Don't the super-rich deserve
their fortunes because of their work,
pluck, and genius? I think not
Behind all the modern technology fortunes,
including computers, one discovers primarily
(public) taxpayer-funded research and development
>Buffett is one of those figures who have helped
drive the ever more ruthless exploitation of the
American working class.
The very mechanisms by which he earned his billions,
a portion of which he now intends to give away, have
contributed to the growth of poverty and social inequality
Wealth as a result of exploitation includes:
piracy, colonial pillage, black African slaves,
extermination of first nation peoples,
child labor, Chinese and Irish
immigrant labor (railroads)
indentured servitude, eminent domain,
massive (often concealed) taxpayer subsidies,
worker massacres, inheritance laws...
The top 1 percent of Americans are now receiving the largest share of national income since the pre-Great Depression year 1928. The top 10 percent get 48.5 percent of total income, an obscene rate of inequality.
According to Princeton University professor Peter Singer, the top 0.01 of taxpayers or 14,000 Americans earn an average of $12,775,000 with total earnings of $184 billion.
The rest of the 0.1 percent, or 129,600 individuals, now have an average income of just over $2 million. And the top 0.5 or 575,900 have an average income of $623,000.
Prof. Singer calculates that if the folks in the top 10 percent donated between 10-30 percent of their income, it would raise $404 billion, an amount that would eliminate half of global poverty. And they wouldn't be left to scrimp on their sumptuous lifestyles.
What should we make of these iniquitous numbers? I can't quarrel with Adam Smith, the oft misquoted and misunderstood moral philosopher and economist, who wrote in his monumental book The Wealth of Nations,
"Whenever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred of the poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many...
Further, as participants in, and arbiters of a fair and just, democratic society, how do we analyze the idea of private philanthropy? Upon engaging in this practice, some plutocrats offer the sanctimonious phrase, "I just wanted to give something back."
My immediate reaction is: why not give it all back? Or, in order to be totally fair and just, give back everything over and above any personal effort expended.
I'm hardly alone in this view. Even Robber Barons like Andrew Carnegie (eventually) acknowledged that all wealth originates in the community and "not in the Herculean work efforts of lone individuals and hence should be returned to whence it came..."
And Warren Buffet, the second richest man in America, concedes that "If you stuck me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru you'll find out how much talent is going to produce in the wrong soil."
Adding that he personally believes "society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned."
Herbert Simon, a Nobel Prize winner in Economics, acknowledges that this societal contribution accounts for at least ninety percent of what people earn in Northwest Europe and the United States.
Based on this clear societal contribution to wealth, Simon believes that moral grounds exist to warrant a flat income tax of 90 percent.
In other words, as Carnegie biographer Steve Fraser urges, if wealth originated as social capital -- as Carnegie maintained -- shouldn't that argument dictate a public democratic role to ensure general consensus on its best use?
But don't the super-rich deserve their fortunes because of their work, pluck, and genius? I think not.
For an example, behind all the modern technology fortunes, including computers, one discovers primarily (public) taxpayer-funded research and development.
Bill Gates, for one, wasn't responsible for any of the crucial technical advances that produced the computer. His work, albeit a "genius mind" was to take advantage of work done at public initiative and expense.
In the case of the Internet, the Pentagon wanted a communications system that could survive a nuclear attack. Private business refused to undertake the investment risks until public funding guaranteed a ready profit.
Yet another example of "socialism for the rich." Even the mouse came from Pentagon funded research. (A revealing study exploring the matter is Kenneth Flamm's Creating the Computer).
Chuck Collins, economic expert and an heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune concludes, "Yet where would the many wealthy entrepreneurs be today without taxpayer investment in the Internet, transportation, public education, the legal system, the human genome and so on?"
To this, we must add several additional sources for the great fortunes. A partial list includes:
Piracy, colonial pillage, black African slaves, extermination of first nation peoples, child labor, Chinese and Irish immigrant labor (railroads) indentured servitude, eminent domain...
Massive (often concealed) taxpayer subsidies, worker massacres, inheritance laws, public land grabs, unfair trade practices, supporting foreign dictatorships to gain cheap labor and resources, tax policy, corporate welfare, and always, underpaid, overworked employees.
Where does this leave us? Personally, I've always been partial to the moral injunction, "To whom much is given, much is required."
Adapting this admonition to modern wealth, the "much" is rarely given voluntarily while the "required" remains an unrequited, vaguely subversive sounding afterthought.
I wouldn't presume to improve on scripture but I would suggest a corollary: From whom much is taken, much is owed.
Self-made wealth is a largely a myth. In the words of economic analyst Mike Laphan, "It takes a village to raise a billionaire. Every taxpayer deserves some credit for the Forbes 400 wealth."
So if all production is social -- from public investments to our combined labor power -- where is society's dividend? Gary Olson @ ZNet