Individual Wealth Cap

a reply to: butcherguy

You compared with to Monopoly. A person's wealth in Monopoly is based on the randomness of the dice. Unless of course you cheat.

a reply to: Bluntone22

So you're saying the non-wealthy are f***ed no matter what and we're all essentially slaves to the wealthy.

The "Greatest Country in the History of the World" everyone!

a reply to: butcherguy

I view Americas success as an anecdotal evidence towards the rapidly evolving business policies.

And how many of those dreamers are dreaming of rigging the game instead of playing it?

The reason my point holds is because you don't need a Billion to be excessively wealthy. It's nearly an arbitrary number because of how abstract money becomes at points far below that. And yet, people still have far more than that number. It literally doesn't take a genius to see this would negatively impact the economy, at least, that's what my fancy schooling leads me to believe.

originally posted by: seagull
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Nope, after you make your billion, you're supposed to just, out of the goodness of your heart, give it away to some "deserving".

This idea, if one can give it that much credit, is far too authoritarian for me to stomach.

The thing is most really rich people do in fact give a lot of their money away. I've shown this on many occassions. They start foundations, charities, etc. Go look around any city and you will find hospitals, universities, parks, homeless shelters, schools, museums, operas, libraries, etc all of which primarily receive their funding from benefactors.

The problem is that many advocating for confiscation of wealth are doing so because they want the benefit at an individual level. They see someone with say millions of dollars while they are say struggling to make a $100 bill payment. They think in their mind, that millionaire would not even miss the $100 yet it would help me out immensely.

The reality though is that any government confiscation would not solve their day to day $100 bill problems. This is the fallacy of their thinking.

a reply to: idiotseverywhere
Yes... they are...

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: butcherguy

You compared with to Monopoly. A person's wealth in Monopoly is based on the randomness of the dice. Unless of course you cheat.

The OP originally made the Monopoly comparison. I followed through.


A person's wealth in Monopoly is based on not only luck, but decisions made in the game... like whether or not to buy a specific property or utility and whether or not to improve the property.

Life has some similarity to Monopoly, but success in life is tied more to good decisions and hard work than to random chance. You make your own luck.... or maybe this 'The goddess of luck favors the man of action.'

a reply to: lakenheath24

Hush! We're not supposed to talk about the Panama Papers. We were supposed to focus on the antics between Trump and Hillary while completely ignoring the fact that Daphne Galizia, a journalist reporting on the Panama Papers, died from a car bomb.

originally posted by: idiotseverywhere
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus
Normal people have jobs, but you have a Billion Dollars.

Envy is one of the 7 deadly sins, you know...

a reply to: idiotseverywhere

So you want a gold backed standard or something along the lines of crypto? Even still the cap will increase over time.

Money is just a social construct to enhance the bartering system, it's how capitalism flows. If someone is hoarding a billion dollars in cash or in a bank account it's not beneficial to that billionaire at all to do so. It just becomes stagnant and rots.

It's in the best interest of someone like Bill Gates to invest that money into something else. If say a government comes along and makes a big plan for I don't know, all new roads, and fresh water pipes across the US, a great works, and gets elected something like you are suggesting might work. But I highly doubt it, the economic system in the US is far to political and indebted to capitalism.

a reply to: butcherguy

If you want to consider the monopoly analogy, you have to keep it consistent with the idea, you never played the first half of the game against the person currently winning. Everyone starts the 'same'(Even though they don't a large part of the thread is addressing generational wealth), but they do not start at the same 'time'. This is not how monopoly normally works, but you have to appreciate we're not talking about the actual game Monopoly. It's an analogy, simply to help bridge the argument to reality so you have a foundation to actually reply about the topic.

a reply to: butcherguy

Life has some similarity to Monopoly, but success in life is tied more to good decisions and hard work than to random chance. You make your own luck

And that's complete bulls**t. The majority of wealth in this country is inherited. It has nothing to do with hard work. If that were the case all these single mothers working three jobs would be rich. Instead they're barely making ends meet.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: butcherguy

You compared with to Monopoly. A person's wealth in Monopoly is based on the randomness of the dice. Unless of course you cheat.

You lost a lot playing that Monopoly game didn't you? Make yourself feel better by saying the successful one had to have cheated or was just lucky with the dice?

