Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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the current economic system with its unfair tax system “has given us stagnating wages, crumbling infrastructure, failing public services, and destabilizing the very institution of democracy.”
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They are also right about the negative effects of excess wealth on democracy. The superrich have a disproportionate influence on political parties and in Congress, given that they have the resources for campaign funding, as well as for lobbying. This has led to changes in economic policies that have increased the economic power of their corporations and allowed them to get away with paying fewer taxes. They have also bought up media—newspapers, television, Twitter—and in that way have shaped public, even if these media spread misinformation and undermine democracy.
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Capping wealth would make it pointless to try to endlessly increase profits at the expense of the lives of the most vulnerable people, as is currently the case. But the immediate point is that much of the money on which billionaires are sitting is stained with the blood of the poor, and therefore they should not keep it.
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Another reason we should limit personal wealth is that wealth concentration accelerates ecological destruction. Very wealthy people are disproportionally responsible for climate change, both because of their luxurious lifestyles and their investments in the fossil industries. While the annual emissions per person for the poorest 50 percent of the world population are less than one and a half tons of CO2 per year, the top 1 percent emits on average 101 tons per person and billionaires’ luxurious lifestyles can cause carbon footprints of several thousand tons.
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But raising taxes will not be enough, since once they have acquired fortunes, most superrich will do what they can to avoid paying taxes. We must also transform the economic system (including the fiscal system) to make it impossible for anyone to become too rich.
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No one deserves to be a multimillionaire. Some limited inequalities in income and wealth can be justified: those based on the amount of time one devotes to work, the burdens of the work, and if one makes exceptional efforts or takes exceptional risks. Or as an incentives-payment in case society needs more people to choose to do certain kind of work. But none of these factors justify the inequalities that we are witnessing today.
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There are two factors that most influence our ability for economic success. The first factor is luck. Our parents and family, our health, impairments and talents, the people who raised and educated us: all factors that to a very large extent are beyond our control. One important source of economic wealth is completely undeserved: inheritance, as well as gifts that parents make to educational institutions and start-ups. Even the structures of markets are such that luck plays a very large role in deciding who becomes a CEO, the billionaire pop star, or makes the product that beats the competition.
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second factor is the structures that previous generations have built and that allow us to economically flourish. Our economic success stands on the shoulders of investments made by previous generations and innovations initiated by governments or non-profit-seeking scientists.