's mind-blowing to me that you assume those people would be out of work when more likely there'd be numerous smaller businesses that would serve that market. If not, that's a pretty good indication that the market never really existed in the first place.
This whole idea that the greedy at the top create jobs is a complete load of crap with no evidence to support it. Jobs are created because there's a need and people willing to pay money to have that need met. End of story, those jobs do not exist because somebody is willing to pay people to perform them, businesses like that go out of business rather quickly.
As for your last point, you're a fucking moron. People accumulate far more money than they can possibly spend for a reason. It makes their dicks bigger and it's pretty fucking clear that they aren't going to stop doing it just because it's destroying the country and the world. Those other things you list have little to no impact on other people.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday October 29 2017, @08:47PM
Investment is both buying things and engaging in trade, which is one of the reasons it makes no sense to call it "hoarding".
With significant economic growth from 1982 or so to 2000. If only all our abysmal failures turned out so well.
[...]
Except we see that you acknowledged such job creation in the previous paragraph. Owned goal.
Also, once again we see the ludicrous pathology where the greedy motive of the wealthy magically outweighs all those tens of millions of jobs they created. I guess it's better to have people poor and unemployed, huh?
I don't have any problem with the wealthy pursuing more wealth for the purpose of dick embiggening even though I don't bother with it myself. It's not something I'm going to start caring about. But if they want to accumulate wealth for that purpose, I'm fine with it.That's what freedom is about, after all. The right to do things, even if small-minded, bitter, jealous busy-bodies can't handle people doing things for impure motives or motives that they can't understand or do.
Though I quite agree that this activity does have impact on other people, mostly positive - keep in mind that they're employing people and making goods and services of value. We should just steer that activity with a modest amount of regulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:52PM (2 children)
do you always look backwards at things? billionaires don't ever work BECAUSE there are thousands of people working FOR them it is a social issue because this work is done under certain social rules. bonus points if you can tell who makes the rules?
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @05:15PM (1 child)
And you know this, how? Hung out with many? Even met one? Oh, I see, you were just shit talking because you're jealous they have more than you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @03:31PM
Throw yourself into a fire you giant turd.