Far abler commentators than I have noted the insanity of the Dem attack on wealth and the wealthy, but I have seen enough to feel a need to chip in. The idiot (and wealthy) mayor of New York City and the bartender Congressperson from the same locale are the current cheerleaders for the Dem war on those who happen to have a lot of money, which, according to the Congressperson, they couldn’t possibly have earned. Fortunately, we have a few billionaires willing to defend themselves against the ludicrous assertion that they didn’t earn their money, Jeff Bezos being the most recent with an outstanding pillorying of that ding-dong dipshit who currently sits in city hall in NYC.
The great economy that this country has, driven by innovation and technology, exists because we created an environment in which people of genius who were willing to work hard could accomplish great things. The Fords, Edisons, Carnegies, and today the Musks, Bezos, Gates, Jobs, et al earned every penny they made. And while they were getting rich, they made thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of other people wealthy–both their employees and investors. They also enriched the lives of all Americans, they raised the standard of living for everyone. Instead of demonizing these people we should celebrate them every day and we should be asking how we can nurture even more of them. Their success is our success.
The truth is that the Dems think wealthy people didn’t earn their money because all those billionaires who fund them–Alex Soros, Gov. Pritzker, the Rockefellers, the Daytons in Minnesota, and on and on, didn’t earn their money–they inherited it. Of course, the Dems won’t do anything that might take money away from this group. Personally I think one of the best ways we could address our debt problem is to limit how much money anyone can inherit. Inherited wealth beyond a few million doesn’t serve any great economic purpose and usually the heirs of the person who created the wealth manage to squander it and extremely rarely do they generate a similar benefit to the economy and society as the parent who passed on the money to them.
In fact, Dems have facilitated the creation of this unearned wealth and its use for political purposes by ignoring the abuses of the private foundation tax dodge. That should be eliminated. Hundreds of billions of dollars of tax obligations are avoided by this method, only available to the wealthy. No more should be allowed to be created, the ones in existence should be required to sunset in a few years and there should be an immediate one time tax of somewhere around 50% on all the assets of these foundations, with the proceeds dedicated to debt reduction.
The other source of wealth that doesn’t make any sense is the continued abuse of stock option and restricted stock grants by executives of public companies. Other than for rank and file employees, these options and grants should be banned. Management should be required to buy any equity they receive in the company. That could occur at a somewhat reduced price as an incentive, but the routine practice of giving CEOs and other high-level managers grants that often result in hundred million dollar plus windfalls should be ended.
These steps would make a huge difference in wealth and income inequality without harming the economy and without belittling the efforts of entrepreneurs who create immense benefits for society.
