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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGive Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%
This should be The Onion:
ts time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time its the popular idea that the successful are obliged to give back to the community. That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from the community. And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by exploiting people, not by creating valueas if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.
Lets begin by stripping away the collectivism. The community never gave anyone anything. The community, the society, the nation is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual persona parent, a teacher, a customergives something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.
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For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in their debt.
Heres a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, its too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the years top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)
Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. Thats for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)What a shit article.
KatyMan
(4,209 posts)n/t
Too bad she could live by her own principles. In the end she was just an angry old hypocrite.
http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/60120/index1.html
KatyMan
(4,209 posts)n/t
tazkcmo
(7,300 posts)When did Forbes become a publication dedicated to the 1%? I'm shocked! Truly shocked by the tone and particulars of this article! I'm sure heads will roll at Forbes once the top brass finds out about this article and how it undermines the populist values of the publication.
wandy
(3,539 posts)Yes there are more of them, try this beaut....
Insider Trading Is A Right: Don't Shackle The Knowledge-Seekers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/08/05/insider-trading-is-a-right-dont-shackle-the-knowledge-seekers/
Harry should be writing satire or at the very best dark fiction.
I guess Forbes pays more per word.
Marr
(20,317 posts)It's amazing that they ever managed to sell this wincing servility and master worship to the same crowd that claims to be 'rugged individuals', but in a reasonably sound economy, I suppose it's easy to tell every Joe the Plumber that he's Henry Ford.
You can't do that when things are as upside-down as they are now, and it's only going to get worse until really fixed. I think the days of this "thank the rich" attitude having any real sway at the polls are numbered.