Obscene wealth: World's 85 richest have same wealth as 3.5 billion poorest http://rt.com/news/wealthy-rich-85-billion-879/
The WRONG and DANGEROUS thing about wealthy people is money retention. Money needs to circulate to stimulate economy. Earn -> Spend -> Earn. Money goes around, makes a full circle, everybody's happy. If you pile up money and don't spend it, you drain economy. Now I don't mind rich people being rich or poor people being poor, I have a problem with the money retention which kind of clashes with the "I don't have a problem..." statement, but I hope I won't be misunderstood. When you have a lot of money, what do you want? More money. Not because you need it, but because at that point it becomes a trophy and the more you have it the more you can brag about it before others in the same category. Like comparing stuffed animals between hunter friends. Like if we could set a limit of how much money is enough for a decent living (say $1mil/year) and say all income (personal and corporate) above that amount would be retained by the government and spent on road infrastructure, education, healthcare system...to keep the money flowing (employ people, encourage spending...). Of course that is just from the top of my head, but if you get the point you will agree if we implement that, we would really have something going. Of course, capitalism and socialism don't go together so that would never work. I guess that is why world's 85 richest have same wealth as 3.5 billion poorest.
You don't want to limit how much money people can make. That also stagnates the economy, although there is evidence that very high tax rates for extreme income (>$1M a year) don't adversely deter innovation. The problem is thus: You don't want very high tax rates because the government is aweful in general in getting people to want to better themselves. They use the money taken in poorly. You don't want enourmous inequality because amazing huge amounts of wealth, as you point out, becomes just a selling game to get more of it. Central banks then are forced to print more money, leading eventually to high inflation. So, imo, one key is for government to own and promote infrastructure of any kind. For example, the government should own or at least compete with corporations for high speed internet access. It should cost almost nothing to get on the internet and have a high speed connection. Same thing with the interstate highway system. Mobility and access to information should cost almost nothing. The problem with wealth creation is that it is misunderstood. People want to be rich which they equate with wealth, when what they should be aiming for is to be happy at their work. This bottom up approach works much better than just trying to create dull employment. As a government, if all you do is want to create jobs for corporations, you get a dull bunch of people that all they do is either: a) go to work and do nothing else, or b) are extremely poor. "Job" creation looks good on paper, but it leads to a dysfunctional society if the work is not suited to the person, which is the case in about 80% of the work force. So, the question is, how do you encourage people to find their professional calling, and then, how do you create an economy that supports just about any conceivable job so that people can sustain themselves doing what they love. That Monet, Mozart, etc died broke is the wrong answer. Having 3.5 BILLION people make $1 a day is the wrong answer.
I have no problem with a level playing field..purt me in coach. but c'mon today is not capitalism in action but crony capitalism. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dail...m-killed-free-market-democracy-120004233.html
One thing the government can do to stop money hoarding is to enforce a tax such as if you earn more than >X million and don't spend an X amount of it by a certain time, your income will be taxed at a higher rate.
Really? I think there are 3.5 Billion people who never should have been born in the first place. Whaddaya think of that? In spite of Leftist propaganda, the makers have no obligation to support the takers for their entire lives. (I'm a Darwinist... "provide for yourself or do the world a solid by dying and stop being a drain on society" Nobody should be "obliged" to support another just because they are alive"... parsites likely shouldn't have been allowed to be born in the first place.)
This is not possible. Watts once asked psychology (I think) students if money was not a barrier, what would they like to do in life. He got a bunch of different answers from teacher, writer, musician...and when he asked them why are they studying psychology then, they replied because we can't make any money doing what we want. So that's the answer to your question. We are not happy-oriented as a society but a production-oriented. Robots with clear instructions set in mind, birth->get a job->buy house->have children->die->repeat. There's no "what do you WANT to do" discussion, it's "do THIS because you can make a lot of money" instruction. No wonder majority of people hate their jobs. So to forbid people from doing something they hate because of money is the same as limit the income I suggested earlier. It doesn't comply with the laws of capitalism. Crony capitalism? More like corporatism. @Scataphagos: I hope for the sake of intelligence that you understand that rich people can't have money without "poor" people. Money doesn't fall into your bank account, someone has to do the job and it's the majority of those you believe should never be born that fill the pockets of the wealthy.
I would wager Scataphagos has contributed a lot more to society than your sorry ass, and never leached off others a day in his life.