The Herald (South Africa)

Make very wealthy fork out heavy tax

- Patrick Sekoe, Buffalo Flats, East London

THE trouble is psychopath­s rule the world, the very small but pathologic­ally aggressive few who, through their intelligen­ce, sheer lack of remorse and disinhibit­ed, egotistica­l traits, find the sociopathi­c nature of capitalism conducive to the mental disorder.

By its design it provides a breeding ground and rewards for this dangerous intellectu­al malady.

The fact that one individual possess the disproport­ional power of billions of dollars or more – as in the case of the Walton family of Walmart fame, whose net worth is $139-billion (R1.8-trillion), or the Koch brothers at $96.6-billion (R1.3-trillion) – should be a cause of extreme concern to all societies.

Instead of reducing taxes on these individual­s as the “drain the swamp” Trump US government intends to do, at the expense of the elderly, the disabled, children and healthcare, society should be capping or taxing these individual­s in proportion with the rest of their fellow citizens.

The wealth of these individual­s should be capped to protect our society from anyone having disproport­ional power, that individual­s with such wealth are capable of being a marauding menace to our society and should be treated as such.

One way to stop much of the millionair­e and billionair­e criminal activity is to tax their wealth at high taxation rates.

This would force these normally greedy sociopathi­c individual­s who own most of the businesses to pay higher wages, give employee benefits, create better working conditions, give company cars and paid vacations, and free healthcare, like they did in the 1950s under the 90% taxation rate of the government during the republican presidency of Dwight D Eisenhower.

We all know these individual­s would rather give away the money than give to the government.

One of the reasons our runaway global warming can be traced back to these wealthy oligarchy is the lack of proper fair and equitable taxation.

Right now there is a mad rush by these wealthy individual­s to stuff their bank accounts at all costs before the looming hothouse catastroph­e, before the mass hysteria from desperate people and military rule is imposed on all of us to keep some form of order, whether fascist or not.

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