Our minds want to work this way. But unless an anchor is a billionaire (most are not even close), they really don’t have even close to the level of wealth as the supremely-rich.
I think a person could make a pretty cognizant argument that with a net worth of $10 Million, the average family of four would NEVER, EVER have want of anything, and could live a pretty opulent lifestyle compared to most humans on the planet. Probably even cutting that in half would make it a true statement.
This is obvious algebra, but think about it – there are 100 $10-Millionaires in a billionaire’s wealth. There are 1000 $10-Millionaires in a $10 Billionaire’s wealth.
It is difficult if not impossible to imagine the wealth of a billionaire. What we really need to do is make sure people with $0 to $10 Million net worth start to see themselves as much more similar to one another, than to people worth $100 Million or more.
IMHO, there is no good reason for there to be billionaires, period, and lots of bad reasons. Again, this statement is probably also true if we lower that number to $100 Million.
Fun thought experiment – if all wealth were capped at $100 Million, what could we do with the proceeds? Something tells me we’d essentially be in Star Trek, which I would take.
Edit:
And Farhad Manjoo’s editorial in the New York Times today, making my case.
What’s baffling to me about this, and similar cases before (like when Fox News listed AOC’s nefarious policy ideas including stuff like “senior healthcare” or somesuch), is how they’re not redefining things or presenting them as some zealous, over-the-top misconception of fairness.
No, they’re talking about “idea of fairness” and “fairness above all”, as inherently laughable and horrible extremist ideologies! Or do they think their audience is so brainwashed that they will automatically turn on any idea or concept the Fox News present as evil?
I can’t honestly say which possibility would be more disturbing.
Definitely 1%, but not the 0.1%. There’s no yachts, jets, or NY penthouse apartments.
Not subject to a 70% tax on income over $10m or a 2% annual tax on personal wealth over $50m (with an additional 1% on wealth over $1b) because they don’t have any of those things.
People in general over estimate how many and who actually falls into this group. It’s way way way smaller than you think.
Let’s not forget that ideas like a ‘flat income tax’ or ‘replacing income tax with a national sales tax’ are often trotted out because folks on the right claim “it’s more fair” than a graduated income tax.
FFS, the lesson behind our parents saying “life isn’t fair” was that no matter how hard we try, we’ll always have to deal with difficulties, random chance and some level of injustice, simply because the world’s not perfect. The lesson was NOT that fairness is bad and undesirable and that we shouldn’t even try to begin with. That’s the twisted version that only a cartoon villain would espouse. It was supposed to teach us resiliency, not sociopathy.
In kindergarten they teach fairness, sharing and telling the truth. None of these are useful to a successful capitalist. Although they are OK for making good workers though.
Same reason that some of these “owner’s class” wants to pay a person $8 an hour vs a living wage. Some how they can rationalize this. I’m always really impressed about how strongly Christian people rationalize this. I worked for that business owner a couple of times. We were integral to the business but they paid the minimum amount that would bring people to work. There are always people who due to circumstances will work for little b/c it is better than nothing. The rest of us move on as soon as we can. Consequently both employers had alot of turnover. Consequently they lost alot of expertise to the turnover.
I think the Fox News wanchors (thank you @timber_munki) would like to think they bathe in the reflected glory of the super-rich by licking their backsides and are thus ‘one of them’ - but, no. .
