I'm of the belief that being a billionaire should be illegal. NOBODY needs that much money and it'd be better served being split among the workers who helped create that wealth while greasing the mechanisms of social mobility (schools, transportation systems, medicare for all). That said, while many billionaires come into wealth directly at the expense of the working and middle class (Bezos, the Koch brothers), not all of them do-- (Michael Jordan, Bill Gates) and so it's a tricky argument to make.
Unless of course, you consider the role that cheap labor of 3rd world countries plays in even somebody like Jordan (sneakers) and then it becomes a matter of convincing people that all human lives are of value and that nobody needs that much wealth. And good luck with that... the average American seems completely incapable of understanding just how much money a billion dollars is.
The video below- attempts to bridge that gap of understanding via an app called "Spend Bill Gates Money".
I'll preface this by saying that you and I value the same things and want similar changes made to the way we're governed.
I totally disagree that the amount of money someone has should be illegal. To me a better way to say it is that it should be undesirable. Saying that earnings should be illegal is where socialist principles fail and is easy fodder for the people that want to make conflations about socialism = communism. An important tenet of a successful socialist economy is one that doesn't cripple creative destruction while promoting principles of a shared society instead.
I have no problem if people earn whatever they earn. Part of the problem with the American version of capitalism is that we allow $s to protect $s. In other words, those who have get to influence those who have not through the control of policies and political entities (the police are an example).
I also disagree that the average is too stupid to get it. The average American might be too blinded by real or perceived desperation to get it, but they are capable. Healthcare for all, universal basic income, protection of shared resources (the environment) are not new ideas or concepts the average person can't get behind. The issue is that the average person is too worried about their day to day lives to be able to spend much time considering these fundamental changes.
The propaganda system that protects those who profit most from the for profit system has been very successful in convincing everyone that has been looking for an answer to the eternal question "why is my life so hard" that their neighbors are to blame or this or that conspiracy theory is to blame. Their neighbors being the other political party, or the person of a different religion, or the person that looks different than you, or the person who fucks differently than you., whatever... It's easier to blame the thing that is more easily seen than than the people that have enough $ to hide. It's easier to see some conspiracy as the obvious truth, when the most simple answer is so very simple. That the average person isn't set up to succeed and that the weakest among us are set up to fail.
The bootstraps bullshit is a narrative the average person has bought into and even the political people pushing for social principles use it to demonstrate they are one of us.
I'm not sure how any of this works given the ample amount of poor people available in the world for those with to continue to take advantage of, but I'd love for our country to acknowledge that its wealth has been built on the back of slavery and the false idea that those who are born without have the same opportunity to have as everyone else. I won't live to see a truly equitable world but I hope that I can die someplace where that basic truth makes it into textbooks.
www.vox.com
www.salon.com
www.theguardian.com
