Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
It’s not about stopping people from succeeding. It’s about a failure in an economic system. An unintended side affect of how we organize our society. Capitalism is just a means to distribute labour and resources when it produces unintended consequences that don’t benefit society we regulate. I don’t see this as any different, the creation and concentration of wealth is an inevitable result of capitalism if there is no mechanism to tax the underlying capital it will concentrate in fewer and fewer hands.
So that’s the symptom that needs addressing. There needs to be a mechanism to prevent wealth concentration
You are correct that 100 million would likely be just as reasonable of a number. I think the numbers could be looked at by people far smarter than me. As to why not more than a billion? Above 1 billion you are in very small quantities of people that diminishes rapidly as to make it all meaningless. At 5 billion your down to about 7-15 depending if you count individual families like the Thomson’s as one or many.
Anyway if you don’t like wealth taxes what do you see as the solution to the wealth concentration problem?
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Several issues. Define wealth. Is it free cash? Most wealth is held in form of stocks, which is only obtained when selling the stock. If they sell the stock, then reinvest it in other stocks,which you or anyone else can buy (not their original company) is that okay? Or do they need to sell these as well?
It is really perspective. I know people that if you say you make $100k per year would consider you rich. Their line could be that if your net worth is say $2M, then you need to redistribute your wealth. Is that okay? If not why not?
You say it is a problem. People invest in these companies and gain on the way up. I would guess most on this board have these investments. Stop the 65 people in Canada and then who are you going to invest in?
Without digging, assume the top 100 are worth $4B each on average. That totals $400B. The other 38.6M average $330k net worth or total $11T. So where is the concentration? They have about 5% of the wealth in Canada.
I don't see it as a problem as investors (you and I) ride their coat tails up and are happy to do so.