To think billionaires shouldn’t exist?

[ThisIcyWriter]

No one earns a billion through hard work alone - it’s exploitation. AIBU to think billionaires shouldn’t exist in a fair society?

Not a chance.

Take a look at Bill Gates and the amount he gives away. Look at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the health care projects they fund.....

Taylor Swift is a billionaire right? I'm fine with that.

Just because there are good billionaires doesn’t mean they should exist

YABU. I have no problem with people being super rich. Unfortunately I'm not one of them. It would be great to have so much money that you can give huge chunks of it away to help others.

Yeah, I agree, even though I'm a huge and fairly uncritical Swiftie!

She does spread her money around though. I don't think she can be accused of hoarding wealth. And it is very clearly due to her talent and global appeal to millions. Not the case for all of them! But it can't be one rule for the ones I like and another for the ones I don't...

He's pretty much an outlier though. Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Bezos etc...not so much

SIGH

Yabu.

bill gates hasn’t always been a non controversial figure, the Microsoft anti competition lawsuits in the 80s/90s are well documented.

and this is the crux really- what do people do over time to get super rich?

Yes the corruption of big tech in bill gates day was different to the corruption of being given the Russian national grid following the Russian privatisation which has made oligarchs. similarly different to colonial raiding and slavery which made people rich 200 years ago.

one is not necessarily better or more palatable than the other- they are financial reward for causing misery and unfairness elsewhere. And that’s the problem

Bill Gates is notorious for his philanthropy and even interns there can earn up to £40k/year (though lowest is £17k) according to Glass Door.
In fact some of the richest people on Earth got there by starting their own software (Microsoft, Google , Oracle etc) or brands (LVMH) which grew to the huge conglomerates they are today, the latter through acquisitions. And what's your definition of exploitation?
It's good to know that the likes of Gates and Buffet plan to give the majority of their wealth to charity.
Billionaires are fine with me - when I hear people call to get rid of them I don't think they understand how the economy and world of entrepreneurship works. These people are major employers.
You take all the money today and redistribute it then in a few years we will be back to how we started with some people vastly wealthier than others. Fact remain that the Warren Buffets of this world are always going to do better than Joe Bloggs down the road. Or take Larry Ellison, adopted in to a middle class family he dropped out of uni when his mother passed away. He's worth about $140bn now.
There is also a difference between wealth and income.

The main question is, what happens when you run out of billionaires as they have all left the country?

Go after those with 100 million, then when they have left those with 10 million, then those with 1 million.

It's a slippery slope when governments dictate how much you can own.

Some sound keen on ensuring people leave. It's not a good idea though as we have lower funds

It’s a ridiculous straw man to equate having an issue with someone having billions and with communism and believing we should all be paid the same.

Are they taking their billions from what us rightfully yours OP?
There's enough money in the world for everyone. Some gather more than others.

Its not about punishing people. But while someone spending their money creating new businesses or buying the countries products, or paying tax is a good thing, above a certain point you enter the law of diminishing returns there. After a certain point, most of the money gets spent on assets (good if you are the one selling the farmland/house less good if you are wanting to buy) or on buying media outlets or worse on manipulating elections. Its about balance. People instinctively don't like it - its not just Elon Musk people complain about, there is also unease around George Soros, Bill Gates. Even if their aims were 100% altruistic, that much money being spent on healthcare/refugees etc is a reminder of how much actual power those people have and it breeds resentment.
One possible option might be to leave income tax as it is and tax expensive assets more - you can move to another country but you can't really take the multimillion pound house in London with you. That might cause assets to be less attractive to invest in and cause their prices to fall. Which wouldn't be a bad thing actually - it would incentivize investment in industry instead and possibly make house prices affordable. The Daily Mail etc would kick up such a fuss it would never happen.

So instead, we will continue to blame all criticism on "politics of envy". Then when public discontent (at corruption and inequality) grows so great they will be encouraged to vote for a populist type who will "shake things up". And the same people who resisted any sensible measures to deal with corruption and inequality will talk about how "the liberal elites opposing him need to understand how angry ordinary people are at corruption and inequality". And then it will all get worse. Yay.

I think op in order to really do that you'd need to do away with the concept of generational wealth since most billionaires have inherited a big portion of their wealth.

I personally am all for taxing the extremely wealthy much much harder and doing away with private schools, so they're paying back into their communities but people can still succeed in business, provide generational wealth for kids but ultimately have a fairer society.

This is an excellent visual. Thank you for sharing it.

People seem to forget that money is a resource, like food. If super rich billionaires hoard unimaginable amounts of money, there’s less money to go round for everyone. If they were hoarding a big percentage of the world’s food while millions are starving to death, would that be morally just?

There is no way that they could spend even a tiny fraction of their fortune. They’re just taking it out of circulation and trying to grow their wealth for the purpose of inflating their own immoral ego.

I personally am all for taxing the extremely wealthy much much harder and doing away with private schools

@Lavender14 would you allow parents to home educate or send the children to school abroad?

@Anonym00se thanks. I was shocked when I first saw it.

I may have totally misunderstood economics but I think that the wealthier the super rich are, the less value our money has because there being more money existing in the world means that each bit of money is worth less?

This thread perfectly illustrates how we can never sort out this issue because it can't be discussed sensibly. Some of the comments on here are just plain childish. The idea that the only positions that exist are vast wealth or communism is so pathetic it isn't even worth commenting on.

As long as there are people willing to tug their forelocks and say "Well done Mr Bezos, you deserve all that money, sir" there will never be any progress towards equality. Some of the posts remind me of the old days when peasants looked up to the Lord in the bit manor house despite the fact that he was probably exploiting them.

Of course no one should have the wealth of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or any of the other multi billionaires around the world. I honestly don't know how they sleep at night when they know they could achieve monumental change around the world if they wanted to.

I agree OP. It doesn't have to be communism but the extremes of wealth are sickening.
There is a book I've been meaning to read as I heard an interview with the author and she made a really good case.
It is called Limitarianism - the case against extreme wealth. Author is Ingrid Robeyns.
It sounds like this is the kind of lines along which you are thinking?

It's not about punishing people.

@biscuitandcake I don't think you can punish people, they'll leave and be fine

It's those who have to make up higher taxes or have lower funds that will struggle more

It sounds like this is the kind of lines along which you are thinking?

I don’t think the op is coming back.

Also, another poster said vive revolution! I have read similar sentiments on here on quite a few occasions and asked the posters to enlarge on what form this revolution will take. So far I have never had a reply.

It's not so much the existence of billionaires that bothers me as the fact that in order to become billionaires they have usually exploited their workers, the planet's resources, and any tax loopholes they can find.
I'm with you, OP, no body 'earns' a billion, they extract it from the workers.
So, Jeff Bezos is 'worth' billions while his workers can barely survive on what he pays them.

I'd like to see a much higher rate of tax applied to the billionaires, including taxing their assets. They could be taxed at 70% and still be mega times richer than most people.