Is every billionaire a societal failure?

[Latimer]

I am absolutely confident that no matter what kind of system you put in there will always be the ultra-rich.

Or at least there will always be those who share a greater part of the wealth (whatever it may be) and enjoy greater privilege.

Anecdotal, but telling:

One of my best friends is a first-generation Mexican American contractor whose now 99-year-old father came to California under the Bracero program (as my friend said, the right way) to pick crops, after a time obtained residency, and finally became a citizen. He and his 97-year old wife still live in the little house in West Los Angeles they bought near the nursery where he worked decades ago. One of my friend's sons is an accountant with Deloite in London, the other is in graduate school at Cal Tech doing research in Biology, and his daughter is a police officer. Don't tell this family that America isn't the land of opportunity.

Besides contracting, one of my friend's sidelines is (illegally) importing cigars from Cuba, which he sells and gives as presents. When Cuba opened up during the Obama years he was on the first ship over. One of the interesting stories that he tells about his stay there centers on the day he was in Havana and his host--his source for cigars--said, "Come with me, I'll show you how my friends and I really live." So my friend is driven into the hills outside of Havana where he finds himself in a manicured country club-like setting with most of the amenities one would find in a similar place in the US, surrounded by beautifully turned-out individuals and families dressed in designer clothes and acting as if they didn't have a care in the world. Not the Cuba I had imagined, nor the Cuba my Socialist Workers Party friends describe to me.

By the way, my first-generation friend is the first person I heard say anything good about Donald Trump. It was in reference to his position on immigration. To my initial surprise, all of the Mexican and Central Americans (immigrant through second generation) with whom I work with expressed support for Trump and his policies when the subject arose--and it arose because they brought it up. For them, Trump represented fairness and jobs, and he didn't talk down to them.

 

[Dominus]

Respectfully, the bell curve IS about symmetry. It assumed a distribution of 50% in the firsts standard deviation from the mean. That makes a large middle class.

Categorically, for THOUSANDS of years in many societies, there was NO middle class. There were poor feudal workers and tradesmen, and there were the elite who owned them basically, so your assertion isn't true until a middle class evolved and speculating began.

Ok. You are right.

That said, what I said about having an elite class remains. Forget about the bell curve. I was wrong about that. But I am right about having an elite class. There is just no way around it. As long as there are people, there will always be a small group of people who end up controlling most resources. The reason is people aren't equal. There will always be a small group of people who figures out how to beat the system.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Elite is elite, but the question put is about degree.

Billionaires are 1,000 times richer than millionaires.

Millionaires are 100 times richer than the take-home pay of someone earning only the federal minimum wage.

So, billionaires are holding 100,000 times the man working a basic job for his bread and beer.

100,000 times. That's hard to fathom how the worth of a man could be THAT degree more than the man who cleans up your kid's school.

I'm still waiting to hear how society reconciles that kind of scale.

Disparity is disparity, but this is an astronomical difference, literally.

When I Google it, the estimate is between 720 and 975 Americans that are at the billionaire rank. That's one quarter of the world's billionaires, yet we are a nation of only 4% of the world population.

While the evening news and broad media keep us navel-gazing about racism and crime, the oligarchs are laughing their asses off. "Peanuts! Get your peanuts!"

 

[Rickrock]

I don't have a problem with someone making more than another person, but I do have a problem with the huge disparity. Both the president of a company and a floor sweeper both contribute to the operation of a company. I don't have a workable solution but if there were a minimum of $20 an hour and a maximum of $200 an hour with anything above being taxed at 90% that sounds reasonable. Where the difference is 1000 times seems extreme. I have heard that democracy works better when a country doesn't have a huge extreme between the classes, but is mostly all equal. I don't know how this can be accomplished and my figures may be out of line, but I believe the idea has merit.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I think it gets back to the definition of "earning." I have yet to hear anything that explains how the billionaire is earning his value at that level.

There used to be bread riots, but we live in an era of industrial food production, so cheap food is abundant, if unhealthy. When we have riots now, it is to steal electronics, and erstwhile "luxury" items like prestige shoes, etc.

It will likely change if there is a period of catastrophic shortages induced by either famine, war, or "natural" disaster, or the inadequate response to one. Although that has to happen in an area where the constituency is not passive. After all, they never burned Baton Rouge or DC after Katrina.

 

[Latimer]

From an essay by Seamus Flaherty, "Modern socialism has no class: the Left is too gentrified to care about work":

"The current Left isn’t interested in universalism, virtue, non-elective communities, or technical skill. It is relativist, individualistic, hedonistic, and preoccupied with abolishing borders and work. As one influential text put in 2015: “the classic social democratic demand for full employment should be replaced with the future-oriented demand for full unemployment”. It would be misleading to present the Left as a monolithic block. Both the socialists who wrote this (Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams), and their Fully Automated Luxury Communist successors, cared and care about class. But it is a version of class from which the traditional working class has largely been expunged, disciplined for bad behaviour."

