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At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a panel moderator asked Michael Dell, America's 17th-richest man, what he thought about the idea of raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent.
This idea has been in the headlines since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated it in a 60 Minutes interview on January 6 as a way to pay for a Green New Deal.
The Davos panel found the question hilarious. When the laughing died down, Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, dismissed the idea out of hand, claiming it would harm U.S. economic growth.
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For Dell's Billionaire CEO, Taxing the Ultra-Rich is a Joke
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innovate, v.:
To annoy people.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday February 16 2019, @12:19AM
I can think of someone who seems to be an exception to that, although he's not quite a billionaire: LeBron James. He's put a lot of his money into charity work in his home town of Akron focused on scholarships and now a school for kids who grew up the way he did. He's had regular conversations with these kids, and by all appearances genuinely cares about their well-being. I get the impression from people who've been involved that he does in fact have genuine empathy for those kids, precisely because he lived their life for 18 years before becoming a basketball superstar.
Of course, he's not at Davos, because (a) he's busy playing basketball, and (b) he doesn't seem to really identify with the likes of Michael Dell. A couple of the major differences between LeBron and Dell:
- LeBron got most of his money by the sweat of his own brow, whereas most of the other Forbes 400 got rich by either being born rich or making other people do the work. LeBron doesn't go into work wearing a coat and tie and sit at a desk sending a memo to Cheryl that the ball needs to go into the hoop this time, he has to put it there himself if he wants to keep on getting paid. And that makes him a very different breed from those who exploit others to live well.
- LeBron knows what it's like to be poor, because he was poor. Most of the super-rich never were poor: About half inherited their money. Most of the rest had a trajectory along the lines of "upper-middle class suburban childhood, trust fund pays for an Ivy League degree and an MBA, either work on Wall Street or start out in middle management, through various bits of ruthlessness, brains, and luck make it to the top levels at their company." Very few have ever seen a salary below $50,000 in their entire life.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.