Do you think anyone truly deserves to be a billionaire?

If anyone does, I’d want it to be the likes of Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough, or others who would put it to truly good use.

Yes, we deserve what we earn.

@SnipSnip That all depends on how one earns it. And anyone amassing a billion dollars is not earning it through their own ingenuity or labor, but through the ingenuity and labor of others.

I have no problem with someone earning a billion dollars, But everything over that should be taxed at a marginal rate of 100%.

Does a thief deserve all his loot?

‘Deserve’ has nothing to do with it. that concept (deserving) is assigned to it by others. WHo are you (or anyone else) to say if someone ‘deserves’ it or not?

That’s like saying – does the drive-thru clerk at McDonalds ‘deserve’ to make $15/hour?

What’s the criterion for being ‘deserving’?

If anyone can make a zillion dollars, go for it. If you make it illegally, then you may pay the price for breaking the law. If you made it legally, it’s not open to question. You get it.

As soon as you put a limit on what a person can earn, that is a wage controll – and that starts to push very closely to socialism, which doesn’t work in the long term.

One might think that if one were a Socialist. People in the USA are Capitalists so it’s OK.

Absolutely. In a free market economy, the way you make money is by exchanging something of value for that money. If you make enough trades that you become a billionaire, then as long as your trades were not fraud or coerced, why shouldn’t you be considered as having ‘deserved’ that money.

Now, there are people who get rich through means that feel ‘undeserved’ where the question is a little muddier. Take for example the Walton heirs. Their father Sam is the one that created Wal-Mart and innovated supply chains and retail stores to reduce prices. Those actions earned him political enemies who are well funded by the unions, but they also reduced the cost of living to consumers, most of whom themselves are poor. Sam Walton made ALOT of people’s lives better by lowering their cost of living. Why would anyone deny that he ‘deserves’ to be a billionaire?

But what about his kids? They’re just inheriting right? They don’t ‘deserve’ that money! Except, this is an upside-down way to look at it. Sam is the one who decided to pass them money and shares in the company. Shouldn’t Sam be allowed to choose how he disburses his wealth? He earned it, and did so without fraud or coercion. If he wants to set his kids up, why shouldn’t he be allowed to do so? It’s his choice. The question of ‘deserves’ misses the point of free exercise of choice.

There are also people where the folks who don’t understand markets will try to portray them as not ‘deserving’ the money. There’s a bias on the left that is a remnant of the Marxist line of thinking that still clings to the Labor Theory of Value that will tell you that someone who just moves money around to get rich doesn’t deserve the money. They might defense someone like a Henry Ford, but would say someone like a Warren Buffett who just invests is undeserving. This is nonsense. Finding the most efficient use of capital (which is what investing is fundamentally about) IS a valuable service in a capitalist economy. We want folks like Buffett or Soros or others to find things to invest in. Even the ever despised ‘Vulture Capitalist’ firms that destroy companies and sell them off like Bain or Danny DeVito’s character from Other People’s Money are doing a valuable service by finding inefficient companies and reallocating their resources to a higher economic use—they are the tools of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called ‘Creative Destruction’ and it is a critical part of a healthy market.

Now, throughout, I tried to make clear that this is NOT the same as those who get rich through fraud or coercion or other illegal/unethical means. This FTX guy for example. He got caught. Bernie Madoff got caught. There are plenty of people who get very rich through illegal/unethical means that don’t get caught. They clearly do NOT ‘deserve’ to be billionaires. HOW you made the money matters.

Me me me me!!

@kritiper “People in the USA are Capitalists . . .”
– Not all of them.

The U.S. isn’t a free market economy. It’s actually socialism for the rich. The opposite of free market.

Social democracy on the other hand is what most “far left” people support. Which is a mixed market economy.

The bigger question is, do you think it is fair that 37% of the country’s wealth should be owned by 1% of the people and that the 1% can use their money to buy political influence?

I hold this truth to be self-evident, that in America today all men are not created equal. Some are born into poverty and some into unimaginable wealth.

I don’t believe in a ceiling, but I do believe in a much steeper progressive income tax scheme, classifying capital gains beyond some threshold as income and also a progressive wealth tax and estate taxes that makes it extremely difficult to maintain that kind of wealth for a prolonged period or intergenerationally.

@Zaku Generally speaking they are. There should have been no doubt about that. I never meant for the comment to be all inclusive otherwise I would have said so.

I think the bigger problem is what they can do with the money. In the US, generally, the richest are also the deftest manipulators of the tax code, manipulators of the legal system, shadow donors to political or influence campaigns, monopolists and regulation capturers, and for some reason we worship a lot of them. I mean, can you actually imagine a billionaire, convicted of murder, getting the death sentence? It’s never going to happen.

@Entropy No offense, but do you ever write an answer short enough that I’ll read it? I think we all understand that you’re smart, but there’s no payoff if it’s too long to bother reading. I limit my time on the computer, so I miss out on most of your edifications.

@Entropy “Sam Walton made ALOT of people’s lives better by lowering their cost of living.”

He also annihilated a lot of good jobs, destroyed value, abused his company’s size in monopolistic and monopsonistic ways, received sweetheart deals from local governments, accelerated outsourcing jobs to the third world, created negative externalities on the US taxpayer, the planet’s environment and carved a chunk out of the middle class. See this: Walmart: The High Cost Of Low Prices.

“But what about his kids? They’re just inheriting right? They don’t ‘deserve’ that money! Except, this is an upside-down way to look at it.”

Not really upside down at all. The reason capitalism works is because it mimics nature’s survival of the fittest mechanism, not because of an inherited “divine right” feudal economic model. Sam can pass on good education and some of his wealth to his kids, but it doesn’t help anyone (except the kids) if they don’t then have to use those advantages to earn their own fortunes through competition. Your neofeudal approach to capitalism is the upside-down view.

The idea that vulture capitalists are inherently beneficial is also upside down. You’re assuming they’re beneficial and then using that to justify that they’re creating value. Companies like that destroy value all of the time, same with mergers and acquisitions that end up leading nowhere. When you have billionaires, and a system that allows politicians to be bribed, the government starts undoing the oversight that regulates markets to prevent things like banks investing their customer’s holdings, or allowing mergers, or refusing to pursue anti-labor practices, or carving out exceptions to prevent unions from striking. And then when those bad bets lead to catastrophic losses, then they get bailouts from the taxpayers because they’re too big to fail. Give me a break…

I think you really ought to give Marx a read. Communism is a critique of the failures of capitalism. There are successful companies employing this model. Having democracy in the workplace would solve many of the problems we see in our system.

I think Bernie Sanders would be deserving. He’d put that money to good use.

@smudges I read it, but regret having done so. I disagree strongly with most of it, but am not going to invest the energy to write arguments.

Remember folks if you hit 5 paragraphs in your answer, you are unworthy of a response. Let’s keep our thoughts very small. That’s what we’re all here for isn’t it?

For me, it’s not the length, but the condescending pro-billionaire capitalist credo.

The lengths throw me off and guarantee I won’t read, much less respond.

Sure as long as you don’t abuse and exploit your work force while getting there.