Sam Seder: We Should Ban Billionaires! (Is He Right!)

[meadowlander]

21. Virtually nobody becomes a billionnaire by themselves these days.

If you are one, it's a pretty safe bet that either:

- you charged too much for your product
- you didn't pay your workers enough
- you dodged your fair share of taxes
- you dodged your fair share of liability for the environmental consequences of what you're doing
- you inherited it from someone
- you won the lottery or gambled in the stock market

All of those except the last one are market failures and I have no issue whatsoever with the government stepping in to correct those failures. That's not "confiscation" - it's the government making sure that the social contract continues to function and that we don't see the kind of rampant income and wealth inequality that has been plaguing the US for the last forty years and is now starting to threaten democratic institutions there.

You know where that ends up? Ask Louis XVI or Marie Antoinette.