Is it bad to be rich?

[The Nehor]

1 minute ago, BRMC said:

Or unemployed 

If it weren’t for the glorious job creators no one would be able to work and/or eat.

“YOU NEED US!”

We really don’t need them. Labor was around long before megawealth was a thing and would continue if the megawealthy all dropped dead tomorrow.

[Chum]

12 minutes ago, dougtheavenger said:

All billionaires are not evil, but on the whole they do more harm than good. If they all dropped dead tomorrow, the world would be a better place.

Or to quote Mary Magdalene: "Shareholders eventually ruin everything".

[BRMC]

45 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

If it weren’t for the glorious job creators no one would be able to work and/or eat.

“YOU NEED US!”

We really don’t need them. Labor was around long before megawealth was a thing and would continue if the megawealthy all dropped dead tomorrow.

Sure.  Back when people had farms and community stores.   Now people live in large cities and work for people who create jobs.  Look what happens in some of these smaller towns built around industries that move.  They collapse.   That's why governments pay corporations to move there.

[rchorse]

1 hour ago, dougtheavenger said:

I have yet to see a single billionaire give all their money away...

Here's one for you:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2020/09/15/exclusive-the-billionaire-who-wanted-to-die-brokeis-now-officially-broke/?sh=29a0b8e13a2a

I admire this guy for actually doing it while alive. I don't have a high opinion of most other billionaires, though.

[MiserereNobis]

In Catholic moral theology, there is a category of sin called “the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance.” Two of the four are perhaps relevant: oppression of the poor, and defrauding laborers of their wages. 
 

God does not appear to look kindly on those who gain wealth at the expense of others. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by MiserereNobis

[Fether]

3 hours ago, dougtheavenger said:

I have yet to see a single billionaire give all their money away. A couple have formed organizations which they control that use their money in dubious ways.

So you think the best thing a billionaire could do is give all there money away? What if they had a system set up where they donated $50,000,000 a year, and that amount grew 10% every year while their wealth grew 15%. Would that not be better the. Just emptying their $1,000,000,000 in assets?

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, BRMC said:

Sure.  Back when people had farms and community stores.   Now people live in large cities and work for people who create jobs.  Look what happens in some of these smaller towns built around industries that move.  They collapse.   That's why governments pay corporations to move there.

Why don’t they give the money to the people in the small town instead? Surely charity for the poor is better than charity for the wealthy in the hope that some will ‘trickle down’ eventually.

[BRMC]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Why don’t they give the money to the people in the small town instead? Surely charity for the poor is better than charity for the wealthy in the hope that some will ‘trickle down’ eventually.

Because they don't "pay" in real terms.  The "payment" is through tax breaks and other incentives.  They make it cheaper to do business there because it creates jobs and feeds the economy.

[The Nehor]

12 minutes ago, BRMC said:

Because they don't "pay" in real terms.  The "payment" is through tax breaks and other incentives.  They make it cheaper to do business there because it creates jobs and feeds the economy.

I know, which is the same as things like child credits. It is corporate welfare. Often given to those who don’t need it to get them to move to a specific location. Another word for it is a bribe. Just not a covert or illegal one (sometimes anyways).

[BRMC]

3 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I know, which is the same as things like child credits. It is corporate welfare. Often given to those who don’t need it to get them to move to a specific location. Another word for it is a bribe. Just not a covert or illegal one (sometimes anyways).

Sure.  It's a bribe.  Why do you suppose they bribe corporations to move their businesses to their states or towns?

[The Nehor]

41 minutes ago, BRMC said:

Sure.  It's a bribe.  Why do you suppose they bribe corporations to move their businesses to their states or towns?

Often there are reciprocal campaign contributions, sometimes it wins you votes directly, sometimes you can get side-benefits like jobs in the company for friends or family, all kinds of variations exist.

[BRMC]

1 minute ago, The Nehor said:

Often there are reciprocal campaign contributions, sometimes it wins you votes directly, sometimes you can get side-benefits like jobs in the company for friends or family, all kinds of variations exist.

  Not typically.  They aren't unilateral politician decisions.    It's because they build factories and campuses, create jobs, and fuel the economy.   

Edited January 5, 2022 by BRMC

[The Nehor]

Just now, BRMC said:

  Not typically.  They aren't unilateral politician decisions.    It's because they build factories and campuses, create jobs, and fuel the economy.   

Of course there is not just one politician involved.

[Eph2,8]

On 1/3/2022 at 8:36 PM, Analytics said:

I do agree with you that value added is a force towards what someone will be paid. However, there are many, many other factors that also come into play, and often completely dominate marginal value.

Warren Buffet has made the point that if he would have been born in almost any other time in human history, he would have been eaten by a tiger or something at a young age, and otherwise lived an unremarkable life of poverty. In a sense he has added a lot of marginal value by having some skills on how to allocate capital, but it's important to remember that this would have been impossible without a huge endowment from the rest of society in terms of culture, infrastructure, laws, etc. Without the rest of society supporting him, he couldn't have earned massive wealth. Given the contribution that society makes and the winner-take-all nature of so much of the modern economy, I'm not sure if attributing marginal value to a specific individual even makes sense.