 

[rareboy]

So describe your ideal society for us. Are there any historic or contemporary examples you would like to describe?

It isn't this.

And I have no doubt that you admire and lust after the billionaire class.

 

[Latimer]

You didn't answer my question.

You answered my question with an attack, which is not to answer my question. I remember my grandfather used to attribute this to only Republicans and bigots, but then he lived in another era.

I only find billionaires useful to the degree that they do good, be it through invention, investment, creating opportunity and/or jobs--and beauty. I recall that Taki Theodoracopulos the millionaire playboy journalist, raconteur and philosopher once wrote, "The only good reason for rich people is to create beauty?" I disagree, and rich people have been particularly bad at it in our times, but there's a kernel of truth there. The merchants and bankers of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance are gone, but we have Florence. Think of it: Giotto! Brunelleschi! Michelangelo! Those avaricious Venetians who sought to control the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, gave us Venice. They gave us Palladio. Think of it: Palladio! How many lives over how many centuries and how many lands have been enhanced by the influence of his work?

I had a meeting yesterday afternoon with a billionaire couple to discuss a project. They were nice enough, and I was happy to spend four (four!) hours with them because they amused and flattered me, and their project--not a large one, or a big money-maker--was interesting. That they were billionaires was not the point.

I've lived around rich people my entire life, and I have no lust for them. If they are good, I am pleased to have them as friends and even compatriots. If they provide me with opportunities to do good, all the better.

In any case, it's not easy to take chances, create a business, run a company. Think of and celebrate the imagination and vision of say, a Henry Ford. Or a Walt Disney. Visit the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan someday. Visit the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. Think of all of the opportunity their guts and fortitude created for others and continues to do so.

What has Bernie Sanders and his wife ever done than be supported by the state? How many opportunities and jobs have they created?

 

[NotHardUp1]

One thing that seems to get lost in the discussion of merits of billionaires is the question of loss.

IF billionaires would not be allowed to exist, due to societal rejection of such gross disparity, what would go missing?

Would millionaires and smaller stock owners simply stop investing in stock and business? Unlikely.

Would the non-billionaire population cease to commision great buildings, luxury dwellings, fine art, furniture, jewelry, or status items like boats and vacation homes and fashion? No.

Would jobs not be created by the same demands for goods for the masses, for entertainment, for construction, for services, for digitial development, for innovation? No.

Would land cease to be developed for urban expansion and renewal, for agricultural use, or for infrastructure? No.

Attributing all these to billionaires ignores the fact that AMPLE resources and wealth still exists in the society to fund all those things. whether it is the pennies of school children paying for the Statue of Liberty foundation, all the way up to mere millionaires endowning museums.

The question was and is, degree. It is not socialism versus capitalism. Unchecked socialism is totalitarianism. Unchecked capitalism is what we have in America. Neither is acceptable. By comparison, sex is good. Unchecked sex is Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Dahmer or Jeffrey Epstein.

What is being challenged in the OP is whether there is a legitimate, reasonable cap on the inequity, or if it is acceptable to continue to be a galactic span. We often imagine the Emperor Chin, or the Egyptian God-kings as ridiculously above the people who made their luxury possible, yet we impute virtue to our own uber-wealthy. I argue that this is the result of the cutlure promoting greed, and thereby, rationalizing the existence of the extreme elite.

 

[NotHardUp1]

So describe your ideal society for us. Are there any historic or contemporary examples you would like to describe?

Although you are asking Rareboy, I'd like to suggest the Nordic states, especially Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Although they have an unfair advantage in having small populations with large land masses, their policies are more the reasons for the praise.

They are not inordinately socialist, but at the same time, are not afraid to put the thumb on the scale in redistributing wealth and ensuring the average citizen is not relegated to a sub-class. Public sector control of several aspects of industry and welfare, and ownership of natural resources, all contribute to a high equality rating and sense of satisfaction by the populace.

They have also seen to adequate national defense without becoming the bitches of the military industrial complex.

They are reviewed here, and are sadly alongside some countries that have high equality of poverty, rather than sustenance:

Top countries on economic equality

Do you want to know the countries where wealth is distributed in the most equitable way? This is the top 10 countries with the lowest economic inequality.

www.activesustainability.com

 

[rareboy]

The Baltic States are the gold standard for quality of life and ensuring 1% don't rob the rest of the country blind.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I thought some of the Baltic states were known for their equality, but low wealth.