Should anyone be allowed to accumulate more than $900 billion?

[Anonymous]

I personally think anything over 900 billion is a little bit excessive, but what do you think?

Updates

5 d

After all, there is no specific law against being selfish as hell, and some people aspire to that.

[Sevenpointfive]

i think if you have a lot of money, you have an obligation to help the world in some way. that doesn't mean selling more coffee or deleting your carbon footprint. you should do that anyway. and then go beyond that.

[Asker]

In a capitalist economy, nobody helps anybody with anything unless there's a payoff for them.

[Sevenpointfive]

i know. there's absolutely no reason for it to be that way other than money and making sure that money is passed down through bloodlines.

[Asker]

There's also, I think, at least an unconscious fear of death. A lot of these people think if they accumulate money, they won't die. They will, of course, but they don't think they will.

[Sevenpointfive]

yeah. that's a constant thing. they are looking into prolonging life. they absolutely fund science like that and with some success, but the truth has revealed it can't be done so far. they know exactly what to do though i believe.

[lightbulb27]

yes, we need an equillibrium day... where the wealth is evened out. What doe sit mean that one person owns everything? it's much better when wealth is divided.

[Effably]

There's the fairly viral post of "At 1 billion $ you get a key to the city, a dog park named after you and a plaque that says you won Capitalism."

I think that is a much better point than 900 billion. If we are being honest there is not a human alive that needs a billion dollars for their own life. You can certainly spend it, but outside of ridiculous purchases that is lifetimes of extravagant luxury.

To be a little biblical, if you're successful get a bigger table to feed your neighbours too.

[Bianca_Italy]

I mean... if you really want to set a limit and distribute money, at that point the limit could be a little lower than $900 billion. 😂

[Asker]

Our economy is really screwed up. There's at least one, and possibly two, people who literally have over $1 trillion in individual wealth. There's something very wrong with that.

[Bianca_Italy]

Yeah... if the economy was a simple thing, economists wouldn't be necessary.

If you distributed the wealth, there would be issues: inflation, productivity decrease and other issues.

[jamesgoldman]

Asker, you think they're are only 1 or 2, the real elite aren't on Forbes... the richest one of those is probably getting close to holding a quadrillion now

[Asker]

Well I'm not really keeping track of who has what it sounds like you are. Thanks for doing that. I guess. If what you say is true, there's probably quite a bit more to be annoyed about than I originally thought.

[slatyb]

Where do you think that money comes from? Almost all of it is paper wealth, and if it's not it came from investors or customers. There's not a vault somewhere full of gold mined by slaves.

[Asker]

That doesn't really change the basic question. Should anybody be allowed to accumulate this much wealth?

[slatyb]

Why not? If someone starts a company and holds 10% of the stock and investors are willing to pay large amounts of money to buy that stock then what? Stock prices go up and down. Are you suggesting that the government take over the company?

[Asker]

I didn't suggest anything. I just asked The question. Maybe you could just answer it. It's easy to make up scenarios in which everybody has to keep their money. It's not so easy to make up ones where somebody shouldn't be able to keep the money for multiple reasons. Why don't you try that.

[slatyb]

I did answer the question. What do you think my answer was?

[Asker]

No, you didn't answer the question.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

If he did it legally, anyone should be allowed to accumulate at least 10 trillion. there should be no limit to how much wealth you can earn legally.

[MrChinaski]

I don't care how much wealth people accumulate per se. What matters is that you tax income effectively. We don't do that.

[Asker]

No we don't tax it effectively because if you have enough money you can engage in what is known as regulatory capture and you effectively will have no taxes or very little because you own the regulators

[goaded]

I think one billion is. Time to increase taxes to 1960's levels, without the 1960's bigotry they love.

[exitseven]

it is a free ecomomy besides 900 billion does not go as far as it used to

[Anonymous]

Wealth is not finite.

[Agape93]

Sure, excessive or not. Idc.

[832loverboy73]

H**L to the NO !!!

[Anonymous]

If you earned it all good