Sure there is some luck, but the most successful usually are successful due to obtaining real estate and trading to better themselves. They don't hoard their money, they invest in homes and work up to hotels.

Usually the ones who do not do well are the ones who assume they need the richest property and severely go in debt. They often find that they have no leverage in trading and begin to lose everything.

Yes, Monopoly is a simple game, but definitely takes some strategy to not be the big loser and cry about how unfair it was.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: Bluntone22

So you're saying the non-wealthy are f***ed no matter what and we're all essentially slaves to the wealthy.

The "Greatest Country in the History of the World" everyone!

I've been to multiple countries around the world.
I've seen real poverty.
I've seen euro middle class.

I'll stick with the United States.

a reply to: strongfp

I have literally no idea or solution, other than the thought:
"hey, there might be actually too much money a person can have, and this can have impact on everyone around them."

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: butcherguy

Life has some similarity to Monopoly, but success in life is tied more to good decisions and hard work than to random chance. You make your own luck

And that's complete bulls**t. The majority of wealth in this country is inherited. It has nothing to do with hard work. If that were the case all these single mothers working three jobs would be rich. Instead they're barely making ends meet.

That is demonstrably false... most wealth is not inherited.

Your logic fails are comical. The fact someone works three low paid jobs is not going to make you rich. Hard work does not equate to VALUABLE work. Big difference.

a reply to: Xcalibur254

The majority of wealth in this country is inherited. It has nothing to do with hard work.

and

If that were the case all these single mothers working three jobs would be rich

It takes hard work and the life skills to make the right decisions.

A person can work three jobs and still not earn enough money to support their children if they make bad decisions.
Bad decisions, like having children when you are not financially set to support them. Marrying the wrong person... etc.

So... ALL mothers working three jobs would be rich? No, there's more to it than working hard... but it isn't all luck.

Wealth already has a cap, of sorts, with progressive rate taxation. Swedistan is an example of a Socialism-Capitalism hybrid that limits personal wealth through taxation until income overwhelms the top tax rate.

There are too many loopholes for the weasels of the world to take advantage of. How does one close loopholes when the people responsible for writing laws are weasels in the loophole generation business? Flat rate tax? Even if individual taxation loopholes were closed, one would also have to close other sources of untaxed, "income," such as expense account and real estate ownership rules for charities and foundations.

a reply to: Edumakated

If it's demonstrably false, can you provide the demonstration. Like a source. Because literally, no. even the most gracious figures place 55% of Billionaires as self made and the rest as inherited, with little statements like this in between:

"Of course, even “self-made” billionaires did not succeed alone. "

"Self Made" describes situations where people literally had everything handed to them in advance, other than money, and then 'amazingly' succeeded in between $80,000 tuition's for highschools and not having a car or house payment.

Trump's story is describable as 'self made' by standard.

a reply to: pteridine

This was, or maybe still is, how I look at it.

I feel like networth tax is specifically to keep conceptually what I'm speaking of in check, but it has no theoretical limit verses generation capital, like my business that has made me very wealthy has no overhead, and so I don't think it's completely unreasonable that an individual gain alone could actually have negative impact on growth rate of the market if the profit isn't dynamic to costs. An actual final ponzi scheme to end them all.

originally posted by: idiotseverywhere
a reply to: Edumakated

If it's demonstrably false, can you provide the demonstration. Like a source. Because literally, no. even the most gracious figures place 55% of Billionaires as self made and the rest as inherited, with little statements like this in between:

"Of course, even “self-made” billionaires did not succeed alone. "

"Self Made" describes situations where people literally had everything handed to them in advance, other than money, and then 'amazingly' succeeded in between $80,000 tuition's for highschools and not having a car or house payment.

Trump's story is describable as 'self made' by standard.

I don't know where that line is...

Yes, some people who become wealthy have a lot of advantages. However, even with advantages, becoming a billionaire makes you a unicorn.

In my mind, I view inherited wealth like coming from a family like the Pritzkers. Our current governor, JB Pritzker is worth a couple of billion. All inherited.

On the other hand, someone like Mark Zuckerberg could be considered self-made. He came from a upper middle class family or even upper class. Yes, one could argue being at Harvard, or even having parents who aren't broke helped him. Or even having access to a network of rich friends. However, at the end of the day, he is still self-made.