What are the best steps to reduce the wealth of billionaires?
What are the best steps to reduce the wealth of billionaires?
There are a myriad of news articles here on Lemmy that display the abhorrent influence billionaires have on our society (especially the US, where I reside). I consistently read comments where the posters appear hopeless and despondent of the situation, while others jokingly refer to the guillotine.
As for myself, I have recently found myself with a lot of free time on my hands after being laid off and want to gather ideas on what would be the best hypothetical route to solve this issue. Let me be clear: These are only THEORETICAL IDEAS and I do not condone any illegal activity.
Historical precedent: While I am not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Occupy Movement, I do know that they were constantly attacked as being unorganized and lacking structure. It would be wise to not fall into the same pitfalls if those were accurate assessments.
Logical formulation: The foundations of the key points of the movement must be logically sound to withstand any external (and internal for that matter) scrutiny.
Motto: If a motto or slogan is chosen, it must be unambiguous so that attacks are directed to the movement, not the motto itself.
I am also aware that most people can't spare any time to these kind of movements. Similar to the Texas seceding news, many commentators have noted that most Texans are living paycheck to paycheck and wouldn't be able to dedicate any time to their cause. I would understand that would be same for this cause as well. However, since I have the time right now, I only ask for your ideas.
Broad issues: High cost of living (mortgages, rent, groceries, etc.) Inflation Homelessness
Philosophical underpinnings: Is there a Threshold of Greed? If so, what is too much wealth?
Possible means of reductions: Voluntary donation or renunciation of wealth past a certain point (highly unlikely) Taxation (also unlikely) Seizing assets (illegal and would most likely set a poor precedent)
It might also to organize an open database of billionaires with their respective fields (Forbes is closed) to help organize a boycott of some sort Though I suspect their fingers are in everything and it would be highly impractical.
Sorry for the word diarrhea. What are your thoughts?
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Focus on making the poor people richer instead. Then you’ll realize things are going pretty good.
Hard to make the poor people richer when the rich are taking an increasingly large share of the pie.
Money is infinite though. The wealthy people know how to tap into all the manipulative ways of increasing their own wealth. What we need is education for everyone to know how to do this. But of course a problem with that is that if everyone is wealthy, no one is wealthy because wealth doesn't exist without something to contrast it with, which are the poor financially-illiterate people who do all the hard labor which generates wealth for their CEOs. Which is why the wealthy people don't want to educate poor people on financial literacy.
Actually with the wonders of math it’s not. Because if the pie gets bigger faster than their portion increases, we all win.
And, as it turns out, the poorest people in the world are indeed getting richer.
Resources are ultimately finite, regardless of method of extraction. The poor people would get richer faster with better distribution and research supports basic reasoning that the pie would get bigger if distribution was better.
Not sure which resources you’re referring to that would be at their limit such that poor people can’t get any richer.
Also no, all the times the economic system has been built around optimizing distribution, production has dropped to almost zero. Under redistribution schemes, the poor tend to die horribly.
I reiterate: All resources are ultimately finite. There is however more than enough for all if extracted sustainably and shared somewhat equally. Under redistribution schemes, the poor stop being poor because having basic needs met increases social mobility. Also production increases because it is in many cases artificially restricted due to the consumers being too poor to buy the things they want and/or need.