Have you ever read anything from Barbara Fried? She makes a really similar argument with something she calls "Left Lockeanism" in her paper, "Wilt Chamberlain Revisited". John Locke believed that mixing your labor with something made it your property, so long as it met a few qualifiers. Fried argued that society "mixes their labor" by the categories you mentioned, even down to the specific tastes they have (a basketball player is only valuable because society values the sport). Therefore, society has a Lockean right to almost all outputs made by individual members of society. I.e., society has a some proportion of right to Buffets wealth and output of his skills because they mixed their labor to get him where he is. It is an interesting argument, I'm not sure how compelling I personally find it - especially with the implications that society then can take wealth or property. But, it seemed similar to the argument you - and others - made, so I thought it worth mentioning. 

[dougtheavenger]

The paradox of wealthy employers

...

is that they create jobs for others but try to keep wages as low as possible. If all employers succeeded in keeping wages low they would cause economic depression. People would not be able to buy their products and they would go out of business. Many wealthy people hated Trump because wages rose under his policies. To the rich, high wages are higher costs.

[dougtheavenger]

7 hours ago, Fether said:

So you think the best thing a billionaire could do is give all there money away? What if they had a system set up where they donated $50,000,000 a year, and that amount grew 10% every year while their wealth grew 15%. Would that not be better the. Just emptying their $1,000,000,000 in assets?

How do you construe my post as a statement that billionaires should give away their money. I don't believe that at all. I much prefer that billionaires keep their money, enjoy it and not try to use it to rule over the rest of us alone which is what that scum sucker, Mark Zuckerberg, does.

Edited January 5, 2022 by dougtheavenger

[Fether]

3 hours ago, dougtheavenger said:

How do you construe my post as a statement that billionaires should give away their money. I don't believe that at all. I much prefer that billionaires keep their money, enjoy it and not try to use it to rule over the rest of us alone which is what that scum sucker, Mark Zuckerberg, does.

Your statement seemed to suggest you wanted them to give it away. My bad

[BRMC]

4 hours ago, dougtheavenger said:

The paradox of wealthy employers

...

is that they create jobs for others but try to keep wages as low as possible. If all employers succeeded in keeping wages low they would cause economic depression. People would not be able to buy their products and they would go out of business. Many wealthy people hated Trump because wages rose under his policies. To the rich, high wages are higher costs.

This is true.  It's also true that jobs migrate based on benefit.  For example, in some areas there are issues finding skilled laborers because employers of unskilled laborers pay better.   This is due to the supply and demand of labor.  A large, global distributor an hour away is paying almost $30/hr plus benefits for warehouse workers and night stockers due to the local labor shortage.   In many areas labor now controls the market.  

On the flip side increasing wages, or at least introducing money into the economy, without increasing production or import of goods as well causes an imbalance and inflation.  We also saw (and in some areas are still seeing) this as workers returned, stimulus money was distributed, and supply chains were broken.   

It will be interesting to see where this next year goes.

[Analytics]

10 hours ago, Eph2,8 said:

Have you ever read anything from Barbara Fried? She makes a really similar argument with something she calls "Left Lockeanism" in her paper, "Wilt Chamberlain Revisited". John Locke believed that mixing your labor with something made it your property, so long as it met a few qualifiers. Fried argued that society "mixes their labor" by the categories you mentioned, even down to the specific tastes they have (a basketball player is only valuable because society values the sport). Therefore, society has a Lockean right to almost all outputs made by individual members of society. I.e., society has a some proportion of right to Buffets wealth and output of his skills because they mixed their labor to get him where he is. It is an interesting argument, I'm not sure how compelling I personally find it - especially with the implications that society then can take wealth or property. But, it seemed similar to the argument you - and others - made, so I thought it worth mentioning. 

I haven't read Fried; I'll check her out.

I don't have a punitive view of the super wealthy--if somebody is rich, good for them. But a couple other considerations need to be kept in mind:

1- Are the people who are actually doing the work that creates the wealth being compensated in a way that is reasonably fair?

2- Is the tax burden fair? Are the people who are benefiting most from our society paying for the benefits that accrue to them?

On that second point, I'll quote a few paragraphs of a famous New York Times article Ben Stein wrote in 2006:

Quote

NOT long ago, I had the pleasure of a lengthy meeting with one of the smartest men on the planet, Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, in his unpretentious offices in Omaha. We talked of many things that, I hope, will inspire me for years to come. But one of the main subjects was taxes. Mr. Buffett, who probably does not feel sick when he sees his MasterCard bill in his mailbox the way I do, is at least as exercised about the tax system as I am.

Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.

Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

...

People ask how I can be a conservative and still want higher taxes. It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren. I thought it was the conservative view that there should be some balance between income and outflow. When did this change?

Oh, now, now, now I recall. It changed when we figured that we could cut taxes and generate so much revenue that we would balance the budget. But isn’t that what doctors call magical thinking? Haven’t the facts proved that this theory, though charming and beguiling, was wrong?

THIS brings me back to Mr. Buffett. If, in fact, it’s all just a giveaway to the rich masquerading as a new way of stimulating the economy and balancing the budget, please, Mr. Bush, let’s rethink it. I don’t like paying $7 billion a week in interest on the debt. I don’t like the idea that Mr. Buffett pays a lot less in tax as a percentage of his income than my housekeeper does or than I do.

Can we really say that we’re showing fiscal prudence? Are we doing our best? If not, why not? I don’t want class warfare from any direction, through the tax system or any other way.

In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning - The New York Times (nytimes.com)