When Rutger Bregman and Winnie Byanyima spoke out about taxes at Davos they went viral. They talk with Winners Take All author Anand Giridharadas about why change is coming
I’ve written about this nonsense countless times, but clearly, it needs to be said again. These billionaires – the ones who pay more tax per annum than I earn, who put more in than they take out, because their wealth means they are more likely to look after themselves when it comes to such things as education and health, yes, these billionaires, what, precisely, are they doing wrong here?
Well, go on, then, what?
I saw some interesting stats today from Gallup that suggest that since the end of the 1990s, the vast majority of people in the US have wanted the rich to pay more taxes. There are signs that there is a profound shift in the public mood.
Oh, that. The politics of envy. Define rich. Oh, yeah “earns more than me”. The rich already pay more tax than the poor. Not just on a flat percentage, but also through progressive taxation. So what, precisely do you want? Blood?
I don’t know whether the left has been sleeping, but there has been a dominant narrative that has remained quite unchallenged in the media. This narrative suggests that there is no connection between the super-rich and abject poverty, that you can keep getting richer and richer, and this has nothing to do with people getting poorer. And it wasn’t always like that, people in the past have known that maximising at the top means you are depriving somebody else further down. It’s empowering for people to hear that truth being put on the table again.
Because, of course, all the wealth in the world is a limited pie and if some have more, then it follows that others are deprived of their share. Right! The reason this narrative exists, sweetheart, is because wealth is not a limited pie and one person being wealthy does not deprive another. What you are peddling here is not the truth, it is a big fat hairy lie. It is nothing other than the politics of envy and spite.
The whole article is the same ignorant depressing bullshit, filled with envy and spite.
The question here is this: Are these very rich paying what the law demands? No? Then present your evidence to the relevant tax authorities. Yes? Then nothing to see here. Move along.
Pretty much the only way (in the West at least, certainly in the last few decades) that a person gets to be a billionaire is by providing some good or service that people want and will pay for. Thats it. They didn’t mug everyone who paid them, they din’t con them, every customer/user was richer for the existence of the good/service. They must have been because they wouldn’t use it otherwise.
Bill Gates is a billionaire because Windows was a far better operating system than DOS, and everybody wanted it. The Google guys are billionaires because before Google search engines were crap and you couldn’t find anything on the internet. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because his website allows me to buy my nephew a birthday present, have it delivered to his house, all wrapped up, without me leaving my armchair. Not only that but far cheaper than me going to a shop to get the same item and posting it. Zuckerberg is a billionaire because people are social beings, and he provided a free way for them to communicate (and show off) to each other.
The point is everyone one of the customers of these companies would be worse off if they didn’t exist. The consumer surplus of all the customers dwarfs the amount that the owners manage to keep for themselves. And we don’t even pay for Google, not in cash anyway, its free. Get that – someone made billions by providing a service for free, that everybody uses multiple times a day, to their great advantage. You’d have thought the people who can’t keep their jealous eyes of other people’s stuff would have noticed this, but no, they want blood. They don’t actually care that the customers/users will be worse off if they drive these companies out of business, or make them charge more, all they can see is the money the founders have made, and a evil desire to take it away from them, because they can.
The thing is that it’s never “The rich” that suffer, because they can afford political lobbyists and accountants to get them exemptions from all the proposed new taxes. The end result being that the major burden always falls on the modestly well off and hard working middle.
If your career depends on there being a plentiful supply of the impoverished, then you just redefine “poverty”
If your income is less than, say,70% of the average income then you are poor.
During the last financial crisis poverty fell, just because everybody else was becoming truly poorer.
Or you could pursue economic policies that are well known to damage the economy thus making sure that there are plenty of poor people to go around.
EU: What does the UK want?
UK: Get rid of the backstop
EU: Just give us a sign
UK: We want rid of the backstop
EU: Why won’t you tell us what you want?
UK: REMOVE THE FUCKING BACKSTOP!
EU: Second referendum? Is that it?