BOOK REVIEW
Where should society draw the line on extreme wealth? A fresh account sets out the logic and suggests how to redress inequality.
BOOK REVIEW
Where should society draw the line on extreme wealth? A fresh account sets out the logic and suggests how to redress inequality.
It’s a good question… in computer terms, it doesn’t matter how much storage space or processing power you have, you WILL find a way to use it.
Someone who makes $30,000 a year and is legit living paycheck to paycheck may be just as tight on money as someone earning $100,000 and living paycheck to paycheck.
The difference is scale.
The person making $30,000 is struggling to make car and insurance payments on an 11 year old Honda Civic.
The person making $100,000 is struggling to make car and insurance payments on their 2024 Porsche Cayenne.
The person making millions may be struggling (to remember) to pay their car and insurance payments on their Bugatti Veyron.
Okay but if the rich person misses their Porsche payments, they can buy a Honda Civic.
I don’t know why you are even saying this. What is the point? “If a person spends lots of money on luxury items, they will have less disposable income.” Okay? What does that contribute to the question of how our government policies regulate wealth?
I’m saying that expenses scale to wealth, so someone making a significant income may still struggle at the same level as someone with a low income.
Look at someone like Rudy Giuliani, who I feel safe in saying, nobody feels sorry for that sad fuck. He’s having trouble paying for ANYTHING. Hope he’s cutting out that avocado toast. ;)
That is only true to a point, after which expenses basically don’t exist anymore and wealth continues to grow. The point at which that happens is much lower than you probably think.
I hear that expenses can scale to wealth (although, as I said, the difference is that the wealthy person can scale back but someone already buying the cheapest option has no choice), but what does that have to do with the article? Just a topic you wanted to bring up? Is there something I’m missing?
I’m saying capping how much wealth someone is allowed to have:
a) Is likely to have unintended consequences.
and b) May end up hurting more people than it helps.
Where is the logic from:
rich people may be broke if they spend a lot
to:
capping wealth may have unintended consequences and will hurt more people than it helps
You do realize that the vast majority of people are not wealthy and that the top one percent own a ridiculously disproportionate amount of the wealth? Wealth caps would only “harm” the top whatever percentage of earners. And if they’re at such a thin margin that the wealth tax would hurt them, like boo fucking hoo lmao, they can sell their Bugatti and buy a new Honda Civic fresh off the lot.
I get the idea of what you’re saying but for many geographies your dollar figure doesn’t match. Up your number to maybe $175k for somewhere like NYC or other large urban centers for it to be accurate.
Oh, definitely. You could even scale rent.
Someone making $30K with 3 room mates is struggling to come up with their share of the rent.
Someone making $100,000 with no room mates, is struggling to pay their $4,000 rent.
But at some point, personal expenditure (not expenses geared to bussiness making more money) maxs out. Only so much food you can eat, only so much time you can spend in a day, only so much housing space you can occupy with out that 5th house basically becoming a investment property.
the spend X persons money games show that eventually its a job to find a ways to spend it. there is a limit when it comes to homes and cars.
If you have a bloated program that sucks up all your ram on unnecessary processes because it was poorly developed your computer would care and especially if you go to scale, a billionaire costs more and takes more computing power than a finely tuned family living off of 40000 a year because the billionaire wastes everything since it means nothing but that family makes sure every Lil bit is used to its fullest. Billionaires break the computer
The person making billions is struggling to pay the officials off that enabled them to continue to make billions.
The person making 100,000 is either living in LA/NY or financially lazy. The person making 30,000 doesn’t have room to manuever.
Clearly we should rebalance things so everyone has room to manuever. The US GDP evenly split among adults is ~138,000 dollars. Take a bit off the top to run the country and we’re left with about 106,000. It’s blindingly clear we’re grinding the working class to the bone for the benefit of the few. Not the country or the people.
And justifying it with, but that guy with a million dollars spends it all! Just doesn’t cut it. He doesn’t need it and he doesn’t need the things it buys.