It all began with an article in 2016. Here’s an excerpt:
“Some ideas about how to make the world better require careful, nuanced thinking about how best to balance competing interests,”. “Others don’t: Billionaires are bad. We should presumptively get rid of billionaires. All of them.”
That was Mr. Scocca, who consistently used to write at gawker.com until the site was crippled by a billionaire, none other than Peter Thiel. Scocca put forward the idea that the world would be a better place if the Billionaires were set ablaze.
Gawker’s article archive remains online though even after its shutdown, and its employees were transferred elsewhere.
But, for a moment, try wrapping your head around this–
At some point, as a result of extreme wealth, money inevitably corrupts. The highest it could do is to buy political power, silence critics and primarily helps to perpetuate MORE wealth, without reciprocating towards social good. According to Mr. Scocca, that fine line is around one billion dollars; beyond that, no matter how much you try, you’re bound to be flawed with wealth.
It was a concept that was thought to be fiddling on the fringes of capitalist and leftist ideologies, until, in a recent political spiral, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren decided to impose heavy taxes on the ultra-rich.
The question if Billionaires need to exist is garnering importance with every passing day because the answer is obviously– “No”. It’s not really fair for billionaires to silently take over the World with their insurmountable influence and power whilst the rest of the general economy struggles to feed its people.
Even Stephen Colbert put forward the question to Bill and Melinda Gates during their appearance on The Late Show, where they spoke about philanthropy and taxing the wealthy.
To which Bill responded, “I think you can make the tax system take a much higher portion from people with great wealth,”. He went on, “These great fortunes were not made from ordinary income, so you probably have to look to the capital gains rate and the estate tax if you want to create more equity there.”
In short: Tax the hell out of the wealthy, but a lot of thinking needs to be put in the specific upper tax rate.
Billionaire abolishment would mean preventing people from keeping more than a billion in their treasury. That is, by imposing higher marginal taxes on income, wealth and estates for billionaires and people on their way to becoming billionaires.
The rapid increase in tech will define one economic condition clearly than the others, and that is INEQUALITY. And, policy-makers need to address this issue, fill the inequality gap by channeling wealth to things that matter: Healthcare, Education, Poverty, Hunger etc.
The world is just beginning to realize that economic crises will at some time outpace economic reforms and decision-makers can no longer helplessly sit hand in hand going by the selfish whims of the Ultra-rich Billionaires. The recent protests carried out in Davos, in the World economic forum(WEF) is a sign that things that were long supposed to change need to start taking effect in the right direction sometime soon. And making a dent in the billionaires’ pocket might just be the right step in that right direction.
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