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4 votes
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Battle for the nation's soul – Norway faces debate about gas and oil wealth
8 votes -
Are billionaires a market failure? And if not market, are they social failure?
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/ The opinion asserts...
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/
The opinion asserts that in response to liberalization of Chinese life, driven by capitalistic economic growth, is the reason that Xi Pinjing "cracked down in every sphere imaginable — attacking the private sector, humiliating billionaires, reviving Communist ideology, purging the party of corrupt officials and ramping up nationalism (mostly anti-Western) in both word and deed."
My conspiratorial brain latched on to the humiliating billionaires line, and started thinking about a between the lines message along the lines that billionaires are good and should not be humiliated, a subtle warning-response to the progressive grumblings here in the U.S. that a failure to support capitalism will result in totalitarianism.
Then I started thinking about the questions, are billionaires good for society? I had always held the position that a billionaire is a market failure (in my econ 101 understanding of the term), much like pollution. It is improper hoarding and unfair leveraging of capital into disproportionate and un-earned degree of pesonal privilege.
It is certainly a by-product of euro-american capitalism, whereby the desires and welfare of the many are trodden on by those with the ability to fight and to shape the regulatory machine meant to protect the interests of the common-wealth.
I see a few possibilities. One, is that my understanding of economics is wrong, and producing as many billionaires as possible is the ultimate goal of capitalism and in fact good for everyone, even in theory.
Two, it is indeed as I suspect, a market failure. And the failure here is one of degree, it is not, in fact problematic to have some individuals with significantly greater wealth among us, and is, in fact, beneficial overall, but to have some with so much more than the rest of us (wealth inequaility) is a result of getting in the way of a clean functioning marketplace.
Three, economic theory is working as described, and economic theory/activity is an insufficient foundation for the maintenance and success of a whole society, and we need to find a way to constrain it to its own sphere, so that it provides us with what we need to be healthy and happy, but no more.
I turn to the bright minds of tildes: am I looking at this right?
16 votes -
Earn $20K every month by being your own boss
32 votes -
The art market is a scam... and rich people run it
7 votes -
What the rich don’t want to admit about the poor
26 votes -
MacKenzie Scott, citing wealth gap, donates $2.7 billion
29 votes -
I was taught from a young age to protect my dynastic wealth
22 votes -
Taxing consumption progressively is a better way to tax the wealthy
8 votes -
The secret IRS files: Trove of never-before-seen records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax
19 votes -
Self-fulfilling prophecies, quasi-non-ergodicity and wealth inequality
10 votes -
1-pixel wealth: Wealth in the United States, shown to scale
60 votes -
America's 1% has taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90%
31 votes -
Amid warnings of surging worldwide poverty, planet's 500 richest people added $1.8 trillion to combined wealth in 2020
9 votes -
WTF happened in 1971?
16 votes -
Cash-strapped Oman plans income tax on wealthy starting 2022
5 votes -
RAND study uncovers massive income shift to the top 1% - The median worker should be making as much as $102,000 annually—if some $2.5 trillion wasn’t being “reverse distributed” every year
33 votes -
It took decades, but Chuck Feeney, the former billionaire cofounder of Duty Free Shoppers, has finally given all his money away to charity. He has nothing left now - and he couldn’t be happier
12 votes -
The recession is over for the rich, but the working class is far from recovered
7 votes -
Under cover of capital gains, the hyper-rich have been getting richer than we thought: the earnings of the top 0.1% grew 50% more from 1996 to 2018 than previously measured
20 votes -
Rich Americans seize historic chance to pass on wealth tax-free
11 votes -
Aid in reverse: How poor countries give disproportionately more to rich countries
6 votes -
The stimulus bill includes a tax break for the 1%
13 votes -
How stock buybacks made US CEOs and shareholders really rich
10 votes -
Luanda Leaks: How Africa’s richest woman exploited family ties, shell companies and inside deals to build an empire
8 votes -
All the world’s wealth in one visual
12 votes -
The modern economy of Russia
6 votes -
Four reasons why millennials don't have any money with Robert Reich
9 votes -
Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has donated a fortune to right capitalism's wrongs, and he thinks his fellow billionaires should too. Why can't we just be grateful?
10 votes -
Musk, Bloomberg, Bezos: America's aristocracy of tech robber barons lives by its own rules
12 votes -
World inequality report 2018
5 votes -
Why America's one-percenters are richer than Europe's
10 votes -
How to increase taxes on the rich (if you must)
14 votes -
The most important debate in economics: What should count as real economic wealth? Who truly creates it, who merely assists the process, and who might be actively impeding it?
9 votes -
The great American tax haven: Why the super-rich love South Dakota
7 votes -
Opulence
29 votes -
Meet the rich kids who want to give away all their money
10 votes -
The 'glass floor' is keeping America's richest idiots at the top
10 votes -
Peter Rahal started RxBar out of his mom’s kitchen — then sold it for $600 million. Life on the other side of the entrepreneurial fantasy
7 votes -
Blame economists for the mess we’re in: Why did America listen to the people who thought we needed “more millionaires and more bankrupts?”
19 votes -
College financial-aid loophole: Wealthy US parents transfer guardianship of their teens to get aid
15 votes -
Disney heiress calls for wealth tax: 'We have to draw a line'
10 votes -
Getting rich: From zero to hero in one blog post
15 votes -
Tildes User Income Survey
18 votes -
Mr. Chen's Mountain - The story of a Chinese billionaire who moved back home, setting his mansion down in the middle of his economically depressed ancestral village
8 votes -
Ocasio-Cortez’s seventy percent top tax rate is a moderate, evidence-based policy
23 votes -
Fed says millennials are just like their parents. Only poorer.
13 votes -
Australians are the richest people in the world
8 votes -
Why wealth is determined more by power than productivity
9 votes -
Kenyatta orders lifestyle audit on high net worth individuals over low tax remittances
5 votes