Dollars & Sense: The Undeserving Rich

[marmar]

The Undeserving Rich
Collectively produced and inherited knowledge and the (re)distribution of income and wealth.

By Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly


Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the nation, is worth nearly $50 billion. Does he “deserve” all this money? Why? Did he work so much harder than everyone else? Did he create something so extraordinary that no one else could have created it? Ask Buffett himself and he will tell you that he thinks “society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I’ve earned.” But if that’s true, doesn’t society deserve a very significant share of what he has earned?

When asked why he is so successful, Buffett commonly replies that this is the wrong question. The more important question, he stresses, is why he has so much to work with compared to other people in the world, or compared to previous generations of Americans. How much money would I have “if I were born in Bangladesh,” or “if I was born here in 1700,” he asks.

Buffett may or may not deserve something more than another person working with what a given historical or collective context provides. As he observes, however, it is simply not possible to argue in any serious way that he deserves all of the benefits that are clearly attributable to living in a highly developed society.

Buffett has put his finger on one of the most explosive issues developing just beneath the surface of public awareness. Over the last several decades, economic research has done a great deal of solid work pinpointing much more precisely than in the past what share of what we call “wealth” society creates versus what share any individual can be said to have earned and thus deserved. This research raises profound moral—and ultimately political—questions. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2010/0310alperovitzdaly.html

[Scuba]

1. Those who benefit most from our society should be taxed commensurately.

[WingDinger]

2. Those who benefit most, also run the institutions and gov. Dont like taxes

[fasttense]

3. This society rewards the luckiest.

Nothing more than luck gets you to be as wealthy as Buffet. Being at the right place at the right time, having enough education to seize the opportunity, having enough assets to develop the opportunity. It is all a matter of luck.

The term the lucky sperm club says it all.

[unblock]

6. ah, but it is more than luck -- it's the dastardly combination of luck & skill that confuses it all!

the rich are very much aware of all the long nights they put in, the clever ideas they had, and network the cultivated and worked brilliantly, and the financial risks they took. all of which is, for most rich people, undeniably true. but it is also very true that luck played a huge role, and anyone who has put in that much effort hates to acknowledge that, at the end of the day, luck played a huge role.

similarly, the not-rich are very much aware of the luck involved, because they see the the hard work that they themselves put in, to merely get by, and see luck as the only differentiating factor.

bill gates would point to how hard he worked to build up microsoft from a tiny start-up, and yes, he did work very hard. but others would point out the luck he had in having a father who could just hand him $5,000,000 to play around with. and in the fact of this obvious bit of luck, bill gates would simply press on -- plenty of others have had wealthy fathers, and none of them created microsoft.


less obvious is that he lives in a society that decided that software was product subject to ownership and copyright laws, that he who contributes capital to a startup should wind up with by far the largest slice of the profits, and that monopolies and anti-competitive practices are fine, and so on. all luck.

[txlibdem]

7. Buffet, Insurance. Gates, Microsoft.

Insurance companies make money by selling you a service that they have no intention of providing.

Microsoft has been implicated in many criminal investigations.

So you innocently ask, how do the rich people get to be rich? They lie, cheat, steal and commit crimes that they somehow avoid arrest or jail time for. The wealthy are crooks. There are no exceptions. They do not deserve your admiration, they deserve jail sentences for all their crimes.

[DirkGently]

4. This is what we need to be talking about. "Deserve" has nothing to do with it.

[dawg]

5. Kick for Buffett

Not a perfect guy. Who is? But he realizes how fortunate he was to be born into a country like the U.S. and is willing to pay his fair share so others can have the same chances he did. Like FDR, the man is considered a traitor to his class, but he's so damn rich they have to keep sucking up to him anyway.

BTW, the man is a genius w/regard to investments. He had lots of luck and lots of societal support, but it wasn't *all* luck.

[sadbear]

8. Buffett needs to put his money where his mouth is

I know he's a very generous philanthropist, but seriously, if he's serious about what he says, he should give back more. Just think of the diseases that could be cured, the damaging social cycles that could be broken, and the peace that could be brought with his wealth. Aren't those things worth more than the business empire his wealth currently supports?

[Concordia]

9. well

I'm not usually one to praise the disgustingly wealthy, but Buffet is one of the few ultra-rich who doesn't make my stomach churn. He really has given a lot of money away. Could he give more? Maybe. But he's done a lot more than other people with megafortunes. He's quite self-aware of the implications of his wealth, as well.