Taxing the Rich

Of course the rich people should have to pay higher taxes. Not because of some sacrifice for the common good principle or some trickle down principle or some from each according to their ability principle, but because they don’t deserve their money. There, I said it. They don’t deserve their millions.

Even if I worked twenty hours a day, 365 days of the year, I wouldn’t make anywhere near just one million.

So they must be making ten, twenty, a hundred times per hour what I’m making.

Is what they’re doing a hundred times more important than what I’m doing. It’s not even ten times more important. (Let’s say I’m a garbage collector.)

Is it a hundred or ten times more difficult? No. (Let’s say I’m a nurse in the paraplegic ward.)

Does it take a hundred or ten times as much skill or training? No. (Let’s say I’m an astrophysicist.)

Rich people have their millions because they’ve been paid, by others or by themselves, an unfair amount for their work. Or because they know how to work an unfair economic system that, for starters, rewards risk: the stock market.

But why do we reward risk? Because it’s a male thing. And males reward themselves for male values.

Actually, though, often it’s not a risk. If the company they started, the company they invested in, lost millions, they could declare bankruptcy. And other people would pay the price. Not them. Or if they’re really big, if they lost really big, the government might bail them out. That is, us.

Furthermore, they’re not even risking their own money. They probably borrowed the start-up money from the bank. So it’s our money. Or the bank’s money (which is just money they made by investing our money).

Or if it was their own money, well it still wasn’t. It was inherited from their parents. (Who probably inherited it from their parents). Because you can’t have that much money to invest by working and saving. Even if you work twenty hours a day, 365 days a year…

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