"More"

The watchword of addicts is "more."  I've probably spoken before about a friend of mine who has a very remote history of substance abuse.  My friend has been abstinent, and going faithfully and weekly to AA meetings, for 41 years. 

Generally, when we think of addicts, we think of one or another consumable substance (alcohol, cocaine, heroin, etc).  Having/getting "more" means using "more."  But there's another thing to which people become addicted in precisely the same way, except they acquire "more," even though they have no use for it.  Those people are addicted to money.  The people with the most money don't need it, can't use it, and frankly don't even want it.  They're just addicted to getting it, and reminding themselves of how much of it is in their control.

The vast, vast, vast majority of people who get money are not counterfeiters: they don't create their own money.  The money they get they take from everyone else, and part of the frenzy is that they ignore what becomes of the people whose money they take, and how those people manage without the money from which they've been separated, simply so that someone with no use for it can claim it for him- or herself.

Warren Buffett, who is one of the people with way too much money (especially considering that he has and has always had a modest lifestyle), is famous for, among other things, essentially complaining that his secretary, Debbie, is in a higher tax bracket than he is.  He recognizes what's wrong with the tax code.  But he can't bring himself simply to pay a higher tax, or take fewer deductions.  I saw, but didn't bother to read, a recent article about him in which he identified a great new investment which had the distinction of not being taxable.  As I said, he's like any other addict, except he can't consume or otherwise use the thing to which he's addicted.  And he's said he just likes making money.  (We're talking here about someone with hundreds of billions of dollars.  And that person wants more, which is going to come directly or indirectly from other people, and disadvantage them?  Buffett has also said that the best way to make money is to have a monopoly.  He likes shooting fish in a barrel.)

Well, other people have an opinion about people who are addicted to money.  Whether they resent it, or it was their money the obscenely rich now have, or they're victims of "greedflation," or even if they're jealous, they have an opinion.

First of all, this chart is about "billionaires."  It's hard to imagine the people surveyed wouldn't feel the same way about people with hundreds of millions, or tens of millions, of dollars.  Especially considering that the dynamic is the same.

Second, we're talking about everyone.  Even more than half of Republicans, who tend to be more accepting of people with way too much money, think billionaires should pay a higher tax.  Over 2/3 of Independents and all likely voters surveyed feel that way, and over 4/5 of Democrats feel that way.

Data For Progress is described as left-leaning, and their "538 Rating" is said to be 2.6.  The highest rated polling organizations get a "538 Rating" of 3.0, and the lowest get a rating of 0.5.  So 2.6 has reliability to it, mildly exaggerated, presumably, by its left slant.  So even if these responses were discounted a little, and if the discount meant that not quite 53% of Republicans think billionaires should pay a higher tax, still, overall, most Americans do think that.

And whether they think it or they don't, what, really, does anyone want with that much money, taken from everyone else, many of whom live hand to mouth?  I saw a statistic not long ago about the surprisingly high proportion of Americans who could not meet a sudden need for $400, and a similar statistic about how many Americans have $1000 or less in savings.

A few weeks or so ago, I got a cold call from some investment company in Texas, and they were offering to produce a significant return on money invested with them, and loaned to private individuals.  They said they carefully screen the prospective borrowers, and the investment company is so careful about screening that only 6% of borrowers are late making payments.  The cold caller also said that most borrowers borrow $600-$1000.  I thought this sounded terrible: people were screened out (not approved for loans), those who were approved were so marginal that all they needed was $600-$1000, and still, 6% of them couldn't repay on time?  So I asked how much interest the borrowers were charged.  It depended on the loan and the borrower, but it was either 20% or 30%.  I would have thought that as a technical and legal matter, this was usury, but whether it was or it wasn't, there was no way I was going to be part of a system that extracted that kind of interest from people who were already that desperate.  So I refused.  I loan money to people -- mostly friends -- and I don't charge them any interest.  I told this company that if they charged the borrowers much less interest, and gave me 3-4%, I'd be happy.

But "we're all in this together," there's no reason to compromise other people, and no one needs to be a billionaire.  I don't know if there were any billionaires when Eisenhower (R) was president, but the highest tax rate during his administrations was in the 90%s.  Hardly anyone paid that level of tax, because of deductions.  I was a kid then, my parents had five children, my father worked, my mother didn't, and we got along fine.

Yeah, billionaires, the vast majority of whom are billionaires because they have dizzyingly high incomes, should pay much more tax.  These are people who live in this country because they choose to.  They should care about its welfare, and about the welfare of their countrymen.