Richard Smothers writes:
I agree wholeheartedly. If someone makes 100 mil and you take 80, he’s still got 20. His cost of living is the same as everyone else’s, despite the fact he may enjoy a more expensive lifestyle, so a higher tax percentage for the wealthy than for the middle class and poor is supremely ethical.
They can afford it! Plus the rich don’t spend their money very well. They either sock it away or buy yachts and gold jewelry and other luxuries. Very little if any wealth actually trickles down. Even a lot of the investments of the rich are not very worthwhile. It is estimated that only 1 out of 133 dollars invested in the stock market is actually productive capital. The rest is simply speculative investment.
Speculation is not real wealth creation. You only create real wealth through productive investments – making something. If you make something that people buy – say widgets – that is a productive investment. Even if you make yachts or gold jewelry, it’s productive investment because you make something that people buy.
Speculative investment creates nothing whatsoever. Wealth is derived from the creation of products which consumers buy.
Speculation is essentially a casino. Do casinos create any wealth for those who gamble in them? Are you kidding? Placing bets on this or that is just playing games with paper money and frankly creates no real wealth at all. And any parasitic wealth that is created by speculation falls almost 100% into the hands of the top 10% if not the top 1%. Little or none of that trickles down to those below.
When the casino fails, as we saw in 2008 during the Great Crash caused by banking and securities fraud, a tremendous amount of productive wealth and real wealth in the hands of the lower and middle classes is destroyed. Billions or even trillions of dollars in lower and middle class wealth was destroyed when the rich placed the wrong bets in their Securities Casino.
The Casino Crash wrecked the economy of the entire world, and the world is still feeling the effects of it. In addition, many middle and lower class people lost their homes, their jobs, and quite a few went broke or become homeless. In the rest of the world, many went hungry or even starved.
In addition, all over the world, programs for the people funded with the people’s money (state welfare safety net programs) were destroyed. These programs fund education, health care, housing, disability, pensions, unemployment insurance and food for the people. They are paid for by the people themselves in taxation into insurance funds which can then be drawn by the people if and when they become needy enough.
The rich hardly felt any pain from their losses. They are still rich. But the lower and middle classes were stuck with a huge bill for the bad bets of the rich in their casino.
Since speculative capital creates no real wealth, is essentially parasitic, the wealth it creates goes exclusively to the rich and none trickles down, is extremely unstable and has tendencies towards horrific crashes that destroy incredible amounts of the people’s wealth, it makes sense to put some proper limits on the shenanigans of the shysters and the banksters, who are really the enemies of all of mankind.
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