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Rising Star
No.
Conversely, it is unethical to want to limit something that you did not ear, create, or are otherwise impacted by. This conversation is always routed in the desire to spend someone else's money.
Rising Star
Currency is most certainly not limited, unless you are a W2 employee. Currency is merely a means to show and trade value, and is only limited by the value that a person or company can generate. It is not a zero sum game, and in many cases one person's value combined with another person's value will double or triple the sum when combined. In that same vein, on person having a trillion dollars does not preclude anymore else from amassing a trillion dollar net worth.
Big companies keep getting bigger, and they aren't trading off each other's growth.
Yes. Of course. Legality doesn’t matter. There’s lots of things that are legal that are only legal due to corruption. Billionaires do not earn their wealth. Their employees whom they exploit do.
What employees did Dr Dre and Bruce Sprinsteen exploit?
The thing is, almost none of the ultra-wealthy amass their fortunes legally, ethically, and/or through innovation; that kind of money is accumulated off others' backs.
Proof like the past 50 years? Billionaires dragon-hoarding more money than they could ever spend in a thousand lifetimes seems pretty unethical in itself when 40 million people are living in poverty in the wealthiest country on the planet, especially as that same country has seen its share of billionaires rise from ~15 total in 1982 to nearly 1000 today because only those "chosen" few have truly benefited from 50 years of very convenient pro-business/anti-worker neoliberal "trickle-down" steadily funneling all our wealth up to the top.
All this has occurred as the rise of computers/the Internet (invented on our dime!) has caused worker productivity to increase 3-4x since the 80s, so we as the 99%/working class/actual value-producers in society rightfully deserve our share of those ridiculous resulting profits which the ultra-wealthy have so far been very happy to slurp up as they continue to underpay&overwork us while not even paying back their fair share in taxes.
Nah. If it's earned its earned.
I know some may differ in opinion, but if the person couldn’t do it, no one would bat an eye.
The only reason this is even a question is because the person could while the majority couldn’t.
So if said person could accumulate wealth under the conditions stated, then they should reap the rewards, no matter how bountiful, and leave it up to their own moral or ethics to decide what to do with it.
No. That is stupid. This whole “eat the rich” socialism campaign is complete lunacy.
How so? There are children starving in America; I think guaranteeing survival is the least we could do for our fellow man when a select few are allowed to possess wealth greater than the GDPs of many countries combined. We become a pseudo-aristocracy when the profit-over-everything motive means the 'owning class' is incentivized to skim off our labor, bend the law, bribe politicians, manipulate media, & monopolize the market to continue growing their stockpiled wealth, i.e., power, until their dragonlike hoarding leads to market collapse, ruining countless others' lives, ad infinitum...
If wealth was earned legally, voluntarily, and without coercion, people should be free to accumulate as much as they can. The concern is that limiting wealth can reduce innovation, investment, and individual freedom.
No it isn’t. It’s routed in the idea that currency is a limited resource. And it simply cannot be ok for the possibility for a trillionaire to exist. If you do not understand this, you need to understand how large of a number that is.
And if this is truly how you feel, then you should understand that the “someone else’s money” you are so protective of, is actually the public’s money stolen by billionaires and now trillionaires.
How was starting a successful company and going public stealing?
Focus on yourself. If you’re thinking like this then comparison instead of self improvement is your problem
The issue is not with the individual accumulating more wealth than they need -- it's the laws and the way the tax code currently works. Until then, play by the rules and make them work for you.
Nope. How much money someone has legally made has absolutely no effect on anyone else. It's not a zero sum game.
Not a valid or internally consistent question. “Ethical” is not in the same dimension as “allow”.
Ethics governs behavior, not outcomes.
“Allow“ is a matter of law and tax policy, and sometimes the behavior of totalitarian governments.
Voluntary fair exchange of value (wages for legal work or money for stock) is always ethical. It’s the foundation of a free society with opportunity for all.
By connecting Ethical and Allow, you are implicitly advocating for (unethical) confiscation of someone else’s property, or more likely, their unrealized capital gains on stock, above some $$ level.
Who gets to decide? On what basis? At what threshold?
Would you like *unrealized* gains in your 401K or brokerage account or crypto holdings taxed at an “unethical wealth gain tax level“ of 80%? What if they drop in value after that?
Same idea, just a lower $ threshold.
How about being taxed at 80% on paper gains on a Pokemon card that you bought for $20 and is now worth $500? Suppose you pay the $384 tax, then the card drops to $50. You now have a *realized* loss of $384. You are poorer IRL. Was that an “ethical” tax policy?
This is ultimately what happens when wealth itself is not “allowed”. At some point, everyone is targeted, because those capable of creating wealth leave, and everyone left pays more. See the flight from NYC.
Look at the 20th century to see how this question ended for 200M murdered people and hundreds of millions more who were impoverished and starved by Communist and Socialist “laws“ based on envy, not voluntary fair exchange of value.
My message of hope and aspiration: as a PM, you can now create a side business in AI consulting and become much wealthier than by a salary. We are all limited only by our imaginations, focus, and effort.
Advice: create high value for others, benefit from it, and don’t worry about the billionaires.
You’re advocating for things that make no sense. Musk is not a trillionaire. He owns assets that cost that much today. Tomorrow they might be priced at 2x or 0.5x. He can’t actually sell them at that price nor they would cost that much without his involvement. You’re repeating things that some left (and even some right) folks say to gain popularity. They quote random numbers and state rich are the problem. But the issue is that if you limit asset max to some arbitrary number that won’t solve any problems. Most of rich will flee the country tomorrow and take their assets elsewhere with jobs and high spending will remain here that is leading this country to a bankruptcy.
Why? This would stop innovation.
Do you have too much money?
100%. Look at flipping EU. How many startups came out of Nordic countries Bernie loves so much? Most entrepreneurs come to the states from countries in Europe exactly because they assume it’s a lot easier here. And you guys want to change this with random taxes because Bernie is trying to promote himself
I would agree that it is unethical for the robber barons type of wealth, where it is accumulated from taking away limited resource from others (i.e. Russian oligarchs).
However, the wealth for the likes of Elon Musk is not like that at all. Say I create a billion shares in my company, and you purchase 1 share for $1, that would on paper make me a billionaire too.
No
No. He also doesn’t have a trillion dollars in cash. The USA being 36 trillion in debt due to corruption is criminal.
Yes. Massive wealth gives individuals power to change rules and influence policy in ways that allow them to accumulate even more at the expense of everybody else, creating a downward spiral toward oligarchy. It's not about preventing rich people from having the money to buy expensive stuff, it's about preventing anyone from having unequal say in laws that affect all of us.