The top 10% own 70% of America's wealth, and corporations themselves are taxed quite low. Also, don't dismiss her wealth so easily, $60B is 75% of the annual cost to cover the tuition of every public college student, and that's from a single individual. For perspective, there are over 600 billionaires in this country.
Not that odd, for every Makenzie scott there 100, 1000?, billionaires that aren’t nearly as generous, who hold onto their wealth that the passes to heirs who may have been insulated from society their entire lives - Eg the climate denying Koch brothers. Taxing them is systematically putting the allocation of some of that capital back into hands of society and out of the random draw of good and bad.
> Not that odd, for every Makenzie scott there 100, 1000?, billionaires that aren’t nearly as generous, who hold onto their wealth that the passes to heirs
There are about 2750 billionaires in the world, 210 of whom have pledged to give away at least half their wealth to charitable causes, so about 12 billionaires who aren't as generous for every Makenzie Scott (assuming that billionaires can't be generous if they haven't signed the giving pledge).
Those 2750 control the allocation how much of the capital of the entire world? Another reason we should tax them is that so few should really not be making the decisions for that much capital. That’s not even a good basis for a competitive capitalist system to run, let alone a social system that wants to maintain some baseline level of minimum fair distribution of wealth.
Even if you agree with Mackenzie Scott’s allocations, she wasn’t the direct individual who amassed the fortune (though I’m sure she contributed a lot), it’s something of serendipity that she’s in a position to be allocating her portion at all now. It really shouldn’t be this way.
> Another reason we should tax them is that so few should really not be making the decisions for that much capital.
Now apply that same logic to the US government. If you divide the federal budget by the number of elected officials, each one controls over $7 billion of income per year. The amount of wealth they control is far higher than all the billionaires in the world combined. In addition, they create laws that are backed by the threat of violence. They also capture wealth through taxes, which if I don't pay, will cause men with guns to come to my home and put me in a cage. I didn't agree to any of this and there's no way I can opt out of it.
I'm not worried about billionaires pulling me over and putting me in handcuffs, or telling me who I'm allowed to marry, or what substances I can use in my own home. I'm not worried about billionaires taking my money to fund armies and spending decades invading random countries in the middle east. I'm definitely not worried about billionaires restricting where I can travel or what business transactions I can engage in.
If I have to choose between the government controlling more of people's resources or less, I'm picking less.
Perhaps. But the people have control over that money. Deferring control to billionaires on the hope that they will grace us with their efficient money distribution is like hoping for philosopher kings.
In practice, democratic control will be more stable.
