Filthy rich and sick of it
The wealthy are begging to be relieved of their cash. How cool is that?
“Take away profits; all you have left is cool.” So writes a perceptive reader. Asking to pay more taxes is also pretty cool. “Tax us… please!” sayeth a group of 100+ rich people, including Disney heiress Abigail Disney and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. Asking to pay more taxes; now that’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
In the last 12 months, almost no infirmity – neither financial, moral nor intellectual – prevented a person from getting rich. Speculators sold NFT squiggles for millions. They sold joke cryptos for millions. They sold money-losing, zombie companies for millions. Cometh now rich people, such as BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink and Abigail Disney, whose excess dollars are turning their stomachs. They would gladly exchange them for a little street cred. And a little cool.
As the Common Dreams website reports, more than 100 ultra-rich folk have warned their fellows in an open letter that “it’s taxes or pitchforks”. “For all our wellbeing – rich and poor alike – it’s time to confront inequality and choose to tax the rich,” the letter reads. “Show the people of the world that you deserve their trust.” What the queasy millionaires seem most concerned about is holding onto their cool rich status, and protecting their authority: “How do we work together and restore trust?’” they want to know. Gemma McGough, a British entrepreneur, reiterated that case in a statement: “It’s time we right the wrongs of an unequal world… It’s time we tax the rich”. Fairness, they say, is what it’s all about. But fairness, like coolness, is a matter of opinion. Is it fair for one group to pay a higher tax rate than another? Is it fair to transfer trillions of dollars to the richest Americans, and then let them impose their agenda on the rest of us? What’s fair about printing up trillions of dollars and passing it to them in the first place? Neither Disney, nor McGough nor Fink mention it.
In the course of this century, the Fed has created and spent approximately $8trn. Its artificially low interest rates spun off trillions more. And the federal government has added $23trn to the national debt. What happened to all that money? Did it buy bread from the bakers? Did it raise the wages of the labouring classes?
No, almost the entire wad was funnelled to Wall Street, where it increased the prices of stocks and bonds. In the stockmarket alone, that represented a gain of $24trn. Who owns stocks and bonds? Abigail Disney. Nick Hanauer. Larry Fink. Over the course of a whole generation – 40 years – the elite have added about $1m in stockmarket wealth for every man, woman and child in the top 10%. Since 1978, executive salaries have increased 1,000% – 100 times faster than employees’ pay. During that same period, in inflation-adjusted terms, the typical working stiff has gained just 32 cents per hour.
“Excess dollars turn their stomachs. They exchange them for street cred”